luntary start.

"Do you like it?" asked Rosetta Muriel, immediately interested. The fair
hair which she usually arranged so elaborately, was parted and drawn
back rather primly over her ears, giving her face a suggestion of
refinement which was becoming, if a little misleading.

Peggy was glad she could answer in the affirmative. "Indeed, I do. The
simple styles are so pretty, I think."

"There was a picture of Adelaide Lacey in the paper, with her hair done
this way. She's going to marry a duke, you know." It was characteristic
of Rosetta Muriel thus to excuse her lapse into simplicity, but though
the ingenuous explanation was the truth, it was not the whole truth.
Even Rosetta Muriel was not quite the same girl for having come in
contact with Peggy Raymond, and her poor little undeveloped, unlovely
self was reaching out gropingly to things a shade higher than those
which hitherto had satisfied her.

The news of the hasty departure was magically diffused. Amy said
afterward that she began to understand what they meant when they talked
about wireless telegraphy. For as the stage rattled and bumped along the
dusty highway the next morning, figures appeared at the windows,
handkerchiefs fluttered, and hands were waved in greeting and farewell.
In many a harvest field, too, work halted briefly, while battered hats
swung above the heads of the wearers, as a substitute for a good-by. And
at the station, to the girls' astonishment, quite a company had
collected in honor of their departure.

Graham and Jack had deferred their start till they had put the girls on
the train, and they regarded the gathering in amazement. "Sure they're
not waiting for a circus train?" Graham demanded. "Are you responsible
for all this? Rather looks to me, Jack, as if we weren't quite as
indispensable as we fancied."

The stage was never early, and the girls hardly had time to make the
rounds before the whistle of the train was heard. "Come back next
summer," cried Mrs. Cole, catching Peggy in her arms, and giving her a
motherly squeeze. "I declare it'll make me so homesick to drive by the
cottage, with you girls gone, that I shan't know how to stand it."

Peggy was saying good-by all over again, but she saved her two special
favorites for the last. "Now, Lucy," she cried, her hands upon the
shoulders of the pale girl, whose compressed lips showed the effort she
was making far self-control, "you must write me now and then. I want to
know ju