study of hands.  Isn’t that the cunniest sapphire ring?  Sister Polly sent it to me on my last birthday; so now you know what month I was born in.  Jeannette Crawley says it’s just the color of my eyes.  She writes poetry.  She wrote some awfully sweet verses about my hair.  ‘The regal color of the flaming sun’, she called it.  She’s dreadfully romantic; but the poor child’s afraid she will never have a chance on account of her snub nose.  We thought her nose was cute though.  Miss Grazie, our professor of ancient history, said my nose was of the most perfect Greek profile she had ever seen—­just like that on the features of Clytie, and with just as delicately formed nostrils.  We set the funniest trap for her once.  Somebody always told the principal when we were going to sneak our fudge nights, and we suspected it was one of the ugly girls—­they’re always either the sweetest or the meanest girls in school, you know.  We had a signal for it, of course—­one finger to the right eye and closing the left; and one day, when we were planning for a big fudge spree that night, I saw Miss Grazie watching us pass the sign.  There isn’t much escapes my eyes.  Sure enough, that night Miss Porley made a raid.  Well, on Thursday, Madge Cunningham and myself, without saying a word to anybody, stayed in Miss Grazie’s room after class and gave each—­other the fudge signal; and sure enough, that night—­”

Constance and Loring tiptoed away, leaving the bewildered Sammy smiling feebly into the eyes of Winnie and floundering hopelessly in the maze of her information.

“I have it,” declared Constance.  “That lovely little chatterbox has given me an idea.”

“Is it possible?” chuckled Loring.  “Poor Sammy!”

“He was smiling,” laughed Constance.  “Here comes the chairman of the floor-walkers’ committee.”

Gresham, always uneasy in the absence of Constance, who was too valuable a part of his scheme of life to be left in charge of his friends, had come into the garden after them on the pretext of consulting the general committee.

“Do you know anything about the Garfield Bank?” Constance asked Gresham in the first convenient pause.

“It is very good as far as I have heard,” he replied after careful consideration.  “Are there any rumors out against it?”

“Quite the contrary,” she hastily assured him.  “It is so convenient, however, that I had thought of opening a small account there.  Mr. Gamble transferred his funds to that bank to-day—­and if he can trust them with over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars I should think I might give them my little checking account.”

When they were alone again Loring turned to her in surprise.

“I have Johnny’s money in my name.  I didn’t know he had opened an account with the Garfield Bank,” he wondered.

“Neither did I,” she laughed.  “I told a fib!  I laid a trap!”

CHAPTER X