As if an embodiment of warning, just then Mrs. Clifton emerged out on her front porch; she looked as if she might be going to shout at them. But Raymond waited to break off a lilac cluster for Missy. He was so cool about it; it just showed how much he was like the Black Prince--though of course no one would “understand” if you said such a thing. The fragrantly beplumed company sped across the green Clifton yard, ruthlessly over the Clifton vegetable garden, to the comparative retreat of Silver Street, beyond. But they were not yet safe--away! away! Missy urged them westward, for no defined reason save that this direction might increase their distance from the danger zone of the High School. Still without notion of whither bound, the runaways, moist and dishevelled, found themselves down by the railroad tracks. There, in front of the Pacific depot, stood the 10:43 “accommodation” for Osawatomie and other points south. Another idea out of the blue! “Let's go to Osawatomie!” cried Missy. The accommodation was puffing laboriously into action as the last Junior clambered pantingly on. But they'd all got on! They were on their way! But not on their way to Osawatomie. For before they had all found satisfactory places on the red plush seats where it was hard to sit still with that bright balminess streaming in through the open windows--hard to sit still, or to think, or to do anything but flutter up and down and laugh and chatter about nothing at all--the conductor appeared. “Tickets, please!” A trite and commonplace phrase, but potent to plunge errant, winging fancies down to earth. The chattering ceased short. No one had thought of tickets, nor even of money. The girls of the party looked appalled--in Cherryvale the girls never dreamed of carrying money to school; then furtively they glanced at the boys. Just as furtively the boys were exploring into pockets, but though they brought forth a plentiful salvage of the anomalous treasure usually to be found in school-boys' pockets, the display of “change” was pathetic. Raymond had a quarter, and that was more than anyone else turned out. The conductor impatiently repeated: “Tickets, please!” Then Missy, feeling that financial responsibility must be recognized in a class president, began to put her case with a formal dignity that impressed every one but the conductor. “We're the Junior class of the Cherryvale High School--we wish to go to Osawatomie. Couldn't we--maybe--?” Formal dignity broke down, her voice stuck in her throat, but her eyes ought to have been enough. They were big and shining eyes, and when she made them appealing they had been known to work wonders with father and mother and other grown-ups, even with the austere Professor Sutton. But this burly figure in the baggy blue uniform had a face more like a wooden Indian than a human grown-up--and an old, dyspeptic wooden Indian at that. Missy's eyes were to avail her nothing that hour.