IT was nine o’clock in the evening when a heavy train rolled into the Union Station of a great western city. Among the passengers to alight was a fair-haired girl who glanced timidly about the big, cavernous station before falling in with the procession of travellers that had begun to move toward the waiting-room. Suddenly, one face shone clearly from among the indiscriminate mass of faces outside the iron gates, and she gave a glad little cry, as a tall boy stepped forward, caught her suitcase from her, and grasped her hand.

“Jacquette, isn’t it?” he exclaimed, his dark eyes shining with welcome. “I’d know you anywhere from your pictures.” “But I shouldn’t know you!” she answered. “I’d no idea you were so big and—and grand!” she finished, roguishly.

“As for that, I am rather grand, to-night,” he laughed, stealing admiring glances at her as he led the way through the crowded station to the street. “I’m down here in the governor’s new auto to meet a long-lost country cousin, and I find a fairy princess, instead. What more could a fellow ask?”

“Not an automobile! Truly? I’ve never been in one, yet.”

“Oh, well, you’ll do a lot of things in Channing that you never did in Brookdale. Here’s the machine. Just step in and be comfortable while I look after your baggage.”

He gave an order to the respectful chauffeur and disappeared into the station, while Jacquette Willard looked after him, feeling that she had suddenly entered a new world. She sat up very straight, brushing a bit of lint from the jacket of her wine-coloured travelling-gown, and, more than once, she patted the sunny mist of hair about her face, and put both hands to the jaunty hat, to make sure that it was poised exactly as it should be. In a few minutes her tall cousin came back and seated himself beside her, and then they went spinning along the brilliantly lighted streets toward her uncle’s home.

“It seems like a fairy story to me, Quis,” she said, looking up at him with a shy smile.

“Didn’t I tell you you were the princess?” Marquis answered gaily. “Do you know?—there’s a pink rose in our conservatory that looks just like you, only it lacks the eyes—poor rose! Your pictures showed your hair was curly, but they didn’t tell the gold colour of it, and those stunning braids didn’t show, either. Wonder if the girls will make you put up your hair?” “What girls?”

“Oh, the bunch I’ll show you, to-morrow morning. Nicest girls in Marston High.”

“High school, do you mean?”

“Yes; we never stop to put on the school, though. Everybody knows Marston. It’s famous all through the west for its football team. I’m mighty glad you came while I’m a senior here, instead of waiting till next year when I’ll be off at college. I can give you no end of pointers. By the way, I liked it just now, when you said ‘Quis.’ I suppose you know about your mother and my father getting our Frenchy sounding names out of the same old novel? Funny, wasn’t it? I have to answer to ‘Markee’ about half the time. The fellows do it to guy me. I wonder what you’d think if I should call you ‘Jack’?”

“I’d like it,” she agreed, promptly. “I never had a nickname.” “All right, that’s settled. Don’t you think it’s queer we feel so well acquainted, just from the letters we’ve written? Do you realise that it’s twelve years since I even saw you? We lived abroad ten whole years, you know. Mother was saying, last night, that I’d spent two years more of my life in Europe than in this country, so far. I’m a pretty good American, though, for all that. The last two years here in Channing seem worth more than the whole ten on the other side. My father feels the same way, too, and he’s mighty happy to think that you and Aunt Sula and grandfather are coming to live so near us.”

“And perhaps we’re not happy about it too! You ought to hear the plans Aunt Sula and I have made for this winter. We’re going to make the most of the chance to hear good music, and see all the exhibitions at the Art Institute, for one thing.”

“Whew! How cultured we are!” “We aren’t, yet, but wait!” Jacquette laughed. Then she added, seriously, “Our plans aren’t all selfish, though. We’re hoping we can interest grandfather in some of the new things, and make him happier. He has been so lonely since grandmother died, Quis.”

“I suppose he has. How soon are they coming?”

“Oh, it will be six weeks or two months before Aunt Sula can settle up things and leave Brookdale. I ought to be there to help her, but she was so anxious to have me begin school the first day that she made me come.”

“Then you’re going to stay at our house six weeks or more. That’s great. Perhaps you’ll make up your mind to live with us all the time after this.”

“Aunt Sula wouldn’t hear of that,” Jacquette said, smiling. “She thinks I belong to her as much as if I were her very own daughter. I guess I do, too. She’s taken care of me ever since I was three years old, you know.”

