XXV
"FOLLOWING THE GLEAM"
If the summer months had brought many changes to the dwellers in the Yellow House and the House of Lords, the autumn was responsible for many more. Cousin Ann's improvements were set in motion and were promised to be in full force before cold weather set in, and the fall term at Beulah Academy had opened with six new, unexpected, and interesting students. Happily for the Careys and happily for Beulah, the old principal, a faithful but uninspired teacher, had been called to Massachusetts to fill a higher position; and only a few days before the beginning of the term, a young college man, Ralph Thurston, fresh from Bowdoin and needing experience, applied for and received the appointment. The thrill of rapture that ran like an electric current through the persons of the feminine students when they beheld Ralph Thurston for the first time,—dignified, scholarly, unmistakably the gentleman,—beheld him mount the platform in the assembly room, and knew him for their own, this can better be imagined than described! He was handsome,
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