"Blessed if I'd do a thing for you if it wasn't likely to be the last race we'll have in one while. Look at _those_," interjected Archie Carey, coming over from the letter window where he had gone to ask for the mail and slamming upon the counter beside the boxes of candy half a dozen plump letters. Three bore the addresses of the schools under consideration. All three faces grew sober. "I'll bet those will settle your hash Bev," was Athol's comment. "Ah, why couldn't you have been a boy instead of a girl anyhow," protested Archie. "Then you'd have come along with us as a matter of course and our good times wouldn't have all been knocked into a cocked hat." "Come on. Let's go home," said Beverly soberly, as she gathered up her boxes, nodded to Mr. Telford, and took her mud-splashed self from the store, the boys lingering to pay the bill. She had remounted Apache when they joined her, Archie carrying the letters which he stuffed viciously into the mail-bag strapped to his saddle. Then the two boys sprang upon their waiting horses. As they rode in silence Beverly glanced down at her khaki riding skirt and at Apache's mud-splashed body, and the next moment had stopped short, exclaiming: "Look at us, and I promised mother I wouldn't race!" "You did!" exclaimed the boys in duet. "I sure did," she repeated with a solemn nod. This was too much for her companions and the woodland bordering the road echoed to their shouts. When they had regained some self-control Athol asked: "Well, what are you going to do about it?" "Do? I'm going to stop at the branch and scrub some of this mud off Apache and myself, for if we show up like this mother will think I've been acting ten times worse that I really have, though goodness knows it's bad enough as it is. I didn't mean to break my promise, but I couldn't let you boys put it all over me like you did and not get back at you. Now get out of the way while I clean up, and maybe you could do a little on your own accounts and not suffer for it either. 'Snowdrift!' He looks exactly like one after a spring thaw." The boys glanced at the beautiful white horse and then at each other. The ensuing fifteen minutes were spent in the vigorous grooming of their steeds, Beverly scrubbing Apache as energetically as Archie and Athol did Royal and Snowdrift. Flat sticks served as scrapers and bunches of dry grass for cloths. When the animals looked a little less like animated mud pies Beverly turned her attention to her riding skirt. To restore that to its pristine freshness might have daunted a professional scourer. The more she rubbed and scrubbed the worse the result and finally, when she was a sight from alternate streaks of mud and wet splotches, she sprang upon the startled Apache crying: