tion of the spring cleaning, and trying to do the things one has been postponing till this week of leisure, and taking advantage of all the pleasures that start up like mushrooms, twenty-four

until I have picked a few violets and spring beautie

ng the matter?"

hat since that attack of inflamma

ant anyth

know. I haven't been in to see Mary sin

e off than she has been for the last year and a half, there's no especi

Peggy with a sign

erfect day to go a

seemed to smile an invitation. Priscilla's

"Too lovely to stay indoors. I'll go to see Mary

would have seen much of each other after high school days. But the winter of Peggy's Freshman year, an attack of rheumatism had left Mary seriously crippled. Though now she was able to be dressed and to hobble from her bed to a chair by th

wn. She had worked making surgical dressings under the Red Cross, and had given much time to collecting and mending worn garments for the destitute children of Belgium and France. She had subscribed for a bond in each of the

ted their eyes on the myriad indeterminate shades of a spring landscape, and drank in the exhilarating odors of damp earth, warmed by the April sun. When Peggy's wrist

eam soda with fresh fruit," she read impressively. "I wondered what it was I wa

oney for something else," said Peggy. "But this is t

speptic heart-failure, when at the opposite counter she spied a stout, middle-aged woman who was regarding her with savage intentness.

she remember where she had seen that heavy, lowering face before. But with the rec

before, but now I remember. You're the Miss Pot

ecessary. Miss Potts was big and strong and kind of heart, though at the moment her expression was far from suggesting the latter ch

d of used to the way things are in this world, and it doesn't surp

ssion of resentment. "I'm sorry that I haven't been able to see more of Mary this last year,"

long way to you

at Miss Potts so blankly that Mary's car

stands on moves 'round, so she can talk without any trouble. He thought it would be a c

weeks or months, or was it fully a year before-to tell her about the new telephone. There had been an eagerness in Mary's voice that she remembered vi

then she gets a call. There's so many new girls on the telephone exchanges nowadays, that they're bou

tudy. "Do you mean t

sappeared from Miss Potts' man

elephone was put in, she called up everybody she knew, to tell 'em about it. And then she'd lie there smiling, wa

spoke, she could almost see Mary's smiling, expecta

e afternoon with her, rang up to say her aunt was in town and she was going to the matinée instead. I don't think Mary ever felt the same abou

I haven't called very often, but that was because I was always hoping to get time to go over

on the whole it's lucky it is so easy for us to forget. But all the same," she e

r flowers to Mary, but a fear that to Miss Potts this might seem an effort to evade a more exacting expression of sympathy led her to relinquish her

u?" Priscilla was bristling like a mothe

. Her three listeners exchange

o be scolded," said Amy, "when you have gone to se

ggy stated gloomily. "I have

cried Ruth, slipping her h

have had time to go to the telephone." Then suddenly her face brighte

e along before Peggy could answer, and she finished her explanation hanging to a strap, while her thre

n nine and ten. Priscilla, you take the hour between ten and eleven; and Amy, you can have the next one. I think we'd bette

't you think it would be rather over

s who were in Mary's class in high school, Elino

in Ne

t college and tell her about it. Mary's telephone is go

Priscilla, "is if Mary was so lo

d Peggy. "She called us up to tell us she h

a great deal to talk about, when you don't get o

considered, it was a rather crest-fallen quartette

Mary Donaldson's telephone rang. "I'm n

uncertainty to which Miss Potts had referred, utte

had made up her mind to ignore the months of silence. Explanations would not help matters, for nothing could explain

laughed for months. And in the next room Miss Potts, listening, made strange grimaces that seemed only distantly related to smi

our neighborhood less than a year. And do you know, Mary, we think Amy must have made quite an impressio

away from contact with young life, was thrilled by the suggestion

ral times, and I thought he was quite handsome. And Hildegarde

She was smiling as she went to class, and wishing she could be an unseen listener

es in sufficient numbers to keep up the excitement till half past eight that evening. Most of the girls, whose memories Peggy had under

m to me I could bear feeling forgotten." Peggy did not realize that, even with Mary's disability, she would have made herself the center of some circle; and in her failure to understand th

ant of heart, few of the girls were satisfied with chatting five or ten minutes over the telephone. They promised to come to see her soon. They offered to lend her books or mail her magazines. One girl suggested that she would

nd Peggy who was giving her studies that half-hearted attention customary on the first day after vacation, whet

her tone was unmistakable, and the shut-i

you before I went to sleep tha

r? I'm glad. W

ng about it. My telephone has been ringing all day. It was queer if it was only

call a brain wave," sugg

many things and talked with so many peop

prophesy there'll be just a

l, it's my bed time now, so I wo

ver, she reflected that she had never done j