s headache
better. I'm going up to tell her."

"And we'll be going, now that you have good news," remarked Betty.
"Wasn't it odd to get good and bad news so close together?"

"But the good came last--and that makes it the best," observed Amy with
a smile.

Mr. Ford gave Grace her brother's letter to take up to her mother, while
he and his brother prepared to go down town again, to finish transacting
some business that had called the Southerner up North.

"And I guess I'd better telegraph Will some money while I am at it," his
father said. "He writes that he has plenty of cash, but his idea of a
lot of money is a few one dollar bills and a pocket full of change. I'll
wire twenty-five dollars to him in Jacksonville to come home with."

"I'll be down in a minute, girls," called Grace, as she hurried up
stairs to her mother's room. "Wait for me, and we'll talk about this
Florida trip."

When Grace came down, having made her mother happy with her good news,
she was eating chocolates.

"Now we know she is all right," laughed Betty.

CHAPTER V

MISSING AGAIN

"And to think that in a few more days we'll leave all this behind
us--all the cold, the icicles, the snow, the biting winds--leave it all,
and sail into a land of sunshine and oranges and Spanish moss and
magnolias and----"

"Alligators!" finished Betty for Grace, who was thus going into raptures
over the prospect before them, as she looked over the wintry landscape
that was in full view just outside the window of Amy's home. I say Amy's
home, for, though it had developed that she was no relative of Mr. and
Mrs. Stonington, still they insisted that she call their home hers as
long as she liked. So it was at Amy's home, then, that her chums had
gathered to talk over the trip to Florida.

It was the day after the somewhat startling developments regarding Will
Ford, and Mr. Ford, true to his determination, had telegraphed his son
twenty-five dollars.

"Well, of course Florida will be lovely!" exclaimed Mollie, "and I love
oranges----"

"To say nothing of orange blossoms," interjected Grace.

"I said oranges!" went on Mollie, putting emphasis on the word. "I like
them as well as anyone, but I love winter and skating and ice boating,
too."

"Oh, I just can't bear cold weather!" said Grace, with a shiver, and a
look toward the chair on which, in a fluffy pile, rested her furs--and
Grace looked handsome in the sable set that her father had given to