hen after a pause, "I suppose,
if you haven't noticed it, then Lloyd hasn't either, that Bernice is
bitterly jealous of her."

"No, I am sure she has not."

"Then I wish you'd drop her a hint. I couldn't mention the subject to
her, because it is an old fight of ours. You know how we've squabbled
for hours over it--the difference between the codes of honor in a girl's
friendships and boys'. No matter how carefully I made the distinction
that I meant the average girl, and not all of them, she always flared
into a temper, and in order to be loyal to her entire sex, took up arms
against me in a regular pitched battle. She's ordered me off the place
more than once, and yet in her soul I believe she agrees with me."

"But, Rob, if that is a pet theory of yours that you go around applying
in a wholesale way, isn't it barely possible that you've made a mistake
this time and imagined that Bernice is two-faced in her friendship?"

Rob shook his head. "She'll be at the station this morning. You can see
for yourself, if you keep your eyes open."

"Now, to be explicit, just what is it I shall see?" retorted Betty. But
Phil interrupted their tete-a-tete at that point, and when they started
to the station an hour later, her question was still unanswered. Bernice
Howe was there, as Rob had predicted, and Katie Mallard and several
other of the Valley girls who had enjoyed the hospitality of The Beeches
during Miss Bonham's visit.

"It looks quite like a garden-party," said Miles Bradford to Miss
Allison, watching the pretty girls, in their light summer costumes,
flutter around the waiting-room. "I don't know whether to compare them
to a flock of butterflies or a bouquet of sweet peas. I am glad we are
going to take some of them with us to-morrow, and wish--"

Betty, who had turned to listen, because his smiling glance seemed to
include her in the conversation, failed to hear what it was he wished.
Bernice Howe, who was standing with her back to her, took occasion just
then to draw Miss Bonham aside, and her voice, although pitched in a low
key, was unusually penetrating. At the same moment the entire party
shifted positions to make room for some new arrivals in the
waiting-room, and Betty was jostled so that she was obliged to dodge a
corpulent woman with a carpet-bag and a lunch-basket. When she recovered
her balance she found herself out of range of Doctor Bradford's voice,
but almost touching elbows with Bernice. She was sayin