oing on vigorously, and the croquet ground was occupied by
eight girls of the middle school. Annie was one of the most successful
tennis players in the school; she had indeed a gift for all games of
skill, and seldom missed her mark. Now she looked with a certain wistful
longing toward the tennis-court; but, after a brief hesitation, she
turned away from it and entered the shady walk at the farther end of the
garden. As she walked along, slowly, meditatively, and sadly, her eyes
suddenly lighted up. Glancing to one of the tall trees she saw a hammock
suspended there which had evidently been forgotten during the winter. The
tree was not yet quite in leaf, and it was very easy for Annie to climb
up its branches to re-adjust the hammock, and to get into it. After its
winter residence in the tree this soft couch was found full of withered
leaves, and otherwise rather damp and uncomfortable. Annie tossed the
leaves on to the ground, and laughed as she swung herself gently backward
and forward. Early as the season still was the sun was so bright and the
air so soft that she could not but enjoy herself, and she laughed with
pleasure, and only wished that she had a fairy tale by her side to help
to soothe her off to sleep.

In the distance she heard some children calling "Annie," "Annie Forest;"
but she was far too comfortable and too lazy to answer them, and
presently she closed her eyes and really did fall asleep.

She was awakened by a very slight sound--by nothing more nor less than
the gentle and very refined conversation of two girls, who sat under the
oak tree in which Annie's hammock swung. Hearing the voices, she bent a
little forward, and saw that the speakers were Dora Russell and Hester
Thornton. Her first inclination was to laugh, toss down some leaves, and
instantly reveal herself; the next she drew back hastily, and began to
listen with all her ears.

"I never liked her," said Hester--"I never even from the very first
pretended to like her. I think she is under-bred, and not fit to
associate with the other girls in the school-room."

"She is treated with most unfair partiality," retorted Miss Russell in
her thin and rather bitter voice. "I have not the smallest doubt, not the
smallest, that she was guilty of putting those messes into my desk, of
destroying my composition, and of caricaturing Mrs. Willis in Cecil
Temple's book. I wonder after that Mrs. Willis did not see through her,
but it is astonishing to wh