"No, indeed," retorted Mary, firmly. "They're nothing to see, dear, I
assure you, but if you insist on seeing them you can all go across to
Laurie's room and come back after you've had a general inspection."

So everybody filed over to Marion Lawrence's room, where it was
discovered that Mary's mother was, as Betty Wales put it, "a perfect
little darling." She was small, like Mary, and she looked so young that
Katherine gravely asked Mary if she was quite sure she wasn't palming off
a sister on them instead of a mother. She entered into all the
absurdities of the hair-raising, which proved to be only a particularly
diverting sort of ghost party, with as much zest as any of the girls, and
her ghost stories were the feature of the evening.

"You see, dear," explained Mary, when the lights were finally turned on
and the hair-raising had resolved itself into a spread, "you see I had a
hair-raising because you tell ghost stories so well. Why, ever since I
read your letter I've been planning how I should show you off--Oh,
mother, it's too good to keep." And Mary regaled her mother with the
story of the neglected book-bill.

"Speaking of lost letters," said Marion Lawrence, "there's a letter for
Frances West over on the zoology bulletin board in Science Hall. It's
been there for two weeks."

"What a funny place for it!" said Mary. "Frances never as much as sticks
her head inside Science Hall. She thinks it's wrong to cut up frogs and
angle-worms. How did it get there, Laurie?"

"Postman dropped it, probably, and somebody who didn't know any better
stuck it up there--the janitor, maybe."