little wistfulness crept into Nancy's voice. "Your life's all cut
out for you, Anne. It's positively thrilling! Though I'd make an
awful mess out of any such undertaking. And Claire has her family.
I'll just go to New York and get the key from Mother Finnegan and work
like mad on the 'Child.' I want to finish it before Dad comes home. I
shall send it, then, to Theodore Hoffman himself--I might as well hitch
my wagon to the tiptoppest star--or whatever it is you do! Of course
it isn't as grand as going to Russia, but I'm going to work, and some
day, maybe, I'll be famous all over the world!"

"Little Anne Leavitt, the great dramatist!" murmured Big Anne fondly.

Claire Wallace, confronting nothing more serious than the squeezing of
her belongings into the huge trunk, was stirred with envy. Nancy had
her "Child"--not a youngster but a growing pile of manuscript, Anne had
her "crusade" among the unfortunate children of Siberia--she had
nothing ahead but to join her family at their summer home, an estate
that covered hundreds of acres on Long Island.

"I wish you'd come home with me, first, Nancy! You heard mother say
how much she wanted you to come and we will have a beautiful time and
then you can see Barry."

Nancy frowned sternly. She had several reasons for frowning--she
thought. Of course she would really like to go to Merrycliffe with
Claire; she loved to frolic, and the last term had been a pretty hard
grind, but her whole future depended upon her finishing her play and
Claire simply must _not_ coax her! Then the other reason was Barry.
Barry was Claire's brother recently returned from long service in
France, decorated by each of the allied countries. Toward him Nancy
and Anne, quite secretly, felt an unreasonable and growing dislike.
Neither of them had ever laid eyes on him but, ignoring the injustice,
based their antipathy solely on the fact that "Claire talks of nothing
but Barry until you feel like shutting your ears!"

Nancy had, more than once, declared that "she could just see him
strutting around with all his medals, letting everyone make a lion of
him, and she loathed handsome men, anyway--they lacked character" and
Anne said "_her_ heart went out to those boys whose every minute in the
trenches had been an unrecognized and unrecorded act of heroism." Of
course they both carefully kept their real feelings from little Claire,
who was too dear to them to ever hurt in any way, so that, when