Could it be possible that the short summer was over? The Lee family had exchanged news and experiences and made ready for a busy school year. Dick, whose new name for the family was the “Foxy Five,” had changed most of all since his summer at camp. All at once Dick seemed to have grown up and to be as old as his twin, who had shown an earlier maturity. He was rather heady and important upon his first arrival, but had calmed down somewhat by the time of school’s opening. He and Doris rather took the house, to use their father’s expression, and regaled their parents with stories of camp life. They took a mild interest in Betty’s trips and spent some time together in arguing over camp matters, or comparing notes on canoeing, swimming and the like.

And now here they all were, in the same old scramble to get to school on time.

“It seems to me,” said Mr. Lee, “that Betty might be more simply dressed for school.”

He and Mrs. Lee were standing before the wide window of their front room to watch Betty, Doris and Dick start to school. Amy Lou’s active little figure had already disappeared around the corner as she hurried off to the grade school, near enough to be reached by walking. There Amy Lou would be in the advanced class and felt very old indeed.

The September morning was quite warm. Both girls wore cool, light frocks and had taken great pains with their toilets; and Betty, as Doris had told her, did not look as “schoolish” as usual.

The three were talking and laughing as they swung their books and walked with light, rapid steps toward the usual corner, where they would catch the street car. Mr. Lee sometimes drove them to school; but this morning he was working out something at home before going to his office. Betty carried a new, shining brown brief-case. Doris had a gay bag. Dick swung his books from a strap.

In spite of Mr. Lee’s critical remark, the paternal eyes that followed the three were fond and smiling. Mrs. Lee laughed a little, as she linked her arm in that of her husband and smiled up at him. “Betty is a little more dressed up than usual, Father, I will admit. But there is the first auditorium session this morning and Betty for the first time will sit in the senior section!”

“Ah!—I understand. No further explanation is necessary.”

“She can be a senior only once in this big school,” reflectively added Betty’s mother. “I hope the child will have a happy year.”

“And not kill herself with all she wants to do,” finished Mr. Lee, “but I insist on the honor roll.”

“Betty’s pride will keep her on that. We’ve talked things over, Betty and I; but by this time we have found out that there is no way of settling things beforehand. I’m not going to waste any time or energy in worry.”

“Good!” laughingly returned Mr. Lee. “See that you keep to that resolution. Doris is going to be more of a handful than Betty, for she has great ideas sometimes and is more impulsive—ready to try anything new. And Dick—I shall have to be a good father this year and keep an eye upon what companions he has, any new ones. Perhaps I can get out to some of the athletic events with him. I understand he’s going to try to get on some team or other.”

“Is that so?” queried Mrs. Lee, rather dismayed. “Get us an extra supply of liniment then!”

Meanwhile, Amy Lou had reached her school and her young friends. The other three were on a crowded street car, full of high school pupils, sitting and standing. Ignorant of their parents’ plans for oversight, they were naturally and properly filled with anticipations of the day or making their own plans for the interesting program of events and activities that lay ahead.

Betty was not a little excited and happy over her new dignity as a senior. Had she entered upon it unprepared, she might have been confused. But three years in the large and well-organized high school of which she was so proud and to which she was so loyal, had made her entirely at home there. Now their classes had the opportunity to lead and give tone to affairs. In some respects they must show what they could do. This morning, taking their places in the large, central senior section was the source of some thrills indeed. And boys and girls who had successfully passed through the first three years of high school had some reason to be proud. Senior complacency is another thing; but life has a great way of taking that out of all of us.

This morning, as the crowds of young people filled the doors and swarmed up the aisles of the assembly hall, Carolyn, who was ahead in Betty’s small group of friends, deliberately stepped back at the row of seats toward the front that was vacant, and gently pushed Betty in first. “This is all right for this morning, isn’t it?” she asked Kathryn, who was next. “We want to hear everything.”

Betty gasped a little, for she knew that if she went in first she would have to sit next to some boy coming in from the right hand aisle. It was understood that the boys had the right half of the senior section; the girls, the left. But the girls were pushing into the seats behind her, so with no choice she obeyed Carolyn. Gwen was there, too, and Kathryn was sending her in after Carolyn. It had happened, and Gwen was a conditional senior in Lyon High.

“You clever old skeezicks!—making me go in first!” Betty paused a little to say this in Carolyn’s ear.

But Carolyn only grinned, then had the grace to change expression as she said, “Betty, I’m sorry! Look who’s coming.”

