ith a
meditative look in her deep-set eyes; the other, a head shorter, had a
lightness about her like an April day, reddish curly hair and an
upturned nose. One Anne Leavitt had never been called anything but
Anne, the other, since her baby days, had been Nancy. The more
intimate of the college girls called them Big Anne and Little Anne.
The professors, dignified perforce, read from their rolls, "Miss Anne
Leavitt, California--Miss Anne Leavitt, New York."

In name only were the two girls alike. Anne had been born with the
legendary "silver spoon" and its mythical fortune. When her father and
mother died a friend of her father's, as guardian, had continued the
well-regulated indulgence that had marked her childhood. Because she
possessed an iron will and early acquired a seriousness and dignity
beyond her years, she was always a leader in each of the boarding
schools to which she progressed. Whatever Anne wanted to do she always
did, and yet, in spite of it, she had reached her college days
unspoiled, setting her strong will only for the best and obsessed with
a passionate longing for a service that would mean self-sacrifice.

She thought now she had found it! Two weeks from this very day she,
would sail for a far-off village in Siberia to teach the peasant
children there and bring to the pitiful captivity of Russian ignorance
the enlightenment of American ideals. So big and wonderful seemed the
adventure that, girl-like, she had paid little heed to the small
details. Nancy and Claire Wallace worried more than she!

"You'll never get enough to eat and how will you ever keep your clothes
clean," sighed Claire, who loved pretty frocks.

"And we can't send you things, either, for they'd never reach you--some
of those awful Bolshevists would be sure to steal them!"

Madame Breshkovsky, the little Grandmother of the Russian Revolution,
had made several visits to the University, and Anne, with the others,
had listened over and over to her vivid, heartrending stories of the
suffering needs of the children of the real Russia. It had been after
such an evening that Anne had given herself to the cause. So that,
when Nancy and Claire fretted excitedly over the hardships and dangers
of the undertaking, she had only looked at them with the question in
her grave, dark eyes: "What matters it if perhaps Anne Leavitt does
lack a few clothes and food and some silly luxuries if she is doing a
little, little bit to help her