ercises of the day were to begin. All day
Monday, carriage after carriage came driving up to the academy,
depositing their loads of freight,--excited girls full of the
freshness and pleasure gathered from their brief holiday. The long
corridors were merry with affectionate osculations. Light, happy
laughs danced out from rosy lips, and arms were twined and intertwined
in the loving clasp of young girls. So much to tell! So much to hear!
Miss Ashton, welcoming the coming groups, called it a "Thanksgiving
Pandemonium;" but she enjoyed it quite as much as any of the rioters.
In the evening, when they were all together in the large parlor, she
turned the gathering into a pleasant party, helped to fill it with fun
and frolic, and sent even the most homesick to their rooms with smiles
instead of tears.

Not a word had been said of Nellie Blair's sickness. There is no place
where a panic is more easily started and harder to control than in a
girls' school; nor is there any cause that will so surely awaken it as
a case of diphtheria. Its acute suffering, its often sudden end, its
contagiousness, all combine to make it the most dreaded of diseases.

Some reason had to be given, of course, for the condition in which
Marion's room-mates found their room on their arrival, also for
Marion's removal. Miss Ashton had guardedly told them the truth, with
the strictest request that they should keep it to themselves; but, in
spite of her injunction, that night after the party broke up, there
was not a girl in the hall who did not know and who was not alarmed by
Nellie's sickness.

Anxious groups gathered together in the corridors and discussed it.
Some fled to their rooms and wrote hurried notes home, asking for
leave to come back at once. The panic had begun, augmented beyond
doubt by the excitement consequent on the return. Miss Ashton was
besieged by girls, all anxious to know the exact state of the case,
and not a few clamoring for leave to go away, even that very night,
from the contagion.

Had she any less influence over this frightened crowd, or they any
less trust in her wisdom and kindness, half of the rooms would have
been empty before morning; but, as it was, simply by telling them the
truth, that Nellie had diphtheria, but that the doctor said that it
was not a malignant case, and that there was not the slightest danger
of its spreading, with even ordinary care, she succeeded in so far
quieting their fears that they went