io davenport. She
was too sleepy to take any interest in it till Betty called out:

"Mary, your escapade has given me the finest sort of a plot for a
_Youth's Companion_ story. I'm going to block it out while I am here,
and finish it when we get back to school. If it is accepted I'll divide
the money with you, and we'll come back on it to spend our Easter
vacation here."

Mary sat up in bed, blinking drowsily. "I'm honestly afraid my enjoyer
_is_ wearing out," she said in a worried tone. "Usually the bare promise
of such a thing would make me so glad that I'd lie awake, half the
night to enjoy the prospect. But somehow I can't take it all in."

Fortunately it was a tired body instead of a tired spirit that brought
this sated feeling, and after a long night's sleep and a quiet day at
home, Mary was ready for all that followed: a little more sight-seeing,
a little shopping, another matinee, and then the week-end at Eugenia's.
The short journey to Annapolis and the few hours with Holland did not
take much time from the calendar, but judged by the pages they filled in
her journal, and all they added to her happy memories, they prolonged
her holidays until it seemed she had been away from Warwick Hall for
months, instead of only two short weeks.

CHAPTER X

HER SEVENTEENTH BIRTHDAY

"Please, Miss Lewis, _please_ do," came in a chorus of pleading voices,
as half a dozen Freshmen surrounded Betty in the lower hall, one snowy
morning late in January. "I think you _might_ consent when we all want
one so tremendously."

"Come on down, Mary Ware," called A.O., catching sight of a wondering
face peering over the bannister, curious to see the cause of the
commotion. "Come down here and help us beg Miss Lewis to be
photographed. There's a man coming out from town this morning to take
some snow scenes of the place, and we want her to pose for him. Sitting
at the desk, you know, where she wrote her stories, with the editor's
letter of acceptance in her hand. Some day when her fame is world-wide a
picture of her wearing her first laurels will be worth a fortune."

"Oh, Betty! Have they really been accepted?" cried Mary, almost tumbling
down the stairs in her excitement, and forgetting the respectful "Miss"
with which she always prefaced her name when with the other girls.

Betty waved a letter which she had just received. "Yes, the editor took
them both, and wants more--a series of boarding-school stories. One of
thes