“And so, having ended her pilgrimage through the Land of College, Loyalheart is going back to Haven Home,” said Kathleen West softly.

“You’re a very lucky Loyalheart,” was J. Elfreda Briggs’ brisk comment.  “Not every one who goes adventuring into strange lands finds the home of her chee-ildhood an interesting place to settle down in.  Now take Fairview, for instance.  I wouldn’t go trotting back there on a cut-rate excursion, let alone making a pilgrimage to the sacred, I mean scared, spot.  That’s the way it looks, you know; as though it had once tried to grow and then been frightened out of it.  I never was so glad in all my life as when Pa said we’d kiss that town good-bye.  I could see that I’d never make my everlasting fortune there as a lawyer.”

“You mean lawyeress, according to the Dean vocabulary,” reminded Arline Thayer with a giggle.

“What is life without Emma Dean?” smiled Anne Nesbit.  “I wish she were here to-night.”

“I wrote her, asking her to pay me a visit while you girls were here,” stated Arline, “but she wrote back voluminous and ridiculous thanks and said the reunion was about as much as she could manage.”

“That reminds me,” broke in Elfreda, in business-like tones, “where are we going to hold the reunion this year and at what time?  Not much of July is left us.  August will scud by like a flash and then ­Well, Grace can tell you why September won’t be a strictly popular time for a reunion.  Sara and Julia Emerson want us to have it at their camp in the Adirondacks.  That’s rather a long distance for Emma to come.  You know she lives farther away than the rest of us.  Why can’t you come down to Wildwood again?  I am nothing if not hospitable.”

“But it’s my turn, now, J. Elfreda,” protested Arline.  “Why can’t you come here?”

“What’s the use in taking turns?” propounded Elfreda sturdily.  “I am an extremely selfish person who never bothers about such little things as mere ‘taking turns.’  Now that four of you girls have your faces set toward wedding rings, it’s high time something was done to console me.  There!  Resist that argument if you can.  Am I a credit to my profession, or am I not?”

“You are,” chorused five laughing voices.

Several days had elapsed since Grace Harlowe had accompanied Tom Gray and his aunt on the mysterious mission that had brought her Haven Home.  Following that memorable morning, the delightful events of which had offered such signal proof of the adoration of her dear ones, Grace had moved about as one lost in a maze of quiet happiness.  Every now and then her mind would halt suddenly in the perusal of the blessings that were hers to wonder almost wistfully if it were not all too beautiful, too dear, to last.

Sometimes she marveled that, after so long and persistently keeping love out of her busy life, she should have at length come into its purest realization.  Once the very thought of it had irked and distressed her.  Now she experienced a sense of deep surprise that she had been so blind.  Her Golden Summer had indeed descended upon her in all its radiant glory.  She rejoiced in the long peaceful mornings spent with her mother on the vine-clad veranda, or in the clematis-wreathed summer house at the end of the garden.  They were busy mornings, too, filled with the joy of preparing the countless dainty odds and ends, so necessary to her trousseau.  Their hands never idle, they talked long and earnestly of the things which lay nearest their hearts, and a strange peace, which Grace’s naturally restless temperament had never before known, enveloped her like a mantle.

Though anxious to meet her friends again in New York City, Grace had sighed with genuine regret at leaving this new-found peace and departing from Oakdale on the most momentous shopping tour she had ever before set out to make.  She and her mother had gone directly to the home of the Nesbits, where a most cordial welcome awaited them.  Two days had passed since their arrival.  It was now the evening of the second day and the five girls whose fortunes had been so firmly linked together at Overton College, by a series of happenings grave and gay, were paying a brief, overnight visit to Arline Thayer at her home in East Orange.

“Thank you.”  Elfreda bowed at the unanimous response.  “As an esteemed representative of the law and a forlorn bachelor girl, I really think my plea deserves some small consideration.  I might also add that I could see you were all anxious to come to Wildwood.  I appreciate your delicate opposition.”  Elfreda grinned boyishly.  “Now that we’ve decided where, we’d better decide when the reunion is to be.”

“We didn’t decide where, did we?” tantalized Miriam.  “We only decided that you were a distinguished lawyeress.”

