th her. Besides that, she took my umbrella, and it isn't big enough for
two."

"It is queer that she did not wait longer," commented Berta wonderingly.

"She said it would be more whimsical and unexpected to stroll off in that
eccentric way. She explained how she is being made over, Mother April,
from the rag-bag of the world; and so she has to be different."

"I hope that she gets very wet indeed," said Berta, "and I don't see why
I should worry."

Robbie's voice answered, "Bea worried about you that day last fall when
you went off alone in that storm to find fringed gentians. The branches
were crashing down in the wind, and one girl had seen a tramp out on that
lonely road. You said you could take care of yourself, but we worried."

"Oh, that was different," exclaimed Berta. "I am perfectly capable of
judging for myself. But Bea is such a scatterbrain that I can't help
feeling"--she hesitated, then added as if to herself, "There isn't any
sense in feeling responsible. She is old enough----"

"I can't hear when you mumble," called Robbie.

"Bea is an awful idiot," replied Berta in a louder key. "Did you catch
that valuable bit of information, Robbie Belle?"

"It sounds," spoke Robbie with unexpected astuteness, "as if you are
really worrying after all."

"Does it?" groaned Berta; "well, then I am an idiot too."

She sternly refused to look anxious even when the dressing-gong found the
wanderer still absent in the rain. At six Berta started for the
dining-room, leaving Robbie hovering at Bea's open door with a supply of
hot water, rough towels, dry stockings, and spirits of camphor. In the
leaden twilight of the lower corridor a draggled figure passed with a
sodden drip of heavy skirts and the dull squashing of water in soaked
shoes.

"Where are the apple-blossoms?" asked Berta in polite greeting as they
met at the elevator.

"I've b-b-b-been studying b-b-b-bobolinks," Bea's teeth chattered. "It's
original to follow birds in the rain."

"But"--Berta's eyes snapped, "I myself when I did it I wore a gym suit
and a mackintosh and rubber boots. Of all the idiots!"

"'O wad some power the giftie gie us,'" chanted Bea's tongue between
clicks,

"'To see oursels as ithers see us,
It wad fra mony a blunder free us,
And foolish notion.'"

Then as Berta took a threatening step in her direction, she broke into a
run. "I think I'll take some exercise now,"