The Strange Likeness

Contents

Sidney passed with her head in the air and without looking at Shirley.

THE
STRANGE LIKENESS

By HARRIET PYNE GROVE

THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY

Akron, Ohio New York

Copyright MCMXXIX
THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY

The Strange Likeness

Made in the United States of America

THE STRANGE LIKENESS

CHAPTER I.
ACT TWO, SCENE ONE.

Stage dramas are accustomed to begin with Act One, Scene One; but the little drama of living presented in this story starts with the second act. The fact that the first act was for so long unknown to some of the dramatis personae permitted the mystery.

“Adoring, dear?”

A young gentleman entered the room as he spoke, smiling indulgently as he looked at his young wife, who bent over a white crib.

The young man was perhaps twenty-seven years of age, neat in his gray suit, with the blue tie that matched his eyes, and carrying himself with an air of poise and quiet assurance. Soft fair hair with a wave that curled itself over an intelligent brow, and good, firm features were points that were no drawback to the gentleman’s attractive personality. Crossing the room, he put an arm around the slender figure of his wife and with her looked down at the sleeping baby.

“Do you blame, me, honey?” whispered the young woman, responding to the embrace and drawing away from the crib a little as she laid a soft finger on her husband’s lips. “Don’t wake her. Isn’t she like a lovely little rosebud? Just look at her adorable little mouth and that wee, dimpled hand and arm. Oh, I’m so glad that I have her!

“And what do you think of the nursery? Auntie’s taste is wonderful, you know, and she helped me. Why, Auntie is just crazy about the baby!”

“I see where I am going to be entirely left out in the cold,” the young man remarked, but he did not look worried over the situation.

“You will soon be as silly as I am,” laughed his wife. “Now promise me! You will never tell, will you?”

“I have hesitated to promise, dear, because I think that no good ever comes of not knowing the truth.”

“But what harm could it do? She is really ours, all tight and fast, and nobody to dispute it!”

“Certainly. But suppose she finds out some day.”

“She can’t, unless we tell her, and if you will promise,—”

Two arms went around the young man’s neck and a lovely face looked up at him. “Please, please,” she begged. “It isn’t as if there would be anything dreadful to find out.”

“No,—it’s just that I—well, I’m no proof against you, as you well know! All right. I promise. I will never tell her.”

“Now you have made me perfectly happy,—as you always do. This is the prettiest doll that I ever had to play with, and I’m going to bring her up very carefully.”

“I see that she has my hair,” teasingly continued the young man, “what there is of it. What color are her eyes? I’ve never seen her awake but once and then she was howling and her eyes were screwed shut.”

“Her eyes are going to be exactly like mine. Auntie says that in all important features she is precisely like all the prettiest babies of our family!”

The two young people happily looked at each other and laughed, still softly; but the baby parted its long, dark lashes a little, turned its head, waved a tiny hand for a moment, and with a faint sigh put its thumb in its mouth, falling soundly asleep again as it did so.

Silently the two, who stood by the crib with its white blankets and dainty coverlid, waited to see if the child would waken. Then gently the young woman drew the baby hand away from the rosebud mouth. With a new dignity she said, “You have to do that whenever babies start to put their thumbs in their mouths.”

But this was back in the late autumn some seventeen years before the next recorded scene.

CHAPTER II.
SHIRLEY EMBARKS UPON NEW ADVENTURES.

“Of course I don’t care, Mother! Why shouldn’t you and Dad go off and have the time of your lives? It is simply great! Hurrah for the Trustees and Faculty! It is time that Dad had his ‘sabbatical year,’ or whatever you call it. With all that he has done for this university!”

“And all that he expects to do, childie.”

“Certainly. The museum will be full of all those mummies and things that you will dig up over there.”

Shirley’s mother smiled. “It would be better for you to learn more definitely, daughter, just what your classical father is going to do over there. I can assure you that we are not going to bring home any mummies. I wanted to make sure, little girl, that your heart had no soreness about this. You understand why it is not best to take you now. When you go abroad, as I hope you may some day, you will want a more general trip first. We have had that. And it is best not to interrupt your education now. I confess to being a little torn between desire to go with your father, to see your cousin in England, with the fine opportunity for myself as well, and the regret about leaving you behind.”

“Seriously, Mother,” said Shirley, more earnestly than she had spoken before, “it looks like a fine adventure to me. Of course, I’m not going to pretend that I will not miss you. But you could give it up and come home if anything serious should be the matter, and after all, we might look at it this way. I am going West for the summer, a big chance for me. Then I’m going to do what I’ve longed to do, attend a girls’ school for a year. See? I’m leaving you for a year!”

“Bless you, child,—I might know that you would take it that way. What a comfort you have always been to me! Just see to it that you are careful not to do risky things, and I shall throw off responsibility. Keep a diary, Shirley. I’m going to keep one, too, to bring you daily pictures of what we shall be doing. Then there will be letters, of course.”

“I will write the letters, Mother, but I’m not so sure about the diary. You know my failing. I like to have the fun, but it takes so long to write about it, and you know that the fun makes better notes than the serious things. My diary will be something like this: ‘January first. Snowing. Missed breakfast. Classes all day. Theme assigned. Chose ‘Why Go To College?’ Have to dress for dinner. Hungry. Expect letter from Mother tomorrow.’”

“Even an outline like that, Shirley will be better than nothing. I should like to look over it to see what my girl has really been doing.”

“I promise to have good lessons, Mother, not just fun, and I imagine that they are pretty strict. Probably they will have to be. But that is a long way off. I shall have nothing but fun this summer, I hope. Here comes Dad. Is this the distinguished professor of Epigraphy, Paleography and Archaeology, to say nothing of—well, all the rest—who is going to dig up Greece and Rome and Egypt this year?”

“And is this the saucy, beautiful and only daughter of the said professor?” queried a light-stepping, fine looking man who entered his own living-room, letting the screen bang behind him.

Shirley ran to meet him, hugging him rather impetuously, while he rumpled her hair and imprinted a kiss upon her forehead. “Well, girls,” said he, “the last old grad has gone, I believe: the last meeting of the trustees is over. I shook hands with the president in his office and he wished me a happy and profitable year.” With a comical side step, the dignified professor reached for the other girl, his wife, and drew her to him with the arm that was not around Shirley.

“My reports of grades are long since in and I’ve answered the university bell for classes for the last time till year after next. Can you wonder that I am a little crazy?”

This mild way of figuratively throwing up his hat amused Shirley, but she was as careful of her father’s dignity as he; so she slipped out from his arm and said, “Here comes a student up the walk, Father. Come on, Mother. Dad has probably flunked him in something. Never mind, Daddy, you will soon be away. I’m packing, too, and I need Mother anyhow. ‘In pace requiescat,’” Shirley added, waving her hand toward the unseeing student who was knocking on the screen, just as Shirley and her smiling mother left the room.

Just what point Shirley had in mind in applying the Latin expression to the supposedly unhappy student, she did not explain, but it was probably the only Latin phrase that occurred to her at the time. Whatever was the lad’s errand, the professor made short work of him and as the student began to whistle as soon as he reached the street some responsibility must have been lifted.

It was a little hard for Shirley that her father and mother should leave before she could, but it could not be helped, and if Shirley had a lump in her throat, no sign of it showed in her bright face as she blithely waved a last goodbye to Dr. and Mrs. Harcourt, whose faces she could see through the Pullman window as the train began to move. But she turned away rather soberly and the young man with her without a word took her arm to lead her back to the car which stood waiting.

Shirley swallowed, winked a moment, then lifted smiling eyes, dark, with curling lashes, to her tall, slim companion. “I’m all right, Dick. There’s just that funny, all-gone feeling, you know.”

“Yep,” returned Richard Lytton. “I’ve had it. Remember when I went to military school? When I stood on the platform in my new uniform, just a mere kid, you know, and saw the train disappear with my father on board, going home without me,—O boy!”

