as it usually does when cherished plans are
demolished and the sun goes in! Very shortly there were no more cookies.

"What on earth has happened to your hydrangea bush? It was full of
blossoms yesterday," Joyce suddenly exclaimed.

"Bates's pup!" replied Cynthia, laconically. There was no need of
further explanation. Joyce giggled at its shorn appearance, and then
relapsed into another long silence. There were times when these two
companions could talk frantically for hours on a stretch. There were
other seasons when they would sit silent yet utterly understanding one
another for equally prolonged periods. They had been bosom friends from
babyhood, as their parents had been before them. Shoulder to shoulder
they had gone through kindergarten and day-school together, and were now
abreast in their first high-school year. Even their birthdays fell in
the same month. And the only period of the year which saw them parted
was the few weeks during vacation when their respective parents (who had
different tastes in summer resorts) dragged them unwillingly away to
mountain and sea-shore. Literally, nothing else ever separated them save
the walls of their own dwellings--and the Boarded-up House.

It is now high time to introduce the Boarded-up House, which has been
staring us out of countenance ever since this story began! For the
matter of that, it had stared the two girls out of countenance ever
since they came to live in the little town of Rockridge, one on each
side of it. And long before they came there, long before ever they were
born, or Rockridge had begun its mushroom growth as a pretty, modern,
country town, the Boarded-up House had stared the passers-by out of
countenance with almost irritating persistence.

It was set well back from the street, in a big inclosure guarded by a
very rickety picket-fence, and a gate that was never shut but hung
loosely on one hinge. Unkempt bushes and tall rank grass flourished in
this inclosure, and near the porch grew two pine-trees like sentinels at
the entrance. At the back was a small orchard of ancient cherry-trees,
and near the rear door a well-curb, with the great sweep half rotted
away.

The house itself was a big, rambling affair of the Colonial type, with
three tall pillars supporting the veranda roof and reaching above the
second story. On each side of the main part was a generous wing. It
stood rather high on a sloping lawn, and we have said that it "stared"
at passer