r than she, herself, was at that
moment. "Wasn't that romantic?"

"Where is papa now?" asked Beverly. She had never heard him mentioned.

"Oh, why--well--he has business interests which keep him in South America
nearly all the time, and--er,"

"Oh, you needn't go into details. It doesn't make any difference to me,"
said Beverly, and walked away with Sally.

"Isn't she odious! And so perfectly callous to sentiment," cried Petty.

"She's a dear, and it's a pity you hadn't a small portion of her common
sense," championed Aileen emphatically.

"I have sense enough to be engaged before I'm _seventeen_, and to know
what it means to be _embraced_, which is more than any other girl in this
school can boast," brindled Petty.

"Well, I should hope it is!" was Aileen's disgusted retort. "And if you
don't watch out you'll boast just once too often and Miss Woodhull will
get wise to your boasting. Then there will be something stirring unless
I'm mighty mistaken."

"Pouf! Who cares for Miss Woodhull? I don't believe she ever had a
proposal in all her life."

"Well, you'd better be careful," was Aileen's final warning as she left
the half-dozen girls of which Petty formed the bright particular star.

"Those three feel themselves so superior yet they are such children," was
Petty's withering remark.

Aileen was two months her junior. Sally less than a year and Beverly
exactly fifteen months. But being engaged very naturally developes and
broadens one's views of life. Dear "Reggie" was just twenty, and had his
lady love but known that interesting fact, had already been "engaged" to
three other susceptible damsels during his brief sojourn upon the earth.
Moreover, he was openly boasting of it to his fellow midshipmen and
regarding it as a good joke. Oh, Reggie was a full-fledged, brass-buttoned
heart-breaker. Happily he was not a representative among his companions.
Most of them are gentlemen. They can do a good bit of "fussing" as they
term it, but this wholesale engagement business is the exception, rather
than the rule.

Nevertheless, Petty had sang of the charms of Annapolis until all her set
were wild to go there, and her enthusiasm had spread like chickenpox. If
the affairs at Annapolis were all Petty pictured them and the midshipmen
as fascinating, the place must, indeed, be a sort of Paradise.

Of course, all the girls knew that Beverly was a real, true Admiral's
grandniece. That he had left Annapolis upon his grad