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160 Prettyman will lecture me? She'll say that at my age I ought to have something in my head besides excuses to talk to the boys!"

The girls laughed, recognizing the ring of prophecy in Bobby's speech.

"That's nothing—I'm to row Dora Estabrooke twice around the lake," mourned Louise. "She weighs two hundred, if she weighs a pound. Thank goodness, I don't have to do it to-night."

Norma was instructed to walk three times around the cellar, chanting "Little Boy Blue" before ten o'clock that night. Frances Martin, to her horror, was enjoined to produce six live angle worms the following morning—"and you know I despise the wiggling things," she wailed. Alice Guerin, the silent member of the octette, was condemned to recite "The Children's Hour" in the dining room "between cereal and eggs." And Constance Howard was told she must add up an unbelievably long column of figures and present the correct answer within half an hour. Constance's bête noir was figures, and already these long columns danced dizzily before her eyes.

"You needn't tell me that chance made such canny selections," observed Betty. "One of those girls manipulated the right notes into our hands. Libbie, what does yours say?"

Libbie handed her slip of paper to Betty without a word.