"Are you really a freshman?" she asked. "Why, I don't believe you are. I—I don't know what to believe!"

Mary smiled at her radiantly. "Never mind," she said, "you'll know the truth some day. Next fall at about this time I'll invite you to dinner, and then you'll know all about me. Now good-bye."

Babbie regarded this speech as merely Mary's convenient little way of getting rid of the stupid Miss Butts, who for her part promptly forgot all about it. But Mary remembered, and she declared that the sight of Miss Butts's face on the occasion of that dinner-party, with all its rather remarkable accessories, was worth many evenings of boredom at "girl dances."

It was not until Friday, that Mary's "little friends" caught her red-handed, in an escapade that explained everything from the size of her trunk to the puzzling insouciance of her manner. They all, and particularly Roberta, had begun to feel a little hurt as the days went by and Mary indulged in many mysterious absences and made unconvincing excuses for refusing invitations that, as Katherine Kittredge said, were enough to turn the head of a crown-princess. Friday, the day that had been reserved for the expedition to Smuggler's Notch, dawned crisp and clear, and some girls who had had dinner at Mrs. Noble's farm the night before brought back glowing reports of the venison her brother had sent her from Maine, and the roaring log fire that she built for them in the fireplace of her new dining-room. So Roberta and Madeline hurried over before chapel to ask Mary to reconsider. But she was firm in her refusal. She had waked with a headache. Besides, she had letters to write and calls to make on her faculty friends and the people she knew in town.

The embassy returned, disconsolate, and reported its failure.

"It's just a shame," said Eleanor. "We've been saving that trip all the fall, so that Mary could go."

"Let's just go without her," suggested Katherine rebelliously. "There can't be many more nice days."

But Betty shook her head. "We don't want to hurt her feelings. She's a dear, even if she does act queerly this week. Besides, every one of us but Roberta and Madeline has that written lesson in English 10 to-morrow, and we ought to study. I'm scared to death over it."

"So am I," agreed Katherine sadly. "I suppose we'd better wait."

"But we can go walking," said Madeline to Roberta, and Roberta, more hurt than any of the rest by her idol's strange conduct, silently assented.

They were scuffling gaily through the fallen leaves on an unfrequented road through the woods, when they heard a carriage coming swiftly up behind them and turned to see—of all persons—Mary Brooks, who hated driving, and Dr. Hinsdale. Mary was talking gaily and looked quite reconciled to her fate, and Dr. Hinsdale was leaving the horses very much to themselves in the pleasant absorption of watching Mary's face. Indeed so interested were the pair in each other that they almost passed the two astonished girls standing by the roadside, without recognizing them at all. But just as she whirled past, Mary saw them, and leaned back to wave her hand and smile her "beamish" smile at the unwitting discoverers of her secret.

It was dusk and nearly dinner time before Dr. Hinsdale drew his horses up in front of the house around the corner, but Mary's "little friends" gave up dressing, without a qualm, and even risked missing their soup to sit, lined up in an accusing row on her bed and her window-box, ready to greet her when she stumbled into her dark room and lit her gas.

"Oh, girls! What a start you gave me!" she cried, suddenly perceiving her visitors. "I suppose you think I'm perfectly horrid," she went on hastily, "but truly I couldn't help it. When a faculty asks you to go driving, you can't tell him that you hate it—and I couldn't for the life of me scrape up a previous engagement."

"Speaking of engagements"—began Madeline provokingly.

"All's fair in love, Mary," Katherine broke in. "You're perfectly excusable. We all think so."

"Who said anything about love?" demanded Mary, stooping to brush an imaginary speck of dust from her skirt.

"Next time," advised Rachel laughingly, "you'd better take us into your confidence. You've given yourself a lot of unnecessary bother, and us quite a little worry, though we don't mind that now."

"Why didn't you tell us that he spent the summer at the same place that you did?" asked little Helen Adams.

Mary started. "Who told you that?" she demanded anxiously.

"Nobody but Lucile," explained Betty in soothing tones. "She visited there for a week, and this afternoon just by chance she happened to speak of seeing him. It fitted in beautifully, you see. She doesn't know you were there too, so it's all right."

