se and golf bag she
carried.

"Why, Emma, _Emma Dean_!" she exclaimed, her voice rising high in
astonishment.

[Illustration: "Why, Emma Dean!" Exclaimed Grace.]

"Yes, it's Emma, _Emma Dean_," returned Emma humorously. "It is I, me,
myself and all the other personally personal pronouns that stand for
your old friend, Emily Elizabeth Dean."

"Wherever did you come from and--oh, Emma"--as the tall thin young woman
pointed significantly to two heavy suit cases and a small leather bag
huddled together on the station platform--"you aren't really--are you--"

"I am," interrupted Emma cheerfully. "I couldn't stay away. I knew you'd
need a comforter this year, so I applied for the position and you can
see for yourself how successful I was. Professor Morton was so grateful
to me for applying that he said with tears in his eyes, 'Emma, I can't
tell you how happy it makes me--'"

"Emma Dean, stop talking nonsense and tell me how you really happened to
be here. It's too good to be true." Grace beamed fondly on her tall,
humorous classmate who had been a never-failing source of amusement to
the Wayne Hall girls.

"Since you are determined to have facts, here goes. I've come back to
Overton, the land of the dig and the home of the sage, to show what four
years of unremittent toil have done for me. I am to be a living
testimonial, one of the 'after taking the prescribed course I can
cheerfully recommend, etc.,' kind. Briefly and explicitly, I dropped off
that train from the south that came in just before your train, and I'm
going to be Miss Duncan's assistant in English."

"You aren't really!" Grace's eyes were dancing. "How splendid! Why I
didn't know you intended to teach."

"Neither did I," returned Emma, a shadow flitting across her face,
"until I went home last June and found that things hadn't been going as
smoothly as they might. Mother and Father never gave me the slightest
inkling last year that money wasn't plentiful in the Dean family. Dear,
unselfish things! They wanted my college life to end in a blaze of
glory. You see, Father had put most of his little capital into a real
estate boom that didn't boom, and it left him with a lot of vacant lots
on his hands that no one, not even himself, wanted. A trolley line was
to pass through the section he owned and it changed its mind, or rather
the directors changed theirs, and straggled off in another direction.
So, unless it straggles back again and Father gets rid of