ends were carefully avoided by their classmates. Miriam, herself,
felt the snub at once. Had she, after all, made a mistake, and was she
losing ground in the class? But her vanity was like a life buoy to her
sinking hopes. She refused to see that the other girls regarded her with
growing dislike.

When school was over, that afternoon, six girls strolled down the High
School walk arm in arm. They were Grace and her three chums and two
other girls who were popular in the freshman class.

Anne's small figure seemed almost dwarfed next to Grace, who towered
half a foot above her. Ever since Anne's trying scene with her father,
Grace had been doubly tender and kind to her, until the young girl
seemed to expand under the happy influence.

"Well, girlies, dear, we are the chosen six. I hope we shall be a credit
to the class."

"Don't talk so loudly, Nora. I feel as if we were surrounded by spies
to-day. Everybody has been so mysterious and queer."

"One thing is practically certain," whispered Grace: "I believe it was
Miriam who told the sophomores about the Omnibus House. Why else did
they invite her to their ball?"

"We can never prove it, though," said one of the others, "unless we get
her up a tree some day and make her admit it."

"Remember, Anne," cautioned Grace, when they came to the cross street
leading to the Pierson cottage, "eight o'clock sharp at my house! And
don't bother about things. We shall have more than enough among us."

At half-past eight that night the sound of a stringed orchestra floated
out on the breeze as the door of the gymnasium swung back and forth to
admit disguised sophomores, who each whispered the countersign to the
doorkeeper, after running the gauntlet of the waiting crowd, and slipped
in.

The music was furnished by a troupe of women players especially engaged
to play in this Adamless Eden. What would not the crowd of waiting boys
have given for one glimpse of the ball room, where ballet girls, clowns
and courtiers, Egyptian snake charmers, Mephistopholeses and
Marguerites, priests and priestesses of the Orient, all whirled madly
together?

Every door had been locked and bolted and every downstairs window
securely closed. Ventilation was obtained through the half-open windows
opening on the upper gallery, which ran around the four sides of the
gymnasium. The doors to this gallery had also been locked and the only
way to reach it was by steps leading up from the gymnasium.

Si