“You were such a little chap, weren’t you? But you seemed terribly old to me, and I remember how impressed I was when you came home at the Holidays wearing that uniform.”

“Little idiot that I was!” laughed Dick, drawing Shirley out of the way of a truck loaded with trunks. “More students going out on the next train,” said Dick, glancing at the truck. “There’s that freshman trying to catch your eye, Shirley.”

Shirley looked in the direction of Dick’s nod and smiled at a plump youth who was looking at her with interest. She waked up to her immediate surroundings a little with her bow to the boy who was in one of her father’s classes and whom she had met several times at her own home. She could not know how very much interested the freshman was or why he said to himself, “That’s only her cousin.”

The small station of the college town was busier than usual with the departure of students. As Dr. and Mrs. Harcourt had made their plans to depart at the earliest moment possible, their leaving was coincident with that of many others, though trustees had largely gone before.

“If you begin to smite them, now, Shirley,” said Dick, “what it will be when you actually get into college, I shudder to think.”

“Nonsense,” said Shirley. “Perhaps I can stay two years at the other school. They have a junior college, you know.”

“Your father wouldn’t stand for that, Shirley. He wants you here for your University work.”

“I know.”

But they had reached the car in which two ladies were sitting. One was elderly, the other about the age of Shirley’s mother. “Well, here’s the orphan, Mother,” said Dick cheerfully, handing Shirley into the front seat and going around to the other door to climb into the driver’s seat himself.

“I would not remind her in that heartless way, Dick,” said his mother whose smile was as cheerful as Dick’s and whose kind eyes looked sympathetically at Shirley.

“I don’t mind, Cousin Molly. Thank fortune, I’m not really an orphan, and I’m going to do just what my revered Dad said to do, keep my mind on the adventures before me. Do you think that we can get off, ourselves, day after tomorrow, Auntie?”

Shirley addressed the older lady in this remark.

“You will be obliged to do so, my dear. You forget that your tickets are purchased and all the arrangements made. We may as well do the last of your shopping now, if Dick will drive us around. I knew that your mother could not manage all of it at the last, with all the interruptions that she had in the professor’s affairs.”

“Now, Auntie! don’t blame it on poor Dad.”

“He could not help it, my dear. But I have not lived next door to you in vain, my child, these pleasant years, and your mother trusts my judgment. I have the list.”

“Oh, you have planned it with her, then,” said Shirley. “Things have been rather mixed up today, but she said to ask you about everything. I’m almost packed, but I surely will be glad to have your help.”

Miss Dudley was Shirley’s great aunt, her mother’s aunt. She lived in an apartment of her own near the Harcourt home and managed to hold the position of general adviser to her niece without any of the disagreeable features which an interfering nature might have introduced. But Miss Dudley had her own pursuits and a wide circle of friends. No one knew her age, but if the Harcourts were in the early forties, Miss Dudley, well preserved, still attractive, with her only lightly wrinkled brow, her wide-awake brown eyes and air of independence, must be in the sixties. She and Shirley had always been good friends. Her tasteful rooms, her books, her curios, which the child Shirley was trained not to touch without permission, had always been a source of pleasure to the professor’s daughter. Many a time some one of Miss Dudley’s friends would come in to call and note the pretty, fair-haired child with her dark eyes, reading some book, perhaps, and curled up in a corner of Miss Dudley’s davenport.

The Lyttons were distant cousins, related upon the Harcourt side. It was with them that Shirley expected to make the western trip. As they, too, had many errands and much to do before the start, Dick deposited Miss Dudley and Shirley in the center of town at their first shopping point and made arrangements to meet them at a later hour, to take them home again. Shirley quite forgot to be lonesome in the exigencies of the moment, the importance of not forgetting any detail and the selection of the last purchases.

Meanwhile, upon the Pullman, Dr. Harcourt was saying to a rather sober wife, “I need a more cheerful companion, Eleanor.” Somewhat whimsically he looked into the now smiling eyes, very like Shirley’s. “I, too, feel as if the plunge had taken my breath a little, but if we let ourselves get homesick or worried at the start, what will become of us?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. I felt like a girl again, planning my trousseau and honeymoon,—but saying goodbye to Shirley has made me think of my responsibilities, I suppose.”

“Stop it, then, my dear. This is our second honeymoon. Think of the fun that we are going to have. Remember what we decided. It is true that things calamitous might happen, but how foolish to guide one’s life by them.”

“I remember, learned professor,” said Mrs. Harcourt, responding to the pressure of the hand that reached down to take hers. “We decided that it is entirely wise to accomplish something in this old world, not held back by our fears, and that this year will be an opportunity to Shirley as well as to ourselves. We’ve made fine plans for her and as usual we pray ‘deliver us from evil.’ Really, Will, I’m a happy woman and I trust in you and Providence just as much as ever. You don’t blame me that I find leaving Shirley behind a little wrench, do you?”

“Not a bit of it. But I think that it will do you both good. What did I do with that Baedeker? The last report of our archæalogical expedition is in it. I put it between the pages and I hope that I’ve not left it at home!”

“I have it in my bag, Will. I’ll find it for you in a jiffy.”

Dr. and Mrs. Harcourt were embarking upon the steamer bound for the English coast at about the same time that Mr. and Mrs. Lytton, their son Dick and cousin, Shirley Harcourt left the college town for their adventures in the West.

“Don’t do anything a Dudley wouldn’t do,” brightly said Shirley’s great-aunt as she embraced her for the last time. “Take good care of my only niece, Dick, if you go off on any of those wild trails. I hope that you will be armed for bandits.”

“Why, Auntie,—who would think that of you? These aren’t the old days in the West.”

“Twentieth century bandits are the worst kind, child. Remember, Dick.”

“Trust me, Cousin Anne. When you see us again we shall have climbed the Rockies in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and California, so to speak. Shirley, do they have the Rocky Mountains in California?”

“Don’t ask embarrassing questions, Dick. We’ll look it up on the map, for we’ll have plenty of time for that on the train. I’m going to study geography and a lot beside this trip, Aunt Anne. Please take good care of your dear self. I wish that you were going too.”

“I couldn’t stand it, Shirley, not all that you are going to do. Take her away, Dick, before I change my mind about letting her go at all!”

This time it was not to the Lytton car but to a taxi that Dick escorted his cousin, a taxi which ticked away in front of the Harcourt home. Aunt Anne would lock the place finally. Shirley whisked inside, taking her seat beside Mrs. Lytton and giving a sigh of relief as she sank into it.

“Tired, child?” inquired Mrs. Lytton.

“Not so much tired as glad that the last thing is done and that we are really off. Are we?”

“I judge that we are. I am glad, too. There was so much to do at our house and I had to see that Dick and your cousin Steve left no essential article behind.”

Both Mr. Lytton and Dick protested at this aspersion upon their ability to look after themselves, but it was all in a joking way and Shirley sat still and tense with the excitement of beginning such a big trip, the longest that she had ever taken. At the station there was a group of girls who had come to see Shirley off. Several of Dick’s friends, too, had made it a point to be there just before the train came in.

“The worst of it is that it is going to be so long before we see you again,” said one high school friend of Shirley’s. “It seems a shame for you not to graduate with the class!”

“Yes, it does; but I’ll go into college with you anyhow, and it would be pretty hard to be here all year without Father and Mother.”

“I don’t blame you, Shirley,” said another girl. “If I had your chance I’d take it in a minute. Write us all about it, won’t you?”

“Oh, yes, Shirley,” cried the first girl. “We’ll want something about you for our little bulletin, and if you will tell me about your trip I’ll use it for a theme!”

But the train whistled. Goodbyes were at last over, the goodbye that had seemed to Shirley to stretch out endlessly ever since her father and mother started away. From the window Shirley waved and blew kisses, at last sinking back on the cushioned seat to find herself beside “old Dick,” who picked up a magazine to use as a fan.

“Come to, Shirley,” said he. “You stood all that like a Trojan. Imagine me if the boys had treated me to all that embracing.”