Mary gave a relieved little sigh, and then, turning suddenly, fell upon the row of pitiless inquisitors, embracing as many as possible and smiling benignly at the rest. "Oh, girls, he's a dear," she said. "He's worth twenty of the gilded youths you meet out in society." She drew back hastily. "But we're only good friends," she declared. "He's been down a few times to spend Sunday—that was how I heard about the lecture—but he comes to see father as much as to see me—and—and you mustn't gossip."

"We won't," Katherine promised for them all. "You can trust us. We always seem to have a faculty romance or two on our hands. We're getting used to it."

"But it's not a romance," wailed Mary. "He took me walking and driving because mother asks him to dinner. We're nothing but jolly good friends."

"Nothing but jolly good friends—"

That was the last thing Mary said when, late the next afternoon, her "little friends" waved her off for home.

"Isn't she just about the last person you'd select for a professor's wife?" said Helen, as Mary's stylish little figure, poised on the rear platform of the train, swung out of sight around a curve.

"No, indeed she isn't," declared Roberta loyally. "She'll be a fine one. She's awfully clever, only she makes people think she isn't, because she knows how to put on her clothes."

"And it's one mission of the modern college girl," announced Madeline oracularly, "to show the people aforesaid that the two things can go together. Let's go to Smuggler's Notch Monday to celebrate."



CHAPTER VI

HELEN ADAMS'S MISSION

The particular mission that Madeline had discovered for the modern college girl was one that Helen Chase Adams would never probably do much to fulfil. But Helen had a mission of her own—the mission of being queer. Sometimes she hated it, sometimes she laughed at it, always it seemed to her a very humble one, but she honestly tried to live up to its responsibilities and to make the most of the opportunities it offered.

The loneliness of Helen's freshman year had made an indelible impression on her. Even now that she was a prominent senior, an "Argus" editor, and a valued member of Dramatic Club, she never seemed to herself to "belong" to things as the other girls did. She was still an outsider. An unexplainable something held her aloof from the easy familiarities of the life around her, and made it inevitable that she should be, as she had been from the first, an observer rather than an actor in the drama of college life. And from her vantage point of observation she saw many strange things, and made her own little queer deductions and comments upon them.

On a certain gray and gloomy afternoon in November Helen sat alone in the "Argus" sanctum. She loved that sanctum—the big oak table strewn with books and magazines, the soft-toned oriental rugs, and the shimmering green curtains between which one could catch enchanting glimpses of Paradise River and the sunsets. She liked it as much as she hated her own bare little room, where the few pretty things that she had served only to call attention to the many that she hadn't. But to-day she was not thinking about the room or the view. It was "make-up" day for the sketch department—Helen's department of the "Argus." In half an hour she must submit her copy to Miss Raymond for approval—not that the exact hour of the day was specified, but if she waited until nearer dinner-time or until evening Miss Raymond was very likely to be at home, and Helen dreaded, while she enjoyed a personal interview with her divinity. Curiously enough she was more than ever afraid of Miss Raymond since she had been chosen editor of the "Argus." She was sure that Miss Raymond was responsible for her appointment, but she had never gotten up courage to thank her, and she was possessed by the fear that she was disappointing Miss Raymond in the performance of her official duties. So she preferred to find Miss Raymond's fascinating sitting-room vacant when she brought her copy, to drop it swiftly on the table nearest the door, and stopping only for one look at the enticing prospect of new books heaped on old mahogany, to flee precipitately like a thief in the night.

The copy for this month was all ready. There was Ruth Howard's monologue, almost as funny to read as it had been in the telling, next, by way of contrast, a sad little story of neglected childhood by a junior who had never written anything good before, and a humorous essay on kittens by another junior that nobody had suspected of being literary. There was also a verse, or rather two verses; and it was these that caused the usually prompt and decisive Helen to hesitate and even to dawdle, wasting a precious afternoon in a futile attempt to square her conscience and still do as she pleased about those verses. One of them was Helen's own. It was good; Miss Raymond had said so with emphasis, and Helen wanted it to go into the "Argus." She had rather expected that Jane Drew would ask for it for the main department of the magazine; but she hadn't, and her copy had gone to Miss Raymond the day before. The other verses were also stamped with Miss Raymond's heartiest approval, and like the rest of the articles that Helen had collected, they were the work of a "nobody." Helen's vigorous unearthing of undiscovered talent was a joke with the "Argus" staff, and her own great pride. But to-day she was not in a benevolent mood. She had refused all through the fall to have anything of her own in the "Argus"; she did not believe in the editors printing their own work. But these verses were different; she loved them, she wanted people to see them and to know that they were hers.

