When the sleighing party reached home they found hot chocolate and ginger cookies awaiting them. Before retiring, Miss Preston had seen to it that neither shivering nor hungry bodies should be tucked into bed that night.

Five weeks had now sped away, and Toinette was beginning to look upon her new abiding-place as home; at least, it was nearer to it than any she could remember. The old life at the Carter school seemed a sort of nightmare from which she had wakened to find broad daylight and all the miserable fancies dispelled.

She and Cicely were seated at their desks one afternoon. It was half-past four and study hour. Cicely was hard at work upon her algebra lesson, but Toinette was writing a letter. This, she knew quite well, was not what she was supposed to be doing, but the five weeks had not sufficed to undo the mischief done in seven years, and she was writing simply from a spirit of perversity. There was ample time to do it during her hours of freedom, but the very fact of doing it when she knew full well that she ought to be at work on her German added piquancy to the act. Moreover, the letter was to a boy with whom she had become acquainted while at Miss Carter’s, and had kept the acquaintance a most profound secret. Not that she cared specially for the boy, although he was a jolly sort of chap, and had been a pleasant companion during their stolen interviews, and often smuggled boxes of candy and other “forbidden fruit” into the girl’s possession.

Still, at Miss Carter’s a boy sprouting angel’s wings would have been regarded in very much the same light as though he were sprouting imp’s horns, and any girl caught talking to one—much less corresponding—would have had a very bad quarter of an hour, indeed. So, though she did not care two straws whether she ever saw him again or not, all the wrong-headedness which had been so carefully fostered for the past years delighted in the thought that she was doing something which might not be approved; indeed, from her standpoint, would be decidedly criticised, and to get ahead of a teacher had been the “slogan” of the Carter school.

It was the custom at Sunny Bank for the teachers to go around to the girls’ rooms during the study hour to help, suggest, or give a little “boost” over the hummocky places, so when a pleasant voice asked at the door: “Can I help you any, dearies?” Cicely answered from her room:

“Oh, Miss Howard, will you please tell me something about this problem? I am afraid my head is muddled.”

“To be sure, I will,” was the cheery reply, and Miss Howard passed through Toinette’s room to Cicely’s.

As she did so her dress created a current of air which carried a paper from Toinette’s desk almost to her feet. She stooped to pick it up and hand it back to Toinette, who had sprung up to catch it, and, as she handed it to her, Miss Howard noted the telltale color spring into the girl’s face.

“Zephyrus is playing you tricks, dear,” she said, smiling, and passed on to Cicely. After giving her the needed assistance, she left them, and a little further down the corridor met Miss Preston.

“How are my chicks progressing, Miss Howard?”

“Nicely, Miss Preston. Cicely needed a little help with a problem in algebra, but I think Toinette needs a little of yours in the problem of life,” and Miss Howard went her way.

A word to the wise is sufficient.

Meanwhile, the letter was finished, addressed, and slipped into Toinette’s pocket, to be mailed later.

Ordinarily, all letters were placed in a small basket to be carried to the office by the porter. As Toinette came down the hall shortly before dinner Miss Preston was just taking the letters from the basket to place them in the porter’s mailbag.

“Any mail to go, dear?” she asked.

“No, thank you, Miss Preston,” answered Toinette, and, jumping from the last step, ran off down the hall to join Cicely and the other girls. In jumping from the step something jolted from her pocket, but, falling upon the heavy rug at the foot of the stairs, made no sound. As the porter was about to take the pouch from her hands Miss Preston’s eyes fell upon the letter, and, supposing it to be one which had been dropped from the basket, stooped to pick it up. She was a quick-witted woman, and the instant she saw the handwriting and the address she drew her own conclusions.

“So that is part of the life problem, is it? Poor little girl, she has got to learn something which the average girl has to unlearn; where they entirely trust their fellow-beings, she entirely distrusts them. I wonder if I shall ever be able to show her the middle path?” Telling the porter to wait a moment, Miss Preston slipped into the library, and, catching up a pencil and slip of paper, wrote down the name and address which was written upon the envelope, then, stepping back to the hall, handed the porter the letter to post.

Toinette joined the girls, and in the lively chatter which ensued forgot all about the letter until several hours later, and then searched for it in every possible and impossible place, but, of course, without finding it, and was in a very uncomfortable frame of mind for several days, and then something happened which did not serve to reassure her, for a reply came to her from her correspondent.

How in the world her letter had ever reached him was the question which puzzled her not a little, and she fretted over the thing till she was in a fever. Then she determined to write again to ask how and when the letter had reached him, although she was beginning to wish that boy, letter and all, were at the bottom of the Red Sea, so much had they tormented her. So a second letter was written, and then came the puzzle of getting it into the mail bag unnoticed. At Miss Carter’s school all letters had been examined before they were allowed to be mailed, and as Toinette’s correspondence was supposed to be limited to the letters she wrote to her father, she had never inquired whether Miss Preston first examined them or not, but, taking it for granted that she did so, handed them to her unsealed. On the other hand, Miss Preston, thinking that it was simply carelessness that they were not, usually sealed them and sent them upon their way.

Although she had not said anything about it, the little affair had by no means passed from Miss Preston’s thoughts, but she was trying to think of the wisest way of going about it, and was waiting for something to guide her.

“If I can only win her confidence,” she said to herself more than once.