The great green campus between Glenwood Hall and the road looked to be scattered over with snowdrifts. That is the way it must have looked to an aviator had one sailed over the old school and looked down upon the campus on this beautiful June day.

But the snow drifts were of lawn and roses. Every girl in the school was dressed in white, and every girl wore, or carried, white roses. They were grouped by classes, or in little cliques, while a photographer from the city with a great camera arranged to take a picture of the scene.

“Hope he’ll hurry up,” groaned Cologne, sitting with Dorothy and Tavia and some of the other girls. “My foot’s asleep.”

“Hush-a-by! don’t wake it up,” drawled Tavia. “You know, Cologne, you haven’t really had a good sleep this half.”

“Especially this last month or six weeks,” groaned Ned Ebony. “Hasn’t old Olaine just kept us on the hop?”

“Why,” said Nita Brent, thoughtfully, “I had been thinking Olaine was a whole lot nicer than she used to be.”

“Certain sure she’s done better by us since Easter,” said Molly Richards, earnestly.

“You’re famous for seeing the best side of a thing, Dicky,” laughed Ned. “I tell you she’s pushed me hard.”

“And me!” “And us-uns!”

The wail became general. Dorothy’s mellow laugh brought them to time.

“Where does the giggle come in, Miss Dale?” demanded Edna Black.

“Sh! don’t disturb your pose,” begged one of the others. “That photographer is getting ready.”

“Well, what does Doro mean by laughing?” complained Rose-Mary, otherwise Cologne.

“I mean to say,” said Doro, quietly, “that you girls all amuse me. Of course we’ve been pushed this half—and especially this last month.”

“And Olaine has done it!” declared Edna.

“Quite so. It was her business to. Do you realize that is what Mrs. Pangborn hired her for? And it’s too bad she isn’t going to stay.”

“Not going to stay?” cried one.

“Olaine just delighted in pushing us,” observed another.

“Of course she did,” Tavia said to the last speaker. “Doesn’t Doro point out the fact that that was her job here?” “And isn’t it going to be her job after this term?” demanded Edna Black.

“Oh!” cried another girl. “This combination of Doro Dale and Tavia Travers knows everything!”

“If that is so, they might scatter some of their intelligence among the faithful,” drawled Cologne.

“First, why should we accept Olaine as a slave driver, and thank her for it?” demanded Edna.

“Because this graduating class has higher marks and ‘does Mrs. Pangborn proud’ more than any class ever graduated from Glenwood. Didn’t you know that?” replied Dorothy.

“And I guess we can thank Olaine,” said Tavia, nodding. “I know I can.”

“And I! And I!” chorused others.

“She was awful crusty about it,” said Molly, “but she did know how to make us climb.”

“We’re some climbers,” remarked Tavia, airily. “I’ve got so high myself that I feel dizzy.”

“But say! about Olaine. Is she really going to leave?” impatiently demanded one miss who could not keep her mind on the main point.

“Wait!” commanded Dorothy. “The man is going to take the pictures. Do be still now.”

“Steady, my hearties,” drawled Tavia; but her lips hardly moved.

There was silence all over the great lawn. It was then that the aviator—had he flown over the spot suddenly—might have thought the white of lawn and roses heaps of unsullied snow, for the girls were just as still as they could be.

“Thank you, young ladies. That is all!” shouted a little, fat man in tall hat and frock-coat. “We will not trouble you longer.”

And in a minute the groups were broken up, and the girls in white were flitting here and there over the green. So much was going on before the bell rang for the graduation class to march to the hall that the question about Miss Olaine was not just then answered.

But Dorothy showed Tavia two letters she had received that morning from Dalton. The outside envelope was addressed to her in the large, rather stiff lettering of Tom Moran; but inside there was a little pink note enclosed with the red-headed young man’s letter.

“Dear little Celia!” exclaimed Tavia. “Let me read it, Doro.”

And the difficult little scrawl from “jes’ the cutest little thing” brought both laughter and tears to the eyes of tender-hearted Tavia:

“‘My loverly, dere miss Doroty Dale:

‘My teacher says she will look ove this letter for mistaks; but she says to ime larnin fast as can be. I wuz goin to kep hous for Tom Moran but he says no not yet sometime praps. I gotter go to schol fust. But Tom Moran is got a big, big house and hes got furnchure an pitchers an things an he says he is goin to let a lady come and kep hous for us till i git bigger. Her name is Olain and he says she is goin to be lik aunty was to me, only better. So no more now from one that lovs you lots you no your little Celia.’”