She had thought of consulting Jane or Marion Lustig, who was editor-in-chief, but she knew beforehand what either of them would say. "Put in your own verse, silly child! Why didn't you say you'd like it used in the other department? We've got to blow our own horns if we want them blown. Use the others next time—or give them back."

But by next month there might be an embarrassment of good material, and as for giving them back, Jane could do it easily enough, but Helen, being queer, couldn't. For who knew how much getting into the "Argus" might mean to that unknown other girl? Helen had never so much as heard her name before, though she was a sophomore. She had a premonition that she was queer too, and lonely and unhappy. The verses were very sad, and somehow they sounded true.

"Perhaps she'll be an editor some day," Helen sighed. "Anyway I'll give her a chance."

She put on her coat and gathered up her manuscripts, first folding her own verses and pushing them vindictively into the depths of her own particular drawer in the sanctum table.

When she reached the Davidson she noticed with relief that Miss Raymond's windows were dark. She was in time then. But when she knocked on the half-opened door she was taken aback to hear Miss Raymond's voice saying, "Come in," out of the shadows.

"Oh, excuse me!" began Helen in a frightened voice. "I've brought you the material for the sketch department. Please don't bother about a light. I mustn't stay."

But Miss Raymond went on lighting the lamp on her big table. As she stood for a moment full in the glare of it, Helen noticed that she looked worn and tired.

"I'm very sorry that I disturbed you," she said sadly. "You were resting."

Miss Raymond shook her head. "Not resting. Thinking. Do you like to think, Miss Adams?"

"Why—yes, I suppose so," answered Helen doubtfully. "Isn't that what college is supposed to teach us to do?"

"I shouldn't like to guarantee that it would in all cases," said Miss Raymond smilingly. "Has it taught you that?"

"Yes," said Helen. "I don't mean to be conceited, Miss Raymond, but I think it has."

"And you find it, as I do, rather a deadly delight," went on Miss Raymond, more to herself than to Helen. "And sometimes you wish you had never learned. When people tell you sad things, you wish you needn't go over and over them, trying to better them, trying to reason out the whys and wherefores of them, trying to live yourself into the places of the people who have to endure them. And when they don't tell you, you have to piece them out for yourself just the same." Miss Raymond came sharply back to the present and held out her hand for Helen's bundle of manuscript.

Helen gave it to her in puzzled silence, and watched her as she looked rapidly through it.

"Ruth Howard?" she questioned, when she reached the signature of the monologue. "Do I know her? Oh, a freshman, is she? She sounds very promising. Ellen Lacey—yes, I remember that story. Cora Wentworth—oh, I'm very glad you've got something of hers. She needs encouragement. Anne Carter—oh, Miss Adams, how did you know?"

"How did I know?" repeated Helen in bewilderment.

Miss Raymond looked at her keenly. "So you didn't know," she said. "It is a mere coincidence that you are going to print her verses."

"I don't know anything about her," Helen explained. "I heard you read the verses in your theme class last week. And at the close of the hour I asked you to let me have them and several other things. I used these first because I had all the prose I needed for this time."

"I see," said Miss Raymond. "Have you told her yet that you want them?"

"No," said Helen, guiltily. "I was going to write her a note as soon as I got home. I didn't suppose she would care."

"I presume you noticed that they are very remarkable."

Helen blushed, thinking how she had hesitated between these and her own production, which she was sure could not be considered at all "remarkable." "I—well, I went mostly by what you said. I don't believe I am a good judge of poetry—of verses, I mean."

"You needn't be afraid to call these verses poetry. But I don't blame you for not fully appreciating them. No girl ought to understand the tragedy of utter defeat, which is their theme."

Miss Raymond paused, and Helen wondered if she ought to go or stay.

