ed down the
corridor beside Mary and into the locker room of the Franklin High
School. The two friends put on their wraps almost in silence. The
majority of the girl students of the big city high school had passed out
some little time before. Marjorie had lingered for a last talk with Miss
Fielding, who taught English and was the idol of the school, while Mary
had hung about outside the classroom to wait for her chum. It seemed to
Mary that the greatest sorrow of her sixteen years had come. Marjorie,
her sworn ally and confidante, was going away for good and all.

When, six years before, a brown-eyed little girl of nine, with long
golden-brown curls, had moved into the house next door to the Raymonds,
Mary had lost no time in making her acquaintance. They had begun with
shy little nods and smiles, which soon developed into doorstep
confidences. Within two weeks Mary, whose eyes were very blue, and whose
short yellow curls reminded one of the golden petals of a daffodil, had
become Marjorie's adorer and slave. She it was who had escorted Marjorie
to the Lincoln Grammar School and seen her triumphantly through her
first week there. She had thrilled with unselfish pride to see how
quickly the other little girls of the school had succumbed to Marjorie's
charm. She had felt a most delightful sense of pardonable vanity when,
as the year progressed, Marjorie had preferred her above all the others.
She had clung to Mary, even though Alice Lawton, who rode to school
every day in a shining limousine, had tried her utmost to be best
friends with the brown-eyed little girl whose pretty face and lovable
personality had soon made her the pet of the school.

Year after year Mary and Marjorie had lived side by side and kept their
childish faith. But now, here they were, just beginning their freshman
year in Franklin High School, to which they had so long looked forward,
and about to be separated; for Marjorie's father had been made manager
of the northern branch of his employer's business and Marjorie was going
to live in the little city of Sanford. Instead of being a freshman in
dear old Franklin, she was to enter the freshman class in Sanford High
School, where she didn't know a solitary girl, and where she was sure
she would be too unhappy for words.

During the first days which had followed the dismaying news that
Marjorie Dean was going to leave Franklin High School and go hundreds of
miles away, the two friends had talked of li