ellar. His father is away this week and there was
no one in the house but the cook. She was all ready to go away for the
evening, too. She didn't know Hippy was in the cellar, so she locked all
the doors, the cellar door included, and went on her way rejoicing.
Hippy said he pounded and shouted and howled and wailed and pounded some
more. Can't you imagine just how funny he must have looked? He couldn't
climb out of the cellar windows, for they are too small and he is too
fat, so he had to stay there until almost ten o'clock. He says he sat on
the cellar steps most of the time and thought of the happy past. At last
the cook came home and when he heard her walking around upstairs he
pounded and shouted again. She thought he was a burglar, just as though
a burglar would make all that noise, and wasn't going to let him out. He
insists that he ruined his voice forever in trying to convince her that
he was himself. He says his frenzied pleadings finally touched her
adamant heart, and she opened the cellar door very cautiously at the
rate of about a sixteenth of an inch per minute."

Grace laughed with the others, as Nora finished. "Poor Hippy," she
commented, "he is always falling into difficulties. I must ask him about
his evening in the cellar."

"Yes, do," urged Nora. "He tried to swear Edith and me to secrecy, but
we refused to be sworn."

"It will make Reddy so happy," laughed Anne.

"Oh, Anne, dear, you don't know how splendid it seems to have you home
again!" exclaimed Grace. "It's just like old times. I can't help feeling
sad though. We thought when we were graduated from high school that our
parting of the ways had come, but now that we are all standing on the
verge of our life work, it seems to me that this is going to be the real
parting. I can't help wondering if things will seem quite the same again
when we gather home next year."

"Of course they will," declared practical Nora. "Grace Harlowe, don't
you dare to grow gloomy and retrospective. We four are chums for life,
and not all the weddings and stage careers and Harlowe House positions
in the world can change us."

"I know they can't. I won't make any more excursions into the Valley of
Doubt," promised Grace.

They had stopped on the walk to talk, now they moved slowly toward the
veranda, four abreast, a bright-eyed, happy quartette. Mrs. Harlowe
greeted her daughter's friends as affectionately as though they were her
own children. "Did you bring you