The Manuscript Magazine was a great success. All of the girls who stood E in penmanship (and that meant excellent) volunteered to assist in copying the stories that were to be bound together in magazine form.

When it was completed the new editor was invited to read it in assembly from the title page to the last period, and a most enthusiastic applause followed. Many a girl, listening, was inspired to do better work in English, that before the close of the school year she might have one of her stories in the Manuscript Magazine.

Virginia, flushed and happy, because of the success of her efforts, left the gym where the forty-five pupils of the school had been assembled, and with her were her own particular friends, members of the Study Club.

They were all clattering at once. “I told you so,” Babs was saying. “A thousand times you would have given up the editorship if we would have permitted you to do so.”

“I think it was a jim-cracky fine get-up,” Betsy declared, walking backwards in front of the group that was on its way to “The Sign of the Tea Kettle,” where Dicky Taylor was to dispense a real treat—not the usual lemonade, she had whispered mysteriously, but something different, and extra, and with permission, so there would be no fear of a visitation from Miss Snoopins.

Dicky was hurried right up to her room after the reading of The Manuscript Magazine, so when the group had reached the upper corridor she threw the door open to greet them before Betsy had had time to tap.

“I am so glad that Dora and Cora have gone to the city with their father professor. I would hate to leave them out and hurt their feelings, but since you have invited me to become a member of your club I would rather just have our own group.”

The guests flocked into the sun-flooded room, which was filled with mementos of many a merry occasion. There were paddles crossed upon the walls.

“Oh, girls, didn’t I have the time of my young life when Tom and I spent a summer on Hide-Away Lake? We each had a canoe and I became as skillful as—as Minnehaha, if I do say so, as I shouldn’t.”

“You’ll have to show me!” Betsy began to tease, when Dicky whirled around and pointed at the wall, where a long row of mounted kodak pictures reached almost to the floor from somewhere up near the ceiling. “A kodak can’t lie!” she retorted. “Put on your specs, and behold.” The girls crowded around the panel of pictures, and many an amusing remark was uttered. “Say! Dicky made a fine boy in those hiking trousers.”

“Lookee, will you? Here she is having a canoe race with a good-looking boy.”

“They’re near enough alike to be twins.”

While her guests were so intent upon the pictures the little hostess, in another part of the room, was busily occupied behind a screen. A moment later she removed this and rang a tiny silver bell. The girls whirled to behold a table on which were seven plates of ice cream and a big dish heaped with little cakes.

“I say, this is some class!”

“Spiffy! That’s what I call it.”

“Here you, Babs, stop edging around to where the biggest piece is. I had my eye on that one myself.”

“Betsy, be quiet! What would Miss King think of our manners?”

“Oh, alas and alack! There are place cards, and so there’s no picking a piece after all.”

“The truth of the matter is, I cut the ice cream brick by rule, and each one of the pieces is two inches thick.”

“It’s delicious, Dicky,” Virginia said, “and I especially appreciate it after having read aloud for so long.”

Silence reigned for at least five minutes that the treat might be enjoyed to the full, then, when the dishes had been cleared away, Virg offered to stay and wash them, but Dicky shook her head.

“What?” she inquired in mock dismay. “Do you think that we would permit the president of our club to wash the dishes? No, indeed! I choose Betsy Clossen and Barbara Wente to assist me. Moreover, I heard you say you were due at Pine Cabin at 4:30, and it’s five minutes of that time now.”

Betsy moaned and groaned when she found that she had been elected to wash dishes, but Babs cheerfully accepted. The other girls went their various ways, some to do reference in the library, Sally to take a lesson on a beautiful gilded harp which her mother had recently sent to the school, and which was the joy of all of the girls, though none but the professor who came from Boston once a week could play upon it.

“Little Sally, she do well,” the long-haired foreigner had assured Mrs. Martin. “She has ze ear. More than some! Zat Betsy, she has no ear.”

It chanced that Babs had been passing through the lower corridor at the time, and as she dried dishes she took the opportunity to tease Betsy about her missing member.

“You can’t make me mad telling me that. I warned my dad that I never would make a musician, but he said that he wasn’t going to leave a stone unturned to try to make me into something.”

“Poor man! He’s doomed to bitter disappointment,” Babs began, then suddenly whirled and gave her friend a hug. “I love you!” she said. “I wouldn’t have you different, not for anything, so now!”

“Say, old dear!” Betsy shook out her drying cloth, “Just for that I’ll give you the nuttiest piece of ice cream or cake or fudge that turns up at the next treat.”

“Sh! Footsteps approach!” Dicky held up a dripping finger.

Delia, the maid, was at the door. “Is Miss Barbara Wente here? There’s a young gentleman in the library to see her, and Mrs. Martin said that she could go down without a chaperone.”

“Oh! ho! ho! Babs has a beau!” Betsy began to tease when Delia had gone, but Barbara, crimson of cheek, had darted to her own room, to tidy up.

