"I'd like to start this moment, but I happened to think I could drive Jerry home, and then I can make the test of my experiment."

"Drive Jerry home----" his words reached the ears of the young people, coming into the hall. It was Friday evening and they had been at the moving-pictures.

"_Who's_ going to drive Jerry home? You, Uncle Johnny? Can't I go, too?

Oh, please, _please_----" Gyp fell upon him, pleadingly.

"Oh, I wish the girls _could_ go," added Jerry.

"Why not?" Uncle Johnny turned to Mrs. Westley. "Then you wouldn't have to worry your head over clothes and hotel space at the seashore! And Mrs. Allan's up there across at Cobble with a house big enough for a dozen----"

"But they must stay at Sunnyside," protested Jerry, her face glowing.

Always, now, at the back of her head, were persistent thoughts of home.

She had counted the days off on her little calendar; she saw, in the bright loveliness with which the springtime had dressed the city, only a proud vision of what her beloved Kettle must be like; she hunted violets on the slopes of Highacres and dreamed of the blossoming hepaticas in the Witches' Glade and the dear sun-shadowed corners where the bloodroot grew and the soft budding beauty of the birches that lined the trail up Kettle. She longed with a longing that hurt for her little garden--for the smell of the freshly-turned soil, for the first strawberries, for the fragrance of the lilacs that grew under her small window, for the clean, cool, grass-scented valley wind. And yet her heart was torn with the thought that those very days she had counted on her calendar marked the coming separation from Gyp and the schoolmates at Highacres--Highacres itself. She must go away from them all and all that they were doing and they would in time forget her, because they would know nothing of Sunnyside. And now, quite suddenly, a new and wonderful possibility unfolded--to have Gyp at home with mother and Little-Dad, sleeping in the tiny room under the gable, climbing the trails with her, working in the garden, playing with Bigboy, sharing all the precious joys of Kettle, meant a link; after that, there could be no real separation.

And she wanted Isobel, too. Between the two girls had sprung a wonderful understanding. Isobel was grateful that Jerry had not humiliated her by mentioning the debate, or the many other little meannesses of which she had been guilty; Jerry was glad that Isobel had not raked them up--it was so much nicer to just know that Isobel liked her now. Isobel was a very different girl since her accident--perhaps Uncle Johnny, alone, knew why. She had decided very suddenly that she _did_ want to go to college. The week before she had "squeezed through" the college entrance exams--luck she did not deserve, she had declared with surprising frankness. And after college she planned to study interior decorating.

Everyone wondered why they had not thought before of such wonderful summer plans. Mrs. Westley would go with Tibby to Cousin Marcia's at Ocean Point in Maine--"quiet enough there"; Graham was going to a boys'

camp in Vermont, and Isobel and Gyp could divide their time between Sunnyside and Cobble.

"We are not consulting Mrs. Travis," laughed Mrs. Westley.

"Oh, she'd _love_ them to be there," cried Jerry with conviction.

"And anyway, if she frowns, we'll move on to Wayside, and _we_ know the trail in between, don't we, Jerry?"

"Say, Jerry," Graham thought it the psychological moment to spring a request he had been entertaining in his heart for some time. "Will you let me take Pepper to camp? Lots of the boys have dogs but none of them are as smart as Pep."

Jerry could not answer for a moment. In her picture of her homegoing, Pepper had had his part; but--it would be another link----

"Of course you may take him. He'll love--being with you." Long ago she had reconciled herself to sharing Pepper's devotion with Graham.

"Oh, I think that's the wonderfulest plan ever made," exclaimed Gyp rapturously--Gyp, who with her mother had visited some of the most fashionable summer and winter resorts. "I want to sleep up on--where is it, Jerry--and see the sunrise. How will we _ever_ exist until school's over!"

"Examinations will help us do that," laughed Isobel.

"And Class-day and Commencement. And who's going to win the Lincoln Award?"

CHAPTER XXV

THE LINCOLN AWARD

"Who's going to win the Lincoln Award?"

