Margaret was to go home with Constance for the entire vacation. She had demurred about leaving her mother, but Mrs. Hamilton had insisted strongly that she should go for the whole time. "It is not as if you were where I could not see you every day, dear. Of course, I would love to have you with me, but just now I would much rather have you visit Miss Van Gerder." And Margaret, seeing that her mother really meant what she said, yielded the point, and went home with Constance. There was to be a house party at Constance's for the last week of the vacation. Dolly and Beth were invited as well as Hope Brereton and Hazel Browne. "I don't know Miss Sutherland well enough to ask her to be of our party," Constance said to Dolly. "She is so far away from home that I would like to ask her if I felt better acquainted. I don't see how you ever came to know her. She absolutely repels all advances." Dolly laughed, although she was inwardly provoked with Mary. What good times she was cheating herself of! Could she not recognize genuine goodness when she saw it? What made Mary so blind and obtuse in these days? "Mary is just like a chestnut-burr on the outside," she replied now to Constance. "Sometime she will get tired of pricking all of her friends, and then everyone will see what a genuine heart of gold she has." "I hope she will shed the burr soon, for her own sake. People do not like to get stung and pricked when they approach her in a friendly manner." "I have preached until I am tired. We must leave her alone now. I am going to take her home with me, and Mother intends keeping her after I go on to your house. She is quite in love with Mother, and is as nearly demonstrative with her, as it is possible for Mary to be with anyone. We shall be a very congenial party at your house, Constance. You always do manage to get together people that suit." "I am afraid that you will take back that remark when you know of one more invitation that I want to give today." "What in the world do you mean?" "Don't be stunned, but I want to have Margery Ainsworth. Shall I?" "The idea of asking us whom you shall invite to your own home! How absurd!" "But you don't like Margery." "I hadn't known that you did either," Dolly said frankly. "I have felt a little sorry for her lately. We have seen more or less of each other all our lives; we both live in New York, and as children we went to the same kindergarten, and we have seen each other with some frequency during all the in-between years. Just now Margery is not having an easy time. Instead of being a junior, as she would have been in the ordinary course of events, she is only a freshman, but I have learned that she is doing extra work and has taken some extra examinations. She hopes to come into our class as a full sophomore after Christmas." "I wonder what has roused her so. She was never a student in any sense of the word, last year."