“We usually dine between seven and seven-thirty, my dears,” said Miss Putnam, as they ascended.  “I will send my maid, Annette, to you.  Will you have separate rooms, or do you wish to do as you did last summer?”

“Oh, let two of us room together,” said Grace eagerly.  “But still, that isn’t fair, for it will leave an odd one.  You know we had Mabel with us last summer.”

“Dear little Mabel,” said Miss Putnam.  “I am sure you must miss her greatly.  Her finding of her mother was very wonderful.  I received a letter from her last week.  She says she is very happy, but that she misses her Oakdale friends, particularly Jessica.”

“She is coming east for commencement,” said Jessica with a wistful smile.  “No one knows how much I miss her.”

“Let us settle the question of rooms at once,” interposed Grace, who knew that whenever the conversation turned to Mabel, Jessica invariably was attacked with the blues.  “Who is willing to room alone?”

“I am,” replied Miriam Nesbit, “only I stipulate that I be allowed to pay nocturnal visits to the rest of you whenever I get too bored with my own society.”

“Very well, then,” replied Grace.  “How shall we arrange it?”

“You and Anne take one room, then,” said Nora rather impatiently, “Jessica and I another and that leaves Marian and Eva together.  Do hurry up about it, for I want to get the soot off my face, and the cinders out of my eyes.”

The question of roommates being thus settled, the girls trooped into the rooms assigned them and began to dress for dinner.  The matter of gowns had been discussed by the girls when the judge’s invitation had first arrived.  As they were to remain for a week, they would need trunks, but for the first dinner, in case the trunks did not arrive on time, it had been agreed that they each carry one simple gown in their suit cases.

Grace and Anne had both chosen white, Jessica a dainty flowered organdie, and Nora a pale pink dimity.  Eva Allen also had selected white.  Marian Barber alone refused to give her friends any satisfaction as to what she intended to wear.  “Wait and see,” she had answered.  “I want my gown to be a complete surprise to all of you.”

“How funny Marian acted about her gown,” remarked Grace to Anne, as she fastened the last button on the latter’s waist.  The maid sent by Miss Putnam had offered her services, but the girls, wishing to be alone, had not required them.

“Yes,” responded Anne.  “I don’t understand her at all of late.  She has changed a great deal, and I believe it is due to the influence of that horrid Henry Hammond.  I simply can’t like that man.”

“Nor I,” said Grace.  “It requires an effort on my part to be civil to him.  I think, too, that the boys are not favorably impressed with him, although they are too polite to say so.”

“I believe in first impressions,” remarked Anne.  “I think that nine times out of ten they are correct.  I may be doing the man an injustice, but I can’t help it.  Every time that I talk with him I feel that he is playing a part, that underneath his polish he has a cruel, relentless nature.”