credit; and Joy,
for the first time in her life, was beginning to taste the sweets of
companionship.

Annabel Jackson was a born leader. When she put the stamp of approval on
anything, it went; and when she began to stop Joy in halls and
recitation rooms for a moment's chat--a bit of advice on lessons--Joy's
stock took sudden flight. If Annabel thought her worth while, she surely
must be; and Blue Bonnet's interest, added to Annabel's, was the needed
touch to bring Joy into the social life of the school.

Not until there was an exodus toward the pipe organ, about which the
girls gathered to sing, did Ruth have a chance to express her opinion of
Joy's sudden popularity.

"_I_ don't intend to take her up," she said haughtily, lagging behind
with Sue. "She isn't our kind at all. I don't know what's got into
Annabel lately. She's perfectly crazy about Blue Bonnet Ashe--completely
under her thumb."

"Lots of us in the same boat, Ruth. I'm quite crazy about her myself."

"Well, she needn't think she can run the school. She's behind this Joy
Cross vogue. She's not going to ram her down my throat. The Biddles
usually choose their own society."

Sue looked at Ruth sharply.

"You've sort of got an idea that name gives you special dispensation,
haven't you, Ruth--kind of a free passport to the upper realms? Well,
forget it! It hasn't. It wouldn't get you any farther with folks that
count than Cross, or Ashe, or Hemphill. It's what you bring to your
name; not what it brings to you. It's like what Miss North said the
other day about life. It isn't what you get out of it, but what you put
into it that counts."

Ruth's lip curled. It takes more than a rebuke to make a democrat out of
an aristocrat.

"Nevertheless I shall retain the privilege of choosing my associates and
not having them thrust upon me."

"That's all right, Ruth, but when you get lonesome, come on back into
the fold. I've an idea that Joy Cross is going to make a place for
herself in the school whether you like it or not. Blue Bonnet seems to
have got at her in some way lately, and she says she's really quite
likable! She says Joy makes her think of the late chrysanthemums in her
grandmother's garden. They never get ready to bloom until everything
else is gone; but you appreciate them all the more after they've
weathered the frost and come out brave and brilliant. Funny idea, isn't
it? Blue Bonnet has such queer ideas. I think she's very unusual."

Ruth,