Sallie Marks had, indeed, received a royal welcome from her friends. They were as glad to see her as if she had just returned from a long voyage. Now they poked the fire and made fresh tea and petted and caressed her until her pale, near-sighted eyes were quite watery and she was obliged to wipe the moisture from her glasses.

"We'll make out the winter here, girls," she assured them. "It may take a week to get the house in order, but we can put up with a little discomfort to have O'Reilly's to ourselves. If they would only strip off this bilious paper and lay a few mattings! The plumbing is better than it was at Queen's, and the heating arrangements, too."

The room was really very comfortable what with the fire in the grate and the heat pouring up the register.

"It was a defective flue that made old Queen's go under," observed Katherine sadly, as if she were speaking of a dear friend who had lately passed into another life. "I am afraid her heating apparatus was a little second class."

"Speak no evil of the dead," admonished her sister Edith.

"Requiescat in pace," said Sallie in a solemn voice.

"La reine est morte; vive la reine," said Margaret.

"After all, we are really 'Queen's'" said Judy, "so let's be as happy as we can. Where are those letters, Sallie?"

Sallie unbuttoned the last layer of sweater and drew out a pile of mail which she distributed, calling the name of each girl.

"Molly Brown," she called, handing Molly a letter from Kentucky.

"Miss Sen, a letter from the Land of the Rising Sun. I hope it will rise warmer there than it set here this evening. Miss Jessie Lynch, a letter addressed in the handwriting of a male. Ahem! Miss Lynch, another letter in the same handwriting of presumably the same male."

Much laughter among those not already absorbed in letters.

"Miss Margaret Wakefield, an official document from the capital of these United States of America. Miss Julia S. Kean, a parental epistle which no doubt contains other things. Miss Molly Brown, who appears to be secretly purchasing a farm."

Sallie handed Molly a long envelope, while the others snatched their letters and turned away. Only Nance had received no mail that day; yet, more than any girl there, she enjoyed corresponding and sent off weekly voluminous letters to her father, her only correspondent except Andy McLean, who was not yet considered strong enough to write letters.

It was with something very near to envy that she watched the faces of her friends as they waded through long family letters with an occasional laugh or comment:

"It's been ten below at home."

"Father forgot to put in my check. He's getting very thoughtless."

"My wandering parents are going to Florida. They can't stand the cold in New York."

"Here's a state of things," exclaimed Edith, "another book bill for books that were burned. Isn't that the limit?"

"Yes, and you'll borrow from me again," said Katherine. "And I shall refuse to lend you another cent. You are getting entirely too crazy about buying books."

Nobody took any notice of this sisterly dialogue which went on continuously and never had any real meaning, because in the end Katherine always paid her sister's debts.

Nance's gaze shifted to Molly, who might have been turned into a graven image, so still was she sitting. She had not opened the letter from home, but the long envelope from the real estate company lay at her feet. In one hand she held a typewritten letter and in the other a long blue slip of paper which, beyond a doubt, was a check. Picking up the envelope, Molly gave a covert glance around the absorbed circle and slipped the check inside. Then she noticed Nance gazing at her curiously. She smiled, and then began to laugh so joyously that everybody stopped reading and regarded her almost anxiously. There was a peculiar ring of excitement in her voice.

"Molly, hasn't something awfully nice happened to you?" asked Nance.

"Why, yes," she answered, "to tell the truth, there has."

"What is it? What is it?" cried the chorus of voices.

Molly hesitated and blushed, and laughed again.

"I don't think you would believe it if I were to tell you," she said. "It's too absurd. I can hardly believe it myself, even after reading the letter and seeing the—the——"

"The what, Molly?" demanded Judy, beside herself with curiosity. Molly laughed again.

"I'm so happy," she cried. "It's made me warm all over. The temperature has risen ten degrees."

"Molly Brown, will you explain yourself? Can't you see we are palpitating to know what it is?" cried Judy.

"I've won a prize," exclaimed Molly. "I've won a prize. Can't you see what it means to me? I needed the money and it came. A perfect windfall. Oh, isn't this world a delightful place? I don't mind the cold weather and O'Reilly's. I'm so happy. I prayed for rain and carried my umbrella. Oh, I'm so happy, happy, happy!"

