eet at Vinton's at half-past six? That will give us an hour and a half
to get the soot off our faces, and if the expressman should experience a
change of heart and deliver our trunks we might possibly appear in fresh
gowns. The possibility is very remote, however. I know, because I had to
wait four days for mine last year. It was sent to the wrong house, and
traveled gaily about the campus, stopping for a brief season at three
different houses before it landed on Morton House steps. I hung out of
the window for a whole morning watching for it. Then, when it did come,
I fairly had to fly downstairs and out on the front porch to claim it,
or they would have hustled it off again."

"That's why I appointed myself chief trunk tender," said Ruth slyly.
"That trunk story is not new to me. This time your trunk will be waiting
on the front porch for you, Arline."

"If it is, then I'll forgive you your other sins," retorted Arline.
"That is, if you promise to come and room with me. Isn't she provoking,
girls? I have a whole room to myself and she won't come. Father wishes
her to be with me, too."

"I'd love to be with Arline," returned Ruth bravely, "but I can't afford
it, and I can't accept help from any one. I must work out my own problem
in my own way. You understand, don't you?" She looked appealingly from
one to the other of her friends, who nodded sympathetically.

"She's a courageous Ruth, isn't she?" smiled Arline, patting Ruth on the
shoulder.

At Ruth's corner they said good-bye to her. Then hailing a bus the five
girls climbed into it.

"So far we haven't seen any of our old friends," remarked Grace as they
drove along Maple Avenue. "I suppose they haven't arrived yet. We are
here early this year."

"I'd rather be early than late," rejoined Miriam. "Last year we were
late. Don't you remember? There were dozens of girls at the station when
we arrived. Arline and Ruth are the first real friends we have seen so
far. Where are Mabel Ashe and Frances Marlton, Emma Dean and Gertrude
Wells, not to mention Virginia Gaines?"

"If I'm not mistaken," said Elfreda slowly, her brows drawing together
in an ominous frown, "there are two people just ahead of us whom we have
reason to remember."

Almost at the moment of her declaration the girls had espied two young
women loitering along the walk ahead of them whose very backs were too
familiar to be mistaken.

"It's Miss Wicks and Miss Hampton, isn't it?" asked Anne.

Gr