"Good land!" exclaimed Mrs. Stout, "perhaps _you_ have been stepped on, Mis' Tweedie, but I'm mighty sure that _I_ ain't! It would take an awful big foot to keep me in darkness." An embarrassing silence followed, after which Mrs. Tweedie put the question, on motion of Miss Sawyer, and the name, "The Morning Glory Club," was adopted unanimously. At the moment Mrs. Tweedie announced, "It is a vote," Ezra Tweedie, unmistakably labouring under some great excitement, appeared in the doorway. "What is it?" asked Mrs. Tweedie. "Mrs. Brown, next door, needs you at once," he stammered. "Oh!" exclaimed the ladies in a stage whisper. Mrs. Tweedie alone seemed not to understand. "What has happened?" she demanded, forgetting for the moment those present. Ezra blushed, and looked about for some means of escape. (What foolishly sensitive, over modest fools we all are at times.) "Why don't you answer?" Mrs. Tweedie almost thundered. "It's a new baby!" Ezra blurted, and then fled. The Morning Glory Club adjourned without form. Late that afternoon when Mrs. Tweedie returned home she found Ezra asleep on a couch in the sitting-room, while in the kitchen her son, Thomas, and two of his chums, were trying to tar and feather a fourth urchin with molasses and the contents of a pillow. The uplifting of our morals and intellect is trying, and some personal sacrifice is necessary, she thought, as she drove the boys out of the house, and awoke her sleeping husband. "Where's Dora?" she asked, when Ezra sat up and rubbed his eyes. "I--I," he yawned. "Dora? Oh, she asked me if she could go out for a few moments, and I gave my consent. I hope, my dear, that I was right in so doing." "Right? Certainly not, Ezra. How are we to have any dinner? The fire is out, Dora is out--" "And you have been out," Ezra chuckled. "Three out--all out!" yelled Thomas. "And say, ma, I'm awful hungry." Chapter II A Man and a Woman ON the same day that the Morning Glory Club was born, it happened that Will Flint met Barbara Wallace on her way to school, and he eagerly grasped the opportunity to renew a friendship which had begun at Barbara's home, in his college town, a year before she came to Manville. "I'm mighty glad to see you, Miss Wallace," he said, with boyish enthusiasm. "Thank you," she replied. "And may I ask how you happen to be at home at this time in the year?" The smile on his face disappeared. "I'll walk with you a few minutes if you don't mind, and try to explain," he said. Will tried to tell the truth and spare himself at the same time, but did neither well. "I'm sorry, and in your senior year, too," said Barbara, when he had finished.