“As an introducer,” she announced calmly to Carter, the personification of propriety’s horror, “I think I do rather well.”

They stowed themselves into the limousine somehow, the girls settled more or less comfortably on the seats, the boys squeezed in between, hanging on the running board, and spilling over into Carter’s domain.

Bob liked the five boys at once, and they seemed to accept him as one of them.  If he had had a little fear that he would feel diffident and unboyish among lads of his own age, it vanished at the first contact.

“Betty, you sweet child, how we have missed you!” cried Mrs. Littell, standing on the lowest step under the porte-cochere as the car swept up the drive of Fairfields, as the Littell’s home was called.

Behind her waited Mr. Littell, fully recovered from the injury to his foot which had made him an invalid during Betty’s previous visit.

From Carter, who had beamingly greeted her at the station, to the pretty parlor maid who smiled as Betty entered her room to find her turning down the bed covers, there was not a servant who did not remember Betty and seem glad to see her.

“It is so good to have you two here again,” Mr. Littell had said.

“I never knew such people,” Betty repeated to herself twenty times that evening.  “How lovely they are to Bob and me!”

Mrs. Littell, who was happiest when entertaining young people, had put the six boys on the third floor in three connecting rooms.  The girls were on the second floor, and Esther, the youngest, who had strenuously fought to be allowed to go to Shadyside with her two sisters, was almost beside herself with the effort to be in all the rooms at once and hear what every one was saying.

“I’m so glad your uncle let you come,” said Bobby, as they waited for Betty to change into a light house frock for dinner.  “I don’t know much about this school, except that mother went to school with the principal.”

That was a characteristic Bobby Littell remark, and the other girls laughed.

“I had a letter from a girl who lives in Glenside,” confided Betty, re-braiding her hair.  “She and her sister are going—­Norma and Alice Guerin.  I know you’ll like them.  Norma wrote her mother went to Shadyside when it was a day school.”

“Yes, I believe it was, years and years ago,” returned Louise Littell.  “The aristocratic families who lived on large estates used to send their daughters to Mrs. Warde.  Her daughter, Mrs. Eustice, is the principal now.”

Betty wondered if Norma Guerin’s mother had belonged to one of the families who owned large estates, but they went down to dinner presently and she forgot the Guerins for the time being.

That was a busy week for the school boys and girls.

The beautiful house and grounds of Fairfields were at their disposal, and the gallant host and gentle hostess gave themselves up to the whims and wishes of the houseful of young people.