“I know it,” replied Grace, “but after Thanksgiving we’ll only meet once in two weeks, for I must get my basketball team in shape, and you see all the members belong to the society.”

“You ought to do extra good work this year,” observed Anne, “for the team is absolutely harmonious.  Last season seems like a dream to me now.”

“It was real enough then,” replied Grace grimly.  “I have forgiven, long ago, but I have not forgotten the way some of those girls performed last year.  It was remarkable that things ever straightened themselves.  The clouds looked black for a while, didn’t they?”

Anne pressed Grace’s hand by way of answer.  The sophomore year had been crowded with many trials, some of them positive school tragedies, in which Anne and Grace had been the principal actors.

“What are you two mooning over?” asked a gay voice, and the two girls turned with a start to find Julia Crosby grinning cheerfully at them.

“O Julia, how glad I am to see you at close range!” exclaimed Grace.  “Admiring you from a distance isn’t a bit satisfactory.”

“Business, children, business,” said Julia briskly.  “That’s the only thing that keeps me from your side.  The duties of the class president are many and irksome.  At the present moment I’ve a duty on hand that I don’t in the least relish, and I want your august assistance.  Will you promise to help before I tell you?”

“Why, of course,” answered Grace and Anne in the same breath.  “What is it you want us to do?”

“Well, it seems that some of your juniors are still in need of discipline.  You remember the hatchet that we buried last year with such pomp and ceremony?”

“Yes, yes,” was the answer.

“This morning I overheard certain girls planning to go out to the Omnibus House after school to-morrow and dig up the poor hatchet and flaunt it in the seniors’ faces the day of the opening basketball game, simply to rattle us.  Just as though it wouldn’t upset your team as much as ours.  It’s an idiotic trick, at any rate, and anything but funny.  Now I propose to take four of our class, and you must select four of yours.  We’ll hustle out there the minute school is over to-morrow, and be ready to receive the marauders when they arrive.  Select your girls, but don’t tell them what you want or they may tell some one about it beforehand.”

“Well, of all impudence!” exclaimed Anne.  “Who are the girls, Julia?  Are you sure they’re juniors?”

“The two I heard talking are juniors.  I don’t know who else is in it.  They’ll be very much astonished to find us ’waiting at the church’—­Omnibus House, I mean,” said Julia, “and I imagine they’ll feel rather silly, too.”

“Tell us who they are, Julia,” said Grace.  “We don’t want to go into this blindfolded.”

“Wait and see,” replied Julia tantalizingly.  “Then you’ll feel more indignant and can help my cause along all the better.  I give you my word that the girls I overheard talking are not particular friends of yours.  You aren’t going to back out, are you, and leave me without proper support?”