A very solemn-faced lad in the blue and gold uniform of Drexel Academy awaited Barbara in the library of Vine Haven Seminary.

“Benjy,” the girl hurried forward with hands outstretched, “what has happened? You look—is it sad? Is your mother no better?”

The lad had risen when Babs entered. When they were seated he said, “I fear not. My mother has not been well for months and Harry writes that unless she is better soon he will send for me, as Mums so often talks of how happy she will be when this term is over and I can return home.” Then, as he glanced out of the window and saw that snow was beginning to fall, he added, almost wistfully, “Spring seems a long way off, doesn’t it?”

“But it isn’t Benjy. Tomorrow will be the first day of March. This is probably to be the last snowstorm, and then, you know, after a few days of sun and rain, how soon the leaves and flowers appear. Strength seems to come with the spring, so please don’t worry more than you can help.”

The boy looked up brightly. “I knew seeing you would make me feel better. I wanted to come over last week when I first had the letter from Harry, but I couldn’t. We were so busy over at Drexel. Even today I had little hope of coming until Dean Craig asked if one of the boys wished to drive with him to Vine Haven. We came over in his own private cutter with that thoroughbred horse that fairly flew.”

Barbara looked around curiously. “Is Dean Craig here? I haven’t seen him.”

“Oh, no, he isn’t in the seminary. He let me out and then drove down to the cabin in the Pine Grove. He is interested in the Manuscript Magazine that your Miss Torrence planned and he came to see about starting some such thing in our English class.” Then he smiled in his frank boyish way. “Maybe the Dean is a bit interested in Miss Torrence herself. Is she young and attractive?”

“Oh, isn’t she though?” Babs was enthusiastic. “She’s the sweetest, dearest, lovablest young teacher in this school. Mrs. Martin is a darling, but of course she is elderly.” Then, as she suddenly thought of something, the impulsive girl exclaimed. “Here comes Virg from Pine Cabin this very minute. Wouldn’t you like to see her, Benjy? She just loves to see people who are her neighbors out on the desert. Sometimes she gets powerfully homesick.”

A slight expression of disappointment crossed the face of the boy. He had called just to see Babs, whom he thought the sweetest, prettiest girl in all the world, but since she was eagerly awaiting his reply, and expecting it to be in the affirmative, he could do not less than say, “Why, yes, of course I would like to see Virginia.”

Barbara was already skipping to the long French window near which Virg was passing. Lifting the sash, she called, “Benjy’s here and he’d just love to see you a minute.”

Virginia soon appeared, although she well knew that Babs had exaggerated the lad’s desire to see her.

Throwing back her Papago blanket of many colors on which snow flakes, lightly fallen, quickly melted, she advanced, her hand outstretched. “Benjy, but it’s good to see someone from home!” Then, standing back, she looked him over admiringly. “You don’t resemble a cowboy or a sheep herder much, do you?”

The boy was about to protest that he had no such ambition, when Babs exclaimed, “Oh, but he will, won’t you, Benjy, next summer when we are all together on the desert? I’d rather look like a real cowgirl than anything else.”

The listeners smiled as they gazed at the dainty, Dresden China girl whose gold and pink and white prettiness suggested a fairy queen far more than a rough-riding cowgirl.

“We often wish to be what we aren’t,” Virginia began, then turned brightly to Benjy to exclaim: “Dean Craig arrived at Pine Cabin while I was there, and he was so interested in the Manuscript Magazine. He asked if he might borrow our one lone copy, and he said that, if we would trust it to him, next week he would send it back, and that it would be accompanied by as many more copies as we might request.”

Babs’ eyes were round and inquiring. “What is he going to do; set Benjy and the other boys to copying it, do you suppose?”

The lad laughed. “Indeed not. Drexel Academy is now the proud possessor of a printing press and your Manuscript Magazine will be the first thing in book form that we have made.”

“Virg, won’t you be the proudest ever to see your name printed after your story?” Then turning to the lad, Babs prattled, “Oh, Benjy, be sure to read Virg’s story. It’s about the desert and it’s the best ever.”

“I know that I shall enjoy it,” the boy rose as he spoke, for, around the circling drive a cutter, drawn by a high-stepping horse appeared. “Oh, isn’t it a beauty—Virg, see how proudly it holds its head? Wouldn’t you and Megsy and I love to have horses like that one out on the desert?”

“I wouldn’t give my Comrade for any horse on this earth,” Virginia replied. “He saved my brother’s life, you know.”

Then when the good-bys had been said, and Virginia had departed, Barbara lingered to say earnestly, “If you have news that saddens you, Benjy, come right over and see me. You haven’t an own sister and so let’s pretend that I am one.” The lad gave the girl’s hand a grateful pressure.

“Thank you, Barbara,” he said, “I feel heaps more hopeful, somehow, that I did.”

Betsy had planned teasing Babs unmercifully, but, when she saw the thoughtful, almost sad expression on the girl’s face when she came upstairs she changed her mind and kissed her lovingly instead.