“They slapped you on the back, Dick, as I should not like to be slapped. I think I prefer the girls’ way.”

CHAPTER III.
PUZZLING ENCOUNTERS.

“Thanks, Dick; I’m recovered,” laughed Shirley, waving away the magazine. “Besides I have this little fan in my ‘under-arm’ bag. It is rather hot today. We are not near enough to the electric fan to get any good of it.”

“We have a fine location, Shirley, in the very center of the car. Your uncle Dick saw to that! I made the reservations, but I can’t vouch for all that are ahead of us. We go from one line to another, you know.”

Shirley did not know. With a bland indifference to detail, for all that would be looked after by somebody, she was ready for all adventure and surprises. “All right,” she said. “I’m perfectly content to let my ‘uncle Dick,’ with some little help from his parents, no doubt, look after all these things, without bothering about any of them myself. But I may as well say at the start that I am perfectly happy, grateful to you all, and every other nice thing that I ought to be! Why, I can hardly believe it, Dick, honestly!”

“It’s a big chance for me, too, Shirley, and remember that you are going to keep the account of what we see for me, too.”

“Indeed I will, always provided that you keep the bandits away.”

“Did I forget to promise Cousin Anne? But she was just joking, the way she does. Say, Shirley, I’m going to see who’s on this train. I was too busy with family affairs to see if anybody got on that I knew, and the taxi made it anyway.”

“Who knows? Somebody may be going as far as Chicago at least.”

Shirley was beginning to look through her pretty new pocketbook that held so much and was so complete inside and out. She was rather glad to be alone for a little. Dick had settled them all comfortably, doing the little things that a well brought up young man can do.

Now with the male enjoyment of freedom he would stroll through the cars at his own sweet will and Shirley dismissed her cousin’s doings, for her own happy thoughts. Father and Mother were off and on the way to great things. Dear Auntie, to whom she owed this trip, would really not be lonesome, for she, too, had pleasant plans for the summer. It was just wonderful how it had all come about.

Professors in colleges have to plan for trips like this one, for great sums of money do not grow on bushes in universities. Dr. Harcourt’s resources would be strained to finance the European trip, to say nothing of Shirley’s expenses. But Aunt Anne had been heart and soul with the matter from the start. It would be of professional importance for Dr. Harcourt to take the trip, join the expedition in which the university was interested, and get material for the book on which he was working. At once Miss Dudley told them that she would undertake the care or plans for Shirley and it was by her advice that the decisions were made. The Lyttons were going on this long western trip and would be only too glad to have Shirley with them. Arrangements were made almost a year ahead of the time for Shirley’s entrance at the girls’ school.

Thoughtfully Shirley drew out her little black note-book, in which she was going to keep an account of expense as well as little notes of the trip, to be filled in by herself or Dick when they wrote letters. She was thinking what a fortunate girl she was. Cousin Molly had given her the new pocketbook. Her “lovely” new blue coat and the pretty, becoming hat Aunt Anne had selected, with her approval. Shirley’s eyes rested on the coat hanging beside her. Here came the porter with bags for the hats, and Shirley took off hers, fluffing out her golden locks with a glance at the little long mirror.

Shirley Harcourt had enjoyed very little travel, though a short trip somewhere was not unusual in the summer vacations. But Dr. Harcourt was hampered by a modest income and then he liked to stay around home, working in his library at the writing, reading books which were beyond Shirley’s comprehension, or interest.

Mr. Lytton enjoyed far more means, though the Lyttons, too, had responsibilities which kept them from travel. This was a trip long planned, one which would take almost the entire summer, with the stay that they intended in various places.

Richard Lytton was almost twenty and entering the junior year at the university in the fall. Shirley, who knew him as well as a sister would know a boy, was always deeply interested in such of his doings as he confided to her. She knew the pretty sophomore girls whom he took to the class affairs and the coquettish freshman girl of the year before, who was such a “peach,” but who left school at the close of the freshman year. Shirley wondered if Dick still wrote to her; but like a little lady, Shirley never asked questions. It was fine to have a cousin in the university and she was glad to think that Dick would still be in school when she entered. He could tell her such things as she ought to know, matters which were entirely outside of her father’s knowledge, or so she thought.

But Shirley did not know that the professors, whose minds are supposed to be upon the subjects they teach,—and they are, indeed,—are fully aware of other problems connected with the social relations and the discipline as well as the privileges of the young people in their care. To Shirley, “Dad” was just a “dear dad,” who knew “a lot” and worked “terribly hard” and was always having to see some student about lessons or his private affairs, concerning which the professor was annoyingly secretive.

Mrs. Lytton glanced at Shirley, after Dick had disappeared, but she saw that Shirley was fully occupied. After an approving survey of her pocketbook’s contents, a few scribbles in the new note-book, and a comfortable adjustment of the pillow which had been given her, Shirley was watching the rapidly flying landscape with great interest. Dick would be back when it was time for dinner in the dining car. Then it would grow dark after a while, she would have the new experience of being in a berth in a sleeper, and in the morning they would be in Chicago.

It must be said that Shirley, though keen about the coming thrills of the parks and the Rockies, had anticipated perhaps most eagerly of all seeing this huge and interesting city. It was the biggest thing in its line that she had yet seen, for Shirley’s visit to New York was yet to come.

They took rooms, engaged beforehand by Mr. Lytton, in a modest but very neat and respectable place. Part of the time with Mr. and Mrs. Lytton, part of the time with Dick, part of the time with all three of the Lyttons, Shirley saw Chicago. The banging cars, the conductors, some of them, so foreign that they could scarcely pronounce intelligently the names of the streets; the roar of the elevated trains and the fun of finding how to take them, climbing high above the surface cars and stepping hurriedly off the platform to the car that glided up so quickly; the big sight-seeing ’busses,—everything was new to Shirley.

Dick liked to go around by himself part of the time, but he also enjoyed taking Shirley around when his parents were either tired or preferred some other amusement than that which the young people chose. They would drop in to hear one of the concerts at Lyon and Healy’s, or find a popular eating place that looked attractive in between times. They visited the Art Institute together, and the museum in Grant Park, though that was too much for them. “We’ll have to take that by degrees, Dick,” said Shirley. “I can’t carry so much in my feeble mind at one time. I imagine that Mother and Father will have an awful time taking in so much in a short visit to the foreign galleries.”

“Best way is to pick out what you are interested in for details,” said Dick, “and then take a casual look through at the rest. Let’s go to Lincoln Park this afternoon.”

“All right, and remember that I have to see the Lake every day. Oh, I just dread going across Michigan boulevard again. I didn’t know that there were so many machines in the world as there are in Chicago!”

“Don’t worry. I’ll see you safely over. It’s somewhat worse than our little town at Commencement time, isn’t it?”

“Yes. To think that I thought that congestion!”

Wherever they went Dick noticed that Shirley drew the eyes of people. That, to be sure, was not so unusual, for even at home, Shirley was considered a very pretty girl. But there was a look almost like one of recognition that he noticed several times. Once, on the top of a ’bus, as they stood, undecided, in the aisle because there were no two seats together, a gentleman rose from an aisle seat, next to which another was vacant. Smiling at Shirley and tipping his hat, he moved to where a single seat gave him room and made it possible for Shirley and Dick to sit together. Shirley, standing with that air of detached poise which was natural to her, thought it only a pleasant courtesy, smiled a little in return and took the inside seat.

Dick glanced after the gentleman. “That chap thinks that he knows you, Shirley,” he said.

“Oh, no; he couldn’t,” replied Shirley, “unless he is some graduate of our school.”

“That might be,” Dick assented. “We meet ’em everywhere.”

But the next encounter puzzled Shirley a little. She and Dick had dropped into a very attractive cafeteria for lunch, on one of their trips downtown. After they had finished their lunch Shirley moved toward the door, standing aside, out of the way of people, while Dick was paying for their checks.

