is old Award without a flicker of my
littlest eyelash, but just _knowing_ her makes it--impossible! Now--what
shall we do?"

Jerry's remonstrance--a little quivery, because she was deeply moved by
Ginny's unexpected tribute--was drowned out in a general assent and a
clamorous approval of Ginny's words.

"I know----" declared Isobel, feeling that, because she was a Senior,
she must straighten out this tangle. "Let's tell Uncle Johnny all about
it." Uncle Johnny--to whom had been carried every hurt, every problem
since baby days.

The others agreed--"He's a trustee, anyway," Gyp explained--though just
how much a trustee had to do with these complicated questions of school
honor none of them knew.

And, as though Uncle Johnny always sprang up from the earth at the very
instant his girls needed him, he came up the winding drive in his red
roadster. They hailed him. He brought the car to a quick stop.

"Uncle Johnny, we want you to decide something for us! Please get out
and come over here."

He stared at the serious faces. What tragedy had shadowed the customary
gladness of the last day of school? He let them lead him to the old elm.

"If you'll please sit down and--and pretend you're _not_--our uncle but
sort of a--a judge--and listen, we'll tell you."

"Dear me," Uncle Johnny murmured weakly, sitting down on the slope.
"This is bad for rheumatism and gray trousers but--I'll listen."

Isobel began the story with the building of the snowman; Gyp took it up.
Dramatically, with an eloquence reminiscent of that meeting of the
Ravens when the ill-fated lot had fallen to Jerry, she explained how
"for the honor of the school" Jerry had shouldered Ginny's punishment.
Peggy Lee interrupted to say that she thought Miss Gray had made an
awful fuss about nothing, but Ginny hushed her quickly. Then the story
came to the winning of the Award.

"Two points--Jerry only needed two points. And she lost ten as a
punishment about the snowman. Don't you see--she's really the winner?"

Uncle Johnny had listened to the story with careful gravity; inwardly he
was tortured with the desire to laugh. But he could not affront these
girls so seriously bent on keeping unsullied that pure white thing they
called honor. "Oh, youth--youth!" he thought, loving them the more for
their precious earnestness.

"And--it's _such_ a mix-up, we don't know what to do. If I knew who had
given the prize I'd go straight to him," exclaimed Ginny bravely.