“Three!” Marquis repeated, in a softened tone. “Were you that little when your father and mother died, Jack?”

She nodded, a wistful look creeping into the hazel eyes, and they were both silent for a little. The automobile had turned on to a fashionable boulevard, and was skimming along like the wind. Presently a grey stone house loomed before them.

“Here we are!” cried Marquis—and, a minute later, Uncle Mac and Aunt Fanny were welcoming the Brookdale niece to their city home.

Aunt Fanny was tall and distinguished looking. Quis was like her; Jacquette saw that at a glance. Uncle Mac was stout and blue-eyed—and dear and kind.

After the first greetings he held his niece off at arm’s length, and looked deep into her eyes.

“Your mother’s own girl,” he said, with a mist in his voice. “Fanny, let’s keep her for ours after this.”

“At any rate, we shall be very glad to keep her for ours until Father Granville and Sula come, Malcolm,” Aunt Fanny answered in even tones, and Jacquette, glancing shyly up at the white profile of her statuesque, dark-haired aunt, felt, suddenly, that she knew who ruled her uncle’s home.

Mrs. Malcolm Granville was a woman who prided herself on her practical common sense, and, though she was very willing to receive Jacquette into her luxurious home for a visit, she had no intention of allowing her husband to put any foolish ideas, even for a minute, into the mind of his niece. As she reasoned, Jacquette, with the modest inheritance left to her by her father, was very suitably placed in the unpretentious home of her grandfather and unmarried aunt, and there was no good reason for saying or doing anything which might cause her to feel discontented with this arrangement.

As a matter of fact, there was not the slightest danger. Jacquette was too devotedly attached to her adopted mother to consider, for a moment, the thought of leaving her, and she felt an impulse to tell Aunt Fanny so on the spot, but she controlled it, and, after a few days, she learned, as people always did, to make allowances for Aunt Fanny’s “way,” and to appreciate her kindness, in spite of it.

“Now I’m going to carry this girl straight off to bed,” Aunt Fanny declared, presently, after Jacquette, relieved of her wraps and seated in a rocker before the fireplace in the library, had been served with a dainty tray of refreshments. “You see she can’t eat a mouthful, even though she confesses to not having taken dinner on the train. I believe she has swallowed three sips of milk and one nibble of that roll, altogether. She’s tired and excited, and the longer she stays here answering your questions, Malcolm, the more tired she’ll be.”

“Oh, mother, it’s disgracefully early!” Marquis protested, but Uncle Malcolm, leaning back in his big leather chair, smiled good-naturedly.

“Guess you’re right, Fanny,” he agreed. “If she’s going to begin school to-morrow morning, the sooner those pretty eyes are shut, the better.”

“There won’t be any school-work to speak of, the first day—nothing but fun—and I had forty things more to say to her,” Marquis was still grumbling as he rose to say good-night, but his mother’s word was law, and even Marquis grudgingly admitted her wisdom, next morning, when he saw the bright, rosy girl that emerged from the good night’s rest. As he started for school with Jacquette, after breakfast, he turned and looked her over with a smile of satisfaction. “Well, what is it? Country cousin?” she asked him, saucily.

“Not much! I meant ‘fairy princess’ when I said it. I was just thinking that if your dress were an inch or two longer, you’d look precious little like a freshy.”

“There’s a double hem in all of them, to let out if I need to,” Jacquette confided to him, “but Aunt Sula thought they were long enough for fifteen.”

“Oh, well, the Sigma Pi girls will post you on all those matters.”

“The Sigma what?”

“That’s your sorority—Sigma Pi Epsilon. I’ve arranged with the girls to rush you, first thing, and they’re sure to bid you in a few days.”

“To bid me?”

“I’ll bet you don’t know what a sorority is! Oh, Brookdale, Brookdale! Think of a fairy princess buried in Brookdale! Why, every high school worthy of the name, nowadays, has its Greek-letter societies, and at Marston, we have more fraternities and sororities than I could tell you about in an hour. The only ones worth mentioning, though, are the ones with national charters. The little local ones are punk. The people that can’t make the nationals, go into them. But it goes without saying that the sorority I’m going to get you into is the most exclusive set in the school. Wait till you see the girls.”

“Why, Quis, I do know about secret societies in schools. I’ve read a lot about the teachers opposing them.”

