Page:Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall.djvu/88

80 The chums hurried, then, to get ready for sleep. "Don't you hope we'll dream something very nice?" whispered Helen as she plunged into bed first.

"I hope we will," returned Ruth, waiting to see her comfortable before she turned out the light and bent over her chum to kiss her. "Goodnight, Helen. I hope we'll be just as good friends here, dear, as we have been since we met."

"Of course we will, Ruthie!" declared Helen, quite as warmly.

"We will let nobody, or nothing, come between us?" said Ruth, a little wistfully in the dark.

"Of course not!" declared Helen, with added emphasis.

Then Ruth crept into her own bed and lay looking at the whiter patch of the nearest window long after Helen's gentle, regular breathing announced her chum asleep. There were few other sounds about the dormitory. A door shut softly in the distance. Somewhere a dog barked once. Ruth was not sleepy at all. The day's doings passed in a not unpleasant procession through her mind.

It seemed a week—yes! a month—since she had left the Red Mill that morning. She again went over the pleasant road with the Camerons and Mrs. Murchiston to Cheslow. She remembered their conversation with good Dr. Davison,