"Here she is now!" cried this latter, on Helen's appearance. "'The
candidate will now advance and say her a-b-abs!' You looked scared to
death when they shot you with the lime-light. I was chewing a caramel
when they initiated me, and I swallowed it whole, and pretty near choked,
when the spot-light was turned on."

Mercy, who was a very sharp girl indeed, was looking at Helen slily. She
saw that something had occasioned their friend annoyance.

"What's happened to you since we came from the supper, Helen?" she
asked.

"Indigestion!" gasped Heavy. "I've some pepsin tablets in my room.
Want one, Nell?"

"No. I am all right," declared Helen.

"Well, we were just waiting for you to come in," the stout girl said.
"Maybe we'll all be so busy to-morrow that we won't have time to talk
about it. So we must plan for the Lighthouse Point campaign now."

"Oh!" said Helen, slowly. "So you can make up your party now?"

"Of course! Why, we really made it up last winter; didn't we?" laughed
Heavy.

"But we didn't know whether we could go or not then," Ruth Fielding
said.

"You didn't know whether _I_ could go, I suppose you mean?" suggested
Helen.

"Why--not particularly," responded Ruth, in some wonder at her chum's
tone. "I supposed you and Tom would go. Your father so seldom refuses
you anything."

"Oh!"

"I didn't know how Uncle Jabez would look at it," pursued Ruth. "But
I wrote him a while ago and told him you and Mercy were going to accept
Jennie's invite, and he said I could go to Lighthouse Point, too."

"Oh!" said Helen again. "You didn't wait until I joined the
S. B.'s, then, to decide whether you would accept Heavy's invitation,
or not?"

"Of course not!"

"How ridiculous!" cried Heavy.

"Well, it's to be a Sweetbriar frolic; isn't it, Heavy?" asked Helen,
calmly.

"No. Madge and Bob Steele are going. And your brother Tom," chuckled
the stout girl. "And perhaps that Isadore Phelps. You wouldn't call
Busy Izzy a Sweetbriar; would you?"

"I don't mean the boys," returned Helen, with some coolness.

Suddenly Mercy Curtis, her head on one side and her thin little face
twisted into a most knowing grimace, interrupted. "I know what this
means!" she exclaimed.

"What do _you_ mean, Goody Two-Sticks?" demanded Ruth, kindly.

"Our Helen has a grouch."

"Nonsense!" muttered Helen, flushing again.

"I thought something didn't fit her when she came in," said Heavy,
calmly. "But I thought it was indi