"Has the child gone daffy?" said Sallie Marks, while Judy seized the envelope and drew out a check for two hundred dollars made out in the name of "Mary C. W. Brown." Then she opened the letter and read aloud:

"'Dear Madam:

It gives us much pleasure to inform you that among several hundred contestants you have won the prize of $200, offered by this company for the best advertisement in prose or verse for one of our mountain chalets. Your poem will occupy the first page in an elaborate booklet now under way and we hope will attract many customers. We offer you our congratulations and good wishes for other literary successes and enclose the check herewith.

Very cordially yours, etc., etc.'"

"Am I sleeping or waking?" cried Molly. "This, at the end of this awful day! Isn't it wonderful?"

The reunited friends made so much noise over this triumph of their favorite that Mrs. Markham, superintending the setting up of beds and arranging of rooms with Mrs. O'Reilly, smilingly observed:

"Dear me, they don't seem to take their misfortune much to heart, do they?"

"They're that glad to get in out of the cold, ma'am, and warm themselves with some tea. It's thawed them out, I expect, the poor young things. They was half froze when they come an hour ago."

"But where's the poem, Molly," cried Judy, when the racket had subsided. "We must see the poem."

"It's locked in my trunk."

"Get it out, get it out," they ordered, and she had no peace until she unlocked the trunk and, rummaging in her portfolio, found the original manuscript of "The Chalet of the West Wind."

"I can't see why it won the prize," she said. "I hadn't even the shadow of a hope when I sent it. It's not a bit like an ad."

"It was certainly what they wanted," said Sallie. "They didn't have to give you the prize, seeing that they had several hundred to choose from. But read it, because I'm in a fever of curiosity to hear it."

In the meantime, Judy had lit the gas, and taking Molly by the shoulders, pushed her into a chair under the light.

"I'm most awfully embarrassed," announced Molly, "but here goes," and she read the following verses:

The Chalet of the West Wind.

There was certainly nothing very remarkable about the little song, and yet it had caught the eye of the real estate men as having a certain quality which would attract people to that sunny mountainside whereon were perched the quaint Swiss chalets they desired to sell. There was a subtle suggestion to the buyer that he might find rest and happiness in this peaceful home. The piney air, the flowers and the sunshine had all been poetically but quite truthfully described. With a picture of the "Chalet of the West Wind" on the opposite page, people of discerning tastes, looking for summer homes, would surely be attracted.

"How ever did you happen to write it, Molly?" they asked her after re-reading the poem and admiring it with friendly loyalty. "Have you ever been to the mountains?"

"No," she answered, "I actually never have. But something in me that wasn't me wrote the verses. They just seemed to come, first the meter and then, gradually, the lines. I can't explain it. I had some bad news and was afraid I would have to leave college and then the poem came. That was all. Two hundred dollars," she added, looking at the check. "It seems too good to be true. What must I do with it?"

"Put it in the Wellington Bank to-morrow morning," answered Margaret promptly.

Between them, Mrs. Markham and Mrs. O'Reilly prepared a very good dinner for the girls that night, and instead of being a funeral feast it was changed into a jolly banquet. The old Queen's dinner table was restored and there was as much gay, humorous conversation as there ever had been in the brown shingled house now reduced to a heap of ashes.

Paperhangers and painters did go into the new college house on the following Monday morning and in less than ten days the dingy rooms were transformed by white woodwork and light paper. If the Queen's girls felt a little out of it at first, not being on the campus, they were too proud to admit it, and nobody ever heard a complaint from them. They had a great many visitors at O'Reilly's. Crowds of their friends came down to drink tea or spend the evening. The President herself called one morning and had a look at the place.

In the meantime Molly had called at Miss Walker's office and informed her that she had come into a little money unexpectedly and, with the money she was earning, she would be able to pay her own board at O'Reilly's for the rest of the winter. It was only by chance that Miss Walker learned how Molly had earned this sum of money.

"Think of the child's modesty in keeping the secret from me," she said to Miss Pomeroy. "Have you seen the poem that won the prize, by the way?"

"Why, yes," answered that critical individual. "It's a sweet little thing and I suppose struck the exact note they wanted, but I assure you it's nothing wonderful."