“Sometimes I feel as though I had earned my college money too easily,” confessed Anne.  “The work I did on the stage wasn’t work at all, it was pure pleasure.  Ruth Denton’s work is the hardest kind of drudgery.”

“But think how hard you worked to win the scholarship,” reminded Grace.

“That was work I loved, too,” replied Anne, shaking her head deprecatingly over her own good fortune.

“Never mind,” laughed Grace.  “Just think of how hard you might have had to work if you hadn’t been a genius, and that will comfort you a little.”

“Grace, you are too ridiculous,” protested Anne, flushing deeply.

“Anne, you are entirely too modest,” retorted Grace.  “Come on, little Miss Nonentity, let’s go to bed or I won’t get up early enough to-morrow morning to see Mabel Ashe before my first recitation.”

“All right,” yawned Anne.  “To-morrow night I must stay in the house and write letters.  I’ve owed David a letter for a week.  I wonder why Nora and Jessica don’t write.”

“They promised to write first, you know,” said Grace.

“If we don’t hear from them by Saturday we’d better send them a postcard to hurry them up.  Let’s go down to that little stationer’s shop to-morrow and see what they have.  I must find one that will suit Hippy’s peculiar style of beauty.”

Laughing and chatting of things that had happened at home, a subject of which they never tired, Grace and Anne prepared for bed.

The next morning Anne awoke first.  Glancing at the little clock on the chiffonier she exclaimed in dismay.  They had overslept, and there was barely time to dress and eat breakfast before chapel.

“Oh, dear,” lamented Grace as she slipped into her one-piece gown of pink linen, “now I can’t go to see Mabel until after luncheon.  How provoking!”

But it was still more provoking to find, when she called at Holland House, late that afternoon, that Mabel Ashe had made a dinner engagement with several seniors and had just left the house.  “What had I better do about it?” Grace asked herself.  “Shall I put it off until to-morrow or shall I take matters into my own hands?  It’s only four days now until the reception, and those girls may do a great deal of talking during that time.”  She paused on the steps of Holland House and looked across the campus toward Stuart Hall.  “I’m sure I heard some one say that both Miss Wicks and Miss Hampton live there,” Grace reflected.  “I don’t like to do it, but it’s the only thing I can think of to do.”  Squaring her shoulders Grace crossed the campus, a look of determination on her fine face.  Mounting the steps of Stuart Hall she deliberately rang the bell.

Miss Wicks and Miss Hampton were both in, the maid stated, ushering Grace into the big, attractively furnished living room.  A moment later there was a scurry of footsteps on the stairs and Alberta Wicks, followed by Mary Hampton, entered the room.