th.

"I suppose not--Miss." It seemed hard for the girl to get out that
"Miss," and Ruth, who was keenly observant, wondered if she really had
been accustomed to using it.

They talked it over and finally reached an agreement. Aunt Alvirah was
sweetly grateful to Ruth, knowing full well that there must have been a
"battle royal" between the miller and his niece before the former had
agreed to the new arrangement.

Ruth was quite sure that Maggie was a nice girl, even if she was queer.
At least, she gave deference to the quaint little old housekeeper, and
seemed to like Aunt Alvirah very much. And who would not love the woman,
who was everybody's aunt but nobody's relative?

Once or twice Ruth found Maggie poring over the Year Book of Ardmore
College, rather an odd interest for a girl of her class. But Maggie was
rather an odd girl anyway, and Ruth forgot the matter in her final
preparations for departure.

CHAPTER III

EXPECTATIONS

"I expect she'll be a haughty, stuck-up thing," declared Edith Phelps,
with vigor.

"'Just like _that_,'" drawled May MacGreggor. "We should worry about the
famous authoress of canned drama! A budding lady hack writer, I fancy."

"Oh, dear me, no!" cried Edith. "Didn't you see 'The Heart of a
Schoolgirl' she wrote? Why, it was a good photo-play, I assure you."

"And put out by the Alectrion Film Corporation," joined in another of
the group of girls standing upon the wide porch of Dare Hall, one of the
four large dormitories of Ardmore College.

The college buildings were set most artistically upon the slope of
College Hill, each building facing sparkling Lake Remona. Save the
boathouse and the bathing pavilions, Dare and Dorrance Halls at the east
side of the grounds, and Hoskin and Hemmingway Halls at the west side,
were the structures nearest to the lake.

Farther to the east an open grove intervened between the dormitories and
the meadows along the Remona River where bog hay was cut, and which were
sometimes flooded in the freshet season.

To the west the lake extended as far as the girls on the porch could
see, a part of its sparkling surface being hidden by the green and hilly
bulk of Bliss Island. The shaded green lawns of the campus between Dare
and Hoskin Halls were crossed by winding paths.

A fleshy girl who was near the group but not of it, had been viewing
this lovely landscape with pleasure. Now she frankly listened to the
chatter of the "inquisitors."