“Well, it would be a calamity anywhere else in the world, but nothing is ever bad at Hilltop.” Gwendolyn Matthews and Poppy were in the Twins’ room, and a crowd of girls were listening to what they had to say with flattering attention.

“Not even Thanksgiving away from home?” Prue demanded with a little pout.

It had just been decreed by Miss Hull and the faculty that there would be no Thanksgiving recess this year. Several cases of measles had broken out in the past week, and the school doctor had ordered a quarantine. Such a thing had never happened before, and the seniors were doing their best to cheer up the many disappointed girls. Gwen and Poppy had selected Twins’ room to go to first of all, for they were pretty sure that they would find a goodly number of the girls there.

“It’s only four days, Prue,” Poppy said consolingly, “and Miss Hull says we are to have a longer Christmas vacation to make up, besides no lessons for the four days now. You all must admit, that’s fair enough.”

“Of course, it’s fair,” Prue agreed readily; “but, well I had a very special engagement this Thanksgiving, and I hate to give it up.”

“I was going to visit Ann’s uncle,” Gladys said sadly, “and now, of course, I can’t.”

“Well, you will some other time,” Prue suddenly turned cheerful.

It is always so easy to make light of other people’s disappointments, particularly when you are comparing them with your own. They always seem small in comparison.

“Don’t be too sure of that,” Ann laughed her quiet little laugh. “Uncle Lacey doesn’t offer invitations very often, and he is not so terribly fond of me. He’s probably delighted to receive my telegram, and has already made up his mind that he has done his duty to his sister’s only daughter, and with a sigh of relief returned to his library.”

“Poor Glad!” Sally laughed, “cruel uncle refuses second invitation and Ann and Glad have to find other host for Christmas.” Both girls lived at a considerable distance from school.

“Not for Christmas,” Ann denied. “I am going home for that blessed day, and so is Glad, aren’t you honey?”

“I most certainly am,” Glad replied. “Christmas is one day when I must be with my mother, not to mention my small brothers and sisters.”

“What were you going to do that was so exciting, Prue?” Janet inquired carelessly.

“I was going to New York,” Prue replied. “I have never been there in my whole life.” She spoke as though she were ninety. “And Daddy promised to take me this year. We were going to meet my brother John, he’s a freshman at Princeton, you know,” she added with pride. “And, oh dear, we were going to have a simply wonderful time, and now just because the Red Twins and that horrid little Ethel Rivers have the measles, I can’t go. John will be so disappointed.”

“Don’t worry about brother,” Gladys teased. “It’s my opinion that he will be quite relieved. Grown-up boys are never very crazy about their baby sisters, especially when their friends are around. You know, Prue darling, you may feel terribly grown-up, but you still wear your hair down your back, and to boys that means you are still a babe and beneath their notice.”

“That isn’t so at all, Glad,” Prue protested. “John and I have always been the best of friends and he would like to introduce me to his friends, I know he would.”

“John is in college now,” Gladys spoke with cool and perfect assurance, “and that makes all the difference in the world. I guess I ought to know, I’ve had three brothers at Yale.”

“Perhaps that accounts for it, Yale isn’t Princeton.” Prue was almost in tears but she managed to smile as she said this.

The other girls laughed.

“I reckon you’d better admit defeat,” Poppy teased. “Prue got ahead of you that time sure enough.”

Gladys drew herself up, and tried to make her roly-poly little self look imposing as she replied:

“When Prue has had as much experience with brothers as I have, she will come to me and humbly beg my pardon and tell me I am right,” she laughed suddenly. “Never will I forget the dance my youngest brother took me to when he was home for his first Christmas vacation. It was at the Country Club, and because it was Christmas all the younger kids went.”

“I know about that kind of dance,” Poppy interrupted. “Nobody has a very good time.”

“Well, I know I didn’t,” Gladys admitted. “I felt very elegant when I left home. Ted had on full dress and looked magnificent, and I had let my best party dress down—” she stopped abruptly and fell to playing a tatoo on the arm of her chair.

“Go on, Glad, we’re listening,” Phyllis urged. “What happened when you arrived at the dance?”

Gladys looked from girl to girl, then she said quietly: “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Sally protested. “Oh, Glad, don’t be irritating!”

“I’m not trying to be,” Glad replied. “Simply nothing happened. Ted left me as soon as he found some of my old maid cousins that he could leave me with, and he only came back and danced with me once. He brought a boy to meet me that wore glasses because he was cross-eyed, and he stuttered. I danced with him once and then I went into the dressing room and took off my slippers. My feet were almost broken, and the next day they were black and blue. He had tramped all over them.”

“Well?” several voices demanded as Gladys paused.

“There’s nothing more to tell. I wept into somebody’s opera cape until it was time to go home, and during the drive I fell asleep on Ted’s shoulder. I didn’t think he understood until the next day, when Mother asked me if I’d had a good time. I said I had, and after breakfast Ted took me to the village and filled me full of ice cream, and on the way home he explained very gently what a nice thing a sister could be, a sort of little comfort, you know, and then on the other hand, what a dreadful little bore. I didn’t need the talk, I’d learned my lesson. I stay at home now and fix the studs in their dress shirts when they want to go out, and if it’s cold I stay up and make hot soup for them, but I never ask to tag along.”

Nothing was said after Gladys stopped, for a minute or two. The girls were all thinking hard. Most of them had brothers or cousins and they all understood.

“Perhaps if I’d treated my brother like that,” Gwen said with a laugh that held sadness in it, “he might have been a better friend of mine now than he is; but I always tagged along and he got thoroughly sick of me. I dance about as well as your cross-eyed friend, Glad.”

Phyllis was thinking of Tom, and being thankful that he was so much older than she and Janet, that they had never had the chance to make Gwen’s mistake.

Janet was thinking of Peter and wondering. Peter Gibbs was a boy she had known back in Old Chester. They had shared the Enchanted Kingdom together, and he had taken the place of her brother long before Tom had arrived to claim the right. Janet was fonder of Peter than she really knew, and she found herself suddenly wondering if he had outgrown her, now that he was in college. She made a firm resolve to take Gladys’s advice.

“Well, thank goodness, Chuck isn’t in college yet,” Daphne said suddenly, and Sally and the Twins laughed.

Then, as so often happens, when a room-full of people have been quietly thinking, everyone began to talk at once. They dismissed the subject of brothers and returned to the holidays. They made plans for all of the days, except Thanksgiving Day itself.

“Something’s bound to happen then,” Gwen assured them. “Miss Hull will probably ask one of the classes to entertain.”

“You know it will be the Seniors,” Poppy replied reproachfully, “and what we will do at so short notice I’m sure I don’t know.” This in Poppy’s complaining tones made the girls all laugh.

“Cheer up, Poppy, we’ll all help you, no matter what,” Sally promised. “We might have a real old-fashioned pillow fight between the wings; that would liven us up a bit,” she suggested. “I admit I feel rather depressed myself.”