, for then we can have such good times together. I
am going to Miss Chalmer's Home Boarding-School for Young Ladies.
Where are you going?"

"I don't know," admitted Ruby, unwillingly. It had never occurred to
her to ask her Aunt Emma the name of the school; indeed I do not think
that she knew that any school had a particular name any more than the
school at home did. That was always called the school, and so Ruby had
thought that this new school was simply a boarding-school. How
dreadful it would be if Maude was going to a Boarding-School for Young
Ladies, and she herself should be going to a school for children.

"You don't know," echoed Maude. "How funny. You are just as funny as
ever, Ruby Harper. I never heard of any one starting out to go to
boarding-school without knowing where they were going."

"Well, I did n't need to know, or I should have asked," said Ruby, with
some dignity. "I came with my Aunt Emma, and she is a teacher in this
school that I am going to, and so I did not have to know anything about
it. She brought me with her."

"Oh," said Maude, in more respectful tones.

To have an aunt who taught in a boarding-school was a great thing in
Maude's eyes, and it made her less inclined to patronize Ruby.

"I do hope it is the same school," she went on presently, really glad
in the bottom of her selfish little heart to see some one whom she had
known before, for this was her first time too of leaving home. "We
will have such nice times together, and I have ever and ever so many
things to show you. You just ought to see all the dresses I have
brought with me."

"And so have I," Ruby answered. "My trunk is just full of them, and I
had a dressmaker sewing them for a whole week before I came away from
home."

"Did you?" asked Maude, and Ruby was pleased to notice that she spoke
as if this fact made her have a higher opinion of Ruby. "I thought
your mamma always made your dresses."

"She always used to, but she is sick now," said Ruby, and the lump rose
in her throat again at the thought that she was miles away from her
mother. "So we had Miss Abigail Hart come and stay a whole week and
sew on them all the time."

"You must have a nice lot then," said Maude. "I am glad, for if we are
going to be friends, I should not like to have the other girls think
that you looked old-fashioned and as if you came from the country;" and
foolish little Maude tossed her head, and looked complacently down