Mary crossed the room on tiptoe, smiling at the recollection of one of her early make-believes.  Oh, if it were only true that one could pass through the looking-glass into the wonderland behind it, what a charming picture gallery she would find!  All the girls who had occupied the room since Warwick Hall had been a school!  Blue eyes and brown, laughing faces and wistful ones, girls in gorgeous full dress, pluming themselves for some evening entertainment, girls in dainty undress and unbound hair, exchanging bed-time confidences as they prepared for the night, ambitious little saints and frivolous little sinners—­they were all there, somewhere in the dim background of the mirror, and because of them there was a subtle charm about the room to Mary, which she would not have felt if she had been its first occupant.

“It’s like opening an old drawer to drop in a handful of fresh rose-leaves, and finding it sweet with the roses of a dozen Junes gone by,” she said to herself, so pleased with the fancy that she went on elaborating it.

“And Lloyd has been here so lately that her rose-leaves haven’t even begun to wither.”

There is no loyalty like the loyalty of a little school-girl for the older girl whom she has enshrined in her heart as her ideal; no sentiment like the intense admiration which puts a halo around everything the beloved voice ever praised, or makes sacred everything the beloved fingers have touched.  Mary Ware at sixteen had not outgrown any of the ardent admiration for Lloyd Sherman which had seized her when she was only eleven, and now the desire to be like her flared up stronger than ever.

She peered wistfully into the mirror, thinking, “Maybe just being in her old room will help, because I shall be reminded of her at every turn.”

For a moment the selfish wish was uppermost that she need not share the room with any one.  It seems almost desecration for a person who did not know and love Lloyd to be so intimately associated with her.  But Mary’s love of companionship was strong.  Half the fun of boarding school in her opinion was in having a room-mate, and she could not forego that pleasure even for the sake of a very deep and tender sentiment.  But she made the most of her solitude while she had it.  From kodak pictures she had seen of the room, she knew at a glance which of the narrow white beds had been Lloyd’s, and immediately pre-empted it for herself, staking out her claim by depositing her hat and gloves upon it.

As soon as her trunk was brought up stairs she fell to work unpacking, with an energy in no wise diminished by the fatigue of the tiresome journey.  She had been cooped up on the cars so long that she was fairly aching for something to do.  In an hour’s time all her clothes were neatly folded or hung away, her shoe-pocket tacked inside the closet door, her laundry-bag hung on a convenient nail, her few pictures arranged in a group over her bed, and exactly half