"My, but I wish I didn't have that year of High School to put in first," she declared. "But then I suppose I wouldn't be satisfied if I were a B. A. and you a Ph. D. But I'm going to study like a runaway horse next winter," she added, growing incoherent in her joy, "and maybe I'll catch up to you, Mr. Alexander Lindsay." Sandy lay back in the hammock and gazed up at the festoons of little green balls, hanging in the trees. He did not respond with his usual readiness to his sister's nonsense. His gaiety seemed to have deserted him lately. "I don't see how you can help getting up on the barn and yelling for joy, Sandy," she declared impatiently. "I know I would, every time I think about going to college, if I were a boy. But I have several good reasons for not expressing myself in that manner. Ellen's one, and Mrs. Sinclair's another, and then I'm really a very well behaved young woman anyway, and I'm going to be a lady some day, and it might not be well to have such dark places in my past." Sandy laughed rather forcedly. "It'll be time enough for me to yell, when I've got something to yell about," he said. "'Don't holler till you're out of the bush,' is a good old adage. And I'm a long way from being out of it yet." "What do you mean?" asked Christina in alarm. "I was talking things over with John last night, and we're afraid we can't manage for me to go this year. Allister lost some money in real estate last month, and can't be depended on to help John as much as he expected. I've almost decided to go down and see Mitchell about the Anondell school. They wrote yesterday asking me to take it again." "Oh, _Sandy_! Oh!" Christina's tone was full of unbelieving dismay. "I can't believe it. Surely,--oh, John won't let you stay! Something can be done surely----" "Oh, of course John wants me to go and he'd manage somehow. But I won't let him. It would cut Neil short too. It's no use making a row over it," he concluded stoically. "It just can't be helped." But Christina was inconsolable. It required a great deal of explaining to convince her that it was not all an evil dream. She just couldn't and wouldn't believe it. It was harder to bear Sandy's disappointment than if it had been her own. He found he had to undertake the role of comforter and try to convince her it was not such a disaster after all. There was no use making a row over what couldn't be helped, he repeated again and again. She would catch up to him in the year she would have at school, and who knew but they might enter college together.