Seminary Shadow Club.

"This learned I from the shadow on a tree
That to and fro did sway upon the wall,
Our shadowy selves--our influence, may fall
Where we can never be."

She repeated it drowsily, peering out from under her umbrella at the
swaying shadows, till something the lines suggested made her sit up,
wide awake.

"Why, I can take _you_ for my chum, of course," she thought. "Your
_shadow-self_. Then it won't make any difference whether Miss
Haughtiness Hurst talks to me or not, _You'll_ understand and sympathize
with me."

All her life when Mary's world did not measure up to her expectations,
she had been in the habit of making a world of her own; a beautiful
make-believe place that held all her heart's desires. It had given her
gilded coaches and Cinderella ball-attire in her nursery days, and
enchanted orchards whose trees bore all manner of confections. It had
bestowed beauty and fortune and accomplishments on her, and sent dashing
cavaliers to seek her hand when she came to the romance-reading age.
Friends and social pleasures were hers at will when the lonely desert
life grew irksome. Whatever was dull the Midas touch of her imagination
made golden, so now it was easy to close her eyes and conjure up a
make-believe chum that for the time was as good as a real one.

Absorbed in her book, Ethelinda read on until the signal sounded for
lights out. Never before accustomed to such restrictions, she looked up