fell into one another's arms, torn between tears and laughter.

With mingled disgust and disappointment the Ravens decided then and
there to let love follow its own blind, mistaken course.

"Miss Gray can die an old maid before I'll ever face another creature
like that!" vowed Gyp, and Pat echoed her words.

"No one ever gets any thanks for meddling in other people's affairs,
anyway," Peggy Lee offered.

"Nice time to tell us _that_," was Gyp's irritable retort.

That evening Miss Gray, charming in a soft lavender georgette dress,
which her clever fingers had made and remade, wondered why her four
young charges were so glum. There was nothing in the world _she_ loved
so much as a symphony orchestra. She sat back in her chair, close to the
edge of the box, with a happy sigh, and studied her program. Everything
that she liked best, Chopin, Saint-Saens, and Wagner--Siegfried's Death.
Gyp, eyeing her chaperon's happy anticipation, indulged in a whispered
regret.

"Doesn't she look pretty to-night? If that horrible creature only hadn't
been----" The setting would have been so perfect for the denouement. She
sprawled back, resignedly, in her chair, smothering a yawn. A flutter of
applause marked the coming in of the orchestra. There was the usual
scraping of chairs and whining of strings. Then suddenly Miss Gray
leaned out over the box-rail, exclaiming incoherently, her hands
clasping and unclasping in a wild, helpless way.

An opening crash of the cymbals covered her confusion. The four girls
were staring at her, round-eyed. They had not believed Miss Gray capable
of such agitation! What _ever_ had happened----

"An old friend," she whispered, her face alternately paling and
flushing. "A very dear--old--friend! The--the third--violin----" She
leaned weakly against the box-rail. The girls looked down at the
orchestra. There--under the leader's arm--sat the third violinist--and a
white streak ran from his forehead straight back through his coal black
hair!

As though an electric shock flashed through them the four girls
straightened and stiffened. A glance, charged with meaning, passed from
one to another. Gyp, remembering the moment of confidence between her
and Miss Gray, slipped her hand into Miss Gray's and squeezed it
encouragingly.

Not one of them heard a note of the wonderful music; each was steadying
herself for that moment when the program should end. Their box was very
near the little door that led behi