also, but a different variety," Louise answered
with a laugh. "I gave your Miss Rextrew some mint gum and she popped it
into her mouth as handily as if she'd chewed gum all her life."

Lena nodded. "She wanted to try it. She wants to try everything that is
going. She's a live wire, that's what she is--good old Nancy!"

"We went the rounds--Annie Pearson and I," Louise continued. "Saw all
the old ladies except one that doesn't want any visitors. Most of 'em
do, though; and say, girlies--" Louise's sweeping glance included all in
the room--"I reckon it won't hurt any of us to run up there once a month
or so when it means such a lot to those old shut-ins to have us."

There was a swift exchange of amazed glances at this, _from Louise
Johnson_, and then a murmur of assent from several voices, before Mary
Hastings in her business-like way suggested, "Why not each of us set a
date for going? Then we won't forget--or maybe all go on the same day."

"All right, Molly--you make out the list an' we'll all sign it," Lena
said, "and, say--make it a nickel fine for any girl that forgets her
date or fails to keep it. Does that go, girls?"

"Unless for some good and sufficient reason that she will give at our
next meeting," Laura amended.

Then began a new era for the old ladies at the Home. Always on Saturday
and Sunday afternoons and often on other evenings, light footsteps and
young voices were heard in the corridors and rooms of the old mansion.
Not only gentle Mrs. Barlow and eager old Nancy Rextrew, but all the
women who had drifted into this backwater of life found their dull days
wonderfully brightened by contact with these young lives. Nancy Rextrew
looked years younger than on that Sunday when she had turned kidnapper.
Naturally she was still the prime favourite with Lena and Eva, and
gloried in that fact. But there were girls "enough to go around" in more
senses than one, and most of them were faithful to their agreement, and
seldom allowed anything to keep them from the Home on the date assigned
to them.

XIII

A CAMP FIRE CHRISTMAS

For over a year Olga had been working in the evening classes of the Arts
and Crafts school, and she was now doing excellent work in silver. Her
designs were so bold and original and her execution so good, that she
received from patrons of the school many orders for Christmas gifts--so
many that she gave up her other work in order to devote all her time to
this. She had now tw