E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
1913
Four girls were walking down an elm-shaded street. Four girls, walkingtwo by two, their arms waist-encircling, their voices mingling in rapidtalk, punctuated with rippling laughter—and, now and then, as theirhappy spirits fairly bubbled and overflowed, breaking into a few waltzsteps to the melody of a dreamy song hummed by one of their number. Thesun, shining through the trees, cast patches of golden light on the stonesidewalk, and, as the girls passed from sunshine to shadow, they made abright, and sometimes a dimmer, picture on the street, whereon were othergroups of maidens. For school was out.
"Betty Nelson, the idea is perfectly splendid!" exclaimed the tallest ofthe quartette; a stately, fair girl with wonderful braids of hair onwhich the sunshine seemed to like to linger.
"And it will be such a relief from the ordinary way of doing things,"added the companion of the one who thus paid a compliment to her chumjust in advance of her. "I detest monotony!"
"If only too many things don't happen to us!" This somewhat timidobservation came from the quietest of the four—she who was walking withthe one addressed as Betty.
"Why, Amy Stonington!" cried the girl who had first spoken, as she tossedher head to get a rebellious lock of hair out of her dark eyes. "The veryidea! We want things to happen; don't we, Betty?" and she caught thearm of one who seemed to be the leader, and whirled her about to lookinto her face. "Answer me!" she commanded. "Don't we?"
Betty smiled slightly, revealing her white, even teeth. Then she saidlaughingly, and the laugh seemed to illuminate her countenance:
"I guess Grace meant certain kinds of happenings; didn't you, Grace?"
"Of course," and the rather willowy creature, whose style of dressartistically accentuated her figure, caught a pencil that was slippingfrom a book, and th