While Shirley stood there, interested in the scene, but not feeling a little apart from it, a short, slim little person came hurrying past, and stopped short upon seeing her. “Hello!” she said. “Seeing how the hoi polloi do it? I thought you had gone for the summer. Passed the house today and it’s all shut up. Nice looking young man you are with. Have a good time for me. Little Ollie has to earn her wages now. So long.”

Shirley stood smiling during this address, delivered rapidly, for the girl seemed to be in a great hurry. There was no chance to tell her that she must be mistaken, though Shirley’s evident surprise at being addressed might have suggested it, Shirley thought afterward.

Dick joined her immediately. “Who’s the old friend?” he asked, looking after the prettily dressed girl who was now mingling with the rest of the hurrying noon crowds on the sidewalk.

“I’m sure I don’t know, Dick, some one that thought she knew me. She stood right in front of me and never stopped to wonder if I were the right one. I must look a good deal like some one she knows.”

Then Shirley repeated the girl’s speech. “She asked me if I were seeing how the hoi polloi do it; so the girl I look like can’t be in the habit of frequenting cafeterias. And this one is a nice one, too.”

“Well, just look out that some one doesn’t try to scrape an acquaintance with you on the strength of your resemblance to somebody.”

“I don’t see how that could be done, Dick.”

The next episode, however, was very harmless and occurred the next day. Shirley was alone, stepping out of a candy shop not far from where they were staying. A handsome car drew up to the curb and permitted a lad of possibly twelve years to hop out, then drove rapidly away. The boy was well dressed, his knickers, stockings, shoes,—the whole outfit, in the latest style for boys. He started to run across the pavement toward one of the doors in the tall building, when he caught sight of Shirley.

“Oh, that’s funny,” he said. “I thought that you were out seeing the Indians by this time. Mother said,—” but here the child broke off, for some one called him from the door. “Goodbye,” he called back, as he started on after his brief halt, with a touch of his cap.

“A sweet little gentleman,” thought Shirley, who had enjoyed the friendly little speech and looked with pleasant acknowledgment at the lad when he spoke to her.

“Whoever my double is, Dick,” said Shirley, after she returned to the hotel and found Dick in the lobby, “she is due out where the Indians are, I’ve just discovered. I hope that I run across her. No, I don’t either. I’d rather there were just one of me!”

“I don’t blame you, Shirley. But you will probably never see her, especially if she has gone on West ahead of us. Besides we may not be going to the same places at all.”

“It is not very important, Dick. I’ll probably forget all about it.”

Shirley was with Mrs. Lytton later in the day, when they went with a guide through the great store of Marshall Field’s and afterward had lunch together there and shopped. Shirley wanted to send her Aunt Anne something from this particular store, just because Miss Dudley had spoken of liking it so much. It must be something nice, from her own little private fund.

For any purchase of her own, Shirley would have sought bargains, but for Miss Dudley she looked among many things far in advance of what she could pay and she rather wondered that the clerks took so much pains. It was an evident disappointment to a clerk who sold her a delicate handkerchief that she bought nothing else, and when Mrs. Lytton asked to see something less expensive than an article which was offered her, the young woman behind the counter looked decidedly surprised, giving Shirley a glance which she could scarcely interpret. But all through the store they were treated with a little more than even the customary courtesy. “I should almost think,” said Mrs. Lytton, “that they knew us.”

Shirley had not mentioned to her cousin the little encounters with those who seemed to think that they knew Shirley, and it did not seem worth while to comment upon it. But she did wonder if the resemblance had anything to do with the very particular courtesy of the clerks. She was accustomed to much the same consideration at home, for her father’s position and personality commanded the respect of his fellow townsmen. But the Harcourts by no means were expected to buy the most expensive articles upon a trip to the home shops.

The last occurrence which could be attributed to a fancied resemblance took place at the hotel, just as they were all waiting in the lobby, preparatory to leaving. A porter was standing by their luggage. Mr. Lytton was paying the bill at the desk. Dick was buying a paper. Mrs. Lytton was sitting in one of the big chairs and Shirley was standing by her, a little back of the chair, with one hand and her pocketbook resting on its well padded top.

A gentleman, conservatively dressed and looking like a prosperous Chicago business man, had previously passed them on his way from the entrance to the desk, where he talked with one of the clerks a moment and turned to make his way as rapidly out. Seeing Shirley, he paused a moment, with a look of surprise. Then he left the straight path to the door and walked briskly toward her. Mrs. Lytton, who was watching her husband from this distance, did not see him. But Shirley saw him coming and wondered what next. It might be some one whom she ought to know.

In consequence, when the gentleman offered his hand, Shirley extended hers. This might be an “old grad,” and it would never do not to remember him. There were hosts of folks who were entertained at her father’s table every Commencement and she could not always remember them.

As in the other instances, this stranger was in a hurry. Not yet had Shirley had an opportunity to say, “You are mistaken!” Nor yet had one mentioned the name of her “double!”

But this was not an “old grad.” It was evident at once as the gentleman addressed her. “Why, my dear, it is pleasant to see you in town yet. I thought that you had gone with your father. We shall miss all of you, though I expect to be in and out all summer. Mrs. Scott and the girls have gone on up to Wisconsin, you know. May you have a very delightful trip. You are looking very much better than you did when you returned at the close of school. Goodbye, my child, I must hurry back to the bank.”

Tipping his hat, this kind-looking, fatherly man sped on with true Chicago hurry. Twice Shirley had thought that she might get in a protesting word, and got no further than an apparent stammer. For Shirley was not supposed to interrupt older people and it would not have been possible to stop this rapid speech without an interruption.

Mrs. Lytton had turned, but with the confusion, inside and out, she did not catch what was said. Mr. Lytton and Dick were joining them now, the porter was gathering up the bags and in a moment they were in a taxi, on their way to the station to catch their train.

CHAPTER IV.
ON WITH THE PANORAMA.

“Who was the old codger with whom you were shaking hands, Shirley, as I came up?” Dick inquired, as once more he went through the process of settling everybody’s baggage and settled himself, too, down on a Pullman seat by Shirley.

“His name was Mr. Scott,” said Shirley demurely. At last she had one name of some one who knew her double. “I would not say that he is very old, and I’m sure that ‘codger’ does not describe him.”

“Why didn’t he shake hands with Mother first?”

“He probably did not recognize her.”

“How did you happen to know him?”

“I did not know him.” Shirley was enjoying this.

“Then why on earth would you shake hands with him?”

“Because I thought that he might be some graduate or even an important trustee that knew Father and remembered me, though you might think that I am flattering myself.”

“And he turned out not to be a trustee or anybody?”

“He was somebody, all right. He said that he supposed I had gone with my father and that I was looking better than I did right after school was out, and that Mrs. Scott and the girls had gone on up into Wisconsin ‘you know.’”

Dick threw his head back and laughed. “I saw him give a quick look back when he saw me going toward you, Shirley. He stopped a moment, almost as if he intended to come back; then he took out his watch and shot out of the door.”

“He was going to the bank,” said Shirley. “Oh, I know Mr. Scott very well indeed!”

“It is a good thing that we are leaving Chicago. Have you told Mother?”

“No; I’d forget to do it, and we have been doing such interesting things that it has not seemed very important. It’s rather mildly interesting, though, to know that some girl, probably of a well-known and wealthy Chicago family, looks enough like me to have me taken for her in broad daylight, at least by persons in a hurry, or by clerks that do not know her any too well. Perhaps I’ll write to Mr. Scott and ask him what her name is.”

“How would you address him, my dear cousin?”

“Yes. That would be a difficulty. ‘Mr. Scott, Chicago, Illinois,’ might be a bit indefinite.”

“Well, I’ll say for you, Shirley, that you look like a million dollars in that new rig of yours. You probably look so much more stunning than the original that they have to stop to speak to you.”

“Now you are a cousin worth having, Dick. Thanks awfully. Next year,—no, I can’t—the year after, when you are a senior, I’ll have all the girls that you like best in for teas and things and invite you over. Maybe the senior girls wouldn’t come to a party given by little me, though.”

