duate?"

"No; we went to Europe in my second year. I cried myself ill when we
parted. My only comfort was that Nannie and I had promised each other
that we would go to college together. Nannie was already earning money
by her carving. Still--it was bitter. Youth can suffer so easily and so
horribly!"

"Yet," said Mrs. Clymer, "though I admit you were a woeful object,
Connie, I thought at the time, and I think now, that Nannie suffered the
most. She didn't shed a tear that morning when she came up to your house
to say good-by; and I went with you to the depot; but there was a look
in her eyes which haunted me. And when she stood in the driveway as we
rolled away, watching the carriage, and you turned and she waved her
hand and smiled--I felt as if I had seen a surgical operation."

"And then? Oh, Mrs. Curtis, that wasn't the end of it?" cried the
youngest member.

"Oh, no. I missed Nannie amid all the change and excitement; and I wrote
her often. At first she wrote me as often. Now I can appreciate how
hard she must have tried to collect the little items of news likely to
interest me. And they were all about girls whom she barely knew, and
things remote from her. Somehow she found out about everything. It was
she who first wrote about when Annie Baylor had scarlet fever, and she
who told first of that astounding happening, Mary Taine Willis'
engagement. Mary was only three years older than we; it was almost like
one of us being engaged. And her reports about the house and the grounds
and the horses, my father said, were clearer and more useful than those
of the man in charge. But somehow during the last year the letters grew
a little less open-hearted and affectionate; a queer film of constraint
froze over them, if I may call it that. And on my part I was conscious
of a mingling of dread in my delight at the prospect of seeing Nannie
when we had come. I knew she would be the same faithful, dear girl whom
I should always love; but my Nannie was more--she was the leader, she
had charm; I admired her so tremendously, I wondered should I admire her
in the same way. Maybe you think that was horrid of me?"

"I don't know"--the Southern woman spoke before the others--"I know it
was natural. Well, did you find it different? _Had_ she changed?"

"I don't remember; I only remember that, in the first half-hour, my only
fear was lest she should be disappointed in _me_. I admired everything
about her; her very clothes were so d