CHAPTER IV.
THE BLACK MONKS OF ASIA "Who wants to go nutting ?" demanded Grace Harlowe in the basement cloakroom a few afternoons later.
"We do," came a chorus of voices.
"I don't," answered one.
"Don't you like nutting parties, Miriam ?" asked Grace.
"She's too old," put in a sophomore.

"This is a young people's party, I presume ?" "Well, it's not a sophomore party, at any rate," retorted Nora.
"Ma-ma, ma-ma," cried a number of other sophomores, imitating the cries of a baby.
The freshmen were nettled by the superior attitude of the older class, but they knew better than to say anything more just then.
"Never mind, girls," said Grace in a low voice, after the sophomores had strolled away, "we'll be sophomores ourselves next year.

Now, all who want to join the party, meet Nora and Jessica and me at the old Omnibus House at three-thirty.

And, above all, don't give the meeting place away." "Not in a thousand years," said Marian Barber.
It was evident that Miriam Nesbit had hoped to break up the party by declining to go herself.

But she was not quite strong enough in the class to divide it utterly, and she went off in a huff, with the secret wish to take revenge on somebody.