sium
sorrowfully, realizing that one of their happiest evenings had passed
into history.

CHAPTER XXI

THE LAMBS' FROLIC

School-days cannot last forever. The fact was borne in on Annabel
Jackson as she sat in her room one afternoon shortly before
Commencement. It wasn't going to be such an easy thing to tear up root
and leave Miss North's after four years as she had imagined. How was she
ever going to get along without the girls? There was Sue--dear old,
impulsive, warm-hearted Sue, companion in so many escapades. And Ruth,
and Wee Watts--Blue Bonnet, too! The parting was going to be especially
hard with Blue Bonnet. _She_ would in all probability disappear on the
Texas ranch, and except for an occasional Christmas greeting or birthday
card, pass out of her life altogether.

There were the teachers also,--Mrs. White and Professor Howe and Madam
de Cartier--and, yes--even Miss North, austere and dignified and
unapproachable as she was, would be missed out of the little world; a
world she had grown to love very dearly, despite its limitations, its
frequent vexations.

"Mercy! you look as if you'd lost your last friend, Annabel," Ruth
Biddle commented from her seat by the window, where she was doing her
best to stop a runner in a silk stocking.

"I have, I'm afraid--or will," Annabel answered dolefully. "Do you
realize that in just fifteen days we shall be saying good-by to these
old walls, forever--you and I? I didn't think it was going to be so
hard, Ruth. Doesn't it break you all up when you think of it? Do you
relish the idea of other girls having this room next year--hanging their
things in our closets; planning feasts and frolics behind barred doors
while we pass on to the ranks of 'young women?' The idea doesn't appeal
to me as much as I thought it was going to."

Ruth bit off her thread and regarded the room a moment in silence.

"Wonder where they'll keep their provisions," she said, eyes toward the
box couch which had secluded many a staple article. "Do you suppose
they'll find the refrigerator, and know enough to make black curtains
for the transoms?"

A gleam shot from Annabel's roguish eyes to Ruth's.

"Let's put them on," she said. "Write a letter and will them our
secrets. We can hide it in the refrigerator."

The refrigerator--a loose brick discovered one day just under the window
on the outside wall--had proved a boon to Annabel and Ruth. By the
least bit of digging from the inside