"Miss Adams," Miss Raymond went on again presently, "the author of those verses was in my room just before you came. She wanted to return a book that I lent her early in the term, by way of answering some question that she had brought up in my sophomore English class. She says that the book and the word of appreciation that went with it are the only kindness for which she has to thank Harding college, and that I am the only person to whom she cares to say good-bye. I don't know why she should except me. I had quite forgotten her. I associated nothing whatever with the name on those verses until I looked at it again just now. I considered the tragic note in them merely as a literary triumph. I never thought of the girl behind the tragedy." She waited a moment. "She's going to leave college," she went on abruptly. "She says that a year and a half of it is a fair trial. I couldn't deny that. She says that she has made no friends, leaves without one regret or one happy memory. Miss Adams, would you be willing, instead of writing her a note, to tell her personally about this?"

"Why, certainly," said Helen, "if you think she'd like it better."

"Yes, I am sure she would. You won't find her at all hard to get on with. She has a dreadful scar on one cheek, from a cut or a burn, that gives her face a queer one-sided look. I suspect that may be at the bottom of her unhappiness."

On the way across the campus Helen had an inspiration, which led her a little out of her way, to the house where Jane Drew, the literary editor of the "Argus" lived.

"I'm so relieved that my department is all made up," she told Jane artfully, "that I feel like celebrating. Won't you meet me at Cuyler's for supper?"

Jane promised, a good deal surprised, for Helen was not in the habit of asking her to supper at Cuyler's; and Helen, after arranging to meet her guest down-town, hurried on to the address that Miss Raymond had given her, one of the most desirable of the off-campus houses.

Miss Carter was in, the maid said, and a moment later she appeared to speak for herself. She flushed with embarrassment when she saw Helen, and her dreadful, disfiguring scar showed all the more plainly on her reddened cheek.

"Oh, I supposed it was the woman with my washing," she said. "I don't have many calls. You must excuse this messy shirt waist. Please sit down."

"Won't you take me up to your room?" asked Helen, trying to think how Betty Wales would have put the other girl at her ease. "We can talk so much better there."

Miss Carter hesitated. "Why, certainly, if you prefer. It's in great confusion. I'm packing, or getting ready to pack, rather," and she led the way up-stairs to a big room that, even in its half-dismantled condition, looked singularly attractive and quite different somehow from the regulation college room.

"I have a dreadful confession to make," said Helen gaily, when they were seated.

"I've taken your verses for the 'Argus.' I've already sent them in to Miss Raymond, and now I've come to ask if you are willing. I do hope you are."

"Why certainly," said Miss Carter quietly. "You are perfectly welcome to them of course. You needn't have taken the trouble to come away up here to ask."

Then she relapsed into silence. Helen could not tell whether she was pleased or not. She had an uncomfortable feeling that she was being dismissed; but she did not go. Never in her life had she worked so hard to make conversation as she did in the next ten minutes. The "Argus," the new chapel rules, Miss Raymond and her theme classes, the sophomore elections,—none of them evoked a responsive chord in the strange girl who sat impassive, with no thought apparently of her social duties and responsibilities.

"She must think I don't know how to take a hint," reflected Helen, "but I don't care. I'm going to keep on trying."

Presently she noticed that from Miss Carter's window could be seen Mrs. Chapin's house and the windows of her and Betty's old room.

"That was where I lived when I first came to Harding," she began awkwardly, pointing them out. Then she looked at the girl opposite, read the misery in her big gray eyes, and opened her heart. Betty Wales, who had worked so hard to get at a little of the story of Helen's freshman year would have been amazed at the confidences she poured out so freely to this stranger. Indeed Helen was surprised herself at the ease with which she spoke and the dramatic quality that she managed to put into her brief account of the awkward, misfit, unhappy freshman.

Miss Carter listened at first apathetically, then with growing interest.

"Thank you," she said gravely, when Helen had finished. "I thought I was the only one who felt so."

"Oh, no, you aren't," said Helen brightly. "There are lots of others, I guess."

"No one with a thing like this," said the girl, with a swift, passionate gesture toward her scar.

"Don't," said Helen gently. "Please don't think about it. No one else does, I'm sure."

"I got it just before I came here," went on the girl, speaking almost fiercely. "It came in a horrible way, but it's horrible just of itself. I entered Harding because I thought the college life—the girls and the good times and the work—would help me to forget it—or to get used to being so ugly."

