Elise visited us in the spring a year ago about this time (it seems like a century to me) and my misfortunes began to pour in the following fall, when I was a senior, and seventeen years old. That last year of high school had started in to be a very happy one for me. Father had finally allowed me to go to dancing-school; mathematics was a bugbear of the past; and our basket-ball team was a perfect winner. I loved dancing-school. It came every Saturday night from eight to ten, and Juliet Adams used to call for me in her closed carriage and drop me afterwards at my door. I remember that on that last Saturday night I was particularly full of good-feeling, for I kissed Juliet good-bye--a thing I seldom do--and called back to her as I ran up the steps, "Good-night. See you at Church." I was never so unsuspecting in my life as I opened the front door. But the instant I got inside the house and looked into the sitting-room, I knew something was wrong. The entire family was all sitting about the room doing absolutely nothing. Father was not at his roll-top desk; the twins were not drawn up to the centre table studying by the student-lamp; Alec was not out making his Saturday night call; and, strangest of all, Ruthie was not in bed. "What's the matter?" I asked. "Take your things off and come in, Lucy," said Father. I didn't stir. My heart stood dead still for an instant. I grabbed hold of the portière. "Something has happened to Tom," I gasped, so sure I didn't even have to ask. I suppose I must have looked horribly frightened, for one of the twins blurted out, in the twins' frank brutal way, "Oh, say, don't get so everlastingly excited. Tom's all right, for all we know. So's every one else. Do cool off." Ruthie giggled. She always giggles at the twins, and I knew then that my sudden fear had been for nothing. The angry colour rushed into my face. "Smarties!" I flung back at the twins with all my might. "Oh, Lucy!" I heard Father murmur, and I saw Alec drop his eyes as if he were ashamed of such an outburst from his seventeen-year-old sister. "I don't care," I went on. "Why do you want to frighten me to death? What's the matter with you all, anyway? What are you all doing? Why isn't Ruthie in bed? Why are the twins--" "It's all about _you_!" Malcolm interrupted in a sort of triumphant manner. "Me!" I gasped. "What in thunder--" "Oh, Lucy!" Father again murmured. "Well, what," I continued, "have you all been saying about _me_?" And I sat down on the piano-stool. Father cleared his throat the way he does before he asks the blessing, and every one else was quiet. I knew something important was coming. "Lucy," Father said, "we think the time has come for you to go to boarding-school." It hit me like a hard baseball and I couldn't have spoken if I were to have died. Father went on in his sure, unfaltering way.