le to pay
you an honest compliment. I have no doubt you have acquired other
virtues of which I am at present in ignorance."

"Aunt Betty, you're getting to be a perfect flatterer. And what about
the vices I may have acquired?"

Aunt Betty smiled.

"They are, I am sure, greatly in the minority--in fact, nothing but
what any healthy, mischievous girl acquires at a modern boarding
school. Now, in my younger days, the schoolmasters and mistresses
were very strict. Disobedience to the slightest rule meant severe
punishment, and was really the means of keeping pent up within one
certain things from which the system were better rid. But I must go
now and dress. When you have rested and completed your toilet, pass
by my room and we'll go on the lawn together."

With a final kiss Aunt Betty disappeared down the hall, leaving
Dorothy alone with her thoughts.

"Dear old auntie," she murmured. "Her chief desire, apparently, is
for my welfare. I can never in this world repay her kindness--never!"

Then, seized with a sudden inspiration, she sat down at her writing
desk by the big window, overlooking the arbor and side garden, and
indicted the following letter to her chum:

"_My Darling Molly:_

"Heavy, heavy hangs over your head! You are severely
penalized for not writing me of your return. But to surprise
your friends was always one of your greatest delights, you
sly little minx! So I am not holding it up against you. I'll
even the score with you some day in a way you little
imagine.

"Well, well, well, you just can't guess what I have to tell
you! And I'm glad you can't, for that would take away the
pleasure of the telling. Aunt Betty has planned a fine
outing for me in the South Mountains, which, as you know,
form a spur of the Blue Ridge range in Western Maryland. We
are to be gone several weeks, during which time who can say
what glorious adventures we will have?

"You are going with us. I want your acceptance of the
invitation by return mail, Lady Breckenridge, and I shall
take pleasure in providing a brave knight for your escort in
the person of one Gerald Blank, in whose automobile we are
to make the trip. He has a new seven-passenger car given him
by his father, and, in the vulgar parlance of the day, we
are going to 'make things hum.' It is only some sixty miles
to the mountains, and we expect to be