s Muriel should
happen to faint away just then.

"I'm glad she did, though, if it won't make her ill, 'cause then she
didn't see me dangling, like I must have, and get scared for that.
Likely she stayed out doors too long. She isn't very strong and it's
mighty cold, I think."

So they hurried her indoors, Gwendolyn with her, yet neither of them
allowed to discuss the affair until they were both warmly dressed in
ordinary clothes and set down to a cute little lunch table, "all for
your two selves," Nora explained: "And to eat all these warm things
and drink hot coffee--as much of it as you like. It was Miss Muriel
herself who said that!"

This was a treat indeed. Coffee at any meal was kept for a special
treat, but to have unlimited portions of it was what Dolly called "a
step beyond."

Curious glances, but smiling and tender, came often their way, from
other tables in the room, yet the sport, and happily ended hazard of
the morning had given to every girl a fine appetite, so that, for
once, knives and forks were more busily employed than tongues.

Neither did the two heroines of the recent tragic episode feel much
like speech. Now that it was all over and they could think about it
more clearly their hearts were filled with the solemnity of what had
happened; and Gwendolyn said all that was needed for both, when once
laying her hand on Dorothy's she whispered:

"You saved my life--the Bishop says that I saved yours. After that
we're even and we must love each other all our lives."

"Oh! we must, we must! And I do, I shall!" returned Dorothy, with
tears rising.

Then this festive little lunch dispatched, they were captured by their
schoolmates and led triumphantly into the cheerful library, the scene
of all their confabs, and Winifred demanded:

"Now, in the name of all the Oak Knowe girls, I demand a detailed
history of what happened. Begin at the beginning and don't either of
you dare to skip a single moment of the time from where you started
down the old toboggan alongside of John Gilpin and that boy. I fancy
if the tale were properly told his ride would outdo that of his
namesake of old times. Dorothy Calvert, begin."

"Why, dear, I don't know what to say, except that, as you say, we
started. My lovely toboggan went beautifully, as it had all the time,
but theirs didn't act right. I believe that the old man was scared so
that he couldn't do a thing except meddle with Robin, who doesn't know
much more abo