“Did you have to pay Foyle the fifty cents to pry you out, Heavy?” demanded Ann Hicks.

“No.  I dropped the half dollar and tried to find it.  I looked for it; that’s all I could do.  I was too fat to find it.”

“Did you look good, Jennie?” asked Ruth, sympathetically.

“Did I look good?” repeated the fleshy girl, with scorn.  “I looked as good as a fat girl crawling around on all fours, ever does look.  What do you think?”

The laugh at Jennie Stone’s sally really cleared the room, for the warning bell for supper sounded almost immediately.  Heavy and Nettie, and all who did not belong in the quartette room, departed.  Then Mercy went tap, tap, tapping down the corridor with her canes—­“just like a silly woodpecker!” as she often said herself; and Ann strode away, trying to hum the marching song, but ignominiously falling into the doleful strains of the “Cowboy’s Lament” before she reached the head of the stairway.

“I really would like to know what that thing is you’ve been writing, Ruth,” remarked Helen, when they were alone.  “All those sheets of paper—­Goodness! it’s no composition.  I believe you’ve been writing your valedictory this early.”

“Don’t be silly,” laughed Ruth.  “I shall never write the valedictory of this class.  Mercy will do that.”

“I don’t care!  Mrs. Tellingham considers you the captain of the graduating class.  So now!” cried loyal Helen.

“That may be; but Mercy is our brilliant girl—­you know that.”

“Yes—­the poor dear! but how could she ever stand up before them all and give an oration?”

“She shall!” cried Ruth, with emphasis.  “She shall not be cheated out of all the glory she wins—­or of an atom of that glory.  If she is our first scholar, she must, somehow, have all the honors that go with the position.”

“Oh, Ruthie! how can you overcome her natural dislike of ’making an exhibition of herself,’ as she calls it, and the fact that, really, a girl as lame as she is, poor creature, could never make a pleasant appearance upon the platform?”

“I do not know,” Ruth said seriously.  “Not now.  But I shall think it out, if nobody else can.  Mercy shall graduate with flying colors from Briarwood Hall, whether I do myself, or not!”

“Never mind,” said Helen, laughing at her chum’s emphasis.  “At least the valedictorian will hail from this dear old quartette room.”

“Yes,” agreed Ruth, looking around the loved chamber with a tender smile.  “What will we do when we see it no longer, Helen?”

“Oh, don’t talk about it!” cried Helen, who had forgotten by this time what she had started to question Ruth about.  “Come on!  We’ll be late for supper.”

When her chum’s back was turned, Ruth slipped out of her table drawer the very packet of papers Helen had spoken about.  The sheets had been typewritten and were now sealed in a manila envelope, which was addressed and stamped.