leaving the top of the
table for the stunt-doers. It was shockingly late, but they wanted all
the old favorites. Who knew when Emily Davis would be back to do her
temperance lecture or how long it would be before they could hear Madame
Patti sing "Home, Sweet Home" through a wheezy gramophone?

"Was it all right?" Eleanor whispered to Betty as they hunted up their
wraps a little later.

"Perfectly splendid," said Betty with shining eyes. "The loveliest
end-up to the loveliest commencement that ever was."

"We haven't got to say good-bye yet," said somebody. "There's a class
meeting to-morrow at nine, you know."

"Half of us will probably sleep over," said Babe in a queer,
supercilious tone. Not for all the morning naps in the world would Babe
have missed that good-bye meeting.

CHAPTER XIX

"GOOD-BYE!"

"And after commencement packing," said Madeline Ayres sadly, "and that's
no joke either, I can tell you."

"Oh, I don't know," said Babe airily. "Give away everything that you
can't sell, and you won't be troubled. That's what I've done."

"I couldn't give up my dear old desk," said Rachel soberly, "nor my
books and pictures."

"Oh, I've kept a few little things myself," explained Babe hastily,
"just to remember the place by."

"My mother wanted to stay and help me," laughed Nita. "She thought if we
both worked hard we might get through in a day."

"Mary Brooks did hers in two hours," announced Katherine, "and I guess
I'm as bright as little Mary about most things, so I'm not worrying."

"Isn't it time to start for class-meeting?" asked Betty, coming out on
the piazza with Roberta.

"See them walk off together arm in arm," chuckled Bob softly, "just as
if they knew they were going to be elected our alumnae president and
secretary respectfully."

"Don't you mean respectively, Bob?" asked Helen Adams.

"Of course I do," retorted Bob, "but I'm not obliged to say what I mean
now. I'm an alum. I can use as bad diction as I please and the long arm
of the English department can't reach out and spatter my mistakes with
red ink."

The election of officers didn't take long. It had all been cut and dried
the night before, and the nominating committee named Betty for president
and Shylock for secretary without even going through the formality of
retiring to deliberate. Then Katherine moved that the surplus in the
treasury be turned over to "our pet philanthropy, the Students' Aid,"
and Carlotta Young i