“Then it’s going to be—really?” demanded Tavia, of her chum.

“About Miss Olaine?”

“Yes.”

“Open the other note,” commanded Dorothy.

And that frank letter from Tom Moran delighted Tavia quite as much as did the mis-spelled one from Celia. Tom had stopped at the school when he had brought Celia away from Mrs. Hogan’s. And he had asked to see, and had been closeted in the office for an hour with, no other than Miss Rebecca Olaine!

“And I saw that ring on her finger when she went in,” Tavia had whispered to Dorothy, on that now long past occasion. “And it was still on her finger when she came out.”

But the interested schoolmates did not know for sure “that it was all fixed” until this day when Tom Moran’s letter had come to Dorothy.

Miss Olaine had never shown the chums any particular friendliness; that was not her way. But, as they were strolling up to Number Nineteen for a last “prinking” before the exercises in the chapel, the teacher passed them in the corridor.

“Come and have tea this afternoon in my room, young ladies,” she said, quite as though she were giving a command instead of an invitation.

“Of course we will, dear Miss Olaine,” cried Dorothy, brightly. “We will be delighted to.”

The grim teacher flushed. When she flushed her eyes twinkled and she looked happier than the girls had ever seen her look before.

“Do you really mean that, Dorothy Dale?” she asked, quickly.

“Mean what?” questioned Dorothy, in surprise.

“That you will take pleasure in drinking tea with me?”

“Why, Miss Olaine, no invitation could have given me so much pleasure to-day—and I am sure Tavia feels the same.”

“I—I am afraid I did not understand you girls very well when first I came here to Glenwood,” said Miss Olaine, gravely.

“Oh, dear Miss Olaine! we did not understand you either!” cried Dorothy.

“And I was real mean to you,” said Tavia, brokenly. “But now——”

The impulsive girl threw her arms about Miss Olaine’s neck and whispered in her ear: “We’re so, so happy about you and Tom Moran! For you’ll love Celia, too, and you all will have such a fine time together!”

Miss Olaine blushed more deeply at that, and looked very much confused. “You—you’ll really come, girls?” she repeated, and then fairly ran into her room and closed the door.

A little later the bell began to peal. The graduating class gathered in the porch. Dorothy and Tavia were at the head of the line. The others took their places. Dear little Miss Mingle began to play the march on the piano.

“Hay foot, straw foot!” whispered Tavia, bound to joke even on so serious an occasion.

They led the procession down the steps. As they approached the chapel the organ broke forth in the same march Miss Mingle had begun. The audience room was already crowded, save for the seats reserved for the graduating class.

“Oh! my father!” whispered Tavia.

“And my father, and Aunt Winnie,” whispered Dorothy, in return.

With sparkling eyes the girls took their seats upon the platform. There was singing, and announcements, and speaking, and the girls filled in their own part of the program—Dorothy with the valedictory, Cologne with quite a serious paper, Nita, as class poet, and Tavia as class historian.

It was almost like a dream to Dorothy Dale—the speaking, the music, the applause which followed the reading of her own paper, and all that was said and done. Mrs. Pangborn finally came forward and two of the smallest girls in the school held the basket of blue-ribboned diplomas.

“My prize class,” said the principal, rather brokenly, “is leaving me and leaving Glenwood forever. You fathers and mothers must see your children go out into the world one at a time. But you seldom know the wrench of parting with so many bright faces at once.

“And this happens to me year after year. Just as I get to know them all, to understand their different dispositions, to learn all their lovable traits, they leave me. And, perhaps, just as they begin to see that I am their friend and loving helper instead of their taskmistress, they graduate. Ah, if they carry from Glenwood something that shall make their future lives sweeter, nobler——”

Dorothy could not hear what else she said for she could not see Mrs. Pangborn through her falling tears and without sight hearing seemed to leave her, too. Pictures of the past, of her many achievements here at Glenwood, and fun and frolic as well, passed before her eyes. And then——

“Miss Dorothy Dale!”

Mrs. Pangborn’s voice was steady again. Tavia gave her friend a slight push.

Dorothy Dale went forward to receive her diploma.