"You can crow over it, if you like," Hubert said remorsefully. "You and Ted were on the winning side of things. Billy, my friendship isn't good for much; but I'll be hanged if I ever expected to go back on you and make such a jay of myself." "Never mind, Hu; it's over now," Theodora said consolingly. "Yes, thanks to you," Hubert returned. "My share in it isn't much." Theodora laughed. "Thanks to Babe, you'd better say. We should still have been a divided household, if Babe hadn't been benevolent enough to have chicken pox." "She didn't," Allyn objected suddenly. "The chicken didn't come out any. I watched to see it, and I couldn't, and papa said so, too, and that's what made her so wretchable." "But it's over, as Teddy says," Hope observed, breaking in on the laugh that followed Allyn's contribution to medical science; "and I can't help feeling that we are going to have a lovely winter, with Archie here, and Billy to stay on till Thanksgiving. There's time to make up for all we've lost now." "We'll make the most of it, then, for this will be my last winter here, for ever so long," Billy said, rising. "If I enter college, next fall, it will be a good while before I settle down at home again." "And I too," Theodora added, as she rose and stood beside him. He smiled down into her eyes for a moment, as they stood there. Then together they turned and walked away. The world about them lay golden in the sunlight and in the glow reflected back from the yellow leaves of the hickories; but not one whit less golden was the future, as it stretched away and away before their glad young eyes. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE It was commencement week at Smith College. To the alumna and the student, the picture called up by those words is sufficiently definite and demands no amplification. To them, is no prettier sight possible than the broad campus dotted with buildings, and the knots of daintily-dressed girls moving slowly to and fro along the winding paths. The Meadow City always puts on her most festal array in honor of the occasion; the very heavens seem to watch for that week, and to provide for it the finest moon of the whole summer.