"Well, don't mention anything about it to the other girls; it would only make their mothers nervous. Your box shall be left in Harlingden this afternoon, when the second batch of luggage goes. I suppose you can walk to your cousin's house. They'll be expecting you?" "Oh, yes! Mother would tell them what time I am coming." Avelyn went back to the Cowslip Room and began to put her various possessions into her box. The packing was a stale business, without any heart in it. It is horrible to be obliged to pay a visit when you don't want to go. In spite of Miss Thompson's injunctions, she could not help confiding her ill news to her room-mates. It was impossible to keep her woes bottled up in her own breast. She wanted sympathy badly. "Hard luck!" said Laura. "Beastly not to be going home!" agreed Janet. "Poor old sport! I'll send you some picture post cards," consoled Ethelberga. "Suppose you break out in spots at your cousin's?" suggested Irma. This was a new view of the case that had not before occurred to Avelyn. "I'd _welcome_ them!" she declared. "I'd get Cousin Lilia to put me in an ambulance and pack me off home." "Suppose they wouldn't? They might say it was too far, and send you to the fever hospital instead." "I wouldn't stay. I'd run away and manage to get home somehow. By the by, don't tell anybody else about this. Miss Thompson told me to keep it dark." "Right you are! We won't blab." All five girls were busy packing. Their beds were strewn with blouses, stockings, and other impedimenta. In the midst of the proceedings entered Miss Hopkins, rather flustered and overdone with the responsibility of seeing that thirty-six boarders took their essential possessions home with them. "Dear me, you're very slow in this dormitory!" she observed. "The Violet Room have finished and gone downstairs. If there were less talking you'd get on a good deal quicker. Here are your reports," dealing out from a packet in her hand five envelopes, addressed respectively to Mrs. Watson, E. A. Ridley, Esq., Mrs. Talbot, Colonel Duncan, and the Rev. F. Carnforth. "Now, make haste! I shall expect to find your boxes strapped when I come up again." Miss Hopkins departed to do her duty in other dormitories, leaving a sensation as of east wind behind her. Avelyn stood staring at the envelope. She was anxious to see her report for this term. The Watson family were lax as regarded letters; at home they usually passed round their correspondence as common property. She tore open the envelope, therefore, and read the report. It was quite a good one, and ended: "Has done conscientious work, and shows marked improvement." Avelyn purred with satisfaction. "Tommiekins is a dear! Mother will be ever so pleased. Even Hopscotch has given me 'satisfactory', which is more than I expected from her, and Mr. Harrison has put 'painstaking' for music, though I know he thinks I'm rather a duffer at it."