f a host of funny
sayings and doings, and then she looked suddenly grave. "Do you know
she is talking about going to boarding school second term?" she
inquired.

"Sally! Why, we could never in the world get along without her,"
Phyllis and Rosamond protested.

"Oh, I don't know,"--Muriel spoke for the first time. "I think we
could. Sally's nice and all that, but she is such a tomboy."

The girls turned in surprise to look at her.

"Of course she is; she wouldn't be Sally if she were any different,"
Phyllis said, and the two girls nodded in solemn agreement, and then
Sally herself arrived.

She came into the room like a whirl of merry autumn leaves. Her hair,
never very orderly at best, was towsled by the wind, and her cheeks
glowed. She had deep blue eyes that flashed and sparkled behind long
black lashes, her hair was black as a raven's wing, and she had a
single bewitching dimple in her left cheek. When she spoke people
generally thought of rippling brooks and deep ringing chimes.

"Sally Ladd, you love," Phyllis greeted her enthusiastically. "I
thought I was never going to see you. You wretch, why haven't you been
over before?"

"Never mind about me," Sally protested, kissing her warmly. "I want to
hear all about Janet. Gracious sakes, it's thrilling enough to get a
new baby sister but to find a grown-up twin! Well, I do think some
people have all the luck. Tell us all about her. Is she pretty?"

Phyllis laughed. She was a little embarrassed.

"She's my twin, you know," she confessed, "and so--"

"And so you haven't gumption enough to say that she's a beauty." Sally
settled the question with her usual straightforwardness.

"Is she like you, Phyl?" Eleanor demanded.

"Not a bit," Phyllis denied. "She's a thousand times nicer. She is so
quiet when there are people around that it looks as though she were
bashful, but she really isn't a bit. She just never says anything
unless it's worth saying, and I wish you could see her look at me when
I babble on."

The girls laughed, and Muriel asked:

"What school has she been to? One up there in the country, I suppose."

Phyllis bit her lip. What was the matter with Muriel? She was being
disagreeable and not at all like the good-natured rolypoly chum of past
years.

"Janet has never been to school," she said quietly, "she has always had
a tutor."

"Oh, Aunt Jane's poll parrot! That means she will know twice as much
as any of us," Sally