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E-text prepared by Mary Meehan and the Project Gutenberg
Online Distributed Proofreading Team. Produced from page
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THE HAPPIEST TIME OF THEIR LIVES

BY ALICE DUER MILLER

Author of "Come Out of the Kitchen," "Ladies Must Live," "Wings in the
Nights," etc.

1918






TO CLARENCE DAY, JR.


"... and then he added in a less satisfied tone: "But friendship is so
uncertain. You don't make any announcement to your friends or vows to
each other, unless you're at an age when you cut your initials in the
bark of a tree. That's what I'd like to do."




THE HAPPIEST TIME OF THEIR LIVES




CHAPTER I


Little Miss Severance sat with her hands as cold as ice. The stage of her
coming adventure was beautifully set--the conventional stage for the
adventure of a young girl, her mother's drawing-room. Her mother had the
art of setting stages. The room was not large,--a New York brownstone
front in the upper Six