"True. You are. But you have never talked about much of anything
else before this particular occasion," said the red-haired girl.
"What has happened to you, Linda mine, since you separated from us
all at the beginning of the winter holidays?"

Linda merely sniffed again and turned to speak to her particular
chum, Cora Courtney.

"You should have been with me in Chicago, Cora--at my cousin, Pearl
Graves', house. I tried to get Pearl--she's just about our age--to
come to Lakeview Hall; but she goes to a private school right in
her neighborhood--oh! a _very_ select place. No girl like this
wild Western person Polk is talking about, would be received there.
No, indeed!"

"Hi, Linda!" broke in the irrepressible red-haired girl, "why
didn't you try to enter that wonderful school?"

"I did ask to. But my father is _so_ old-fashioned," complained Linda.
"He would not hear of it. Said it would not be treating Dr. Beulah
right."

"Oh, oh!" groaned Laura. "How the dear doctor would have suffered,
Linda, if you had not come back to her sheltering arms."

The laugh this raised among the party made Linda's cheeks flame
more hotly than before. She would not look at the laughing group
again. A flaxen-haired girl with pink cheeks and blue eyes--one of
the smallest though not the youngest in the party--came timidly to