"It was certainly nice in Jean to say what he did to me about my being your friend," was Elfreda's abrupt comment when, after saying good-bye to Mrs. Gray, the two young women started down Chapel Hill toward home. "It was the highest compliment that he could pay me. If there had been time I'd have liked to tell him a few of the reasons for it. I guess he would have understood then that I had special cause to be loyal to you. I don't mean by that that anybody would have to have special cause to be _your_ friend. One would only have to meet you once, Grace Harlowe, to know that your friendship would be the kind worth having. That is, if one had any sense. That time I plumped myself down in your seat when we were bound for Overton College to begin our freshman year, I was too much wrapped up in myself to know how lucky I was. Isn't it queer, though, how things like that are often the means by which we begin the staunchest friendships?" "Yes, it _is_ strange. If we hadn't met on the train that day in that way, you might have decided to go to another boarding place instead of taking up with Mrs. Elwood's offer to you to share Miriam's room. Then, very likely, we might never have become well acquainted. There were ever so many girls at Overton College during the six years that I spent there, whom I never came to know really well." Grace looked regretful. "But they all knew you," was the staunch retort. "You are as much of an institution there now as Harlowe House is. Your name has become a household word at Overton College. Emma and I were speaking of that very thing at the reunion. She said that if she were manager of Harlowe House for the next twenty years she'd never come to be known as well there as you were in the time you spent at Overton." "Emma is a wily old flatterer and so are you," laughed Grace. "Just because you girls like me you think the whole world ought to fall in line and worship me." Her bantering tone changing to seriousness she continued, "Not that I don't appreciate your affection, and love you with all my heart for it. Neither of you ever stops to think how much credit you both deserve. Sometimes I wonder what I ever did to bring me so many true friends. I never properly realized their worth until this summer. Living in the shadow has taught me a great deal. "The very fact that all my friends have stood by me so firmly has made me see that I owe it to them to be strong and steadfast through all. It has taught me, too, that I can't afford to be selfish. When Tom first went away I used to think that, if he never came back, there wouldn't be anything worth living for, ever again. But it came to me by degrees that such a viewpoint was utterly selfish; that I had a great deal to live for. Father and Mother, first of all; then Mrs. Gray and my friends. So I made up my mind that if worse came to worst, I would devote myself to them more than ever and thus try to make up for my own loss."