bin. Then I'll tell you what a
splendid friend Grace Harlowe has been to me."

"It shall be as Mam'selle says," responded Jean gallantly. Accompanied
as far as the veranda by the three women, Jean made his final adieus and
strode down the pebbled drive to the gate, a sturdy, purposeful figure,
despite his years. To the three who watched him almost out of sight, the
determined set of his broad shoulders in itself seemed to presage the
success of his mission.

"It was certainly nice in Jean to say what he did to me about my being
your friend," was Elfreda's abrupt comment when, after saying good-bye
to Mrs. Gray, the two young women started down Chapel Hill toward home.
"It was the highest compliment that he could pay me. If there had been
time I'd have liked to tell him a few of the reasons for it. I guess he
would have understood then that I had special cause to be loyal to you.
I don't mean by that that anybody would have to have special cause to be
_your_ friend. One would only have to meet you once, Grace Harlowe, to
know that your friendship would be the kind worth having. That is, if
one had any sense. That time I plumped myself down in your seat when we
were bound for Overton College to begin our freshman year, I was too
much wrapped up in myself to know how lucky I was. Isn't it queer,
though, how things like that are often the means by which we begin the
staunchest friendships?"

"Yes, it _is_ strange. If we hadn't met on the train that day in that
way, you might have decided to go to another boarding place instead of
taking up with Mrs. Elwood's offer to you to share Miriam's room. Then,
very likely, we might never have become well acquainted. There were ever
so many girls at Overton College during the six years that I spent
there, whom I never came to know really well." Grace looked regretful.

"But they all knew you," was the staunch retort. "You are as much of an
institution there now as Harlowe House is. Your name has become a
household word at Overton College. Emma and I were speaking of that very
thing at the reunion. She said that if she were manager of Harlowe House
for the next twenty years she'd never come to be known as well there as
you were in the time you spent at Overton."

"Emma is a wily old flatterer and so are you," laughed Grace. "Just
because you girls like me you think the whole world ought to fall in
line and worship me." Her bantering tone changing to seriousness she
continued, "Not