"So do I." Elfreda's shrewd eyes grew wistful. "I know I'd have the best time ever if I went home with you, but I feel as though I ought to go with Laura. She would have been so disappointed if I had refused her invitation. That sounds conceited, doesn't it? But you can see how things are, can't you?" "I can, indeed," returned Miriam, and the significance of her tone left no doubt in Elfreda's mind regarding her roommate's understanding of things. CHAPTER XXII GRACE'S PLAN The Easter vacation slipped away at the same appalling rate of speed that had marked the passing of all Grace's holidays at home. There were so many pleasant things to do and so many old friends to welcome her return to Oakdale that she sighed regretfully to think she could not possibly accept one half of the invitations that poured in upon her from all sides. Nora and Jessica had come from the conservatory to spend Easter at home, so had the masculine half of the "Eight Originals Plus Two." Then, too, the Phi Sigma Tau, with the exception of Eleanor Savelli, had renewed their vows of unswerving loyalty, and their numerous sessions ate up the time. There was one day set aside, however, on which the little clan had paid a visit to Jean, the old hunter, and Ruth had experienced the satisfaction of seeing and talking with a man who had been her father's friend. The old woodsman had been equally delighted to take Arthur Denton's child by the hand, and the tears had run down his brown, weather-beaten cheeks as he looked into Ruth's face and exclaimed at the resemblance to her father that he saw there. "You shall yet hear. You shall yet see, Mamselle," he had prophesied with a fullness of belief that made Grace resolve to keep on writing to the address Jean had given her for a year at least, whether or not she received a line in return. She, too, felt confident that Arthur Denton still lived. She was, therefore, more disappointed than she cared to admit when, on returning to Overton, she failed to find an answer to the letters which she had sent to Nome at stated intervals. Ruth, apprehensive and sick at heart, by reason of hope deferred, was striving to be brave in spite of the bitterness of her disappointment. From the beginning she had sternly determined not to be buoyed by false hopes, then if she never heard from the letters that she and Grace had sent speeding northward, she would have nothing to disturb her peace of mind other than the regret that her dream had never come true. Yet it was hard not to think of her father and not to hope. A late Easter made a short April, and May was well upon them before the students of Overton College awoke to the realization that it was only a matter of days until the senior class would be graduated and gone; that the juniors would be seniors, the sophomores juniors, and even the humblest freshman would taste the sweetness of sophomoreship.