Jo giggled, but looked pleased just the same. Geraldine—familiarly known as Gerry—Middleton was editor-in-chief of the school paper, Pied Piper. Besides holding this exalted position, Gerry was a senior and one of the most popular girls at Laurel Hall.
"I don't believe I could write like this for the public eye—" Jo said modestly.
"The vulgar public," interposed Nan.
"Anyway, this is strictly for private consumption," finished Jo, gayly tapping the journal on the fluffy head of Doris who was sitting directly beneath her on nothing more comfortable than the floor. "I wrote it to cheer up an invalid." She looked over intervening heads until her eye met Nan's. "It's for your Aunt Emma, Nan. I thought she might like it."
"Say, Jo, that's a bully scheme!" Nan was radiant. "It will be the best tonic in the world for her!"
So it happened that the new friends of the chums from Woodford came to hear about Nan's invalid aunt. Being kind-hearted girls, they took a genuine interest in the unfortunate woman. And, knowing of Jo's "journal," they saved up scraps of interesting or funny happenings of the day and brought them to lay in the lap of the "literary light."
Miss Emma wrote back cheerfully and affectionately, and her genuine and enthusiastic appreciation of the journal spurred Jo on to fresh efforts.
Meanwhile, the girl chums were becoming well accustomed to the pleasant routine of classes and recreation at Laurel Hall. On Sundays most of the girls put on their best frocks and went in automobiles to Laurelton and church.
This was both pleasant and sad to Jo, who thought more of her parents' troubles on Sundays than on other days—perhaps because then she had more time to think.
She gathered from her mother's letters—which arrived far more regularly and voluminously than the brief and hastily scrawled missives of her father—that nothing had as yet been heard of Andrew Simmer.