“They’d be delighted to be asked to the professor’s house, even with you out of the question, which I should not admit. Moreover, my dear Shirley, how do you know that by that time a senior girl would be interesting? Now the reverend seniors are often known to have the most serious cases of their college career with sophomores, or even freshmen girls.”

“That is so. Good. I’ll know all the freshmen girls, perhaps, and I know some of the sophomore girls as it is. Just pick out one that Aunt Anne will welcome into the family!”

“That remains to be seen, Shirley. Now, look here. Let’s plan what we do when we get to Denver.” Dick pulled from his pocket one of the illustrated advertisements, published by the railroad companies. Everything else was soon forgotten in studying Colorado and its possibilities.

From that time on there was one delightful panorama of prairie, irrigating ditches, rivers, mountains, with rides among the foothills and climbs to the heights; of new birds and flowers and trees; of unafraid wild animals in the national parks; of snowy summits; of glaciers in Glacier Park and sure-footed horses on narrow trails. Shirley was not afraid to go into quiet raptures over dashing mountain streams, all the scenes so new and inspiring to her, and each new expedition. Mrs. Lytton declared that it was “as stimulating as a cup of coffee” to meet Shirley’s eagerness every morning.

“Never having had a daughter, Shirley, I did not know what I had missed, till this trip. Dick could not be spared, but I wish that we could adopt you.”

“I never made a good girl, did I?” queried Dick.

“You are a fine son,” said his mother, “and that is enough for me.”

Shirley was glad of that little speech of compliment from her cousin Molly. Thoroughly appreciating the privilege of this trip with them, she had tried in every way to make her cousins glad that she had come. There were many little ways in which she could be of service, and when they were out together, as they sometimes were without the gentlemen, they were as jolly as two girls. Mrs. Lytton was active and strong, taking part in all the rides upon the narrow trails as bravely as any of them.

One delightful experience followed another. They grew weary at times, to be sure, and there were some narrowly averted accidents, but no calamity occurred to mar their trip. When it was wise to let time intervene between undertakings, they merely tarried a little longer in some camp or hotel until they felt like resuming the onward way. They met many friendly people at different places and with the informality of American tourists, they joined forces for some trip, or discussed frankly the problems of a common country. There was one group of girls, traveling with two chaperons, who were attracted to Shirley. Their companionship made the trip through the Yellowstone lively, for they often found themselves upon the same ’bus. Dick, too, attached a young man of about his own age, a student in a different university.

But it was not until they had reached a hotel in the big and wonderful state of Washington that Shirley saw her double.

It happened in one of the corridors on the second floor about noon. The Lyttons and Shirley were leaving that night. Shirley had just been downstairs to the lobby, and as there was but one easy flight of stairs with a landing midway, Shirley did not take the elevator, but ran up the stairs instead.

Between the stairway and her room were the doors to the elevator, and as she turned from the last stair down the corridor in the direction of her room, she saw herself, apparently, standing in front of the elevator door. Even the hat was of the same color as her own, and a little fluff of golden hair curled around near the place where ears were supposed to be. The coat was not like her own, however.

The young girl was laughing and talking in an animated fashion to two girls who were with her. She faced Shirley, and Shirley, now surprised and interested, took an eager step toward her. But it was quite evident that the other girl had not seen Shirley. The elevator doors slid open just then; the three girls stepped in and were out of sight in a moment.

More mechanically than otherwise, Shirley went on toward the room with something that she was bringing Mrs. Lytton. “Why, Cousin Molly, I’ve just seen my double. It’s the queerest thing. I didn’t suppose that two people of different families could look so much alike. Oh, I haven’t told you a word about how in Chicago people kept taking me for some one.” Shirley paused, rather dazed by the experience.

Mrs. Lytton looked at her rather soberly, Shirley thought. “I wonder who it could be. Why don’t you try to find out who she is? Has she a room on this floor?”

“How stupid I am, Cousin Molly! Here I stand! It would be rather interesting to know who she is, perhaps.”

Shirley flew out of the room and down the stairs. But there was no sign of the girls in the lobby. She even went to the desk and asked rather hesitatingly if the clerk had seen any one who looked like herself pass just now.

The clerk to whom she addressed the question looked at her closely. “Yes,” he said. “A young lady enough like you to be your twin came to the desk for a moment with another young lady, who left her key. Let me see. The young lady’s name was Penn, Miss Penn. She and her mother just checked out, but she came back to get something which she had forgotten or thought that she had forgotten she said. From what was said I took it that they were going to some other hotel in the city, here. If they are friends of yours, or relatives, I may be able to trace them for you.” The clerk, as he talked, noted Shirley’s hesitation. He came to the correct conclusion that she did not know the young lady who looked so much like her. Odd, he thought.

“Thank you,” said Shirley. “I will ask my cousin if it is best to find them. We are leaving in a few hours ourselves.”

But Mrs. Lytton did not think that it would be worth while to try to find the girls. “It would only be a matter of curiosity, perhaps, and neither of you would care for acquaintance, since you say that it has not made a pleasant impression to find yourself taken for some one else. And if the girl should be some distant relative, my experience is that unless there is something in common, looking up one’s relatives is not very satisfactory,—though interesting, of course, and kinship does make a bond, unless too distant. If you really want to do it, Shirley, we can remain another day. I will let you decide the matter. We might get into touch by this evening, I’ve no doubt, and perhaps you would feel better satisfied.”

“If you leave it to me, Cousin Molly, I’ll say to go right on with our trip. For a moment, I felt like going right up to the girl and saying, ‘Look in the mirror, please,’ just for fun. But my curiosity has all oozed out and my natural timidity, Dick, has come to the fore.”

Dick Lytton, who was present at the discussion, laughed and asked Shirley again if she had told his mother all the details.

“Most of them Dick. I’ll give her the whole story while we pack up. Now let me fold up your frocks, Cousin Molly. You know you like the way I do it. Is it too soon to pack them?”

“No. Better have it done before we go out. Where did you say you were going to take us, Dick? Oh, yes. We get another and better view of the old Pacific, Shirley. Go and find your father, please, Dick.”

CHAPTER V.
SENIOR PLANS.

It was past the middle of September, but the well-kept, well-watered and closely shorn lawns of the school still looked like velvet. A little rolling, with concrete walks, flower beds, fine shrubbery, great old trees with heavy foliage, close as a grove in some portions, the large grounds contained some handsome buildings of modern make, as well as several of stately old style no longer built.

Most attractive of all, perhaps, was the lake front, where Lake Michigan stretched out widely and a boathouse of a conservative style stood by a small dock, to which were tied a number of boats. What had probably been a bluff, of no great height, had been smoothed into a gentle incline toward a strip of sandy beach. Out at some distance a strong breakwater had been constructed to protect the small shipping of this girls’ school.

Back a little in the quiet open grove, on two of the rustic benches, which had been drawn close together, a small group of girls in their summer frocks talked in animated fashion.

Any group of girls is interesting and attractive, but these girls, representing the cream, so to speak, of girls who cared enough for education to receive it and who had reached the senior year successfully, might claim a second look from anybody.

“Oh dear,” said one, “classes begin tomorrow!”

“Hate to take up the grind, Fleta?” queried another, whose locks of a reddish gold were gathered into a little net over the fluffed mass at the back of her head. Irma Reed was letting her “bob” grow out.

“Sort of,” laughed Fleta, a tall, grey-eyed girl with good features, whose hair she declared was grey at the start, though its soft ash color was becoming to Fleta’s fresh complexion.

“I shall quite welcome it,” a plump, brown-haired lass contributed. “I have had the pokiest summer that you ever imagined. It is one grand adventure to get back to school! Mother was sick all summer, too sick to leave town, even, and we could not get to our summer cottage at all. Of course no help wanted to stay where there was sickness, and beside the trained nurse I had one lone woman in the kitchen and I had to take care of one small brother and two smaller sisters and keep them quiet on account of Mother.

“I was glad to do it, of course, and you may know that I learned first aid to the injured, beside a whole kindergarten and primary course! The only poetry that I can repeat is Mother Goose and the like. But perhaps it paid. I’ve been up against some real things, girls; and I am so thankful that Mother is well now and that things are so I can come back here!”

A pair of beautiful dark eyes were watching Edith Stuart as she related her summer’s experience. A pretty little chin lifted as Sidney Thorne remarked, “‘All’s well that ends well,’ as the immortal Shakespeare hath it. You have had a hard summer, Ede. But I am rather glad, too, to get back, though I had quite as full a summer as usual of good times. It is our last year here, girls. Can you realize it?”

“Sidney has been East this summer girls,” a very slight, dainty girl remarked, with a gesture of complete information. “That’s the Boston accent she is bringing back. Yes, Sidney, I’m ‘ratheh’ glad to get back, too, and it is ha’d to realize that indeed it is our lawst year!” The girl’s face was dimpling with mischief and she shook back from her face hair almost as golden as Sidney’s own.

Sidney looked a trifle taken back at this. Sidney Thorne did not like to be made fun of and preferred to do the criticising herself if there were any to be done; but after a moment, during which she did not know whether she wanted to freeze up or not, she gave way to smiles instead.

“Little sinner,” she said, “don’t you make fun of me! But you are all wrong, though I have been with my aunt all summer and I talk more or less like her all the time, which is perfectly proper for any Standish to do! I haven’t been East at all. I was on a big western trip, partly by rail, partly by auto. If you are good, I will tell you about some of the good times I had. But give me hotels and cars, no camps except for very limited stops. I did some mountain climbing, though, and I like the riding, though I had one terrible scare, riding on a ‘sky-line,’ when the horse slipped and there were only inches to slip in.”

“Oo-ooh!” shivered Dulcina Porter.

“Not so bad,” said Sidney, “after it is over. Think how many times you just miss being hit when you cross a street, or your car just escapes a collision. The great event of the trip was going up into Alaska, where I had never been before.”

As if in memory of cool places, Sidney drew her light scarf closer around her shoulders. But the breeze from Lake Michigan’s waters was blowing more strongly just now.

“To change the subject, Sidney,” said Fleta Race, “what plans have you for the Double Three this year, and what must we have in senior doings? How about the elections and everything? What’s our play going to be and how are we going to work it diplomatically with you know whom, to have what we really want instead of working at something we’ll hate?”

Sidney smiled a little, though she was annoyed. It was like Fleta to blurt everything out, she thought. She dropped her eyes, playing with the end of her gay scarf. “Why ask me, Fleta?” she asked.

“Because you have the most influence of anybody in school, and because you are the president of the Double Three,” Fleta replied. “I’m sure that you have some little ideas. What’s been floating around in the little old brain this summer while you have been climbing and sailing and swimming and everything?”

“Don’t push our president, Fleta,” gently said Edith, who sat next to Sidney. She tapped Sidney’s proud little shoulder with a soft finger as she continued. “Of course, Sidney has ideas, but let her have a chance to work them out. If she has any plans she will tell us fast enough. This isn’t a formal meeting anyhow. It just happened.”

Edith’s remarks made Sidney feel in a more responsive mood. Fleta’s compliment, too, was not unacceptable. She had no objection to an addition to the idea, either, and said in a low tone, as if some listening spirit might be near, “What do you think, girls,—the dean spoke to me about Miss Gibson this morning. I was talking to her about several things and she said, ‘By the way, Sidney, I noticed that a number of the girls were making it hard for Miss Gibson last year. I wish that you would use your influence among them. Your scholarship is uniformly so high and your courtesy is always so irreproachable that I am sure you will want to help Miss Gibson. She was new last year, you will remember, but her knowledge and standing are such that I expect loyalty from my girls!’

“Excuse my repeating a compliment to myself, girls, but I just had to say the whole speech as she said it. Moreover, was it so much of a compliment as trying to get me to do something? I did not tell her that I detested Miss Gibson, of course, and it wasn’t the time to tell her how autocratic and disagreeable Miss Gibson is. Indeed, there were people waiting to see the dean. All that I said in reply to the dean was, ‘Yes, Miss Irving,’ though I looked attentive, and inquiring, at the proper places. Why should I tell the dean what I was thinking? Most certainly none of us intend to do any thing that is not in good form, like a few of the girls. You remember what happened in the junior English last year that time. At the same time, I do not think that they should have retained a teacher who is so objectionable to many of the best girls.”

Sidney Thorne naturally included herself and her companions among the “best girls” of the school, as she spoke in her most dignified way, with careful choice of words. If Sidney ever fell into the modern carelessness of school girl speech, it was not because she had not been trained from childhood in the best English, chiefly from having always heard it from her parents.

“I got a good deal out of my work with Miss Gibson last year, Sidney,” said a girl who had not spoken during these interchanges, though she had joined in smiles or laughter. She was not a particularly pretty girl, but had a pleasing face, one of high intelligence. A pleasant mouth and a firm, though not prominent chin, clear blue eyes, a nose as straight as Sidney’s and a broad brow, such of it as could be seen, presented a wholesome combination. Some day, when Hope Holland cared a little more about her looks, she would make a handsome young woman, but at present she was far more interested in other things. Today she wore the simplest of dark blue georgette dresses over a dark slip. Not a ring, a pin or a string of beads decorated her. Her small hands were clasped around her knees, as her heels went back under the bench to a cross bar there. Her silk hose were black and her shoes, while neat, were not as new as those of the other girls. Hope could have had them, but had not bothered.

The rest of the girls wore light dresses, with all the pretty accompaniments, though these were all in good taste and surely not out of style. No girl who had been at least a year in this school was ever seen to be over-dressed, for with the lessons from books, other lessons were taught about the fine arts of living. Whatever their private tastes, and it would be odd if no girl ever attended the school whose personal ideas were different, while here the atmosphere prevailed and had its present and often permanent influence.

“You have never said so before, Hope,” returned Sidney. “Why didn’t you come to the rescue last year? Have we a disciple of Miss Gibson among the ‘Double Three?’”

Hope laughed a little. “It takes me longer to make up my mind, Sidney, than it does some people. I could see that Miss Gibson was making a mistake in the way she handled some of the girls, but I got more inspiration out of the way she reads and the interest that she gives to all”—here Hope hesitated and Fleta inserted, “that old stuff!”

“Yes. That’s it, Fleta. Another thing I found out, and that is that Miss Gibson writes herself and gets it accepted, which is more to the point, I imagine, from what my brother tells me. So I’m going to ask her questions in class and get her to tell us things, if I get a chance.”

“Don’t imagine that she’d let you! She thinks that she has to pour the course of study in and assist the process of digestion as little as possible!”

Hope could not help smiling at Sidney’s vehemence, but to herself she thought that Sidney was not fair, as sometimes happened when a prejudice seized Sidney. Hope wondered what it was this time. Did Miss Gibson lack family, grace of manner, or was there some personal peculiarity that offended Sidney? Miss Irving was right about Sidney’s grades. Miss Gibson had not offended by any injustice to the one whom Fleta called the most influential girl in school. Was that true? Very likely.

“Nearly time for dinner, girls,” said Sidney, looking at the little jeweled watch which she wore. “Let’s walk to the beach for a minute. After all, this is a dear old place. I shall hate to leave it next spring, I suppose. One thing I want to say right now, girls, and you must make your plans accordingly. As it is our last year together, I want you to spend either all or at least part of the Christmas Holidays with me. We’ll have a house party of the Double Three. I want them all in my house, Hope, if you don’t mind, and you must come over all the time and stay all night as much as you can.”

Exclamations of delight at the plan were heard for the next few minutes. “If we should decide to take in any one else and make it a Double Four, we can still have our house party, of course. It is all fixed up with Mother.”

Hope, who lived in the same city, rather protested at her not having any one at her house, but she gave it up when she saw that it would make Sidney unhappy to interfere with her plans. Hope often gave up to the more insistent Sidney, but she was fond of Sidney and knew her good points as well as some of her faults,—the drawbacks, either in disposition or in perception of the facts of life, from which no one can be entirely free.

Together, in happy mood, the girls walked to the edge of the shore, where the restless waves of Lake Michigan broke on the sand and pebbles. Coming events of their senior year were discussed, for by this time the girls were well acquainted with the customs and traditions of their school. Events social, athletic and intellectual were talked over, from hockey and basketball to the marvelous “Prom” in the spring, perhaps the most delightful and exciting of all.

Other groups of girls were drifting toward the buildings when at last Sidney, Hope and the rest of the Double Three turned their steps in that direction. For all of them these first days were filled with expectation, along with the pleasure of meeting each other again after summer days. Adventures of one kind or another were certain to come, adventures of success or failure, adventures of friendship and adventures of good times.

CHAPTER VI.
THE “DOUBLE THREE.”

This small association of six girls, who were known as the “Double Three,” and who so denominated themselves, had drifted into the very informal organization on account of an accidental performance at Hallowe’en in their junior year. They were friends, more or less intimate then. It chanced that the Mistress of Hallowe’en celebrations, a senior of the year before, had appointed Sidney and Hope to manage some sort of a “stunt,” as those events are called.

The result was an amateur one act play, portraying more or less of a mystery. Sidney wrote most of it, or managed its production. Masks and loose black dominoes were the costume, to which the final touch was given by an oblong badge which represented the face of an ordinary ivory domino, the “double three.” The domino robe had suggested the word; the number of the girls who had been asked by Sidney and Hope to help had suggested the badge; double three sounded so much better than plain six, if something from the game were taken as a symbol.

So much was said about the stunt of the “double threes” that it was only natural for the girls to drift together more often and finally to call themselves the Double Threes, with occasional meetings and good times. But it must not be supposed that it was a definite or recognized society or anything like a sorority, for sororities did not exist in this school.

Fleta Race, Irma Reed, Edith Stuart and Sidney Thorne occupied a suite together. Dulcina Porter and Hope Holland shared one of the single rooms in the dormitory. In their junior year Sidney and Hope had roomed together; but without having any trouble, both had come to the conclusion that it would be good to try not being together, for they were friends when at home. Each would room with a “stranger” and Sidney would try being in a suite. Hope privately thought that she would not like it, for all the ways of simple school living were not what Sidney enjoyed at home. But at that Sidney was an independent soul that wanted to see if she could do what other girls did. She was not the only daughter of wealthy parents among the students here.

Previous to her sophomore year Sidney had been tutored at home, and hard indeed she found it to make up all the loose ends of her freshman year. Hope had attended another school until her junior year, when she had come to join Sidney after hearing her accounts of its superior advantages. But then, everything that Sidney did, everything that she had, all connected with herself and her family, were considered just right by the cool Sidney, so sure was she, so blandly superior to mistakes or criticism.

Hope felt a sense of relief to have no one but dainty unselfish little Dulcie around. Yet there was a charm about the superior Sidney after all, and Hope loved her. In the real living together, Sidney’s gentle training made it impossible for her to be discourteous or disagreeable. It was that unconscious assumption of superiority that Hope disliked, though she could not have analyzed it. Sidney was “proud,” she would have said. Money had nothing to do with it, for Sidney at least thought that she admired achievement and ability above everything. It was quite likely that she did not even give her father credit for having successfully managed a large business and money which he had inherited. Practical ability is not to be despised, and it is only the love of money that is the root of evil, or the silly ostentation that sometimes accompanies it.

Leaving the campus, the girls of the Double Three strolled into the parlors, where several other girls at once ran up to Sidney, as she was the latest arrival.

“I looked everywhere for you, Sidney,” said one. “Where in the world did you disappear to?”

“Oh, the girls got hold of me after I was dressed. We had so much to talk about that we went down in the grove to look at the lake and stayed there, gibbering, longer than we intended. I wanted to hunt up some more of you.” Sidney was swinging hands with this bright-eyed girl as she spoke.

“Hello, Thorne in the flesh,” cried another very tall girl, who looked down upon the shorter Sidney as she spoke. “Going to beat me in everything this year?”

“Going to try to, Olive,” returned Sidney, whirling around to look up at her old rival and exchange mild embraces.

“Well, look out, that’s all,” laughed Olive, moving away with a salute.

“Listen, Sidney,” said another miss who was trying to get to Sidney through the group. “There is going to be a meeting of the athletic board right after dinner in the library. Don’t you forget it and do something else!”

“All right, Dorothy. I’ll be there.”

There were other girls, who did not rush to meet Sidney, and one who joined the tall, competent looking Olive Mason, as she walked away from Sidney’s group, made a somewhat critical remark. “I don’t see why you should welcome Sidney Thorne so cordially, Olive. She did everything but cheat to beat you last year.”

“Good sportmanship, my dear,” replied Olive. “She didn’t cheat and it is up to me to see that my work is better than hers.”

“I think that it is, Ollie. It was just favoritism that gave her the higher grades! Sidney Thorne is a little snob!”

“I’d show myself pretty small, if I said that favoritism gave Sidney the higher grades, so never mind, Barbie. Please don’t say anything like that around where the girls can hear you. They all know that you are such a friend of mine and they might think that I felt that way. It wouldn’t look well, to say the least, Barbara.”

“Don’t worry. If I express an opinion about Sidney, I’ll see that the girls know it is my own, not yours. I’ll say this for Sidney Thorne, that she doesn’t push herself in; but she just loves it that they put her on all the boards and committees and make much of her.”

“Why shouldn’t she?” asked the fair-minded Olive. “Who wouldn’t like it? She has ideas, and is pretty and charming. I don’t say that it does not spoil her a little, but I thought it out this summer. I was jealous and disappointed, Barbie, but I decided to go right ahead seeing what I can do on my own account. I imagine that every one of us can make some place for herself if she tries!”

Barbara Sanford looked keenly at Olive. “You’re one mighty fine girl, Olive!” she exclaimed. “The girls know it, too!”

“That is good of you to say, Barbie, but it would be a pity if I hadn’t learned a few things by being in this school three years and ‘playing the game’ under our athletic director,—and isn’t it terrible, Barbie?—she’s engaged!”

“What! The Water Nymph going to leave us?”

“Sh-sh! There she is. Why, she is back for part of the year anyhow, and perhaps she will not be married before next summer.”

“I wish it had been Miss Gibson, or the math teacher. But that is the way it always is!”

“Barbie the pessimist!” laughed Olive.

After dinner Sidney was promptly on hand at the meeting of the “athletic board,” announced also at dinner. Sidney was feeling especially happy about everything. It was really glorious to be a senior, with more privileges, among the “high and mighty,” so far as age and position were concerned. Sidney knew too, that she had worked hard in these years, to justify her parents’ faith in her and to satisfy herself that she could.

The meeting was a short one, however. There were no lesson hours, but as the girls were expected to be in their rooms at a reasonable time, Sidney ran up to her suite immediately, to help her suite-mates put everything to rights. She was glowingly happy. “This is going to be the greatest fun yet,” she said. “What do you think one of the girls said to me? I won’t tell you who it was, though. She said, ‘why don’t you and the rest of the Double Three set it up about some of these elections? You could have things the way you want them!’”

Dulcie and Hope had come in and were sitting on one of the single beds, watching Fleta unpack and hang away a few last garments. Edith, mending one of last year’s cushions too pretty to be thrown away, came in and plumped herself down beside Hope.

“What did you say to that?” asked Hope, watching Sidney, who was looking critically at the arrangement of the dresser and was changing the position of several knick-knacks.

“I said nothing, says I,” facetiously answered Sidney, looking into the mirror and giving her aristocratic nose a dab with the puff from her vanity case. And it may be remarked that Sidney was also enough of an aristocrat to powder that same nose nowhere else than in her boudoir or some equally private place.

“However,” she continued, “why not use a little influence if we have it? Why be seniors for nothing?”

