ith which
Mrs. Harold sent her boys to the right-about in order to avoid demerits
for tardiness.

"Why must they rush back on the very minute?" asked Rosalie, when all
were gone, half inclined to resent an order of things which deprived her
of her gallant Jean sans ceremony.

"Discipline! Discipline! Little lady," laughed Mrs. Harold, coming up
behind Rosalie and turning the piquant face up to hers.

"I should think they'd feel like a lot of school boys to be ordered
about so," was Juno's rather petulant comment.

"Better feel 'like a lot of schoolboys' here, than like a lot of
simpletons when they 'hit the tree,'" was Mrs. Harold's merry reply.
"You've a whole lot to learn about regulations, my bonny lassie."

It was all said so kindly and so merrily that Juno could not resent it.

"But when will they learn about their leave? And if they are to go out
to Severndale tonight how will they manage?" asked Rosalie eagerly.

"Trust Daddy Neil to manage that. When they get back they'll be called
to the office and the officer in charge will notify them of what has
taken place and give them their orders."

"Oh, I don't think I can possibly wait to hear what they'll say!" cried
Polly. "I never, never knew such a lovely thing to happen before."

CHAPTER XIV

AT SEVERNDALE

"My goodness!" cried Rosalie, "I thought I knew Peggy Stewart, but the
Peggy Stewart we know at Columbia Heights, and the Peggy Stewart we saw
at Wilmot, and the Peggy Stewart we've found here are three different
people!"

"And if you stay here long enough you'll know still another Peggy
Stewart," nodded Polly sagely.

"She is a wonder no matter where you find her," said Nelly quietly, "and
she grows to be more and more of a wonder the longer you know her."

"How long have you been observing this wonderful wonder?" asked Juno.

"I think Peggy Stewart has held my interest from the first moment we
came to live at Severndale," was Nelly's perfectly truthful, though not
wholly enlightening, answer. Juno thought the evasion intentional and
looked at her rather sharply. She was more than curious to see Nelly's
home and father, and wondered if the party would be invited there.

The Christmas hop, which had been a paradise within flag-draped walls
for Captain Stewart's guests, was numbered among delights passed, but so
many more were in store and the grand climax of the year, the New Year's
eve hop, though, alack! it had to be given on the ni