Helen considered a moment in silence. "I guess we're even more alike than I thought," she said at last. "We both expected college to do it all for us, while we—just sat. But I can tell you—do you play basket-ball? Anyhow you've seen it played. Well, you've got to keep your eye on the ball, and then you've got to jump—hard. Have you noticed that?"

Miss Carter laughed happily at Helen's whimsical comparison. "No," she said, "I've never been much interested in basket-ball. I'm afraid I've 'just sat' or jumped the wrong way."

Helen considered again, her small face wrinkled with the intensity of her thought. "You mean you've jumped away from the very things you were trying to get hold of," she said. "You've expected things to come to you. They won't. You've got to do your part. You've got to jump very often, and as if you meant it."

The girl nodded. "I see."

"You can do one thing right away," said Helen briskly, rising and buttoning her coat. "Do you know Jane Drew? Well, she's an awfully clever senior and an editor. She's going to have dinner with me at Cuyler's, and I'd like you to come too. You see one of the things you have jumped into already is being a star contributor to the 'Argus,' and we always want to meet our star contributors."

Miss Carter hesitated.

"Never mind your waist," Helen urged tactfully. "It looks perfectly fresh to me, but you can keep your coat on if you'd rather."

"All right, I'll come," said Miss Carter bravely.

And having yielded, she kept to the spirit, as well as the letter, of her promise. Jane, who was a very matter-of-fact young person, treated her with the same off-hand cordiality that she would have bestowed on any other chance acquaintance with interesting possibilities. The girls who stopped at the table to speak to Jane or Helen, smiled and nodded affably when they were introduced. Some of them stared a little, at the unusual combination of two prominent seniors and an obscure underclassman, but Miss Carter did not flinch. After dinner, when Jane had gone to speak to some friends at another table, she leaned forward toward her hostess. "I want to thank you," she said shyly, "for telling me about yourself and for bringing me here. Do you know, I was going to leave college, but I'm not now. I'm going to stay on—and try jumping," she ended quickly as Jane reappeared.

So Helen felt that her dinner had been a success, even though she should have to borrow largely from her next month's meagre allowance to pay for it.

On her way through the campus she met Miss Raymond, hurrying to meet an important engagement. But she stopped to inquire about Miss Carter.

"I knew you'd manage it," she said, when she had heard Helen's brief story of her adventures. "You're a person of resources. That's why we wanted you on the 'Argus' board."

Helen fairly danced the rest of the way to the Belden. "Perhaps I shan't be afraid of her next time," she thought. "I'd rather she'd say that than have sixty verses in the 'Argus.' Oh, what a selfish pig I was trying to be! I don't deserve to have it all come out so beautifully. And—oh, dear, I'm late for the meeting of the house play committee, and Betty said it was awfully important."

She found the committee in riotous and jubilant session in Madeline's room.

"Three cheers for Sara Crewe!" shrieked Polly Eastman, when Helen appeared.

"Goodness, I'm not Sara," gasped Helen.

"Oh, I mean the play, not the character," explained Polly impatiently. "It's going to be simply great. What do you suppose we've got now, Helen?"

"I don't know," said Helen, sitting down on the floor, since the bed and all the chairs were fully occupied.

"Well guess," commanded Polly, tossing her a cushion.

"A lot of Turkish-looking things for Mr. Carrisford's study."

"Nonsense! We can get those all right when the time comes."

"Josephine Boyd has learned her part."

"Then she's done a tall lot of work on it since last rehearsal," said Polly serenely. "I'm sure I hope she has, but this is something any amount nicer."

"Then I give up."

"Well, it's a monkey," cried Polly triumphantly, "a real live monkey that belongs to a hand-organ man in Boston. The Italian bootblack at the station knows him, and—did he promise fair and square to get them up here, Lucile?"

"Fair and square," repeated Lucile promptly. "I said we'd give him five dollars and his fare up from Boston. It's well worth it. A cat would have been too absurd when everybody knows the story."

"I hope Sara won't mind carrying a live monkey across the stage," said Betty. "I should be dreadfully afraid it would bite."

