A snicker ran around the room. Professor Nevin frowned and stared--first at his little worn book and then at the two offending young women. Of course he was powerless to undo what had been done years before! And as he scowled, across the classroom one Anne Leavitt smiled at the other. When the hour ended the recitation they walked away arm in arm, laughing over the ridiculous situation. At the Library steps they were joined by another girl from the French class. She had run in her eagerness to overtake them. "Are you _really_ both Anne Leavitts?" she asked breathlessly. They assured her solemnly that they were and that they didn't know just what to do about it--old Professor Nevin had been so funny and upset. They all three laughed again over it all. And there in the golden warmth of that October day began the friendship of these three--for the third girl was Claire Wallace. The students in the University found countless ways of distinguishing between the two Anne Leavitts. One was tall and grave with a meditative look in her deep-set eyes; the other, a head shorter, had a lightness about her like an April day, reddish curly hair and an upturned nose. One Anne Leavitt had never been called anything but Anne, the other, since her baby days, had been Nancy. The more intimate of the college girls called them Big Anne and Little Anne. The professors, dignified perforce, read from their rolls, "Miss Anne Leavitt, California--Miss Anne Leavitt, New York." In name only were the two girls alike. Anne had been born with the legendary "silver spoon" and its mythical fortune. When her father and mother died a friend of her father's, as guardian, had continued the well-regulated indulgence that had marked her childhood. Because she possessed an iron will and early acquired a seriousness and dignity beyond her years, she was always a leader in each of the boarding schools to which she progressed. Whatever Anne wanted to do she always did, and yet, in spite of it, she had reached her college days unspoiled, setting her strong will only for the best and obsessed with a passionate longing for a service that would mean self-sacrifice. She thought now she had found it! Two weeks from this very day she, would sail for a far-off village in Siberia to teach the peasant children there and bring to the pitiful captivity of Russian ignorance the enlightenment of American ideals. So big and wonderful seemed the adventure that, girl-like, she had paid little heed to the small details. Nancy and Claire Wallace worried more than she! "You'll never get enough to eat and how will you ever keep your clothes clean," sighed Claire, who loved pretty frocks. "And we can't send you things, either, for they'd never reach you--some of those awful Bolshevists would be sure to steal them!"