“Girls! News! News! Great news!” It was Margaret Selover who skipped into the corner room occupied by Virg and Eleanor Burgess.

“Mrs. Martin just told me that Eleanor Pettes’ college closes a few days before Vine Haven and she has written that she will come for our final exercises. She’s ever so eager to see our last Manuscript Magazine of the year.”

“Well, it’s to be a spiffy one all right. My name is going to be in it.”

“Oh, Betsy, I don’t believe it! Virg, she’s storying, isn’t she? You never would print one of her doggerels, would you?”

The editor of the magazine laughed and actually winked at Betsy. With a chuckle that little maid asked: “Won’t Margaret be the most surprised person in this school when she does see the reason for my name being in the bang-up last edition?”

“Maybe Virg is starting a joke column and is permitting Betsy to conduct it.” This from Babs who had followed Margaret into the room.

“Me? I’m no joker. I’m the most serious-minded pusson at Vine Haven.” Then tantalizingly, “If you tried till doomsday, you couldn’t guess why my name is to be featured in the biggest and best Manuscript Magazine of the year, so you might as well devote your thoughts to something easier.”

“Very well.” Megsy looked inquiringly at Virginia. “Have you heard from Winona? Is she coming here to be ready to go West with us?”

The girl addressed shook her head. “No, I’m sorry to say. Winona writes that the practical nursing courses will not be completed until the last of June and of course we cannot wait for her three weeks after our school closes. But Winona is quite capable of crossing the country alone. Anyone of us is now, I feel sure.”

“Virg,” Babs exclaimed, “what wonders you’ve worked with Sentimental Sally! She even looks different someway. Yesterday, just to tease, one of the girls who has a brother over at Drexel told her that Donald Dearing has returned to that Military Academy and that she had invited him to come to our closing party. A few months ago Sally would have acted silly, giggled or simpered or something, but instead she merely smiled indifferently and went right back on with her reference work. I was in the library at the same table and that’s how I happened to hear it.”

“There’s a lot to Sally. Her mother cares only for society and her chief desire it would seem is to have her daughter learn how to be idle gracefully. I don’t know what she will think when she finds that Sally has actually chosen a goal toward which she is working. She plays beautifully on the harp and since she will not need to earn money, she is going to plan to devote part of her time to giving harp concerts in hospitals, old folks’ homes and places where her music will bring the most happiness.” Virginia was proud of and pleased with her protege, it was quite evident.

“Betsy, you are our incorrigible member,” Megsy said to tease. “Virginia has failed to influence you for good. You’re the only one in the study club who hasn’t been inspired to choose a goal or try for the Honor Roll.”

“Me? Goodness no. I don’t want to sprout wings yet. But if you’ll produce a deep-dyed mystery of some kind, I’ll show you what I can do.”

Barbara laughed. “You remind me of the tramp who offered to shovel snow in the summer to pay for a meal.” Then catching hold of Margaret’s arm, she added, “Two bells. Time for you and me to go to French. Fare-thee-well till lunch.”

When Virginia and Betsy were alone, the latter maid grinned her delight, but suddenly there was an anxious cloud on her piquant face. “Virg,” she said, “do you think I can make it? This Latin translation is powerfully hard.” She had taken a book from her blouse where it had been hidden while her tormentors had been in the room.

“I’m sure of it!” Virginia’s voice expressed her confidence. “I have a free hour now and we’ll go over it together.”

The weeks that followed were indeed busy ones. Each of the older girls in Madame La Fleur’s sewing class was to make her own dainty white dress for the closing party, and, at almost any free hour groups of merry maids could be seen gathered first in one room and then in another hemming, basting and ruffling, for those little “French gowns,” as Babs called them, were to be made every stitch of them by hand.

“This would have been jolly fun,” Betsy declared, “if it wasn’t for the fact that final exams are hanging so heavily over our heads.”

Virg, of course, solved this problem by suggesting that one girl read history while the others sewed. This they did and at the end of each chapter the book was passed to someone else that the former reader might not lose too much time from the making of her gown.

“I’m glad it’s the history of France,” Sally remarked during a pause in which the book was being passed from one to another. “That seems sort of appropriate since we are making French dresses. Madame La Fleur even had the material sent from her brother’s shop in Paris.”

“It doesn’t look like mere muslin does it?” Babs held up a shimmering length to let the sun shine through it. “It’s heaps more like gossamer, but Dicky, do go on with the reading.”

“Very well. This chapter is called ‘Reaction and New Discontent.’ ‘It was said of the Bourbons that they never forgot anything and never learned anything.’”

“This is rather paradoxical, isn’t it?” Margaret began, when Betsy teasingly interrupted. “Whizzle, Megsy! What a word! You certainly have learned something and didn’t forget it either. Why if I could say such a long one as that right off easy, I’d think I was ready to graduate.”

“Hush, Bets. Just because you aren’t trying for the Honor Roll is no reason why the rest of us don’t want to study.” Sally spoke her thoughts these days as independently as did the others.

Betsy flashed. “Just for that I’m going to finish the paragraph.” Which she did, rattling off information about Louis eighteenth in a manner to make several of the girls present open their eyes in amazement, but before they could declare that they believed Betsy had a book hidden in her sewing and was reading it, a gong called them to another task.

Later that day when Virginia and Betsy were having one of their secret sessions at translating Latin, the younger girl chuckled. “That was a close call. I almost gave away the fact that I have actually been studying. That never would do, if it’s to be a grand sweep-’em-off-their-feet surprise.”

Virginia laughed. “Betsy, you are as refreshing as one of our desert winds, after a sultry day, when it blows down from the snowy-topped mountains. Often I go up on the mesa, when it begins to blow, and take gloriously deep breaths. They make one feel like a new being.”

Betsy had closed her book and was sitting with an almost pensive expression on her usually merry face. “It must be wonderful to have a real home,” she said. “Dad and I haven’t had one for years, not since mother left. We live in hotels, you know, wherever Dad is sent. Sometimes it’s in one big city and sometimes another. At first I thought it was great, but after the novelty wore off I was desperately lonesome. Then Dad sent me here to boarding school. Of course I love it, with all of the girls for make-believe family, but, when vacation time comes and you are all talking of going home, I do wish that Dad and I had one, somewhere. This summer, though, will be better than most, for I have a very nice aunt who has invited me to visit her and her two small boys at their summer home on the sound.”

Then springing up, the impulsive girl gave her companion an unexpected hug. “Virg, you’re a dear,” she exclaimed. “I don’t in the least like the thought that after the closing party I shall never, never see you again.”

The older girl was touched, for there were actually tears in the eyes that were usually laughing. “I’ll play prophet,” she said gaily. “I will prophecy that you will visit us all out on the desert some day. Perhaps next year or the year after.”

“Virg,” the eyes now were glowing, “if such a thing could happen, I just know that I would live happily ever after.”

As we know, strange things do happen.