"I won't give it away," replied Hippy. "It's a surprise. You'll see, and I wager it will be the talk of the place before the evening is over."
"Is it animal, vegetable or mineral, Hippy?" demanded Mrs. Nesbit.
"Animal," replied Hippy. "Very much animal."
"Now, what in the world," the two women exclaimed, their curiosity piqued.
"Hippy, I wish you would come on and get to work," called Grace over her shoulder, as she hurried past, and Hippy darted after her, remembering that he had not done a thing that evening to assist the girls.
"How fine Grace Harlowe does look, Mrs. Nesbit," remarked Miss Thompson, "and how I shall miss her when she leaves the High School! The time goes too quickly to suit me, when all these nice girls leave us for college."
Miss Thompson still cherished a deep regard for Grace, although, since the circumstance of Grace's refusal to betray Eleanor, narrated in "Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School," the two had never returned to quite the same footing as formerly.
Grace was, indeed, the picture of a beautiful gipsy girl who in romance turns out not to be a gipsy at all, but a princess stolen in her youth. She wore a skirt of red trimmed in black and yellow, a full white blouse and a little black velvet bolero. Around her waist she had tied a gayly colored sash, while on her head was a gipsy headdress bordered with gold fringe.
"Hippy," commanded Grace, "will you please take this gong and announce that the auction is about to begin!"
"Certainly, certainly," answered Hippy. "Anything to oblige the ladies."