“Yes, I suppose you have—but they haven’t any right to do it. Is it their business to forbid our joining a club, provided our parents are willing? As for the Channing Board of Education, I guess we’ve hushed it up for one while. It made a rule, last year, shutting off fraternity and sorority members from a lot of high school privileges—trying to freeze out secret societies that way, you see—and we just took up a collection and hired a first-class lawyer and got an injunction against their enforcing that rule. They haven’t any legal right to do such a thing.”

Jacquette listened with a growing sense of her own lack of information. “But don’t you think there’s anything, then, in all this fuss about fraternities making class distinctions in school?” she asked cautiously.

“Not a thing! I’ll tell you how it is: All the fellows that are really worth anything get into some fraternity or other—and the same with the girls.”

They turned a corner and came within sight of Marston High School. It was a large grey stone building, rising abruptly from the street and separated from it only by two railed-in grass plots, one on each side of the walk leading to the main entrance. A few scrub oaks, straggling relics of the old forest which had once flourished where the hurrying, striving city now stood, shaded the windows at the south, but, except for these, everything was bare—as different as possible from the pleasant grounds surrounding the little Brookdale school.

“Oh, are we here?” Jacquette cried. “I wanted to ask you about planning my course, Quis.”

“Lots of time for that,” he told her. “You won’t do a thing but be rushed, to-day.”

“And just what is being ‘rushed,’ please?”

“Here’s somebody that will show you,” he answered, coming to a sudden stop on the sidewalk in front of the school building, where a group of girls were talking together.

They greeted Marquis gaily, and Jacquette’s name had hardly been pronounced before they came fluttering about her like butterflies. After a minute, Marquis laughingly withdrew, promising to look her up later.

Jacquette had never experienced anything like this. She was flattered and petted, her “beautiful braids” envied, her “lovely colour” raved over, while she was being presented to this and that girl, and yielded reluctantly by one to the other, until she had met about twenty.

There the introductions stopped. Plenty of other girls and boys were standing about, or passing in and out of the school building, but it was evident that she was to meet no one outside of this particular set, to-day. She was satisfied, though, for she had begun to believe what Marquis had said about these being the nicest girls in Marston High.

As she stood there in the warm September sunshine, she found herself taking notes of the silk and muslin gowns worn by these new friends, and of the elaborate styles of hair-dressing. One richly-dressed girl, who had been introduced as Blanche Gross, was describing a forty-dollar hat that she had bought “just to wear in the house, at teas and receptions.” Jacquette, fresh from Brookdale, wondered what Aunt Sula would say to that. She wished Quis had told her that hats were not worn outdoors in Channing. Not one of the girls had any covering on her head.

The chatter about her went on merrily. Now and then a new girl was brought into the charmed circle, and passed around, just as Jacquette had been, but no one seemed to think of going into school. Jacquette did not quite understand; she was only sure that it was all fascinating, and that she was glad to be a part of it.

“Don’t we go in to see about our classes, pretty soon?” she asked, presently, of Louise Markham, a jolly, stylish-looking senior in a white linen suit, who seemed to have taken her especially under her wing.

“Oh, no!”—Etta Brainerd, the talkative girl of the crowd spoke before Louise could answer—“Sorority girls never register until second day.”

“But we may have to reform our ways in that respect, girls,” laughed Louise. “Did you know the Board of Education took off five teachers from Marston faculty, last year, because the enrollment of pupils on the first day was only a thousand? Next day, you know, after the rest of us had registered, there were nearly fifteen hundred, and the teachers didn’t like it a bit. It made their work so much harder.”

“Oh, they always fuss about something,” said Etta, carelessly. “We have to take care of the interests of our sorority, first day. Guess we aren’t going to let the Kappa Delts run off with the best girls, while we’re registering!”

Etta was the tallest girl in the group. Her brown hair was drawn to the top of her head in a fluffy knot, and her skirts almost touched the ground. As she spoke, she was readjusting the sorority pin on the front of her white lace waist. “It has to be exactly over the heart,” she explained, with a smile, as she saw Jacquette watching her.

“We’re going to have a spread after a while, and we want you to come,” Louise murmured to Jacquette. “That’s what ‘rushing’ means. Quis said I should tell you. We pick out the girls we think we may want, and give them a good time—spreads and so on—and then, if we find they’re all right, we bid them Sigma Pi—ask them to join, you know.”

