e. What a brave
girl she is, Tom!"

"Bravest in seven states!" acknowledged Master Tom, promptly. He had
always thought there was nobody just like Ruth, and his sister smiled
upon him approvingly.

"I guess she is!" she agreed. "There isn't a girl at Briarwood Hall that
will be her match in anything--now that Madge Steele has gotten through.
Ruth is going to be head of the senior class before we graduate--you
see."

"She'll have to hustle some to beat little Mercy Curtis," grinned Tom.
"_There's_ a sharp suffragette for you!"

Helen laughed. "That's right. But, unfortunately for Mercy, Mrs.
Tellingham considers other work beside our books in grading us. Oh,
Tommy! we're going to have a dandy time this coming year at school."

"You have my best wishes," returned her brother, with a slightly clouded
face. "Bobbins and Busy Izzy and I expect to be drilled like everything,
when we get back to Seven Oaks. Professor Darly is a terror."

Ruth came out with her bag then, and in the doorway behind her appeared
the little, stooped figure of Aunt Alvirah. The Camerons waved their
hands and shouted greetings to her.

"Take good keer of my pretty, Master Tom," shrilled the old lady,
hobbling out into the yard. "Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!"

"We'll handle her as if she were made of glass," declared Tom, laughing.
"Hop in, Ruthie!"

"Good-bye, Aunt Alvirah!" cried the girl of the Red Mill, clasping the
little old lady around the neck and kissing her. Then she waved her hand
to Uncle Jabez, who appeared in the mill doorway, and he nodded grimly,
as the car started.

Ben appeared at a window and bashfully nodded to the departing pleasure
party. The car quickly passed the end of the Cheslow road and sped up
the riverside. These lowlands beyond the Red Mill had once been covered
by a great flood, and the three friends would never forget their race
with the freshet from Culm Falls, at the time the Minturn Dam burst.

"But we're bound far, far above the dam this time," said Tom. "Fred
Larkin lives farther than that--beyond the gorge between the hills, and
at the foot of the first pond. We'll get there long before dark unless
something happens to this old mill I'm driving."

"There! Tommy's harping on his pet trouble," laughed Helen. "Father
won't let us use the new car to go scooting about the country alone in,
and Tommy thinks he is abused."

"Well! that 'six' is just eating its head off in the garage," grumbled
the boy