whether he was entirely in fun or not. The language of the school world was equipped with a strange vocabulary to outside ears, and she felt very guilty for letting Mr. Huntington fall into such a humiliating mistake.

“Grinds are just—gists,” she explained hastily, and went out of the door as Mr. Huntington held it open for her, with a sense of having made everything clear.

 CHAPTER V—MANAGING MRS. FOREST

As Peggy started running back to the place she had left the girls, she became aware that someone in a blue Peter Thompson had come up the hill to wait for her, and was at the moment gazing intently toward Gloomy House, while the wind flapped her skirts and fluttered her hair free of its ribbon.

“Katherine, Katherine,” shouted Peggy, and the figure started to life at once and came tearing toward Peggy until they were like a couple of young express trains about to collide at full speed.

“I’ll save you, I’ll save you,” Katherine was crying breathlessly. “I’ll be there in a minute,—I’ll save you, dear.”

And then the collision happened.

“Oh, oh, oh,” gasped Peggy as she and Katherine rolled over each other, a whirling mélange of blue dress and red coat, down the steep slope of the river bank right into the midst of the waiting group of bacon batters.

Around them as they sat up, still seeing stars, and aching from the bumps newly raised on their foreheads to their scratched knees and ankles, arose a hubbub of questionings, consolations and reproaches.

“Oh, my—land!” moaned Peggy, winking the dust and bits of dried leaves out of her eyes. “I hope you don’t feel as badly as I do, Katherine. What made you say—” she spoke now in a puzzled tone, for full consciousness was coming back, “whatever made you say that you would—save me? Instead you nearly killed me, you know.”

“Why, I—ouch! my poor arm—I was going to save you from the ghosts and things at Gloomy House, of course,” answered Katherine indignantly. “You were gone so long and we were all so worried, that I climbed the top of the hill to see if I couldn’t make out what had become of you—and then there you were flying away from that awful place like mad, scared to pieces at something. Naturally, I hollered that I’d save you. What kind of a room-mate would I have been if I hadn’t?”

The 

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