duty bound
to make hygiene the first consideration. Don't listen to them, listen to
me. I change my mind a dozen times a day, and have a new fad every
fortnight, so it stands to reason that my advice is more broad-minded
than the advice of a person who rides only one hobby, and rides that in
a rut."

Lloyd laughed at Gay's foolishness, but groaned when Betty told her how
far the classes had advanced during her absence from recitations.

"I'll have to work like a beavah this next week to catch up. I stah'ted
out to have perfect repoah'ts, and I feel that I must stick to it, as
Ederyn did when he heard the king's call. It is an obligation that I
_must_ meet. I must keep tryst or die."

Gay looked at her admiringly. "I knew you were like that," she
exclaimed. "If there is anything I envy it is strength of character."

The admiring glance and Gay's remark carried greater weight than all the
nurse's warning. There was another reason now for persevering in her
determination. Gay expected it of her, and she could not fall below
Gay's expectation of what a strong character should accomplish.

Gay, having finished a white stripe across the shawl, opened the
sweet-grass Indian basket hanging on her chair-post, and took out
several skeins of zephyr of a delicate sea-shell pink.

"Let me hold it while you wind," begged Lloyd. "It's such an exquisite
shade, like the heart of a la France rose. It makes me think of the
stories mothah used to tell me. Everything in them had to be pink, from
the little girl's dress to the bow on her kitten's neck. Her slippahs,
parasol, flowahs in the garden, papah on the wall, icing on the cake,
everything had to be pink."

"What a funny little creature you must have been," laughed Gay, secretly
making note of Lloyd's favourite colour, and resolving to change the
names on two packages laid away in her trunk. The blue sachet-bag with
the forget-me-nots should go to Betty instead of Lloyd, as she had
originally intended. Lloyd should have the one with the garlands of pink
rosebuds.

"My room at home is furnished in pink," Lloyd went on. "Oh, Gay, I'm
wild for you to see Locust. I'm going to have you and the Walton girls
and Katie Mallard, one of our neighbahs, spend two days and nights with
us. While I've been cooped up heah getting well, I've planned some of
the loveliest things to do that you evah dreamed of. It's going to be
the gayest vacation that evah was."

When Miss Gilmer returned at