with you girls to-night,"
declared Ruth. "I am so anxious to see Arline. My Daffydowndilly will be
happy, too, for my sake. And Grace, I have a strange presentiment that I
shall see him before long. I can't think of him as anything but alive.
I'm so glad that you told me. It would have been a dreadful shock to
have had the news come through Miss West or her friends."

"She hasn't the slightest idea that we know she was in the hall," said
Grace. "I imagine you will hear of your father through half a dozen
different sources in the morning. I don't believe she intended to tell
you to-day. I think it was part of her plan to take you by surprise and
completely unnerve you. Alberta Wicks and Mary Hampton are efficient
town criers," Grace added bitterly. "She depended on them to spread the
news in the cruelest way."

"Why, Grace, I never heard you speak so bitterly of any one before!"
exclaimed Ruth.

"Ruth, to tell the honest truth, I am thoroughly disgusted with those
two girls," confessed Grace wearily. "They have been at the bottom of
every annoyance I have had since I came to Overton. It may not be
charitable to say so, but I shall certainly not regret seeing them
graduated and gone from Overton. I know it sounds selfish, but I can't
help it. I mean it. And now we are going to talk only of delightful
things. I think we ought to give a spread to-night in honor of you. It
isn't every day one finds a long-lost father. Arline is going to stay to
dinner, and, of course, she'll stay afterward."

Grace's proposal of a spread met with gleeful approval, and in spite of
a hearty six-o'clock dinner, there was no lack of appetite when at ten
o'clock Elfreda, who insisted on taking the labor of the spread upon her
own shoulders, appeared in the door announcing that it was ready. By
borrowing Grace's table and using it in conjunction with her own,
employing the bureau scarf for a centerpiece, and filling up the bare
spaces with paper napkins, the table assumed the dignity of a banqueting
board. There were even glasses and plates and spoons enough to go round
and one could have either grape juice or tea, Elfreda informed them.
"You'd better take tea first, though, because there are only two bottles
of grape juice, and we need that for the toast to Ruth's father. Of
course if you insist upon having grape juice----"

"Tea," was the judiciously lowered chorus from the obliging guests.

"Thank you," bowed Elfreda. "I wouldn't have gi