fresh, sweet morning air, for, although the first week of June was
already gone, the fierce heat of the summer had not yet descended upon
Silver Bow, nestling in its cup-like hollow among the Nevada mountains.

"'Ho, ho, the hours will quickly fly,
And soon vacation time be by;
Ah, then we'll all in glad refrain,
Sing welcome to our school again.'"

piped up a sweet voice in muffled accents from the depths of the closet
where the singer was rummaging to find hooks for her wardrobe, which
lay scattered rather promiscuously about Tabitha's tiny bedroom.

"Why, Gloriana Holliday, where did you learn that?" demanded the girl
on the threshold, abruptly ceasing her song. "It's as old as the
hills. Mrs. Carson used to sing it when she went to school."

"So did my mother. I've got her old music book with the words in it,"
responded her companion, emerging from the dark closet, flushed but
triumphant. "There! I've hung up the last dud I could find room for.
The rest must go back in the trunk, I guess. My, but it does seem nice
to have a few weeks of vacation, doesn't it?"

"One wouldn't think so to hear you carolling about school's beginning
again," laughed Tabitha, shaking her finger reprovingly at the
red-haired girl now busily collecting the remainder of her scattered
property and bundling it into a half-empty trunk just outside the
kitchen door.

Gloriana echoed the laugh, and then answered seriously, "But really, I
have never been glad before to see vacation come. It always meant only
hard work and worry, gathering fruit in the hot sun or digging
vegetables and peddling them around from door to door; while school
meant books and lessons and a chance to rest a bit, and the last two
years it meant Miss Angus, who did not mind my red hair and crutches."

"But it is all different now," Tabitha interrupted hastily, shuddering
at the gloomy picture her companion's words had called up. "You are my
sister now, and there won't be any more goats and gardens to bother
about. You have left off using one crutch altogether, and don't need
the other except out of doors. We are going to have a lovely vacation,
and you won't want school to begin at all in September."

"Yes, it is all different now, Kitty Catt, thanks to dear old you!"
agreed the younger girl, giving the slender figure in the doorway an
affectionate hug. "And I suppose I shall be as daffy about this queer
desert place as you are by the time Iv