Like the Stars

THE VANISHING COMRADE

“Orchard house, beware! Aunt Katherine’s nieces are here.”

The Vanishing Comrade

CHAPTER I GREAT AUNT KATHERINE COMMANDS

CHAPTER I

GREAT AUNT KATHERINE COMMANDS

Two boys and a girl climbed down out of the bus from Middletown when it made its final stop in front of the summer hotel at the head of Broad Street. The boys, between them, were carrying the girl’s books and a goodly number of their own, for they were returning from the last session of the school year. To-morrow summer holidays would begin. They nodded a friendly good-bye to the driver and started off up the steep little elm-roofed street that sloped directly up to Ashland College, an institution for girls, perched on the highest plateau of this hill town. The boys’ father was a professor in that college and the girl’s mother an instructor. But in spite of their privilege of living in the lap of learning these young people had to take a daily nine-mile bus ride down into the bigger village of Middletown if they themselves were to get college preparation.

The boys were twins. They were tall and spare, even for boys of sixteen, and seemed all angles. They had thick thatches of auburn hair, whimsical faces, and generous, clear-cut mouths. The girl was sturdy, slightly square in build, with brown, straight bobbed hair. The bobbed hair was parted at the side and brushed away in a wing from her forehead, and this gave her a boyish, ready look. Her eyes were hazel and very clear and confident in their level glance, but when she smiled, as she did often, they crinkled up into mere slits of eyes, because they were slightly narrow to begin with, and then she seemed oddly Puckish. Her mouth was wide and her lips rather full, but for all of that, because of its uptilted corners, it was really a very nice mouth. She trudged along now between her two friends, the corners of her mouth more uptilted than usual.

“Oh, I’m so glad it’s vacation! At last!” she was saying. “Mother and I are going to have just the nicest summer. We’re going to take 

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