None of the girls, except her four most intimate friends, would dare think of following her down there, and if she could slip away from that audacious quartette, she would be safe for the rest of the afternoon.
Peering through a hole in the hedge, she stood waiting for them to pass.
A section of the botany class came first, swinging their baskets, and bound for a wooded hillside where wild flowers grew in profusion.

A group on their way to the golf links came next, then half a dozen tennis players, and the newly organized basket-ball team.

A moment more, and the four she was waiting for tramped out abreast, arm in arm: Lloyd Sherman, Gay Melville, Allison and Kitty Walton.

Gay carried a kodak, and, from the remarks which floated over the hedge, it was evident they were on their way to the orchard, to take a picture which would illustrate the nonsense rhyme Kitty was chanting at the top of her voice.

They all repeated it after her in a singsong chorus, the four pairs of feet keeping time in a soldierly tread as they marched past the garden: "Diddledy diddledy dumpty! Three old maids in a plum-tree! Half a crown to get them down, Diddledy diddledy dumpty!" Only in this instance Betty knew they were to be young maids instead of old ones, all in a row on the limb of a plum-tree in the orchard, their laughing faces thrust through the mass of snowy blossoms, as they waited to be photographed.
"Diddledy diddledy dumpty"-- the ridiculous refrain grew fainter and died away as the girls passed on to the orchard, and Betty, smiling in sympathy with their high spirits, ran down the stately marble steps to the seat under the willow.