ng people clustered together, talking at random
and laughing easily.

"It will be so lonely without you all," sighed Bess. "All the other
college folk will be off by Tuesday at the latest, and here we shall
languish!"

"You'll not have much time to languish if you assist in the
kindergarten, Winifred," said Catherine affectionately. "I'm so glad you
are going to do it! You'll make them sing like little nightingales. O,
Bess, you go right by Grandma Hopkins' on the way home, don't you? Would
you mind running in and telling her that the cake got off all right?
I'll write her, of course, but I know she will want to know. Algernon!
You don't mean it? Miss Ainsworth drawing her own novels! How perfectly
delicious! O Max, there you are! What did Mr. Morse say? Was he pleased
with the way we handled the paper?"

"Seemed to be. How I wish I were still on, to be able to write up your
departure fittingly! I say, who's that odd little pair over there? They
seem to be looking this way as if they wanted something."

The others turned and Frieda, who had been standing in a dreary silence,
listening to the chatter of all these dear boys and girls whom she was
leaving perhaps forever, suddenly ran across the platform to where a
little old lady in black with a knitted shawl over her head, and a
little old man in ill-fitting clothes were standing.

"We came to tell our little friend good-by," "And to wish her _Gute
Reise!_" They spoke in a kind of duet.

"Here are a few poor blossoms from our garden--"

"That you forget not the old people--"

"And a trifle of _Kuchen_ that I made myself--"

"And this I have carved for you, to put your pens on--"

Frieda, beaming and exclaiming her gratitude, made a pretty picture and
the young people, observing her and hearing the rapid German, felt that
they were seeing her in a better light than they had before, much as
they had already learned to like and enjoy her.

Dot clung to Hannah, and the gentle Agnes, who had found Alice
incredibly congenial, walked arm in arm with her a little apart from the
others, while Catherine in the center of the group held her father's arm
fast.

They were off at last.

"I thought that child in the back seat was Elsmere," sighed Catherine,
starting up and dropping back again, relieved. "That child actually gets
on my mind so that I expect to see him everywhere."

"Algernon tied him up, or he would have been there. He is a little
rascal. It was a relie