p the street now looking for you. He thought perhaps Mrs.
Murphy might know where you were."

"What did he want with us?" asked Judy, lifting her mourning veil.

Jimmy hesitated.

"He was thinking of getting up a Christmas dance, but----" He looked at
Judy's black dress.

"She's not in mourning, Mr. Lufton," laughed Molly. "It's only that she
prefers to look like a mourning widow-lady."

"Oh, excuse me, Miss Kean," said Jimmy. "I thought you had had a recent
bereavement."

"Here, Judy, take off that thing," exclaimed Molly, unpinning the
mourning veil in the back and snatching it off Judy's glowing face.

"Molly, how can you invade on the privacy of my grief," exclaimed Judy,
laughing.

"Why, it's Miss Judy Kean," exclaimed Dodo Green, coming up at that
moment with Andy McLean. "Nothing has hap----"

"No," put in Molly, "it's only one of Judy's absurd notions. She's been
wearing mourning for years off and on, but she's only lately gone into
such heavy black."

"And you've no objection to a little fun, then?" asked Andy.

"Not a particle," answered Judy, the old bright look lighting her face.
"My feelings aren't black, I assure you."

"On with the dance, then, let joy be unconfined," cried Andy. "We'll
call for you at a quarter of eight, girls--at O'Reilly's, you say? I'll
have to trot along now and tell the mater."

The three boys hurried off while Molly and Judy rushed home to look over
their party clothes.

"Isn't life a pleasant thing, after all?" exclaimed Judy, and Molly
readily agreed that it was.

Such a jolly impromptu Christmas Eve party as it was that night at the
McLeans'! Mrs. McLean had a niece visiting her from Scotland, an
interesting girl with snappy brown eyes and straight dark hair. She was
rather strangely dressed, Molly thought, in a red merino with a high
white linen collar and a black satin tie, and she looked at Molly and
Judy in their pretty evening gowns with evident disapproval. Just as
Jimmy Lufton and Molly had completed the glide waltz for the fifth time
that evening and had sunk down on a sofa breathless, the parlor door
opened and in walked Professor Edwin Green, looking as well as he had
ever looked in his life, with a fine glow of color in his cheeks.

"My dear Professor!" cried Mrs. McLean.

"Ed, I thought you were going to spend Christmas in the south,"
exclaimed his brother.

"You are a disobedient young man," ejaculated the doctor,--all in one
chorus.

"Don'