“Having once admired me, can you refuse my humble request?” retorted Elfreda, with a sentimental rolling of her round blue eyes.

“Let’s put her out of her misery,” proposed Miriam.  “Wildwood for me, Elfreda, provided the rest are pleased.  How about you, Arline?  As an almost-wed are you willing to sacrifice your reunion claim to Elfreda?”

“Of course.”  Arline made genial response.  A peculiar look shot into her pretty eyes, however, as she nervously began to turn the jeweled pledge of engagement that decked her ring finger.  She seemed about to break into further speech, then set her red lips with decision and remained silent.

Seated beside her on a willow settee, which they had occupied together since repairing to the veranda after dinner, Grace alone noticed Arline’s sharply drawn brows and the sudden ominous tightening of her baby mouth.  She wondered vaguely what it might mean.  Surely Arline was not angry because Elfreda had begged for the privilege of holding the reunion at Wildwood.  She was of too sunny a disposition to become thus disturbed by such trifles.  She had always been far more ready to give than take.  Grace now recalled that even in the midst of Arline’s joy at seeing her, there had been a hauntingly wistful look in the dainty little girl’s blue eyes.

Under cover of Kathleen West’s lively account of a big story which she had run to earth after a week’s assiduous pursuit, Grace’s kindly hand found Arline’s.

“What is the matter, Daffydowndilly?” she asked just above a whisper.  “You don’t appear to be quite your usual cheerful self.”

“You noticed, then?” counter-questioned Arline in an equally guarded tone.  “I’m glad you did.  Still, I was going to tell you, anyway.  Wait until later.  I have arranged for you to room with me to-night.  Then I’ll tell you all.  But not now.  No one else must know.”

With a soft pressure that betokened loyal sympathy, Grace released Arline’s little hand and turned her attention to Kathleen, who was holding her small audience spellbound by a recital of the very audacity of her deeds as a star reporter.

“Won’t you miss all that when winter comes and you cease to be Kathleen West?” questioned Anne, a trifle anxiously.  She too had had to decide between publicity and love.  “You’ve lived in a whirl of exciting happenings so long that settling down for good will seem rather tame.”

“I shall love it.”  Kathleen’s sharp black eyes glowed with intensity.  “Trailing news is all right for a few years, but I’d hate to go on with it forever.  There are so many things I’d like to do that I’ve never had the time to dream of doing.  I’m going to keep on writing, just the same as ever.  Neither Gerald nor I care to begin making a home just yet.  We shall board and write in the evenings together.  You see he is the literary editor of Crawford’s Magazine now.  That means that we can spend our evenings together.  We are going to collaborate on a play and, oh, we have planned to do lots of things.  I imagine we shall carry out some of our plans in time.  We have already collaborated on several magazine stories and worked them out beautifully.  You see, neither of us is jealous of the other’s work.  If we were, then I’d prefer to stay Kathleen West.”

“You are fortunate,” remarked Arline almost bitterly.  Again a shadow crossed her face which Grace alone noted.

“I decline to share my successes with any mere man,” asserted Elfreda grandly.  “Not that I have been what you might call entirely slighted.  Wait until I tell you the sad story of my one love affair.”

“This is vastly interesting,” mused Miriam.

“Tell us about it this minute.”  Arline brightened visibly.  Elfreda’s promised tale of tragedy was sure to turn out comedy.

“Let me see,” began Elfreda with a fine air of reminiscence.  “We met last year in a corridor of the law school, I was making a wild rush down and he was making an equally wild rush up.  Result, we collided.  Just like that,” Elfreda brought her hands smartly together to illustrate the force of that momentous collision.  “I wasn’t overcome with joy at this slam-bang introduction.  I had seen him often from afar and never admired him.  He was at least three inches shorter than yours truly, had a snub nose and freckles.  All of which was not romantic.

“That was the beginning; but not the ending.  The next time I met him, he claimed beaming acquaintance.  After that he pursued me madly.  He was always bobbing up in the most unexpected places.  It gave me a feeling of being haunted.  At first I bore it like a martyr.  I hated to hurt his feelings.  After a while it began to get on my nerves.  About that time he began to make sentimental remarks.  I carefully explained that I did not believe in love.  That only made matters worse.  He rolled his eyes and vowed that he would convince me.  Then he began sending me letters and love lyrics.  The lyrics were so original they were positively weird.

