“Just listen to Grandmother Bright,” teased Anne.  “She is hunting her lost chick, as usual.”

With merry laugh and jest the girls prepared for the street.  Grace and her friends were among the first to leave, and hurried to the street, where the boys awaited them.

“Hurrah for the only original ranters and barnstormers on exhibition in this country,” cried Hippy, waving his hat in the air.

“Cease, Hippopotamus,” said Nora.  “You are mistaken.  We are stars, but we shall refuse to twinkle in your sky unless you suddenly become more respectful.”

“He doesn’t know the definition of the word,” said David.

“How cruelly you misjudge me,” said Hippy.  “I meant no disrespect.  It was a sudden attack of enthusiasm.  I get them spasmodically.”

“So we have observed,” said Nora dryly.  “Let’s not stand here discussing you all night.  Come on up to my house, and we’ll make fudge and have things to eat.”

“I have my car here,” said David.  “Pile into it and we’ll be up there in a jiffy.”

“It’s awfully late,” demurred Grace.  “After ten o’clock.”

“Never mind that,” said Nora.  “Your mother knows you can take care of yourself.  You can ’phone to her from my house.”

In another minute the young people had seated themselves in the big car and were off.

“Did you see Eleanor’s runabout standing there?” Nora asked Grace.

“Yes,” replied Grace.  “I was rather surprised, too.  She hasn’t used it much of late.”

“How beautiful she looked to-night, didn’t she?” interposed Jessica.

“Are you talking of the would-be murderess, who froze us all out Thanksgiving Day?” asked Hippy.  “What is her latest crime?”

Grace felt like saying “Destroying other people’s property and getting innocent folks disliked,” but refrained.  She had told no one of her interview with Miss Thompson.  Grace knew that the principal was still displeased with her.  She was no longer on the old terms of intimacy with Miss Thompson.  A barrier seemed to have sprung up between them, that only one thing could remove, but Grace was resolved not to expose Eleanor—­not that she felt that Eleanor did not richly deserve it, but she knew that it would mean instant expulsion from school.  She believed that Eleanor had acted on the impulse of the moment, and was without doubt bitterly sorry for it, and she felt that as long as Eleanor had at last begun to be interested in school, the thing to do was to keep her there, particularly as Mrs. Gray had recently told her of Miss Nevin’s pleasure at the change that the school had apparently wrought in Eleanor.

Could Grace have known what Eleanor was engaged in at the moment she would have felt like exposing her without mercy.

During the first rehearsals Grace, secretly fearing an outbreak on Eleanor’s part, had been on the alert, but as rehearsals progressed and Eleanor kept strictly to herself, Grace relaxed her vigilance.