“That will be great,” said Dorothy.  “Oh, girls, I think this is going to be the grandest affair we’ve ever had in Glenloch.  Can’t you just see how everything is going to look?”

“We’ll get the boys to help decorate the hall,” suggested Betty.

“They’ll be useful in lots of ways,” added Charlotte.  “Boys come in handy sometimes.”

“We must have a business meeting right away with Kit and Alice,” continued the practical Dorothy.  “We shan’t accomplish anything until we know just what each one is to do.”

“There’s just one thing,” said Ruth hesitatingly.  “Do you suppose we can make a success of it without telling people what we are going to do with the money?  Of course I know,” she went on hurriedly, “that our own families must be told, but it seems to me it will be much pleasanter for Marie if it isn’t generally known.”

“That’s so,” declared Dorothy.  “It would be horrid for her to feel that she is being made an object of charity for the town.  Let’s tell just our mothers and fathers, and swear them to secrecy.”

“If we give a good entertainment,” added Charlotte, “no one will have any right to ask what we’re going to do with the money.”

“Good,” cried Ruth, much relieved.  “I felt almost sorry I’d proposed it when I began to think about poor Marie.”

“Girls, girls, it’s half-past six,” cried Betty, as Miss Burton’s clock struck the half-hour.  “I actually haven’t heard that clock strike before this afternoon.”

“Mercy me!  We have dinner at six,” and Ruth turned to find her coat and hat.

At that moment there was a knock, and Miss Burton’s landlady poked her head into the room to say there was a gentleman at the door who wanted to see Miss Ruth Shirley.

“It must be Mr. Hamilton,” said Ruth, who felt guilty on account of the lateness of the hour.  “I’ll call down and tell him I’ll be there in a minute.”

“It’s not Mr. Hamilton.  It’s no one I know,” answered Mrs. Stearns.

Ruth looked puzzled.  “Oh, do come down with me,” she implored, catching Miss Burton’s hand, and together they went along the hall and down to the turn in the stairs.  Then, as Ruth caught sight of the tall, handsome man standing in the hall with the lamplight shining full upon his face, she forgot everything else in the world, and getting over the remaining stairs in some incomprehensible way, threw herself into his outstretched arms.

“Oh, Uncle Jerry, Uncle Jerry!” she cried with a little break in her voice as she buried her head on his shoulder.  She was quite unconscious that, though his arms tightened around her, his eyes were fixed with eager longing on the smiling girl who had stopped half-way down the stairs.  There was a long second of silence.  Uncle Jerry’s face went white and then red.  Margaret Burton’s smile faded, and an expression of perplexity took its place.  Then she came down the stairs, and holding out her hand said: