least the furniture had been relieved of its
burdens, and the bed made in the most approved fashion. Blue Bonnet was
free to join Solomon, and to gather a great bunch of the golden-hued
coreopsis to adorn the lunch table. She was thinking of a little plan,
as she cut the long stems and arranged the flowers with taste and
precision; a little plan she had barely time to execute before Kitty
Clark's familiar, "Ooh-hoo, Ooh-hoo!" echoed from somewhere in the
vicinity of the front gate.

"I suppose I'm loads too early, but I could hardly wait to see you, Blue
Bonnet," was her cheery greeting. "We've all been pining away for you.
New York must have been fascinating to have kept you so long."

Blue Bonnet admitted that it was. She even opened her lips to tell of
some of its enchantments, but Kitty went on irrelevantly:

"You've missed a heap at school. I suppose you can catch up, but you'll
have to dig in, I can tell you. The Czar"--Kitty's name for Mr.
Hunt--"isn't bestowing any more favors than usual."

Blue Bonnet's first impulse was to tell Kitty that she would not be back
in school with the We Are Sevens this year, but she thought better of it
and waited.

Kitty rambled on.

"Latin's a perfect fright and--oh, Blue Bonnet, what, do you think? Miss
Rankin's engaged! Yes, she is, honest, truly. She's got a ring, a
beauty! She wore it turned in the first two weeks, but now she's picked
up courage and turned it round so everybody can see it. She's going to
quit after Christmas. They're going to live in Boston. He's a
lawyer--Sarah Blake's father knows him, and says he's right nice."

Kitty's patronizing air nettled Blue Bonnet as much as it amused her.

"Why shouldn't he be nice?" she inquired a bit sharply. "Miss Rankin's
nice herself."

The remark went over Kitty's head, and the appearance of Sarah Blake
down the roadway put a stop to the gossip.

It was the gayest kind of a little party that made the rafters in Mrs.
Clyde's dining-room ring with laughter an hour later. Blue Bonnet had
insisted upon Grandmother and Aunt Lucinda lunching with them, so Mrs.
Clyde sat at one end of the broad board and Miss Clyde at the other.

Blue Bonnet's coreopsis had been rearranged, and put in a charming brown
basket. From beneath the basket, and quite concealed from sight, were
seven little boxes attached to yellow ribbons which ran to each of the
We Are Sevens' plates.

Blue Bonnet could scarcely wait for the dessert to be