It is more than two years later. The class of '09 had been holding a reunion in New York. A number of the members lived in that city, and others were within easy access of it. So Constance had proposed that there should be semi-annual reunions at her home for as many as could come. Several of these reunions had been held now, and the girls enjoyed them, perhaps even more than the yearly gatherings at Westover during Commencement week, when they did not really have time to compare notes and gossip, as they liked to do, over all the little happenings of the past year. This time there seemed even more news than usual to be talked over and discussed. Sarah Weston would sail the next week for India as a missionary, Grace Egle was studying medicine, Ellen Terence and Kate Seaton were doing work on New York newspapers, and were doing it well, too. Margaret had run off for a day from the well-known college in which she had a good position; Mary was there, too, but after the holidays she would go west, for she had accepted the chair of Biology in a new woman's college just started there. One of the girls was singing in a fashionable church, though, when she used that adjective, Beth protested vigorously. "I think that it is horrible to speak of a fashionable church. I know that it is often done, but a church that merits such an adjective cannot be a church in the true sense of the term." There had been some lively talk on the subject after Beth's remark, and the girls had enjoyed it, for it seemed like the old days at Westover, when they were constantly picking each other up and holding conversational tilts. Another of the class was doing lyceum work as a public reader. Still another had opened a kindergarten, and many more, like Beth and Dolly, were filling quietly and efficiently the little niches at home which sadly needed them. For the most part, college life had broadened all of the girls, so that none of them were entirely content to lead a perfectly useless life of fashion and gayety. Constance herself had gone into college settlement work, just as she had planned to do long before. After the rest of their classmates had gone, Mary and the "diggers" (for the old name seemed still to cling to them) stayed for a cosy chat with Constance. Beth and Dolly, indeed, would stay for a couple of days longer. They were sipping tea, which Constance had insisted on making, when her sharp eyes caught the gleam of a new ring on Margaret's finger. "Who gave you that, Meg? Are you keeping secrets from your crowd? I wouldn't have believed it of you." Margaret flushed richly. "I truly meant to tell you girls before I left tonight, but it was not easy to tell someway. It is absurd to think of it, but really, I am going, if nothing happens, to be Abby Dunbar's sister some day." "Margaret! how lovely! no, not that you will be her sister, but that you will be Raymond Dunbar's wife, for he is as broad and generous and fine as she is petty and narrow."