The boys turned up their collars or ducked their chins beneath the folds of woollen mufflers; and the girls drew their wraps about them and hurried on, eager to reach the schoolhouse and gain shelter from the icy blast. About the great stove they hovered, scorching their faces, while they endeavored to get thoroughly warmed before the hands of the clock should point to nine. Two girls were missing from the group around the stove. Randy Weston, who had been at school in Boston for three months, and Phoebe Small, whose incessant teasing had at last prevailed, and who had six weeks before experienced the joy of going away to boarding school. It was not that Phoebe did not love her home, or enjoy the friendship of her mates, but she had long entertained the idea that a boarding school was the only school worth attending. She had wished Randy good luck when she started for Boston, but she could not stifle a feeling of envy, and it seemed impossible for her to stay quietly at home attending the district school. In vain Mrs. Small insisted that Phoebe would be homesick, that Randy was with friends, while at boarding school all would be strangers. Phoebe invariably answered, "Well I'd just like to try it and see how it would seem. I could write letters home to the girls as Randy does, and I think that would be just grand." At last it occurred to Mrs. Small that the best thing for Phoebe would be to grant her wish. "I know that she will be homesick before she's been away a week," she said to her husband, "but she cannot be convinced, and perhaps if we allow her to try it, she will get all and more than she wants of it, and come home with a mind to be contented." So one bright morning Phoebe was driven to the station on her way to a school for girls which was under the direction of two ladies who were friends of Mrs. Small. Immediately upon her arrival she sent a note to her mother in which she told in glowing words of the pleasure of her ride in the cars, and her reception by the two elderly ladies who presided over the school. Then, after a week had passed another letter came the general tone of which was less cheerful. Then a fortnight slipped by, and a brief letter told only of her studies, and said not a word of the delights of boarding school life. Then, as time passed and the mail brought no letter from Phoebe, her mother became anxious. "I do hope she's well, and I must say I wish I'd never consented when she begged to go," said Mrs. Small a dozen times a day, to which her husband would reply, "Oh, she's all right. If she was sick they'd let us know. Most likely she's had 'nough of it, and hates ter say so." "Well, all the same, if I don't get a letter from her to-day, I'll go after her to-morrow." Mrs. Small answered, as the wind whistled around the corner and down the chimney.