“They will say that we do it anyhow,” approvingly Dulcie added, swinging her slippered feet under the bed and out again. “They did last year; don’t you remember, Hope?”

“Being accused of a thing and really doing it,” said Hope, “are two very different things.”

Sidney thought that Hope was being “snippy.” She cast a glance in Hope’s direction and brightly asked, “Any objection, Hope?”

“I never cared to belong to a political gang,” laughed Hope. “We see enough of that in Chicago.”

“Calls us a ‘gang,’ girls,” whimpered Fleta, making a comical face.

“Time enough to worry about politics when there is any reason for it,” comfortably said Edith Stuart. “There isn’t any objection to our having our own ideas and working for them, especially if they are for the good of the school and not just to get our own way. Being determined to get her own way and run everybody is like Stella Marbury. I am pretty sure that it was Stella who suggested that to Sidney. Own up, Sidney. Stella wants to be one to make this a Double Four, Sidney.”

Sidney was now sitting on a straight chair in a corner by a window. “Does she?” she asked, with no change of countenance.

“If it was Stella, you’ll not get Sidney to acknowledge it now,” said Irma Reed, leaning up against the frame of the door and watching Sidney Thorne with amused eyes. “My opinion is that the Double Three’d better keep in the background unless we want the dean to consider us a sorority and tell us that we simply can’t exist. We might make it a little reading club, if we want to have it a real club. There would be no objection to that.”

“I wouldn’t even do that,” said Edith. “We are just congenial friends. If anybody reaches the same intimacy with us we might be a Double Four, perhaps. But we are not considering applications, are we, Sidney?”

“I should think not!” said Sidney, with emphasis.

CHAPTER VII.
THE SENSATION.

Coming as she did from a trip which had filled her mind with impressions of breadth and beauty, Shirley Harcourt was delighted to observe that her school environment was not to be one that was close or confined. As she was borne around the drive to Westlake Hall, she caught a glimpse of the lake’s shining waters and wound through the woods of its attractive acres.

But Shirley was tired and she wished that the summer’s travel had not taken off the freshness of the pretty coat, in which Dick thought that she looked “like a million dollars,” or faded a little the becoming hat. And she had been careful, too, wearing something else on the outdoor trips on the mountains. Her bathing cap sufficed on the California beaches.

It had not been possible for the trip to be planned for Shirley’s convenience. As they came home by a southerly route, one which Shirley thoroughly approved, nevertheless, she had found it necessary to strike north to Chicago again. This route was comparatively so near to home that she was tempted to go there, if only for a few hours.

But there was the extra expense to be considered first. Then it would be quite forlorn, after all, to go into that house and find the strangers to whom it had been rented for the year. Miss Dudley would not return until the first of October. With determination, then, Shirley put aside all home-clinging thoughts and wondered why she were not more keen about the school experience before her. She had thought it such a wonderful plan, something that she had always wanted to do,—that jolly life in a dormitory with other girls!

But Shirley’s depression was chiefly physical and a natural result of the continued delights and strain of the long summer trip. Now she was feeling refreshed by the cool, fresh lake air, and the sight of the school environment cheered her. No one was arriving with her, for Shirley was late. This was another drawback, for Shirley’s habit was to be ahead of her work, and the thought of a number of lessons in which to catch up was not a happy one. She counted up the days which had passed since the opening one,—only three. There would be no lessons recited on that day, perhaps not on the next one. She would do it, anyhow, and Shirley set her lips firmly together at the thought of it.

With rising interest, Shirley looked at the massive building with its porches and vines, as she turned from paying the man of the taxi and went up the steps. Her bag was light, but she took her time to ascend, looking around at the walks and buildings seen through the trees, and noting that there were no girls around. Glancing at her watch, she saw that it was the dinner hour.

Shirley rang the bell and was admitted promptly. The sensation had arrived. The maid gave her one look, first surprised, then questioning. “Why Miss (Shirley did not catch the name),—are you masquerading already?” she said.

Shirley looked surprised in her turn. “Will you show me to my room, please, or to some one who will direct me? Or perhaps I should see the dean first.” That, Shirley knew, would probably be impossible, if she were at dinner. “I am Shirley Harcourt, and my arrangements were all made for me.” “Yes, certainly,” said the maid. “The dean is at dinner, but there is always some one in charge at the office during these first days. I will take you there.”

More than one curious glance the maid cast at Shirley as she showed her to the office. It was as if she could not believe her eyes, and Shirley, who had almost forgotten her Chicago experiences by this time, wondered if this were not some one from Chicago, who must know her “double.”

“It will be possible, I think, for you to have dinner,” said the maid. “I will be ready to see you when you are through in here. Miss Schiff, this is Miss Shirley Harcourt, who wants to see you about the room reserved for her.”

The maid was enjoying this introduction, it was very evident. She was quite a superior sort of maid, Shirley could see. Probably she was some girl who was paying her way with this part service. Shirley was accustomed to that in her college town. She dimly saw the neat office with its desks and safe, its tables and chairs. Miss Schiff was looking at her with bright amusement. “What in the world?” she asked. “Are you joking me, Emma? But no,—” Miss Schiff was looking at the traveling garb, the bag and the tired girlish face.

“I am Shirley Harcourt,” firmly said Shirley. “If you will find the list of girls and their rooms, you will see my name. I have been on a western trip and I could not get here before.”

“I see,” kindly said Miss Schiff. “Excuse me. I took you for some one else at first. I will look up the matter at once. Just sit down. You can go out to dinner with me presently.”

“Thank you, but my head aches a little and I should like bed better than anything else. I had a late lunch in Chicago, and then I had some fruit and a sandwich on the local train that brought me here. Probably they gave me the headache.”

“Perhaps a hot drink would help you,” Miss Schiff suggested, “but that is as you like.”

In a few moments Shirley knew the number of her room, and the maid whom Miss Schiff called Emma took her to a room on the second floor. It was already occupied, Shirley saw, but there stood her pretty cedar chest, already uncrated and ready to be unlocked for the sheets and pillow slips which must go on that comfortable looking single bed. The big portmanteau which had accompanied her on the western trip also stood on one side of the large closet.

Pretty frocks hung in the closet, all on one side. Shirley wondered who her room-mate was to be, but her head throbbed too unpleasantly now for her to do anything but make up her bed, take a hurried bath and crawl thankfully under the covers. Her room-mate, of course, would be surprised to find her there, but she couldn’t help that.

It happened that her room-mate did not come in or think of doing so until after the time for study hours to commence; for with the other girls she had gone out on the campus for a while, and meantime she heard that Shirley Harcourt had arrived. “You will find a little surprise in your room,” said Miss Schiff to Madge Whitney, whom she met as she went to dinner, through the flocks of girls that came from the dining hall.

“My room-mate’s come, has she, Miss Schiff? Why doesn’t she come to dinner?”

“She had a severe headache and wanted to get to bed. You might study in the library, Madge, or with Caroline again. I will give you permission.”

“Oh, thank you, Miss Schiff! My books are all in Cad’s room anyhow. Did she look like a nice girl?”

Miss Schiff laughed. “Yes, she looked like a very nice girl, so much like one, in fact, that you may find her more of a surprise than you think.” With an amused look, Miss Schiff hurried on.

“Now what did she mean by that?” asked Madge of her friend Caroline Scott. “Do you suppose that she is some precise prunes, prisms and persimmons creature that I won’t like at all? I’ve a great mind to run up and see!”

“And make a great hit right at the start!” Caroline suggested.

“That is so. If she has a headache, she may be in a warlike frame of mind. I’ll not risk it. Poor thing! It’s bad enough to be late getting to school, let alone having a headache ‘right at the start.’ Will you lend me a pencil, Cad? Then I’ll not have to go to the room at all till bedtime. Dear me,—if we only could have roomed together this year!”

“Yes; but I am not going to let rooming with Stella Marbury spoil my senior year. We get along all right, and she spends half her time away from the room practicing anyhow. It would never have done not to room with the girl from my home town.”