"She ought to have thought of that when she took the part," said Madeline. "She can't flunk now."

"Let's hurry it through and have the organ-man play for a dance afterward," suggested the ingenious Georgia Ames. "He'd surely throw that in for the five dollars."

"Better have him play between the acts too," put in somebody else. "There's nothing like getting your money's worth."

"And we'll pay him all in pennies," added Polly gleefully. "We can take turns handing them out to the monkey. How many pennies will there be in five dollars and a fare from Boston, Lucile?"

Helen listened to their gay banter, wondering, as many thoughtful people have wondered before her, at the light-hearted abandon of these other girls. "It must be fun to be like that," she reflected, "but I don't believe I should want to change places with any of them. They only see their own little piece of things, and they don't even know it's little,—like the man who didn't know anything about the forest he was walking through, because he got so interested in the trees. My tree is just a scraggly, crooked little sapling that won't ever amount to much, but I can see the whole big forest, and hear it talk, and that makes up. I'm glad I'm one of the kind that college teaches to think," ended Helen happily.

A moment later she made an addendum. "Betty Wales is a kind by herself," she decided. "She doesn't exactly think, but she knows. And she's really responsible for to-day. I wish I could tell her about it."



CHAPTER VII

ROBERTA "ARRIVES"

It was dress rehearsal night for the Belden House play, and the hall in the Students' Building, where the big house-plays are performed was the scene of a tremendous bustle and excitement. The play was to be "Sara Crewe," or rather "The Little Princess," for that is the title of the regular stage version of Mrs. Burnett's story which the Belden House was giving by the special permission of the Princess herself. The pretty young actress who had "created" the part was a friend of Madeline's father, and Madeline, being on the committee to choose a play, declared that she was tired to death of seeing the girls do Sheridan and Goldsmith and the regulation sort of modern farce, and boldly wrote to the Princess for permission to act her play, because it seemed so exactly suited to the capabilities of college girls. The Princess had not only said yes, but she had declared that she should be very much interested in the success of the play, and when Madeline, writing to thank her, had suggested that the Belden House would be only too delighted if she came up to see their performance, she had accepted their invitation with enthusiasm. Of course the committee and the cast were exceedingly flattered, but they were also exceedingly frightened and nervous, and even the glorious promise of a live monkey, with a hand-organ man thrown in, did not wholly reassure them.

To-night everything seemed to be at sixes and sevens. Though most of the committee had toiled over it all the afternoon, the stage resembled pandemonium rather than the schoolroom of Miss Minchen's Select Seminary, which was to be the scene of the first act. The committee were tired and, to speak frankly, cross, with the exception of Madeline, who was provokingly cool and nonchalant, though she had worked harder than any one else. The cast were infected with that irresponsible hilarity that always attacks an amateur company at their last rehearsal. They danced about the stage, getting in the way of the committee, shrieking with laughter at their first glimpses of one another's costumes, and making flippant suggestions for all sorts of absurd and impossible improvements.

Meanwhile, regardless of the fact that the rehearsal ought to have begun half an hour before, the committee and Mr. Carrisford's three Hindu servants were holding a solemn conclave at the back of the stage. The chef-d'oeuvre of their scenic effects was refusing to work; the bagdads that were to descend as if by Hindu magic and cover the bare walls of Sara's little attic bedroom when the good fairies, in the guise of the aforesaid servants, effected its transformation in the second act. There weren't enough of the draperies for one thing, and some of them wouldn't unroll quickly, while others threatened to tumble down on the servants' devoted heads.

"Well, we'll just have to let them go for to-night," said Nita Reese dejectedly at last. She was chairman of the committee. "To-morrow we'll fix them all up again, the way Madeline says is right, and you three must come over and do that part of the scene again. Is everybody ready?"

"Miss Amelia Minchen isn't," said Betty, "She just came in carrying her costume."

"Then go and help her hurry into it," commanded Nita peremptorily. "Madeline, will you fix Ram Dass's turban? He's untwisted it again of course. Georgie Ames, line up the Seminary girls and the Carmichael children, and see whether any of their skirts are too long. Take them down on the floor. Everybody off the stage, please, but the scene-shifters."

