"Dal, here's one of your masterpieces, composed when you were thirteen, and mooney over Daren Lane."
"I? Never! I didn't write it," denied Dorothy, with color in her dark cheeks.
"Yes you did. It's signed—'Yours forever Dot Dalrymple.' ... Besides I remember now Daren gave it to me. Said he wanted to prove he could have other girls if he couldn't have me."
"How chivalrous!" exclaimed Dorothy, joining in the laugh.
"Ah! here's what I've been hunting," declared Margaret, waving aloft a small picture. "It's a photograph of Holt, taken five years ago. Only the other evening he swore I hadn't kept it—dared me to produce it. He'll want it now—for some other girl. But nix, it's mine.... Dal, isn't he a handsome boy here?"
With sisterly impartiality Dorothy declared she could not in the wildest flight of her imagination see her brother as handsome.
"Holt used to be good-looking," said she. "But he outgrew it. That South Carolina training camp and the flu changed his looks as well as his disposition."
"Holt is changed," mused Margaret, gazing down at the picture, and the glow faded from her face.
"Dare Lane is handsome, even if he is a wreck," said Elinor, with sudden enthusiasm. "Friday night when he beat it from Fanchon's party he sure looked splendid."
Elinor was a staunch admirer of Lane's and she was the inveterate torment of her girl friends. She gave Helen a sly glance. Helen's green eyes narrowed and gleamed.