Christmas came and went, sadly and quietly.  Lydia was glad when the holidays were over and she was back in school again.  On her desk that first morning lay a tiny envelope, addressed to her.  She opened it.  In it was an invitation from Miss Towne to attend a reception she was tendering to the members of her Algebra and Geometry classes, freshmen and seniors.

For a moment Lydia was in heaven.  It was her first formal invitation of any kind.  Then she came rapidly to earth.  She had nothing to wear!  It was an evening party and she had no way to go or come.  She put the precious card in her blouse pocket and soberly opened her Civil Government.

At recess, she sat alone as she was rather prone to do, in the window of the cloak room, when she heard a group of girls chattering.

“Who wants to go to grouchy old Towne’s reception when you can go to a dance?  I’ve got two bids to the Phi Pi’s party,” said a fourteen-year-old miss.

“Oh, we’ll have to go or she’ll flunk us in Algebra,” said another girl.  “I’ll wear my pink silk organdy.  What’ll you wear?”

“My red silk.  Maybe she’ll let us dance.  I suppose Charlie and Kent’ll both want to take me.”

“Terrible thing to be popular!  Hasn’t Kent the sweetest eyes!  Do you know what he said to me the other night at the Evans’ party?”

The girls drifted out of the cloak room.  Lydia sat rigid.  Pink organdy!  Red silk!  Kent’s “sweetest eyes”!  Then she looked down at the inevitable sailor suit, and at her patched and broken shoes.  So far she had had few pangs about her clothes.  But now for the first time she realized that for some reason, she was an alien, different from the other girls—­and the realization made her heart ache.

The bell rang and she went to her recitation.  It was in Civil Government.  Lydia sat down dejectedly next to Charlie Jackson, the splendid, swarthy Indian boy of sixteen.

“Did you learn the preamble?” he whispered to Lydia.

She nodded.

“He didn’t say we had to,” Charlie went on, “but I like the sound of it, so I did.”

The rest of the class filed in, thirty youngsters of fourteen or fifteen, the boys surreptitiously shoving and kicking each other, the girls giggling and rearranging their hair.  Mr. James rapped on his desk, and called on young Hansen.

“Can you give the preamble to the Constitution?” he asked, cheerfully.

The boy’s jaw dropped.  “You never told us to learn it,” he said.

“No, I merely suggested that as Americans, you ought to learn it.  I talked to you during most of yesterday’s period about it.  I wondered if you were old enough to take suggestions and not be driven through your books.  Miss Olson?”

Miss Olson, whose hair was done in the latest mode, tossed her head pertly.

“I was too busy to learn anything extra.”

Mr. James’ eyebrows went up.  “A dance last night, I suppose.”  He continued with his query half way round the class, then paused with a sigh.  “Has any one in the class learned it?”