saying goodbye with a soft dimply hand; and just as fitful were the
gleams of warm sunshine that lazed through the stately trees on the
broad campus of Wellington College. It was a brave day--Summer
defying Nature, swishing her silken skirts of transparent
iridescence into the leaves already trembling before the master hand
of Autumn, with his brush poised for their fateful stroke of
poisoned beauty; every last bud of weed or flower bursting in heroic
tribute, and every breeze cheering the pageant in that farewell to
Summer.

"If school didn't start just now," commented Norma Travers, "I
wonder what we would do? Everything else seems to stop short."

"I never saw shadows come and go so weirdly on any other first day,"
added Judith Stearns ominously. "I hope it doesn't mean a sign, as
Velma Sigbee would put it," and dark eyed Judith waved her arms
above her black head to ward off the blow.

"Is it too early to suggest science?" lisped Maud Leslie timidly.
"I've been reading about the possible change of climate and its
relation to the sun's rays going wild into space. I don't want to
start anything, but it might be judicious to buy more furs next
Summer. Also it might justify the premonitory fad."

"Don't you dare," warned Ted Guthrie, puffing beneath her prettiest
crocheted sweater and rolling down from her chosen mound on the
natural steps of the poplar tree slope. "It's bad enough to think of
icy days up here, far, far away from the happy laughing world of hot
chocolate and warm movie seats," and she rolled one more step nearer
the boxwood lined path, "but to tag on science, and insinuate we are