es more and you would have been too late. Did
you think I could go to Briarwood without you?"

Ruth ran up and kissed her heartily. She knew that Mercy's "bark was worse
than her bite."

"You come and see Jane Ann--and be nice to her. She doesn't look it, but
she's just as scared as she can be."

"Of course you'd have some poor, unfortunate pup, or kitten, to mother,
Ruth Fielding," snapped the lame girl.

She was very nice, however, to the girl from Silver Ranch, sat beside her
in the chair car, and soon had Jane Ann laughing. For Mercy Curtis, with
her sarcastic tongue, could be good fun if she wished to be.

Here and there, along the route to Osago Lake, other Briarwood girls
joined them. At one point appeared Madge Steele and her brother, Bob, a
slow, smiling young giant, called "Bobbins" by the other boys, who was
always being "looked after" in a most distressing fashion by his sister.

"Come, Bobby, boy, don't fall up the steps and get your nice new clothes
dirty," adjured Madge, as her brother made a false step in getting aboard
the train. "Will you look out for him, Mr. Cameron, if I leave him in your
care?"

"Sure!" said Tom, laughing. "I'll see that he doesn't spoil his pinafore
or mess up his curls."

"Say! I'd shake a sister like that if I had one," grunted "Busy Izzy"
Phelps, disgustedly.

"Aw, what's the odds?" drawled good-natured Bobbins.

The hilarious crowd boarded the _Lanawaxa_ at the landing, and after
crossing the lake they again took a train, disembarking at Seven Oaks,
where the boys' school was situated.

From here the girls were to journey by stage to Briarwood. There was
dust-coated, grinning, bewhiskered "Old Noah Dolliver" and his "Ark,"
waiting for them.

There was a horde of uniformed academy boys about to greet Tom and his
chums, and to eye the girls who had come thus far in their company. But
Ruth and her friends were not so bashful as they had been the year before.

They formed in line, two by two, and slowly paraded the length of the
platform, chanting in unison the favorite "welcome to the infants" used at
the beginning of each half at Briarwood:

"Uncle Noah, he drove an Ark--
One wide river to cross!
He's aiming to land at Briarwood Park--
One wide river to cross!
One wide river!
One wide river of Jordan!
One wide river!
One wide river to cross!"

The boys cheered them enthusiastically. The girls piled into th