an to amuse the
girls, so they were left pretty much to themselves, and passed the ten
days of vacation in the best way they could.

"Girls will be girls," that was what Miss Ashton said when the pupils
who had been at home came back with their summer outfits, and she
found the whole attention of the school given for a few days to their
examination and comparison.

"If I could hear you talk half as much about any branch of study, or
your art lessons, as I hear you talk about your new clothes," she said
with a pleasant laugh, "I should be delighted; but I suppose nothing
seems more important to you now than the fashions, and, on the whole,
I don't know but I am glad of it."

It was this interest in their many-sided life that gave Miss Ashton
her great influence over them. The girls would take articles of
apparel to her for her inspection, and find them doubly valuable if
they met with her approval.

There was one set whose wardrobes were objects of especial interest:
those were the graduating class. Next to her bridal dress, there seems
to be no other that is thought so much of, not only by the girl, but
by her parents.

It would be idle, perhaps out of place here, to say how much display
and foolish extravagance there is at such a time. Where it can be well
afforded, it is of comparatively little importance, but a great deal
of heartache might be avoided, if the simplest costume were decided
to be the most suitable. Parents whose means have been tried to the
utmost to give their child the advantages of the school, who have
never hesitated over any labor or self-denial in order to accomplish
it, find themselves at last called to confront the question of
dollars, hardly earned or saved, squandered on a dress almost
worthless for future use, on pain of seeing their child mortified and
unhappy because she cannot, on this eventful occasion, look as well as
the others. Even Miss Ashton's influence, great as it was, had failed
to accomplish any good result in changing this long-established
custom; and for reasons best known to themselves, the present senior
class had voted in their class meetings to make their graduation day
one long to be remembered in the annals of the school.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

NEMESIS.

Until this year this academy had had a salutatory and a valedictory in
the same way they did at Atherton Academy, given for the best
scholarship as it was there; but as this was considered a finishing
scho