How different the streets looked!  Not at all as they had that morning, when she wandered through them, bewildered and lost.  It was a gay holiday world, as she looked down on it from her seat beside Phil.  She wished that the drive could be prolonged indefinitely, but there was only time for the briefest spin before the hour for the matinee.  More than all, the programme brought back that bewitching moment when, keyed to the highest pitch of expectation by the entrancing music of the orchestra, the curtain went up, and the world of Peter Pan drew her into its magic spell.

It was a full day, so full that there was no opportunity until nearly bedtime to explain to the girls the cause of her morning disappearance.  It seemed fully a week since she had started out to find her lost shilling, and such a trivial affair now, obscured by all that had happened afterward.  But the girls laughed every time they thought about it while they were undressing, and Mary heard an animated conversation begin some time after she had gone to bed in the studio davenport.  She was too sleepy to take any interest in it till Betty called out: 

“Mary, your escapade has given me the finest sort of a plot for a Youth’s Companion story.  I’m going to block it out while I am here, and finish it when we get back to school.  If it is accepted I’ll divide the money with you, and we’ll come back on it to spend our Easter vacation here.”

Mary sat up in bed, blinking drowsily.  “I’m honestly afraid my enjoyer is wearing out,” she said in a worried tone.  “Usually the bare promise of such a thing would make me so glad that I’d lie awake, half the night to enjoy the prospect.  But somehow I can’t take it all in.”

Fortunately it was a tired body instead of a tired spirit that brought this sated feeling, and after a long night’s sleep and a quiet day at home, Mary was ready for all that followed:  a little more sight-seeing, a little shopping, another matinee, and then the week-end at Eugenia’s.  The short journey to Annapolis and the few hours with Holland did not take much time from the calendar, but judged by the pages they filled in her journal, and all they added to her happy memories, they prolonged her holidays until it seemed she had been away from Warwick Hall for months, instead of only two short weeks.

CHAPTER X

HER SEVENTEENTH BIRTHDAY

“Please, Miss Lewis, please do,” came in a chorus of pleading voices, as half a dozen Freshmen surrounded Betty in the lower hall, one snowy morning late in January.  “I think you might consent when we all want one so tremendously.”

“Come on down, Mary Ware,” called A.O., catching sight of a wondering face peering over the bannister, curious to see the cause of the commotion.  “Come down here and help us beg Miss Lewis to be photographed.  There’s a man coming out from town this morning to take some snow scenes of the place, and we want her to pose for him.  Sitting at the desk, you know, where she wrote her stories, with the editor’s letter of acceptance in her hand.  Some day when her fame is world-wide a picture of her wearing her first laurels will be worth a fortune.”