With a little shrill scream of pain Rae Malgregor's hands went flying
back to her temples. Like a person giving orders in a great panic she
turned authoritatively to her two room-mates, her fingers all the while
boring frenziedly into her temples.

"Now, girls," she warned, "stand well back! If my head bursts, you know,
it's going to burst all to slivers and splinters--like a boiler!"

"Rae, you're crazy!" hooted Zillah.

"Just plain vulgar--looney," faltered Helene.

Both girls reached out simultaneously to push her aside.

Somewhere in the dusty, indifferent street a bird's note rang out in
one wild, delirious ecstasy of untrammeled springtime. To all intents
and purposes the sound might have been the one final signal that Rae
Malgregor's jangled nerves were waiting for.

"Oh, I _am_ crazy, am I?" she cried with a new, fierce joy. "Oh, I _am_
crazy, am I? Well, I'll go ask the Superintendent and see if I am! Oh,
surely they wouldn't try and make me graduate if I really was crazy!"

Madly she bolted for her bureau, and snatching her own motto down,
crumpled its face securely against her skirt and started for the door.
Just what the motto was no one but herself knew. Sprawling in
paint-brush hieroglyphics on a great flapping sheet of brown
wrapping-paper, the sentiment, whatever it was, had been nailed face
down to the wall for three tantalizing years.