.

"Did I look good?" repeated the fleshy girl, with scorn. "I looked as good
as a fat girl crawling around on all fours, ever _does_ look. What do you
think?"

The laugh at Jennie Stone's sally really cleared the room, for the warning
bell for supper sounded almost immediately. Heavy and Nettie, and all who
did not belong in the quartette room, departed. Then Mercy went tap, tap,
tapping down the corridor with her canes--"just like a silly woodpecker!"
as she often said herself; and Ann strode away, trying to hum the marching
song, but ignominiously falling into the doleful strains of the "Cowboy's
Lament" before she reached the head of the stairway.

"I really would like to know what that thing is you've been writing,
Ruth," remarked Helen, when they were alone. "All those sheets of
paper--Goodness! it's no composition. I believe you've been writing your
valedictory this early."

"Don't be silly," laughed Ruth. "I shall never write the valedictory of
this class. Mercy will do that."

"I don't care! Mrs. Tellingham considers you the captain of the graduating
class. So now!" cried loyal Helen.

"That may be; but Mercy is our brilliant girl--you know that."

"Yes--the poor dear! but how could she ever stand up before them all and
give an oration?"

"She _shall_!" cried Ruth, with emphasis. "She shall _not_ be cheated out
of all the glory she wins--or of an atom of that glory. If she is our
first scholar, she must, somehow, have all the honors that go with the
position."

"Oh, Ruthie! how can you overcome her natural dislike of 'making an
exhibition of herself,' as she calls it, and the fact that, really, a girl
as lame as she is, poor creature, could never make a pleasant appearance
upon the platform?"

"I do not know," Ruth said seriously. "Not now. But I shall think it out,
if nobody else _can_. Mercy shall graduate with flying colors from
Briarwood Hall, whether I do myself, or not!"

"Never mind," said Helen, laughing at her chum's emphasis. "At least the
valedictorian will hail from this dear old quartette room."

"Yes," agreed Ruth, looking around the loved chamber with a tender smile.
"What will we do when we see it no longer, Helen?"

"Oh, don't talk about it!" cried Helen, who had forgotten by this time
what she had started to question Ruth about. "Come on! We'll be late for
supper."

When her chum's back was turned, Ruth slipped out of her table drawer the
very packet of papers Helen had spoke