t waiting for such a chance as this. We are all
gone--soft to-night. Take care we don't kiss you, Doro."

Tears were in Dorothy's eyes. She loved her school friends, and this
was an affecting parting.

Tavia snatched up the banjo. She sang:

"Good night! Good night! Good night! Good night!
Good night again; God bless you.
And, oh, until we meet again,
Good night! Good night!
God bless you!"

The strain swelled into a splendid chorus, and, while they sang, the
girls wrapped up the china pieces, putting each safely in the box
beside the damaged ones.

"Speech! Speech!" came the demand from Tavia's corner, and without
further ceremony Dorothy was lifted bodily up on the table and
compelled to make a speech. It was a dangerous, undertaking, for the
sofa pillows that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere put in so
much punctuation that the address might have been put down as a series
of stops. However, Dorothy did manage to say something, for which
effort she was roundly applauded.

The night bell called them to the sense of school duties still
unfinished.

"Oh, that old bell!" complained Nita, pouting.

Cologne drew Dorothy over in the corner. "Ask Tavia about the man on
the horse," she whispered. "She got a letter from him!"

CHAPTER IV

THE PREMATURE CAMP

After all, the last days of school came and went, and the Glenwood
girls had started off for their respective homes before Dorothy had a
chance to fully realize that the vacation had really begun, and that
each day of that delightful calendar now seemed suspended from the
very skies, illumined with the prospects of the very best of good
times.

Dorothy had promised to spend a greater part of the summer with
Rose-Mary Markin at the Markin summer place, a delightful spot on Lake
Monadic in Maine. This plan was particularly fortunate, as Mrs.
Winthrop White, Dorothy's Aunt Winnie, with whom the Dales had lately
made their home, was to go abroad, while Ned and Nat, Dorothy's
cousins, had arranged such a varied itinerary for their summer sports,
that one might imagine, to hear the schedule, that the particular
summer involved must have been of the brand which has neither night
nor autumn to mark its limits.

Then Major Dale, and Dorothy's brothers, Joe and Roger, were to take a
long-promised cruise on the St. Lawrence, so that Dorothy was quite at
liberty to plan for herself.

But these plans could never interfere wi