On Wednesday noon college would close for the balance of the week. Those students who lived near enough could go home to eat their Thanksgiving dinners, the rest would stay at the Hall and get up such impromptu entertainments as the occasion suggested and their genius could devise. Dolly was one of the fortunate ones who could go home. Mary lived west of the Rocky Mountains, and Beth seemed to have no desire to go home. Dolly was wild over the prospect. Fred was coming home from Harvard, and she could stay until the early morning train on Monday. "It is worth getting up at four o'clock," she announced decidedly. "Oh, by the way, I'll send Fred a telegram signed 'Vice-President Class '09.' That doesn't sound as big as 'President' would, of course, but it will do. Patrick will take it down to the office for me. Blessed Patrick." She scratched off her message humming gaily: "Hurrah! hurrah! oh, jubilation! Two more days and then vacation; No more Latin, no more French, No more sitting on a hard wooden bench." She turned suddenly and caught an expression of utter homesickness and loneliness on her room-mate's face. Beth was looking hard and bitter, a look that Dolly had come to know and dread. She mentally anathematized herself for talking of home before these two girls. Then a brilliant thought struck her. "I have a bit of news for you," she announced briefly. "It may be of interest to you. The fact is, you are both going home with me on Wednesday." Her companions stared at her. "Don't be a goose, Dolly. 'Tis very good of you to propose it, but your father and mother, to say nothing of that brother of yours, will want all of your time. They will not care to have strangers there whom they must entertain." "They will not entertain you, my dear. I am taking you to entertain a couple of boys whom Fred proposes taking home. Don't you see how useful you can make yourselves?" "Elizabeth could," Mary Sutherland replied quietly, but with a certain wistfulness. "I would be no help at all. I never could talk to boys; then, I have no clothes to wear, and you would be ashamed of me." "If you cannot entertain boys, you must learn to do it before you are a week older. No one expects college girls to have many clothes, so that part of the question is disposed of. I am going to send an extra telegram to Mother now, so that she will be sure to get a large turkey. I don't want you to go hungry when you eat your Thanksgiving dinner with me." "But, Dolly--" "Oh, will you please be still? Both of you? You interrupt me." "You are wasting your money by sending that telegram, and your strength in writing it," said Beth coolly, "for I, at least, am not going." But Dolly had a very persuasive way of her own, and in the end both Beth and Mary Sutherland succumbed, the latter, however, not without sundry misgivings. "You know that my dresses are old-fashioned and I cannot afford any new ones. Will you not be ashamed of me?"