"Oh, Nita," cried Polly Eastman, who had just come in, rushing breathlessly up to the distracted chairman, "I'm so sorry to be late, but some people that I couldn't refuse asked me down-town to dinner. I ate and ran, really I did. And Nita, what do you think——"

"I'm much too tired to think," returned Nita, wearily. "What's happened now?"

"Why, nothing has actually happened, only I was at the station this afternoon, and I asked the shoe-shine man about the monkey, and he hasn't heard, but he told the organ-man that the play began at half-past eight, and all the trains have been horribly late to-day, so if he should plan to get in on the eight-fifteen——"

"Have him telegraph that it begins at six," said Nita, firmly. "Go and see to it now."

"Why, I did tell him to," said Polly, sighing at the prospect of going out again. "Only he's so irresponsible that I think we ought to decide——"

"Go and stand over him while he telegraphs," said Nita with finality. "We can't understudy a monkey. Josephine Boyd, come here and go through your long speech. I want to be sure that you get it right. It didn't make sense the way you said it yesterday."

"Oh, Nita." It was Lucile Merrifield holding out a yellow envelope.

Nita clutched it frantically. "Perhaps she's not coming. Wouldn't I be relieved!"

"It's not a telegram," explained Lucile, gently, "only the proof of the programs that the printer has taken this opportune moment to send up. The boy says if you could look at it right off, why, he could wait and take it back. They want it the first thing in the morning."

"Give it to Helen Adams," said Nita, turning back to Josephine. "She can mark proof. Go on Josephine, I'm listening, and don't stop again for anybody."

Josephine, who was the father of the large and irrepressible Carmichael family, had just finished declaiming her longest speech with praiseworthy regard for its meaning, when somebody called out, "Ermengarde St. John isn't here yet."

Nita sank down in Miss Amelia Minchen's armchair with a little moan of despair. "Somebody go and get her," she said. "Betty Wales, you'd better go. You can dress people fastest."

It seemed to Betty, as she hurried down-stairs and over to the Belden, that she had toiled along the same route, laden with screens, rugs and couch-covers, at least a hundred times that afternoon. She was tired and exasperated at this final hitch, and she burst into the room of the fat freshman who had Ermengarde's part with scant ceremony. What was her amazement to find it quite empty.

"Oh, she can't have forgotten and gone off somewhere!" wailed Betty. "Why, every one was talking about the rehearsal at dinner time."

The cast and committee included so many members of the house that it was almost depopulated, and none of the few girls whom Betty could find knew anything about the missing Ermengarde.

"I must have passed her on the way here," Betty decided at last, and rushed down-stairs again. As she went by the matron's door she almost ran into that lady, hurrying out.

"Oh, I beg your pardon, Mrs. Kent," she said. "You haven't seen Ermengarde—that is, I mean Janet Kirk, have you?"

"No, not yet," said Mrs. Kent briskly. "I only heard about it five minutes ago. I'm just getting ready now to go up and take the poor child some things she's sent for."

"But she isn't in her room," said Betty, bewildered but certain that Mrs. Kent's apparent affection for the irresponsible Janet was very ill-bestowed.

"Of course not, my dear," returned Mrs. Kent, serenely. "She's at the infirmary with a badly sprained ankle. She'll have to keep off it for a month at least, the doctor says."



"Oh, Mrs. Kent!" wailed Betty. "And she's Ermengarde St. John in the house-play. What can we do?"

Mrs. Kent shook her head helplessly. "You'll have to do without Janet," she said. "That's certain. She was on her way home to dinner when she slipped on a piece of ice near the campus-gate. She lay there several minutes before any one saw her, and then luckily Dr. Trench came along and drove her straight to the infirmary. She fainted while they were bandaging her ankle."

"I'm very sorry," said Betty, her vision of a possible hasty recovery dispelled by the last sentence. After a moment's hesitation she decided not to go back to the Students' Building to consult Nita. It would be better to bring some one over from the house to read the part for to-night. It was important, but luckily it wasn't very long, and somebody would have to learn it in time for the play the next evening.

So she hurried up-stairs again and the first person she met was Roberta Lewis, marching down the corridor with a huge Greek dictionary under her arm.

"Put that book down, Roberta; and come over to the rehearsal," commanded Betty. "Ermengarde St. John has sprained her ankle, and gone to the infirmary and everybody's waiting."