That question was on every tongue at Highacres. That interest rivaled even the excitement of Class-day and its honors; of the Senior reception, Commencement itself. It shadowed the accustomed interval of alarm that always followed examinations. Everyone knew that the contest was close; no one could conjecture as to whom the honor would fall, for, though one student be a wizard in trigonometry, he might have failed dismally in the simple requirement of setting-up exercises or drinking milk.

"I've eaten spinach until I feel just like a cow out at pasture,"

declared Pat Everett disgustedly, "and what good has it done! For I was only _eighty-five_ in English!"

"But think of all the iron in your system," comforted Peggy Lee. "I hope Jerry wins the prize, but I'm afraid it is going to Ginny Cox. She was _ninety-nine_ in Cicero. I wish _I_ had her brains----"

"And her luck! Ginny says herself that it is luck--half the time."

"Look how she got out of that scrape last winter----" spoke up another girl.

The Ravens, who were in the group, suddenly looked at one another.

"It won't be _fair_ if Ginny wins the Award," was the thought they flashed.

The records for the contest were posted the day before Class-day--the last day of the examinations. A large group of boys and girls, eagerly awaiting them, pressed and elbowed about the bulletin board in the corridor while Barbara Lee nailed them to the wall. Gyp's inquisitive nose was fairly against the white sheet.

"_Vir-gin-i-a Cox!_" she read shrilly. "Jerauld Travis _only two points behind_! And Dana King third----"

An uncontrollable lump rose in Jerry's throat. She had hoped--she had dared think that she was going to win! She was glad of the babble under which she could cover her moment's confusion; she struggled bravely to keep the disappointment from her face as she turned with the others to congratulate Ginny.

The plaudits of the boys and girls were warm and whole-hearted. If any surprise was felt that it had been Ginny Cox and not Jerry Travis who had won the Award it was carefully concealed.

"We might have known no one could beat you, Coxie."

"It was that ninety-nine in old Cicero."

"Hurrah for Ginny!"

Dana King trooped up a yell. "Lincoln--Cox! Lincoln--Cox!"

Through it all Ginny Cox stood very still, a flush on her face but a distressed look in her eyes. The Ginny Cox whom her schoolmates had known for years would have accepted the hearty congratulations with a laughing, careless, why-are-you-surprised manner; the Ginny Cox whom Jerry had glimpsed that winter afternoon preceding the basketball game was honestly embarrassed by the turn of events. She had not dreamed she could win--it _had_ been that ninety-nine in Cicero.

"Ginny Cox, you don't look a _bit_ glad," accused one clear-sighted schoolmate.

Alas, Ginny was not brave enough to clean her troubled soul with confession then and there; she tried to silence the small voice of her conscience; she made a desperate effort to be her own old self, evoking the homage of her schoolmates as she had done time and time again. She answered, uneasily, with a smile that took in Jerry and Dana King:

"I hate to beat anyone like Jerry and Dana. It's so close----"

Whereupon the excited young people yelled again for "Travis" and again for "King." The crowd gradually dispersed; little groups, arm-in-arm, excitedly talking, passed out through the big door into the spring sunshine. A buoyance in the very air proclaimed that school days were over.

In one of these groups were Ginny Cox, Gyp, Jerry, Pat Everett, Peggy Lee and Isobel. Among them had fallen a constraint. Isobel broke it.

"Ginny Cox, you haven't any more right to that Award than I have! You _know_ you built the snowman and Jerry took the blame so's you could play basketball. _She's_ the winner!"

Each turned, surprised, at Isobel's defence of Jerry's right, marveling at the earnestness in her face.

"Oh--_don't_," implored Jerry. "I'm _glad_ Ginny won it."

Ginny stamped her foot. "_I'm_ not--I wish I hadn't. I never dreamed I would--honest. What a mess! I wish I'd just turned and told them all about it, but I didn't have the nerve! I'm just yellow." That--from Ginny Cox, the invincible forward! Breathless, the girls paused where they were on the grassy slope near the entrance of Highacres. A great elm spread over them and through its shimmering green a sunbeam shot across Ginny Cox's face, adding to the fire of its sternness.