“Didn’t it come out to suit you?” smiled Hazel Holland.

“No,” pouted Tommy, screwing up her small face.  When animated, Grace’s was an impish face, made more so by the upward tilt of a much freckled nose.

“Go where?” I questioned Margery, now evincing a mild interest in Tommy’s affairs.

“To the thea thhore.”

“Oh, the sea shore,” nodded Hazel.

“Yeth.  The daithy theth tho.  I’m going with my father and mother.  But I don’t want to go.  I want to thtay here with the girlth,” pouted Tommy.

“I should think you would be happy to think you are going to the sea shore.  Most girls would be,” reminded Hazel.

“It must cost a lot of money to go to the sea shore,” remarked Margery Brown.

Tommy bobbed her head vigorously.

“Yeth.  My father hath lotth of money, I thuppothe.  But I don’t care.  I don’t want to go.”

“When do you go?”

“I don’t know, Hathel.  The Oracle thayth I’m going.”

The Oracle having settled the question, no further doubts remained in the mind of little Grace Thompson.

Grace’s father was a lawyer.  Both he and the girl’s mother had inherited fortunes, and Grace being an only child had much, finer clothes than any of her companions in the little New Hampshire town of Meadow-Brook.

Hazel Holland and Margery Brown were the daughters of village merchants, the former’s father being a druggist, while the father of the latter owned a fairly prosperous grocery business.

The fourth member of this little quartette, Harriet Burrell, was not so fortunately situated as were her three friends.  Harriet’s father was a bookkeeper in the local bank, and on his moderate salary was doing his best to give his daughter and younger son an education.  His salary was barely sufficient to do this and at the same time support his family, small as it was.

It was Harriet’s ambition to go to college.  She was now sixteen years old.  In two more years she would finish her course at the high school.  From that point on, the way did not look particularly bright, so far as continuing her education was concerned.

In the meantime Harriet Burrell was living the wholesome life that her environment made possible.  She was a strong, healthy, buoyant girl, full of life and spirits, popular with everyone who knew her, and a superior being in the estimation of the three girls who were her close friends, even though she was unable to dress as well as they or to do other things that were easily within the means of the parents of Grace, Hazel and Margery.

The four girls were together much of the time, quarreling and making up almost in the same breath, even stubborn little Tommy giving way to the kinder and more mature disposition of Harriet Burrell.  As Hazel had already said, Harriet at that moment was at home helping her mother, even though the fields, the trees and the nodding daisies were calling loudly to her.