we
are at my house. I hope mother won't be too much alarmed when I tell
her. I'll have to explain Jerry's clothes. They are not quite a perfect
fit, as you can see."

Marcia held the young girl's hand between her own. "I'll come to see you
at three o'clock to-morrow afternoon. Maybe I can show you then how
deeply I feel what you did for me to-day."

"I wonder what she is so mysterious over," thought Marjorie, as she ran
up the steps. "I never dreamed that she and I would be friends. And
Muriel, too. How perfectly dear she was. But"--Marjorie stopped short in
the middle of the veranda--"what do you suppose became of Mignon?"

CHAPTER XXVI

LETTING BYGONES BE BYGONES

Marjorie touched the button of the electric bell for admittance, but her
finger had scarcely left it when the door was opened by her mother, who
regarded her daughter with mingled amazement and alarm.

"Why, Marjorie!" she cried. "What has happened to you?"

"Don't be frightened, Mother. I know I look awfully funny!" Marjorie
stepped into the hall, with a superb disregard for her strange
appearance, assumed with a view to calming Mrs. Dean's fears.

"I--a canoe tipped over and I helped one of the girls out of the river
and got wet. My clothes are down at the boathouse drying. Jerry went
home and brought back some of hers for me. That's why I look so
different. She didn't come here for fear of scaring you."

"You have been in the river!" gasped her mother in horror, "and it's
unusually high just now."

"But it didn't hurt me a bit," averred Marjorie, cheerfully. "I can
swim, and someone had to help Marcia. Come upstairs with me while I get
into my own clothes and I'll tell you all about it."

They had reached her room and Mrs. Dean was eyeing her lively little
lieutenant doubtfully. "Are you sure you feel well, Marjorie?" she asked
anxiously.

"Perfectly splendid, Captain," was the extravagant assurance, as
Marjorie gently backed her mother into a chair. "I'm going to get out of
Jerry's clothes and into my own and then we'll have a nice comfy old
talk."

Slipping into a one-piece frock of blue linen, Marjorie brushed her
dampened brown curls thoroughly dry and let them fall over her
shoulders. Placing a sofa pillow on the floor close to her mother, she
settled herself cozily at her mother's side and leaned against her knee,
looking far more like a little girl than a young woman of seventeen.

It was a very long talk, for there was m