HAPPY NEW YEAR!

"It's been a gay old week, hasn't it?" said Marjorie, on New Year's Eve.

"You bet!" cried King, who sometimes lapsed from the most approved
diction. "Wish it was just beginning. We had fine skating till the snow
came, and ever since, it's been bang-up sleighing. Well, only four more
days, and then school, school, school!"

"Don't remind me of it!" said Marjorie with a groan. "I wish I was a Fiji
or whatever doesn't have to go to school at all!"

"Oh, pshaw, Midge; it isn't so bad after you get started. Only holidays
make you so jolly that it's hard to sit down and be quiet."

"It's always hard for me to sit down and be quiet," said Midge. "If
they'd let me walk around, or sit on the tables or window-sills, I
wouldn't mind school so much. It's being cramped into those old desks
that I hate."

Poor little Marjorie, so active and restless, it was hard for her to
endure the confinement of the schoolroom.

"Why don't you ask mother to let you go to boarding-school, Mops?" asked
Kitty, with an air of having suggested a brilliant solution of her
sister's difficulties.

Marjorie laughed. "No, thank you, Kitsie," she said. "What good would
that do? In the school hours I s'pose I'd have to sit as still as I do