Betty looked, glanced back at the crowd of girls following and sat down in a seat not quite midway, only to hop up again as she saw that the whole row must be filled. “Oh, it’s all right, Caro’. I’ll not mind.”

Nonchalant, as nattily dressed as ever, Ted Dorrance had appeared in his most effective suit, better looking than ever. Jack Huxley came toward Betty, stopped in the exact middle of the row and looked down at her from a somewhat superior height.

“’Lo, Betty,” said he in friendly fashion.

“Hello, Jack,” she responded. She sat down, tucked her books under the seat and rose again to wait till the principal was ready to lead in the salute to the flag, with which every assembly session began.

Carolyn, repentant, began to talk to her, but Gwen was asking questions on the other side of Carolyn. They were early. The room was not yet full.

“Have a good vacation, Betty?” asked Jack.

“Ever so nice,” replied Betty.

“You didn’t know that I saw you, did you in the East?”

“No—where?” Betty looked up wonderingly. It was pleasant to have Jack rather friendly, but the memory of that experience at his birthday party and of her necessary frankness to him about it later was not a happy one. And for him it had doubtless been more annoying. Well, she couldn’t help it.

“I was with a party at an inn on a little Maine lake. We were just leaving when you drove up. I knew some of your girls, but only the Dorrances and Larry Waite of the boys.”

“Oh—yes—I remember. But I didn’t see you at all. Of course I wasn’t looking for any one that I knew. I didn’t look at you and not speak, did I?”

“No. One of the boys was out and snapping a picture of you all in the car.”

“Oh, that was Archie Penrose! Funniest thing—we met the Penroses on the way East. I was with the Gwynnes, motoring. We all got acquainted, of course, and they said they were thinking of moving here. Then we were together in a lot of fun in Maine; Kathryn and I motored to Boston with them, and I never knew at all that Mr. Penrose was considering going into the same firm my father’s in, not until I was home and Father asked me ‘who are these Penroses you talk about? There’s a man by that name in the firm now!’”

“Probably Penrose was undecided and not talking about it,” Jack suggested.

“That was it—so Father supposed. And Father was awfully busy in New York, too full of his own affairs to listen to my babblings. And probably I didn’t babble to him much, either.”

Betty was babbling now and knew it. She had always tried to be as friendly to Jack in public as would ordinarily be natural.

Some thought of the sort seemed to occur to Jack. All at once he bent toward her and said, “You’re a peach, Betty Lee. I’ve forgiven you.” He said it with a laugh and turned to speak to the boy standing on his other side.

Betty sighed with relief and turned to Carolyn; but a hush fell over the assembly and all eyes were on the principal and the flag.

Busy, pushing hours followed. After all, there was something good about being at work. You were getting somewhere and there wasn’t any time going to waste!

After school some of the girls were playing hockey and a number were at the tennis court. There, tired after games, a group of the reunited seniors were gathered. On a grassy elevation, heels dug into the slight incline, Betty, Carolyn and Mary Emma Howland were recovering breath from their last effort.

“One thing,” Mary Emma was saying, “about playing hockey with seniors is that they know how to play by this time and you’re not in danger of having some girl swing her stick over her head and give you a side swipe!”

That amused Carolyn Gwynne. “Did I ever hit you when I was a freshman, Mary Emma?”

“Never, Carolyn. You don’t get excited when you’re learning anything. Who beat at tennis?”

“Betty beat, you might know,” laughed Carolyn, looking at her recent opponent. “But I don’t care. I can play tennis all right and I occasionally beat even Betty.”

Betty was too pre-occupied just now to do more than give Carolyn a smiling look. The two girls understood each other.

Kathryn Allen now strolled up with Gwen Penrose and Betty hopped up, saying that she forgot to tell Gwen to save a certain date for “something doing.” And as Betty moved toward the girls, near at hand, Mary Emma said softly to Carolyn, “Remember, Carolyn, that we simply must have Betty as President of the G. A. A. this year. I’ve got to talk to you about it. Mathilde has something started already about it and there is another girl that would like to be it.”

“Mathilde! Why, she couldn’t do it any more than a—rabbit!”

“Mathilde has some following, Carolyn, and she is a sorority girl. I doubt if Mathilde could get it herself, but she might fix it up so Betty couldn’t divide the vote and—you know—get a ‘second best’ girl in to keep Betty out, even if she couldn’t get it for herself.”

