Marjorie did not add that her walk would include a last stroll past the towering gray walls of a certain stone building on Lincoln avenue, which bore over its massive oak doors the inscription, "The Sanford High School for Girls." Almost every day since her arrival, she had visited it, viewing it speculatively and with a curious kind of apprehension. She was not afraid to plunge into her new school life, but deep down in her heart she felt some little misgiving. What if the new girls proved to be neither likable nor companionable? What if she liked them but they did not like her? She had just begun the same apprehensive train of thought that had been disturbing her peace of mind for the last four days when her mother's voice broke the spell.
"If you are going that far I wish you would go on to Parke & Whitfield's for me. I should like you to match this embroidery silk. I have not enough of it to finish this collar and cuff set I am making for you."
"I'll be your faithful servant and execute all your commissions, mum," declared Marjorie with a little obeisance, her spirits rising a little at the prospect of actual errands to perform. She was already tired of aimlessly wandering along the wide, well-kept streets of Sanford, feeling herself to be quite out of things. Even errands were actual blessings sometimes, she decided, as a little later, she ran upstairs to dress.
"May I wear my best suit and hat, Mother?" she called anxiously down from the head of the stairs. "It's such a lovely day, I'm sure it won't rain, snow, hail or do anything else to spoil them."
"Very well," answered Mrs. Dean, placidly.
With a gurgle of delight Marjorie hurried into her room to put on her new brown suit, which had the mark of a well-known tailor in the coat, and her best hat, on which all the Franklin High girls had set their seal of approval. She had shoes and gloves to match her suit, too, and her dancing brown eyes and fluffy brown hair were the last touches needed to complete the dainty little study in brown.
"Don't I look nice in this suit?" she asked her mother saucily, turning slowly around before the living-room mirror. "Aren't you and father perfect dears to let me have it, though?" She whirled and descended upon her mother with outstretched arms, enveloping her in an ecstatic hug that sadly disturbed the proper angle of her brown velvet hat.
"Don't be gone too long," reminded her mother. "You know father has promised us tickets for the theatre to-night. We shall have an early dinner."
"All right, I'll remember, Captain." With a brisk touching of her hand to her hat brim in salute Marjorie vanished through the door, to reappear a moment later at the living-room window, flash a merry smile at her mother, about face and march down the walk in true military style.
Long before when Marjorie was a tiny girl she had shown an unusual preference for soldiers. She had owned enough wooden soldiers to make a regiment and was never at a loss to invent war games in which they figured. Sometimes, when she tired of her stiff, silent armies, which could only move as she willed, she inveigled her father or mother into being the hero, the enemy, the traitor or whatever her active imagination chose to suggest. Her parents, amused at her boyish love of military things, encouraged her in her play and entered into it with as much spirit as the child herself. Her father, who had once been an officer in the National Guard, taught her the manual of arms and she had learned it with a will.