“They’re the sweetest things!” said Vivian.
“Wasn’t that your secret when we held our first meeting in May?” asked Dorothy.
“Yes, that was it. When you mentioned the hepatica, I thought how lovely it would be to have little hepatica pins. I wrote father all about it, and he said he’d love to have them made for us as a gift from him. They are sweet! I love them!”
She lifted hers from her blouse and examined it, while the other Vigilantes did the same. They were little hepaticas in dull gold. In the heart of each glowed three small pearls; and in a circle around the pearls were engraved in tiny letters the words, “Ever Vigilant.”
“They’ll be such a help to us this summer, I think,” said Dorothy. “I know mine will. It will help me remember—lots of things.”
They were sitting on their rock back of the Retreat. It was afternoon of the day following the pageant, and this was their last Vigilante meeting.
“Doesn’t it seem as though everything had come out just right?” asked Priscilla after a little pause. “This morning in chapel when Miss King announced that we’d won the cup, I could have screamed, I was so glad! And that’s due to you, Dorothy, more than to any one else. Just think of your Latin examination! Miss Baxter has put it in the exhibit of class work. I’m so glad!”
“I can’t help feeling glad, too. But then it isn’t any more than I ought to have done toward my share of winning the cup. I helped toward losing it the first of the year.”
“Oh, don’t let’s talk about that part—ever again!” cried the founder of the Vigilantes. “It’s never going to happen any more, and that’s what makes me so happy, because now we understand each other, and next year we’ll all be working for the same thing! Oh, I get happier every minute!”
“Won’t it be lovely to have the Blackmores in The Hermitage?”