“Does she dislike Betty that much?”

“She has always been jealous of her.”

“By the way, does anybody know whether Lucia Coletti is coming back or not? Betty hadn’t heard at last accounts.”

“Well, Betty would be the first one. I wish she would come back. She and Peggy Pollard have a good deal of influence with the sorority girls. I sometimes think Betty should have gone in. She had the chance, I know, with the Kappa Upsilons.”

Carolyn did not reply to this, and Betty was turning back with the girls, who selected a grassy seat and dropped down to join their friends. “Can you realize it, girls?” queried Kathryn. “We’re actually seniors at last!”

“Let’s have a club,” suggested Betty. “I was thinking about that just before you and Gwen came up.”

“Another club?” asked Carolyn. “Seems to me Lyon High needs most anything more than any new organization.”

“I didn’t mean a big club. I mean a little club of our own, not a sorority and not exactly secret; but just to get together sometimes, for fun and to plan things if we want to.”

“A secret caucus!”

“That’s it, Kathryn,” laughed Betty, who had no such intention at all. “We could have it a hiking club or a swimming club or even a literary club—for collateral reading.”

“Now wouldn’t that be wonderful!” cried Carolyn, as sarcastically as generous Carolyn ever could manage. Betty giggled.

“Think of the time we’d save, reading together,” suggested Mary Emma, in pretended sincerity.

“No,” urged Betty, “but here we are together this year for the last, maybe. Carolyn’s going East to school, Mary Emma’s folks may move to California, I don’t know what I’m going to do, and anyhow we’ve this grand senior year together. Besides, what’s the matter with taking a book along if we go on a picnic together and having—Carolyn, who is so so enthusiastic about the literary idea—read us some famous poem, or whatever they give us this year? Somebody think up a name for it, though if you all don’t want it, I’m too lazy to urge it.”

“I think that the Hiking Hoodlums or some pretty name like that would be least revealing of our real object,” giggled Mary Emma.

“Lovely,” assented Betty. “We can consider that suggestion. By the way—I ought to get home before too late. I called up Mother at noon about something very important—a change in my schedule, and she told me that a letter from Lucia had come and was ‘waiting for me!’ I hope it is to tell me that she’s coming back to Lyon High, don’t you!”

The assent was general and emphatic. “I was just talking to Carolyn about Lucia,” said Mary Emma. “Do call us all up and tell us the news after you have read it.”

“I will if I have time,” promised Betty. “Come on, seniors. Let’s make up a senior song of our own and sing it on the first hike of the Happy Hoodlums.”

“Oh, Betty!” cried Carolyn. “You wouldn’t really have such a name for a club, would you?”

“Unless you promise to read poetry to us,” threatened Betty.

“I don’t know which would be worse,” laughed Carolyn.

In high spirits the senior girls separated; but Mary Emma caught up with Betty before they left the grounds. “By the way, Betty,” said she, “wasn’t it terribly dramatic and wasn’t Ramon Balinsky simply thrilled to find out that his mother and sister were living?”

It was all Betty could do not to show her surprise and a certain dismay at this speech from Mary Emma. “Gwendolyn Penrose told me all about it this noon at lunch,” Mary Emma added.

“Why no, Mary Emma,” said Betty. “You would expect it to be dramatic, I know. But you see Ramon was so nearly dead when the boys told him, partly to rouse him, Ted said; and when he finally took it in, he was by himself, I suppose, though the boys would never make a big story of it anyhow. But you must be careful, Mary Emma, not to tell about it, because Ramon had to go after that man, he said, and they might worry if they knew. So we’re not telling his mother and sister yet, because he asked us not to.”

“I think that’s all nonsense,” said Mary Emma, “but I won’t tell anyhow. I promised Gwen I wouldn’t. And isn’t Gwen Penrose an addition to the class and our crowd! Everybody that meets her likes her so far.”

“Gwen is nice, Mary Emma, and you must meet her brothers. One is a real artist already. They’re just getting settled now. And what do you think? We may move, the first of the month to a whole house instead of an apartment. Father and Mother are looking, to decide now. It is a terrible undertaking, but it will be wonderful to have more room. If we do, I’m going to have a party first thing!”

But Betty wondered, on her way home, how in the world, with all the people knowing about it that did, “the facts were to be kept from Mrs. Sevilla and Ramona Rose.” That was what Ramon had called his sister, Betty remembered.