She liked to think of her father as a barefoot boy swinging on the gate which she was then approaching. From the very first day she had felt at home in the comfortable brown house which stood in the midst of a rambling apple orchard. The gnarled old trees were a source of endless delight to her seven-year-old brother and sister, David and Dorothy.
As Carol opened the gate, she heard merry, chattering noises which she knew were made by the twins, who, hidden in the branches, were pretending that they were birds.
As she walked up the gravelly path, the youngsters slid down a near-by apple-tree and pounced upon her.
“You promised to play with us when you came home from school,” David cried, “and I want to choose the game,” he hurried to add.
“Why, David Lorens!” his twin sister cried indignantly. “You know it isn’t your turn to choose a game. You chose yesterday and so it is my turn.”
“Tut! Tut! Children!” Carol laughingly admonished. “Climb up in the tree again and be happy little birds until I come out, and then we three will do something ever so interesting.”
Carol little dreamed that the something that they were to do would make a wonderful change in her life.
Dancing into the sunny living-room, Carol called, “Mother mine, we have a problem to solve. Can you guess what it is?”
Mrs. Lorens glanced up from the blue patch that she was sewing on a small pair of overalls as she replied, “Yes, dear, I can guess. The principal of the Sunnyside school thinks that you are too advanced to take the work of the eighth grade again.”
“Why, Mother dear, are you a mind-reader?” Carol asked as she sat on a stool near by. “That is just what happened, and in one way I am ever so sorry. Of course I am eager to get through high as soon as possible, so that I may help Daddy ‘recuperate his fallen fortunes,’ as he calls it, but I am really disappointed not to be able to attend this school, for I met seven of the loveliest girls, and they asked me to join their Sunnyside Club. Mother dear, what am I to do? It will cost quite a little to send me to the city of Dorchester every day, and that is the nearest high school.”
Mrs. Lorens smiled lovingly at her daughter. “The right way always opens for us, dear,” she said. “Just now I am not sure what it is, but this evening your father and I will talk it over,” then she added with a little sigh, “I had so hoped, Carol, that you might go to boarding-school this year to study music and drawing, for which I am sure that you have natural talent, but, because of our changed circumstances, I fear that it cannot be. That is why your brother Peter gave up going to college this term. He will continue his law studies with your father and assist him in the office, but, if we all economize, and go without something this winter, you may be able to go away to school by another fall.”