The “crowd”, regardless of proper chaperonage, had to be back in Mount Hadley at nine o’clock. But the girl stayed there on the ledge until the final moment of departure. Alarmed companions, missing her, searched the mountain top, calling her name. The “chaperone” was a hulking maiden whose eligibility consisted in the fact that “come December she was going to be married.” The woman arraigned Madelaine severely. “... If you ever give me another scare like this, I’ll have you read out of school! The very idea of running off by yourself and moping close to the edge of a dangerous precipice in the dark! I never had such a fright in my life!” “I’m sorry,” returned Madelaine. “The valley was very beautiful. I stole off to watch the twinkling lamps.” “Oh—you stole off to watch the twinkling lamps? Rather watch a few twinkling lamps than have some real fun while you’ve got the chance. I wouldn’t be like you, Madge Theddon, for all the money there is in Massachusetts. Why! You simply don’t know how to enjoy yourself——” “Maybe,” suggested a snippish little prig who had entered the school a couple of years before, “maybe she’s wondering who her folks are!” The prig’s name was Gridley and she had shown a dislike for Madelaine from the first afternoon. Miss Bernice Gridley had small patience with the quiet smile that played about Madelaine’s lips when the former sought to impress upon whosoever it might concern the vast importance of the Gridley money and blood. “She’s an orphan,” went on the Gridley girl, loud enough for Madelaine to overhear. As Bernice intended she should. “An awful nice feller I got acquainted with at the prom last June told me so. He’s a cousin of hers or something. She was adopted out of an orphan asylum. She’s all stuck-up because her foster-mother happens to have money! I’d rather be poor than a nobody!” Madelaine’s features burned scarlet. A newspaper was lying on the seat of the trolley beside her. She picked up the sheet and tried to read, hiding her flaming face behind it. It was the editorial page of that evening’s _Springfield Union_. In the “goofus” column the staff humorist had included several verses clipped from an exchange. When Madelaine’s sight had cleared, she read the words. Then she forgot the ill-bred Gridley girl. The subject and sentiment was mesmeric and the catty environment faded. “GIRL-WITHOUT-A-NAME (From _The Paris_ [Vt.] _Telegraph_) “You came to me in my dreams last night, Dear Girl-Without-a-Name; A lovely phantom from out the space That parts our lives, you came. You greeted me with your eyes, dear heart, And secrets Peri keep; I moved with you, with your hand in mine. Down the mystic glades of sleep.