g her
pillow energetically. "I'm not going to mope here alone all the
afternoon, with you off having a jolly time at the picnic. Write a
little note for me to Florrie Hastings, will you? I'll do as much for
you when you sprain your foot."

"What shall I put in it?" said Maude, rummaging out her portfolio
obligingly.

"Oh, just ask her if she will come down and cheer a poor invalid up
this afternoon. She'll come, I know. And she is such good company. Get
Dickie to run right out and mail it."

"I do wonder if Florrie Hamilton will feel hurt over not being asked
to the picnic," speculated Maude absently as she slipped her note into
an envelope and addressed it.

Florrie Hamilton herself could best have answered that question as she
walked along the street in the fresh morning sunshine. She did feel
hurt--much more keenly than she would acknowledge even to herself. It
was not that she cared about the picnic itself: as Nan Wallace had
said, she would not have been likely to enjoy herself if she had gone
among a crowd of girls many of whom looked down on her and ignored
her. But to be left out when every other girl in the school was
invited! Florrie's lip quivered as she thought of it.

"I'll get Father to let me to go to the public school after vacation,"
she murmured. "I hate going to Miss Braxton's."

Florrie was a newcomer in Winboro. Her father had recently come to
take a position in the largest factory of the small town. For this
reason Florrie was slighted at school by some of the ruder girls and
severely left alone by most of the others. Some, it is true, tried at
the start to be friends, but Florrie, too keenly sensitive to the
atmosphere around her to respond, was believed to be decidedly dull
and mopy. She retreated further and further into herself and was
almost as solitary at Miss Braxton's as if she had been on a desert
island.

"They don't like me because I am plainly dressed and because my father
is not a wealthy man," thought Florrie bitterly. And there was enough
truth in this in regard to many of Miss Braxton's girls to make a very
uncomfortable state of affairs.

"Here's a letter for you, Flo," said her brother Jack at noon. "Got it
at the office on my way home. Who is your swell correspondent?"

Florrie opened the dainty, perfumed note and read it with a face that,
puzzled at first, suddenly grew radiant.

"Listen, Jack," she said excitedly.

"Dear Florrie:

"Nan is confined to ho