ed her shoulders and drooped her head until it almost
touched her chest. "I can't bear to think of going home!" she said
heavily.

"Going home!" echoed Sahwah and Gladys, nearly falling off the ledge in
alarm. "You're not going home, are you? Don't tell us that you----"
Words failed them and they stared in blank dismay.

It was Katherine's turn to look alarmed when she caught their meaning.
"Oh, I don't mean that I'm going home now," she said hastily. "I mean
that I can't bear to think of going home at the end of the summer."

"Gracious!" said Gladys weakly. "Who's thinking about the end of the
summer already? Why, it's hardly begun. You don't mean to say that
you're worrying now about going home in September?"

Katherine nodded, without cheering up one bit. "That's the trouble," she
said laconically. "I know it's a crazy thing to worry about, but when we
were having such a good time on the lake this morning I got to thinking
how I hated to leave it, even to go to college, and started to get blue
right away. And the more I thought about it the bluer I got, and the
bluer I got the more I thought about it, and--that's all there is to
it!" she finished with a characteristic gesture of her long arms. "And
now I can't stop thinking about it and I've just got the indigoes!"

"Well, of all things!" exclaimed Sahwah. "Aren't some people the
funniest things, though?"

She and Gladys leaned back and regarded Katherine curiously. Here was
the girl who stood unmoved by fire or flood, who never worried about an
exam; the girl who had calmly rallied the demoralized volley ball team
and snatched victory in the face of overwhelming odds, who seemed to
have optimism in her veins instead of blood, at the very beginning of
the most charming summer in her life, worrying because some time or
other it must come to an end! Katherine's "indigoes" were as startling
and unaccountable as her inspirations. And it was not put on for
momentary effect, either. She sat limp and listless, the very picture of
dejection, and no amount of rallying on the part of the two served to
bring her back to her breezy, merry self.

They left her at last in despair, and wearily climbed back to the tents.
"I wish we hadn't talked to her at all," wailed Sahwah. "Now the thought
of going home makes me so blue I can't bear to think about it." And her
voice had such a suspicious catch in it that it made a sympathetic
moisture rise in Gladys's eyes, and she declare