rl in a neat print dress. Her hat was hung
over her arm, and the low evening sunlight shone redly over her smooth
glossy head. She carried herself with a pretty dignity, but when her
eyes met Pauline's, she looked as if she would smile on the slightest
provocation.

Pauline promptly gave her the provocation.

"Good evening, Miss Cameron," she called blithely. "Won't you please
stop a few moments and look me over? I want to see if you think me a
likely person for a summer chum."

Ada Cameron did more than smile. She laughed outright and went over to
the fence where Pauline was sitting on a stump. She looked down into
the merry black eyes of the town girl she had been half envying for a
week and said humorously: "Yes, I think you very likely, indeed. But
it takes two to make a friendship--like a bargain. If I'm one, you'll
have to be the other."

"I'm the other. Shake," said Pauline, holding out her hand.

That was the beginning of a friendship that made poor Mrs. Wallace
groan outwardly as well as inwardly. Pauline and Ada found that they
liked each other even more than they had expected to. They walked,
rowed, berried and picnicked together. Ada did not go to Mrs. Boyd's a
great deal, for some instinct told her that Mrs. Wallace did not look
favourably on her, but Pauline spent half her time at the little,
brown, orchard-embowered house at the end of the beech lane where the
Embrees lived. She had never met any girl she thought so nice as Ada.

"She is nice every way," she told the unconvinced Aunt Olivia. "She's
clever and well read. She is sensible and frank. She has a sense of
humour and a great deal of insight into character--witness her liking
for your niece! She can talk interestingly and she can also be silent
when silence is becoming. And she has the finest profile I ever saw.
Aunt Olivia, may I ask her to visit me next winter?"

"No, indeed," said Mrs. Wallace, with crushing emphasis. "You surely
don't expect to continue this absurd intimacy past the summer,
Pauline?"

"I expect to be Ada's friend all my life," said Pauline laughingly,
but with a little ring of purpose in her voice. "Oh, Aunty, dear,
can't you see that Ada is just the same girl in cotton print that she
would be in silk attire? She is really far more distinguished looking
than any girl in the Knowles' set."

"Pauline!" said Aunt Olivia, looking as shocked as if Pauline had
committed blasphemy.

Pauline laughed again, but she sighed