low chair by the window her Princess Winsome had sat to read and study
and dream all through her school days.

Here was the mirror that had caught her passing reflection so often,
that it still seemed to hold a thousand shadowy semblances of her in its
shining depths. Only the June before (three short months ago) she had
stood in front of it in all the glory of her Commencement gown.

Mary crossed the room on tiptoe, smiling at the recollection of one of
her early make-believes. Oh, if it were only true that one could pass
through the looking-glass into the wonderland behind it, what a
charming picture gallery she would find! All the girls who had occupied
the room since Warwick Hall had been a school! Blue eyes and brown,
laughing faces and wistful ones, girls in gorgeous full dress, pluming
themselves for some evening entertainment, girls in dainty undress and
unbound hair, exchanging bed-time confidences as they prepared for the
night, ambitious little saints and frivolous little sinners--they were
all there, somewhere in the dim background of the mirror, and because of
them there was a subtle charm about the room to Mary, which she would
not have felt if she had been its first occupant.

"It's like opening an old drawer to drop in a handful of fresh
rose-leaves, and finding it sweet with the roses of a dozen Junes gone
by," she said to herself, so pleased with the fancy that she went on
elaborating it.

"And Lloyd has been here so lately that _her_ rose-leaves haven't even
begun to wither."

There is no loyalty like the loyalty of a little school-girl for the