But while Louise was speaking, Jacquette had suddenly recognised a girl who had spent the summer with an aunt in Brookdale, a few years earlier.

“Margaret Howland!” she cried, darting forward and catching her by the arm.

“Jacquette Willard! Where did you drop down from?” Jacquette wondered, as she explained, at the curious expression which crossed Margaret’s face. “I never dreamed you went to this school,” Jacquette finished. “I was going to look you up the first chance I had, but now we’ll see each other every day. Isn’t it splendid?”

“Yes, I’m awfully glad to see you, but——” Margaret hesitated.

“‘But,’ you’re so big you can’t play with a little freshy?”

“No, indeed! But I’m afraid, if Quis Granville is your cousin——”

“Jack!” a surprised voice interrupted, and, turning, Jacquette found Quis looking down at her in unmistakable disapproval. “Good morning, Miss Howland,” he added, lifting his cap to Margaret. “Excuse my cousin, will you? Some of the girls want her.”

It was done in a twinkling. Margaret was swallowed up in the bevy of girls who had gathered about while she talked with Jacquette, and Marquis carried off his cousin in gleeful triumph.

“What in the world!” he began, as soon as they were out of earshot. “How did she ever get you?”

“Get me? What do you mean?” Jacquette protested. “That’s Margaret Howland—a darling girl I knew in Brookdale, three years ago.”

“The mischief you did! She’s one of the strongest workers in Kappa Delta, and you mustn’t have a thing to do with her at this stage of the game, or you’ll lose all your chances with the Sigma Pi girls. Now, mind, Jack, you’re new here. I know the ground and you won’t be sorry if you take my advice. My frat is Beta Sigma, the best in school—hardest to get into, finest frat house, highest dues, and all that. The only sorority that ranks with it is Sigma Pi Epsilon. I want you to have the best. Understand?” And, as he ended, he handed her over to Louise Markham, whose laugh had rippled out gaily when she saw them coming.

“I’ll not let her get away again,” she told Marquis, her dark eyes twinkling as she put one arm around Jacquette. “We love her too much, already, to trust her in the enemy’s camp.”

“Indeed we do!” chorussed half a dozen girls, gathering about, and, before she realised what was happening, Jacquette had been bewitched into forgetting all about Margaret.

The morning passed, and when the noon hour came, the girls adjourned to the Sigma Pi spread. It was given at Etta Brainerd’s house, and Jacquette found that it meant sandwiches and salads, hot chocolate, olives, cake, ice-cream and candy, all served picnic fashion, with sorority songs, and laughter and chatter. When the party dispersed, late in the afternoon, some one whispered to Jacquette that she was to stay, and, as soon as the other guests had gone, the Sigma Pi girls gathered about and told her that they had decided to ask her to join their sorority.

Then Louise Markham, who had completely won Jacquette’s heart, walked home with her to tell Quis what a success she had been with the girls, and to charge him that he must help her with an important letter which she was to write to her Aunt Sula that evening.

Accordingly, after dinner, Marquis and Jacquette retired to the library for consultation.

Jacquette took up a pen. “Tia Mia,” were the first words she wrote.

“What’s that?” Quis demanded, looking over her shoulder.

“Tee-ah mee-ah,” pronounced Jacquette. “It’s Spanish for ‘my aunt.’ We found it in a book, and I thought it was cunning; so ‘Tia’ has been my pet name for Aunt Sula ever since.”

“Oh! Well, go on,” Quis consented, and after much re-writing, this was the letter they sent:

“Tia Mia,

“The first day at school has been simply glorious and now I have a great favour to ask. Don’t refuse it! I have been asked to join the nicest girls’ club in Marston High School. May I do it? Of course I’d rather wait till you are here and could know the girls, too, but Quis says I ought to accept when I’m asked, as it’s a great compliment, and they may never invite me again. It’s called a sorority—a sisterhood, you know—and it stands for the highest ideals in scholarship and everything else.

“Darling, please, please don’t make me lose this chance of being closely associated with the very best girls, just because you’re not here to judge for yourself. Trust me.

“I don’t know what the dues will be, but not large, Quis thinks, and I could pay them out of the money set aside for my education. It’s really a part of my high school education, they seem to think, here.

“Please say yes, dearest, and by return mail.

“Always the same love,

“Your Girl.”