The Monday when the fall term of the academy at Westbridge opened was a very beautiful day.  The air was as soft as summer, but with a strange, pungent quality which the summer had lacked.  There was a slightly smoky scent which exhilarated.  It was a scent of death coming from bonfires of dead leaves and drying vegetation, and yet it seemed to presage life.  When Maria and Evelyn went out to take the trolley for Westbridge, Maria wore a cluster of white chrysanthemums pinned to her blouse.  The blouse itself was a very pretty one, worn with a black plaited skirt.  It was a soft silk of an old-rose shade, and it was trimmed with creamy lace.  Maria had left off her mourning.  Evelyn looked with a little surprise at Maria’s blouse.

“Why, you’ve got on your pink blouse, sister,” she said.

Maria colored softly, for no ostensible reason.  “Yes,” she said.

“You don’t generally wear it to school.”

“I thought as long as it was the first day,” Maria said, in a slightly faltering tone.  She bent her head until her rose-wreathed hat almost concealed her face.  The sisters stood in front of the house waiting for their car.  Evelyn made a sudden little run back into the yard.

“You hold the car!” she cried.

“I don’t know that they will wait; you must not stop,” Maria called out.  But the car had just stopped when Evelyn returned, and she had a little cluster of snowberries pinned in the front of her red gown.  She looked bewitchingly over them at Maria when they were seated side by side in the car.

“I guess I was going to wear flowers as well as some other folks,” she whispered with a soft, dark glance at her sister from under her long lashes.  Maria smiled.

“You don’t need to wear flowers,” she said.

“Why not as well as you?”

“Oh, you are a flower yourself,” Maria said, looking fondly at her.

Indeed, the young girl looked like nothing so much as a rose, with her tenderly curved pink cheeks, the sweet arch of her lips, and her glowing radiance of smiles.  Maria looked at her critically, then bade her turn that she might fasten a hook on her collar which had become unfastened.

“Now you are all right,” she said.

Evelyn smiled.  “Don’t you think these snowberries are pretty with this red dress?” she asked.

“Lovely.”

“I wonder what the new principal will be like,” Evelyn said, musingly, after riding awhile in silence.

“I presume he will be very much like other young men.  The main thing to consider is, if he is a good teacher,” Maria said.

“What makes you cross, sister?” Evelyn whispered plaintively.

“I am not cross, only I don’t want you to be silly.”

“I am not silly.  All the girls are wondering, too.  I am only like other girls.  You can’t expect me to be just like you, Maria.  Of course you are older, and you don’t wonder, and then, too, you knew him when he was a boy.  Is he light or dark?”