s" that some very characteristic
comments were made upon the masculine guests now enjoying their
post-prandial cigars, or cigarettes, in the smoking-room, below stairs.

Mrs. Harold was in her element listening to the girls' frank comments.

"Oh, I know I'm going to have the very time of my life, Mrs. Harold,"
exclaimed Natalie, giving a little bounce of rapture.

"Mr. Porter is certainly a remarkably handsome man," was Juno's
complacent comment. "But, Mrs. Harold, aren't first classmen
really--well--don't they come in for greater privileges? Rate more? Is
that what you say down here?"

"Of course. Especially a five-striper, Juno. You'd better cultivate Guy
Bennett. It's a great distinction to profit by a five-striper's favors.
There are three girls in Annapolis who have reduced that sort of
cultivation to a science and if you manage to rival them you will have
scored a point, sure enough."

"How many five-stripers are there?" asked Stella.

"Only one, happily, or the girls to whom I allude would have nervous
prostration. But the four and three-stripers save the day for them.
Nothing below is worth cultivating."

"Don't Polly and Peggy 'cultivate' the stripers!" asked Rosalie.

"That depends," was Mrs. Harold's cryptic answer as an odd smile caused
her lips to twitch. "Last year's five-striper and a good many other
stripers, were with us constantly, and I miss them more than I like to
dwell upon. This year's? Well--I shall endeavor to survive their
departure."

"Oh, but don't you just love them all!" cried Rosalie.

"Which, the midshipmen or the stripes?" asked Polly.

"Why, the midshipmen, of course!"

"I think a whole lot of some of the boys--yes, of a good many, but there
are some whom I wouldn't miss much, I reckon."

"Oh, I think you are perfectly heartless, Polly. They are just the
darlingest men I ever met."

With what unction the word "men" rolled from Rosalie's tongue. "Men" had
not figured very largely in Rosalie's world, and Mrs. Harold chuckled
inwardly at the thought of classing Rosalie's particular little Jean
Paul, in the category of grown-ups; anything more essentially boyish,
and full to the brim of madcap pranks, than the eighteen-year-old Jean
Paul, it would have been hard to picture.

Mrs. Harold had dispatched notes to Helen and Lily Pearl asking them in
Peggy's and Polly's name to be present at her little tea that afternoon,
to meet several of the midshipmen, and, if they cared to