The annual ice carnival, full of excitement, came again and took its place in history. As Captain Holley was enduring an attack of tonsillitis, nothing marred the occasion for Betty, who again won the highest prize for fine skating. As this was Donald’s unlucky year, according to him, he had twisted his ankle several weeks before and was not at his best. The first prize among the boys went to Jack Appleton, the second to Donald.

Both Jack Appleton and Harry Mills had this year developed a violent fancy for Eloise, who had her hands full to distribute her favors impartially, and not offend either the boys or their sisters. Harry Mills was her partner at the banquet which followed the carnival skating, but Jack claimed her most of the time on the ice. Eloise was almost equal to Betty on skates, and there had been some discussion among the judges about dividing the first prize, but it seemed best to award the second prize to Eloise. Betty had a few more extra performances to her credit.

The good-natured rivalry between Jack and Harry did not escape the comments of the girls, who pretended to deplore the fate of “poor Reginald.” He was away, they said, and had no chance against his rivals.

“It is such a pity to spoil the lovely illusion about Reginald,” said Eloise one day, as some of the girls stood in the hall, reading the letters just received, “but here is the last letter,” and she tossed a letter into Betty’s hands. “I was annoyed at first, then I thought that it would be fun to let you keep on thinking what you did. You thought from my manner that it was some boy I didn’t like, didn’t you?”

“I guess we did,” replied Betty, reading the letter and laughing out when she came to the signature. But she made no remark, and handed the letter, a brief one this time, to Pauline, who was nearest. She rapidly read the page and exclaimed “A girl!”

“Ora Rand!” read Juliet aloud. “The romance of Reggie is o’er!”

“He’s gone to the ‘never been’ shore,” added Isabel.

“That masculine hand,”

“Of Miss Ora Rand,” suggested Cathalina.

“Shall fool us poor Psyches no more,” finished Lilian. “Tell us about her, Eloise.”

“I did not want to write to her in the first place, because I am so busy, you know, that I can hardly keep up writing to two or three close friends whom I don’t want to give up. She is younger than I am, does not go around with us older girls and boys at home, and, I think, just wanted to keep up a correspondence because I was away at school and she thought it would be interesting. So it has been a little drag, that is all. But she is a good little thing, and I have answered her letters once in awhile. I am ashamed to be so mean, but you just can’t spend so much time on letters. And that is ‘Reginald’!”

“Now defunct,” said Pauline. “Requiescat in pace.”

School life is a busy, exciting one, full of hard work for those who want success in it, but also full of fun and good times among the especially interesting folks that compose the school world. It is full of variety, and time flies swiftly on that account. Before the girls realized it, spring was again at hand. It was April, with its tantalizing days, in which the birds were migrating, nature was making a great effort to bloom into blossoms of tree and plant, the girls were hungering for the woods and shore, and yet in this more northern clime there were wet, muddy fields, chill winds, and occasional flurries of snow. The bird classes wore rubber boots, raincoats, and rubber hats or other more disreputable head covering which rain could not hurt. It was April of 1917, that spring when the echoes of heavy artillery in France were of more and more concern in our country.

One morning the newspapers were delivered earlier than usual. The delivery was usually made about the middle of the forenoon. This morning, as Isabel said later, “even Greycliff Village had speeded up,” and the papers came out right after breakfast. In them was the never-to-be-forgotten message of the President. The teachers sat reading their papers at their desks when the first bell for class rang, and a few of the girls who took them came to class with copies in their hands. Faces were sober and some of them were beginning to take on that look of uplift which was characteristic of the time. Patricia West’s class had gathered and were waiting when she put down her paper upon her desk, looked through and beyond the girls gathered before her, and stepped to the blackboard behind her. No outline of Latin constructions, or references for English study grew under her hands. The girls watched her while she wrote:

Silence for a moment, as the girls read and looked at each other and at “Patty.” “Is it war, Miss West?” asked one of the girls in the front row. Miss West picked up the paper. But as she began to explain, the chapel bell rang, to the surprise of all, the continuous ringing which was the signal for a general meeting.

“Pass out quietly, girls,” directed Miss West; “go immediately to the chapel, and take your regular seats.”

Lilian slipped her arm in Hilary’s as they went in the chapel, and walked forward to their seats, which were side by side, in the junior collegiate section. No customary music from the organ greeted them, but most of the faculty were on the platform. A few of the professors who lived at the village, and had not yet come out for classes which were scheduled later in the day, were missing. There sat Doctor Carver, looking bored. Professor Schafer sat back in his chair, his arms folded, a grim look on his face. Doctor Norris was giving an encouraging smile to Patty, who was very white.

It was not long before the last class had entered and was seated, and members of the faculty ceased to enter the door on the platform. Then Miss Randolph rose and went forward to the desk. “Young ladies,” said she, “I have called you together this morning because we are at a crisis in American history, and I want you to have a share in the first knowledge of facts, which you ought to know, and in which you will probably have a share.

“You have been studying the history of Greece, Rome, England, and other countries beside your own, and very properly. You have been studying American history, and some of you imagine that ‘history’ is all of the past. The pages that are being made every year are not less important. Professor Matthews will read to us all the remarkable message by the President of the United States which is in the morning paper. Not alone the words of the message have stirred us this morning, but what is before us—the inevitable duty.

“It might seem strange to some that I call you from your lessons and interrupt your work. But we try to teach more at Greycliff than the usual curriculum. We take an interest in the character of our girls. When I talked to you at the beginning of the year on ‘Heroines’ I had in mind the self-sacrifice and heroic meeting of difficulties that some of you may have to bear. I hope that they may not be too heavy, but I have confidence that my girls will not be found wanting. Professor Matthews.”

