ALL DAY LONG one happy moment followed another as uninterruptedly as one telegraph-pole after another flashing by the window of a railroad train. It had been like that ever since the morning Mrs. Adams had fallen into conversation with Laurel on the hotel veranda. That was ten days ago, yet Laurel was only just beginning to become sufficiently used to the steady succession of kindnesses as to take them for granted, as to forget for an hour or so, occasionally, the phenomenon of their unfailing repetition.

Mrs. Adams had noticed Laurel the first morning she had appeared alone in the hotel dining-room. So too, had others noticed her. The head-waiter had shown Laurel to a table by a far window. After she had sat there alone during breakfast, lunch, and dinner, Mrs. Adams made inquiries of the clerk. It seemed the new girl’s mother was ill upstairs. Tonsillitis. The hotel doctor was taking care of her. Mrs. Adams spoke to Laurel that morning, asked her if there was anything she could do to help, and introduced her to two girls standing, near by, with tennis racquets.

“Do you play?” asked one of the girls.

“Will you play?” asked the other.

It was as easy as that. That very morning Laurel played tennis with three girls of the crowd; that very afternoon played golf with three others; that very evening met the boys and danced until the music stopped, running upstairs between numbers to see if her mother was comfortable, and to let her share what she knew would make her happier than anything else in the world.

“Well, I guess we’ve struck the right place at last, Lollie,” Stella exclaimed from her pillow, with a glint of triumph in her eyes. “Don’t think of me. Don’t come up again, Dearie. I’m all right. I’m bound to be. I just knew we’d happen on to gold some day.”

It had all been pure luck. Stella had chosen this particular hotel from a circular, on the strength of the fact of its high rates. The start had been anything but propitious. Either she or Laurel was confined to the bedroom the first twenty-four hours, and Stella had been obliged to wander about the unexplored regions downstairs companionless. Then the moment the fever left Laurel, didn’t it go and settle itself upon Stella—settle and stay, too! At the end of two weeks Stella was only just beginning to sit up in a chair by her bed.

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