"Certainly, you resemble a hearth," agreed Emma Dean. "Now tell me how
you like my costume. It took me hours to reduce my wearing apparel to
its present picturesque state. All you girls are screaming successes.
But who is 'Peter Rabbit'?"

"I don't know, but I'm going to find out," declared Elfreda. "He, or
rather she, carried a package of little cards with a cunning rabbit's
head and the name 'Peter Rabbit' on them. I have one here."

"So have I," came from every member of the group.

"Let us find the famous Peter, then offer our congratulations," proposed
Patience, with a searching glance at the company.

But the "famous Peter" was not to be found among the throng of gayly
attired girls, and there was no little comment among them at his sudden
and complete disappearance.

"I wonder what became of 'Peter Rabbit'?" remarked Anne, when, later in
the evening, a number of Semper Fidelis girls gathered in one corner of
the room to hold an informal session and compare notes.

"Who is 'Peter Rabbit'; or, the Mystery of the 'Blue Jacket'?" declaimed
Emma Dean. "Even Sherlock is all at sea, aren't you, Brother Holmes?"
Emma Dean laid her hand familiarly on the great investigator's shoulder.

"Don't be too sure that I'm all at sea. I have a theory." Elfreda put on
a preternaturally wise expression.

"We'll hear it at once," returned Emma briskly.

"Not to-night. I have other weightier problems on my mind. I have been
asked to solve the campus mystery."

"Campus mystery!" exclaimed several voices. "What is it?"

"Walk to the extreme northern end of the campus, then go east one
hundred and fifty paces and you will come face to face with the
problem," was Elfreda's mystifying answer.

"Oh, I know what you mean," cried Sara Emerson. "The ground has been
broken there for some kind of building. We noticed it day before
yesterday."

"Right, my child," commended Elfreda patronizingly, "and therein lies
the mystery. I have prowled about the vicinity at odd moments ever since
the men began working there, but even my powers of penetration have
failed."

"Since your curiosity has reached such a height, why don't you ask Miss
Wilder to tell you the whys and wherefores of this startling affair?"
teased Emma Dean. "I never realized until now what a mysterious process
digging a cellar is."

"It isn't the process that's mysterious, it is the object of the
process," declared Elfreda, with great dignity.

"Not everyone 'can s