After a brief chapel service, classes went on as usual the rest of the day. That evening the Grant Academy Glee Club was to give an entertainment at Greycliff, as many cadets outside of the club permitted to attend as desired to come and pay the small admission fee. Donald had told Betty not long before that he thought there was scarcely a cadet who would miss the opportunity to come to Greycliff, and certainly no girl was planning to stay in her room to study on that night!

“Seems to me,” said Isabel, “that we have all our excitement at once. This morning they tell us we are going to get into the war at last, and here come the prospective soldiers to our doors this evening!”

“Oh, not many of those boys will go!” exclaimed Virginia.

“I don’t know about that. Of course the very young ones will not, but the older ones won’t care whether they are through school or not. My, don’t I wish I’d been a boy, too!”

“Isabel!”

“I’m going over to see what Betty and Cathalina are going to wear tonight.”

“And, incidentally, what Hilary and Lilian are going to wear.”

“No, they won’t care what they wear, especially tonight, when all they’re thinking about is what is going to happen to Campbell and Philip, and how soon. If I were only old enough, I’d go as a nurse when our boys go.”

“You’d have to know something about nursing, too.”

“Yes; I suppose I would.”

“I don’t believe we’d better think much about it yet. It will be some time before we are actually in it.”

The girls in Lakeview Suite were dressing for dinner and the concert when Isabel entered. Cathalina’s cheeks were pink, and Betty’s were a match for them, as they dressed, in what Isabel called their “spacious boudoir.” Isabel perched on the bed and told the girls to back up to her if they wanted to be hooked up, or have any ribbons tied. “Will they let the boys sit by the girls if they want to?” she asked.

“Oh, yes,” said Betty; “but they never let us have real invitations; we have to buy our own tickets, you know.”

“I wondered,” said Isabel. “I could not remember, but Poddy Brown asked me if I would be there and said he hoped to see me!”

“What a name!” exclaimed Cathalina. “Poddy!”

“Yes, isn’t it? I asked him about it at the military reception, and he said it was a great compliment on the part of the boys—they call him ‘Pod’ because he never ‘spills the beans’!”

Having brothers, neither Cathalina nor Betty had to have that expression explained. “I see,” said Cathalina. “He’s the boy with that serious face, isn’t he?”

“Yes. He can tell you all kinds of jokes with the most sober face, but at the end he laughs like anybody else.”

“Isabel,” said Cathalina, “what do you think about the military school, do you think that it will be broken up right away?”

“Mercy, no,” said Isabel. “Why, the old United States has to get ready, doesn’t she? Jim said that ‘when he got in it,’ as he put it, even the regular army could not get off the first minute. Is Captain Van Horne’s appointment under the regular army?”

“It can’t be, because at home he did not want them to call him ‘captain’; said it was only a courtesy title of the school.”

“Only the commandant, Donald said,” inserted Betty, “is a regular army officer, and as far as I know, he is retired. I am so anxious to hear what Donald has to say about the latest news.”

“He sings, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, but he wanted me to see him a moment before I go in the auditorium, at the head of the stairs, about ten or fifteen minutes before the program begins.”

“There! How do I look, Isabel? Compliments are in order,” and Cathalina whirled around to show Isabel her gown.

“You are as perfect as usual, and as pretty as a peach,” responded Isabel at once.

“For that I’ll hug you,” said Cathalina, laying her hot cheek against Isabel’s before she suited her action to her words. “You rather overdid the compliment, but it sounded well. See what a fever I have!”

“Your cheeks are hot, but we’ll not send for the doctor yet. But I’ll have to hurry, if I get dressed before dinner myself. There will be enough time after dinner, though, won’t there?”

“I don’t think so,” said Betty. “The cadets are going to have an early dinner and come right over, to have the program begin as soon after seven-thirty as possible.”

“The announcement said eight o’clock.”

“I know it, but there was a change. See if Miss Randolph does not announce it at dinner. She must have forgotten it at noon. I had a note from Donald this morning.”

Evening came and brought almost the entire military academy to Greycliff, in various conveyances. They went immediately to the auditorium, the singers to a room near the chapel, whence divers tones and tunes soon floated out, as one or another tried his voice. Some of the young officers were counted among the members of the Glee Club, among them Captain Van Horne and Lieutenant Maxwell. Girls and cadets occupied the seats in the chapel, and filled it with the buzz of conversation while they waited. Captain Van Horne, with one eye on Donald, though not for the purposes of discipline, noted that he went out into the hall before the program, and followed his example, in the hope of seeing Cathalina. Both young men were rewarded with a short visit, as the girls stopped to shake hands and ask what they thought of the prospect. “This news of imminent war has stirred up the academy to the boiling point,” replied Captain Van Horne to Cathalina. “All sorts of crazy ideas are going the rounds, but the atmosphere is patriotic at any rate.”

The conversation in the auditorium ceased as soon as the Glee Club cadets came on the platform. The younger cadets in the audience were as quiet as the girls, out of respect for them, and because they had been told that they would be asked to withdraw by their officers if they forgot and conversed with the girls during the musical numbers.

How the cadets sang, and how the girls applauded! Their schoolmates in the audience, also, ably assisted in the applause. Before the last number the commandant announced that another had been added to the program, “by Lieutenant Maxwell, with the Glee Club.”

The last number printed was a rollicking sailor song, sung with much enjoyment apparently, while the audience felt like keeping time. Then, in great quiet, Lieutenant Maxwell stepped forward and began the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”:

Could it be the jolly, joking young lieutenant that all the girls enjoyed so much? The fine young face was sober, and looked off into the night through the great windows. Perhaps he saw a little white cross in France. But he smiled as he sang the words Patty had written on the board that morning:

“As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free!”