mas vacation. Didn't I hear a
certain young lady wishing the other night that she could stretch hers
out indefinitely?"

Lloyd's dimples deepened. "How much longah will you make it? A week? If
I stay out much longah than that, it will be such hah'd work to catch up
with my classes that the game won't be worth the candle."

"But I would make it so long that there would be no necessity of having
to catch up, as you call it. You could simply make a fresh start in a
new class."

Lloyd looked up in alarm. "When?" she demanded.

"Um--well, next fall, let us say," he answered, deliberately. "Yes,
surely by that time you'll be well and sound as a new dollar."

"Next fall!" she gasped, her face growing white and her eyes strangely
big and dark. "You don't mean--you _couldn't_ mean that I must leave
school."

"Yes, that's exactly what I mean. You are overtaxing yourself and must
stop--"

"Oh, I can't!" interrupted Lloyd, speaking very fast. "I _won't_! It's
cruel to ask it when I've worked so hard to keep from falling behind
Betty and the girls. Oh, you don't _know_ what it means to me!"

The old doctor looked up in amazement at this unexpected outburst.

"No," he answered, slowly, after a moment's silence. "I don't suppose I
do. I had no idea it would be a disappointment to you. I would gladly
save you from it if I could. But listen to me, my little girl, and try
to be reasonable. You are on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Nothing
can mean as much to you as your health. What will keeping up with the
other girls amount to if the strain and the overtaxing makes an invalid
of you for life, perhaps?

"Mind you, I am not saying that the work itself is too great a tax.
Madam Chartley's is one of the best regulated schools I have ever
inquired into. Ordinarily a girl ought to be able to take the course
with perfect ease. But you see that little spell of la grippe left you
weak and unfit for any extra strain, and, instead of easing up a bit,
you went on piling on all that extra load of lessons and Christmas
preparations and vacation dissipations. It was like trying to walk on a
broken foot. The more you tried, the worse it got. The mischief is done
now, and there is no remedy but to stop short off."

Lloyd sat very still for a moment, staring out of the window in a dazed,
unseeing way, as if not fully understanding all he said. Then she turned
with a piteous appeal in her face to Mrs. Sherman.

"Mothah, it isn't so, is