matters, then leave
Miss Kathleen West alone. She hasn't spoken to you since the day of the
bazaar, so I can't see that your junior counsel is of any particular use
to her."

"Still, it seems a shame to give up; besides, it is the first thing
Mabel ever asked me to do," demurred Grace.

"I know, I've thought of that," continued Elfreda a little impatiently.
"But I don't think you are justified in wasting your whole year's fun
worrying about some one who isn't worth it. If Mabel knew, she would be
the first one to indorse what I have just said."

"I'm not wasting my year, Elfreda mine," contradicted Grace
good-naturedly. "Just think what a nice time we had to-night! And I'm
getting along splendidly with all my subjects. I belong to the Semper
Fidelis Club, and am having the jolliest kind of times with you girls.
That doesn't sound much like wasting my year, does it?"

"I didn't say you had wasted it," retorted Elfreda gruffly. "I said, or
rather intended to say, that you would be likely to waste it. You are
the sort of girl who ought to have the best Overton can offer,
because--well--because you deserve it. You think too much about other
people, and not enough about yourself," she concluded shortly.

"What a selfish Elfreda," laughed Grace, walking across the room and
sitting down beside the stout girl, whose round face looked unusually
severe. "One might think Elfreda Briggs never did an unselfish act in
all her twenty-two years. Now I am going to give you a piece of your own
advice. Stop worrying--about me. Whatever my just desserts are, they'll
overtake me fast enough. Hurrah! Here is our little Anne. Did you have a
nice time, dear, and what did you cook for supper?"

"I always have a nice time at Ruth's," smiled Anne, "but, if you had
seen the three cooks all trying to spoil the broth and succeeding beyond
their wildest expectations, you would have been greatly edified."

"I can imagine Arline Thayer gravely bending over that little gas stove
of Ruth's," said Grace.

"She had all sorts of splendid ideas about what we might make, but no
one had the slightest idea as to how to make anything she proposed."

"I am afraid none of us would ever set the world on fire as cooks,"
observed Elfreda with sarcasm.

"Where's Miriam?" asked Anne, slipping out of her coat and unpinning her
hat.

"Writing to her mother," returned Elfreda. "Now tell us what you
cooked."

Frequent bursts of laughter arose as Anne describ