“S.B.—­Ah-h-h!  S.B.—­Ah-h-h!  Sound our battle-cry Near and far!  S.B.—­All!  Briarwood Hall!  Sweetbriars, do or die—­ This be our battle-cry—­ Briarwood Hall! That’s all!”

CHAPTER XXV

AUNT ALVIRAH AT BRIARWOOD HALL

Mr. Cameron, Helen’s father, and Mrs. Murchiston, who had acted as governess for the twins until they were old enough to go to boarding school, were motoring to Briarwood Hall for the graduation exercises.  They proposed to pick Tom up at Seven Oaks Military Academy, for he would spend another year at that school, not graduating until the following June.

They also had another guest in the big automobile who took up a deal of the attention of the drygoods merchant and Mrs. Murchiston.  A two-days’ trip was made of it, the party staying at a hotel for the night.  Aunt Alvirah was going farther from the Red Mill and the town of Cheslow than she had ever been in her life before.

First she said she could not possibly do it!  What ever would Jabez do without her?  And he would not hear to it, anyway.  And then—­there was “her back and her bones.”

“Best place for old folks like me is in the chimbly corner,” declared Aunt Alvirah.  “Much as I would love to see my pretty graduate with all them other gals, I don’t see how I can do it.  It’s like uprooting a tree that’s growed all its life in one spot.  I’m deep-rooted at the Red Mill.”

But Mr. Cameron knew it was the wish of the old woman’s heart to see “her pretty” graduate from Briarwood Hall.  It had been Aunt Alvirah’s word that had made possible Ruth’s first going to school with Helen Cameron.  It was she who had urged Mr. Jabez Potter on, term after term, to give the girl the education she so craved.

Indeed, Aunt Alvirah had been the good angel of Ruth’s existence at the Red Mill.  Nobody in the world had so deep an interest in the young girl as the little old woman who hobbled around the Red Mill kitchen.

Therefore Mr. Cameron was determined that she should go to Briarwood.  He fairly shamed Mr. Potter into hiring a woman to come in to do for Ben and himself while Aunt Alvirah was gone.

“You ought to shut up your mill altogether and go yourself, Potter,” declared Mr. Cameron.  “Think what your girl has done.  I’m proud of my daughter.  You should be doubly proud of your niece.”

“Well, who says I’m not?” snarled Jabez Potter.  “But I can’t afford to leave my work to run about to such didoes.”

“You’ll be sorry some day,” suggested Mr. Cameron.  “But, at any rate, Aunt Alvirah shall go.”

And the trip was one of wonder to Aunt Alvirah Boggs.  First she was alarmed, for she confessed to a fear of automobiles.  But when she felt the huge machine which carried them so swiftly over the roads running so smoothly, Aunt Alvirah became a convert to the new method of locomotion.