“But in my darkest hour of oppression I stumbled upon a remedy.  I happened to remember a girl who was an art student.  I also remembered that she was terribly sentimental.  So I dragged my pursuer along with me to a water-color exhibition that I knew she expected to attend.  They met.  I perpetrated the introduction.  It turned out even better than I had dared to hope.  The funny part of it was that both of them were afraid I’d be angry.  The deeper they fell in love, the harder they tried to keep it from me.  After a while Charles, that was my perfidious idol’s name, came to me with a long face and confessed.  I suppose his conscience troubled him.  He told me that he had made a terrible mistake in thinking himself in love with me.  I humbly agreed with him that he had.  He assured me that he now knew that he could never have been happy with me.  Before he got through explaining, it struck me as being so funny that I laughed in his face.  Now he doesn’t speak to me.  Neither does the girl.  She evidently believes that she snatched away my last chance.”

The cheerful smile Elfreda turned on her amused listeners as she ended her recital was hardly an indication of deep sorrow for her double loss.

“That reminds me of Emma Dean’s one romance,” smiled Grace.  “I shan’t tell you about it.  Wait until we have the reunion and I’ll ask her to dig up her sentimental past for your benefit.”

“I hope I can arrange my vacation so that I can attend the reunion, too,” sighed Kathleen.  “As Patience Eliot and I have been invited to be the Sempers’ guests of honor, naturally I don’t care to miss it.”

“Can you get away from the paper at any time during August?” asked Anne thoughtfully.

“Yes; but only for a week,” Kathleen spoke regretfully.

“Then let us decide upon the time now,” proposed Miriam.  “I am sorry to be a kill-joy, but one week will have to be my limit this year.  I wish I could spare two, but it’s impossible.”

“I intended to speak of that,” nodded Elfreda.  “I’d love to have you girls with me longer but I know that most of you are cramped for time.  So I’ll be magnanimous and say, ‘thank you for small favors.’”

The subject of the reunion thus renewed, it was decided to hold it during the second week in August, and the six friends began an avid planning for it.  From that the conversation drifted back to Overton College, always a fruitful topic for discussion.  It was truly a heart-to-heart talk.  Because of the perfect fellowship that existed among them, they could look back and speak frankly not only of their lighter hours, but also of the graver moments when the struggle to reach their aims had seemed well-nigh impossible.

Half-past eleven o’clock found them still lingering on the veranda, the incessant murmur of their busy voices proclaiming their mutual satisfaction in being together once more.  When at last a voluble procession wended its way upstairs to bed, the usual amount of visiting between rooms was carried on with the old-time fervor of college days.

“It’s exactly like old times,” declared Elfreda to Miriam.  “Here we are, you and I, rooming together again just as we did at Overton.  Sometimes when I stop to think that those days are gone for good and all, it gives me the blues.  I can’t realize that you, Miriam Nesbit, and Grace Harlowe, too, are actually grown-up and getting ready to be married.  Why it seems only yesterday since I was the verdant freshman who invited herself to room with you and kept you in hot water for a whole year because she didn’t know enough to behave like a human being.”

“What about the Elfreda Briggs who proved herself the most loyal friend and roommate one could ever hope to have?” demanded Miriam, laying a friendly hand on Elfreda’s shoulder.

“Oh, I had to get in line,” returned Elfreda with a flashing affectionate glance that belied her brusque words.  “I could see that the way I had started out wouldn’t take me far.  You and Grace made me over.”

“Yet, if it hadn’t been for Grace I would have stayed a hateful, conceited snob all my days,” returned Miriam soberly.  “There isn’t one of us who doesn’t owe her a debt of gratitude that we can never hope to repay.  If happiness is the certain reward of good works, then Grace Harlowe ought never to know an unhappy moment.”

Miriam spoke with a certainty born of her deep regard for Grace.  To her it seemed that naught save the brightest of futures could come to her friend.  Yet happiness is at best a fragile, evanescent thing.