“It is very, very hard to give Mabel up.  She is the child of our sorority, but she belongs most of all to me.  She is the dearest girl imaginable, and neither hardship nor poverty have marred her.  She is sweet, unselfish and wholesome, and always will be.  I am glad, glad, glad that her dream has at last been realized, and I should be the most selfish girl in the world if I didn’t rejoice at her good fortune.”

She smiled through her tears at Mabel, who rushed over to her and exclaimed: 

“Jessica, dearest, you know perfectly well how much I do and always shall love you, and Grace and Anne and Nora, too.”

The four girls lingered a few moments, then said good-bye to Mrs. Allison and Mabel, who was to remain for the present with her mother.  She kissed her friends tenderly, promising to see them the next day.

“I’ll be in school to-morrow unless mother needs me here,” she said with such a world of fond pride in her voice that the girls who had so willingly befriended her felt that their loss was a matter of small consequence when compared with the glorious fact that Mabel had come into her own.

CHAPTER IV

GRACE TURNS IN THE FIRE ALARM

“I wonder what sort of excitement we shall have next?” remarked Grace Harlowe to her three friends one afternoon as they gathered in the senior locker-room, before leaving school.

Three weeks had elapsed since Mabel Allison and her mother had met in Room 47 of the hospital, and many events had transpired in that short space of time.

The girl chums had been entertained at “Hawk’s Nest” by Mrs. Gibson, and were in consequence the most important persons in the Girls’ High School.  They had found Mrs. Gibson charming, and had been invited to repeat their visit at an early date.  Mabel’s story had circulated throughout Oakdale, and she and her friends were the topic of the hour.

The one cloud on their horizon had been the fact of the inevitable separation.  They had begged and entreated Mrs. Allison to take up her residence in Oakdale for the balance of Mabel’s junior year, but on account of home matters she had been unable to comply with their wishes.  So Mabel had departed for Denver with her mother, while the chums had kissed her and cried over her and had extracted a laughing promise from Mrs. Allison to bring her to Oakdale during commencement week to witness the graduation of the Phi Sigma Tau.

“It seems as though we have done nothing but say good-bye to people ever since school began,” said Anne Pierson with a little sigh.

“I know it,” exclaimed Nora.  “First our boys, then Mabel, and—­”

“And now all we can do is to wonder who will fade away and disappear next,” finished Grace.  “Promise me that none of you will run away from Oakdale, or elope, or do anything that can be classed under the head of vanishing.”