shut him off at that. She knew that the western girl could not stand
much teasing.

They were all nervous, anyway; at least, the girls were. Ruth and Helen
approached their second year at Briarwood with some anxiety. How would
they be treated? How would the studies be arranged for the coming months
of hard work? How were they going to stand with the teachers?

When the two chums first went to Briarwood they occupied a double room;
but later they had taken in Mercy Curtis, a lame girl. Now that
"triumvirate" could not continue, for Jane Ann had begged to room with
Ruth and Helen.

The western girl, who was afraid of scarcely anything "on four legs or
two" in her own environment, was really nervous as she approached
boarding school. She had seen enough of these eastern girls to know that
they were entirely different from herself. She was "out of their class,"
she told herself, and if she had not been with Ruth and Helen these few
last days before the opening of the school term, she would have run away.

Ruth was going back to school this term with a delightful sense of having
gained Uncle Jabez's special approval. He admitted that schooling such as
she gained at Briarwood was of some use. And he made her a nice present of
pocket-money when she started.

The Cameron auto stopped for her at the Red Mill before mid-forenoon, and
Ruth bade the miller and Aunt Alvirah and Ben--not forgetting Jerry
Sheming, her new friend--good-bye.

"Do--_do_ take care o' yourself, my pretty," crooned Aunt Alvirah over
her, at the last. "Jest remember we're a-honin' for you here at the ol'
mill."

"Take care of Uncle Jabez," whispered Ruth. She dared kiss the grim old
man only upon his dusty cheek. Then she shook hands with bashful Ben and
ran out to her waiting friends.

"Come on, or we'll lose the train," cried Helen.

They were off the moment Ruth stepped into the tonneau. But she stood up
and waved her hand to the little figure of Aunt Alvirah in the cottage
doorway as long as she could be seen on the Cheslow road. And she had a
fancy that Uncle Jabez himself was lurking in the dark opening to the
grist-floor of the mill, and watching the retreating motor car.

There was a quick, alert-looking girl hobbling on two canes up and down
the platform at Cheslow Station. This was Mercy Curtis, the station
agent's crippled daughter.

"Here you are at last!" she cried, shrilly. "And the train already hooting
for the station. Five minut