Annie Eustace gazed wistfully upon her friend.  “Yes,” she agreed, “you are quite right, Margaret.  Mrs. Slade and Mrs. Sturtevant and poor Bessy Dicky and all the other members are very good, and we think highly of them, but I too feel that we all travel in a rut sometimes.  Perhaps we all walk too much the same way.”  Then suddenly Annie burst into a peal of laughter.  She had a sense of humour which was startling.  It was the one thing which environment had not been able to subdue, or even produce the effect of submission.  Annie Eustace was easily amused.  She had a scent for the humorous like a hound’s for game, and her laugh was irrepressible.

“What on earth are you laughing at now?” inquired Margaret Edes irritably.

“I was thinking,” Annie replied chokingly, “of some queer long-legged birds I saw once in a cage in a park.  I really don’t know whether they were ibises or cranes, or survivals of species, but anyway, the little long-legged ones all walked just the same way in a file behind a tall long-legged one, who walked precisely in the same way, and all of a sudden, I seemed to see us all like that.  Only you are not in the least like that tall, long-legged bird, Margaret, and you are the president of the Zenith Club.”

Margaret surveyed Annie with cool displeasure.  “I,” said she, “see nothing whatever to laugh at in the Zenith Club, if you do.”

“Oh, Margaret, I don’t!” cried Annie.

“To my mind, the Zenith Club is the one institution in this little place which tends to advancement and mental improvement.”

“Oh, Margaret, I think so too, you know I do,” said Annie in a shocked voice.  “And my heart was almost broken because I had to miss that last meeting on account of grandmother’s having such a severe cold.”

“The last meeting was not very much to miss,” said Margaret, for Annie had again said the wrong thing.

Annie, however, went on eagerly and unconsciously.  She was only aware that she was being accused of disloyalty, or worse, of actually poking fun, when something toward which she felt the utmost respect and love and admiration was concerned.

“Margaret, you know,” she cried, “you know how I feel toward the Zenith Club.  You must know what it means to me.  It really does take me out of my little narrow place in life as nothing else does.  I cannot tell you what an inspiration it really is to me.  Oh, Margaret, you know!”

Margaret nodded in stiff assent.  As a matter of fact, she did know.  The Zenith Club of Fairbridge did mean very much, very much indeed, to little Annie Eustace.  Nowhere else did she meet en masse others of her kind.  She did not even go to church for the reason that her grandmother did not believe in church going at all and wished her to remain with her.  One aunt was Dutch Reformed and the other Baptist; and neither ever missed a service.  Annie remained at home Sundays, and read aloud to her grandmother, and when