“Lloyd, too, is having what she wanted this winter, the social triumph that godmother and Papa Jack coveted for her.  Her ambition is to measure up to all their fond expectations, and to leave a Road of the Loving Heart in every one’s memory.  And she is certainly doing that.  Her popularity is the kind that cannot be bought with lavish dinners and extravagant balls.  She’s just so winsome and dear and considerate of everybody that she’s earned the right to be called the Queen of Hearts.”

“And now all four of you are happy,” remarked Mary, “for your dreams have come true.  And seeing that makes me all the more determined to make mine come true.”

“Oh, the valedictory that you are to win for Jack’s sake,” said Betty, coming out of the revery into which she had fallen for a moment.

“That’s only one of the things,” began Mary.  “The others—­” Then she stopped, hesitating to put in words the future she foresaw for herself.  Sometimes in the daylight it seemed presumptuous for her to aspire to such heights.  It was only when she lay awake at night with the moonlight stealing into the room, that such a future seemed reasonable and sure.

Unknowing that the hesitation held a half-escaped confidence, Betty did not wait for her to go on, but held up the check, saying, “You know this is a partnership story, and you are to get another trip to New York out of it.  Putting your shilling in the Christmas offering was a good investment for both of us.  If you hadn’t I never would have thought of the plot which your adventure suggested.”

“But you’ve made your story so different from what actually happened, that I don’t see how I can have any claim on it at all,” said Mary.  “It’s just your sweet way of giving me Easter Vacation with Joyce.”

“Indeed it is not,” protested Betty.  “Some day I’ll follow out the whole train of suggestions for you, how your shilling made me think of an old rhyme, and that rhyme of something else, and so on, until the whole plot lay out before me.  There isn’t time now.  It is almost your Latin period.”

Mary rose to go.  “Once I should have been doubtful about accepting such a big favour from any one,” she said slowly.  “But I’ve found out now how delightful it is to do things for people you love with money you’ve earned yourself.  Now Jack’s watch-fob, for instance.  He was immensely pleased with it.  I know, not only from what he wrote himself, but from what mamma said.  Yet his pleasure in getting it was not a circumstance to mine in giving it.  Not that I mean it will be that way about the New York visit,” she added hastily, seeing the amused twinkle in Betty’s eyes.  “Oh, you know what I mean,” she cried in confusion.  “That usually it’s that way, but in this case it will be a thousand times blesseder to receive, and I never can thank you enough.”

Throwing her arms around Betty’s neck she planted an impetuous kiss on each cheek and ran out of the room.