"What a tangled up sentence that is, dearie!" The older girl tried to hide her own sorrow that she need not depress the others who were all in a holiday mood. "But I _do_ believe that birthdays _ought_ to be sunny, for they are a chance to start life all over." Merry looked up brightly. "I love beginnings!" she said, as she rolled her sleeves preparing to wash the dishes. "Whatever the mistakes or faults of the past have been, I feel that on New Years and birthdays, and even on Mondays, I can clean off the slate, so to speak, and start all over." When the two girls were alone in the kitchen, Merry slipped an arm about her companion as she said, "Dear Jane, I wish you would act more friendly toward poor Jean Willoughby. I know that your seeming to avoid him the other day, hurt him deeply." But Jane shook her head and in her eyes there was an expression of suffering. "I can't! Oh, I can't!" she said miserably. "Some day he might find out how I had acted about father's renouncing his fortune, and then he would scorn me! I couldn't endure it, Merry. Oh, indeed, I couldn't! I'm going back East with you next week, and then I shall never see Jean Sawyer." An hour later the young people started down the mountain road, Julie riding on the horse as the other two girls, dressed in their natty hiking costumes, declared that they would rather walk. They had decided to have lunch at the inn, for Mrs. Bently was an excellent cook. Jane covered her aching heart so well that Dan believed after all he had been mistaken in thinking that she was sorrowing for Jean. Her loving devotion to her best friend plainly proved to him that she was not at all jealous of Merry. Deciding that he must have been wrong, he entered wholeheartedly into the joyousness of the occasion and a jolly procession it was that wended its way down the circling road toward the hamlet of Redfords. At every turn Dan glanced down to see if, by any chance, Meg Heger might be returning to her home cabin. Her foster-father had not known how long she would have to stay at the Normal, where Teacher Bellows had sent her for a time of intensive preparatory work, but the lad hoped and believed that, even if Meg would have to return to Scarsburg on the following Monday, she would visit her home over the week-end. Nor was he wrong, for, at the bend, just above the village, Gerald, who had been racing ahead, turned to shout through hands held trumpet-wise: "Say kids, Meg Heger's coming. Gee-golly! Now she can come to the party!"