"You mean that you want me to go and get her?" asked Roberta doubtfully. "Because I think it would take two people to help her walk, if she's very lame. She's awfully fat, you know."

"We want you to read Janet's part," explained Betty, "just for to-night, until the committee can find some one to take it." And she gave a little more explicit account of the state of affairs at the rehearsal.

"Yes, indeed, I'll be glad to," said Roberta readily. She was secretly delighted to be furnished with an excuse for seeing the dress rehearsal. She had longed with all her soul to be appointed a member of the play-committee, but of course the house-president had not put her on; she was the last person, so the president thought, who would be useful there. And Roberta could not screw her courage up to the point of trying for a place in the cast. So no one knew, since she had never told any one, that she thought acting the most interesting thing in the world and that she loved to act, in spite of the terrors of having an audience. But she had let slip her one chance—the offer of a part in Mary's famous melodrama away back in her freshman year—and she had never had another.

And now, because she was Roberta Lewis, proud and shy and dreadfully afraid of pushing in where she wasn't wanted, she did not think it necessary to mention to Betty that she had borrowed a copy of the play from little Ruth Howard, who was Sara, and that she had read it over until she knew almost every line of it by heart.

Of course the committee were thrown into a state bordering upon panic by the news of Janet's accident, but Madeline comfortingly reminded them that the worse the last rehearsal was, the better the play was sure to be; and there was certainly nothing to do now but go ahead.

So they began to rehearse at last, almost an hour late, and the first act went off with great spirit, in spite of the handicap of a strange Ermengarde, who had to read her part because she was ashamed to confess that she knew it already, and who was supposed not to be familiar with her "stage business." To be sure, she had not very much to do in this scene, but at the end everybody thanked her effusively and Ruth Howard declared that she never saw anybody who "caught on" so fast.

"You ought to take the part to-morrow night," she said.

"Oh, oh!" Roberta cautioned her, in alarm and embarrassment. "They're going to have Polly Eastman. I heard Nita say so. Besides, I wouldn't for anything."

Ermengarde's chance comes in the second act, where, half in pity and half in admiration for the queer little Sara Crewe, she comes up to make friends with her, and, finding to her horror that Sara is actually hungry, decides to bring her "spread" up to Sara's attic. There, later, the terrible Miss Minchen finds her select pupils gathered, and wrathfully puts an end to their merry-making.

At the opening of this scene the attic was supposed to be lighted by one small candle, and consequently the stage was very dim.

"I don't believe Roberta can manage with that light," whispered Nita to Betty who was standing with her in one of the wings.

"Don't let's change unless we have to," Betty whispered back. "You know we wanted to get the effect of Miss Minchen's curl papers and night-cap. Why, Nita, Roberta hasn't any book. She's saying her part right off."

"No!" Nita was incredulous. "Why, Betty Wales, she is, and she's doing it splendidly, fifty per cent, better than Janet did."

Sure enough Roberta, becoming engrossed in the play, had forgotten to conceal her unwarranted knowledge of it. She realized what she had done when a burst of applause greeted her exit, and actors and committee alike forgot the proprieties of a last rehearsal to make a united assault upon her.

"Roberta Lewis," cried Betty accusingly, "why didn't you tell me that you knew Ermengarde's part?"

"Oh, I don't know it," protested Roberta. "I only know snatches of it here and there. Polly can learn it in no time."

"She won't have the chance," said Nita decisively. "You must take it, Roberta. Why didn't you tell people that you could act like that?"

"I shall have stage-fright and spoil everything," declared Roberta forlornly.

"Nonsense," said Nita. "You'd be ashamed to do anything of the kind."

"Yes," agreed Roberta solemnly, "I should." Whereupon everybody laughed, and Nita hugged Roberta and assured her that there was no way out of it.

"Somebody go and get Janet's costume," she ordered, "and any one who has a spare minute can be fitting it over. We shall have to have an extra rehearsal to-morrow of the parts where Ermengarde comes in. Go on now, Sara. Use Lucile's muff for the monkey."

When at last act three was finished it was ten o'clock and Nita gave a sigh of utter exhaustion. "If Madeline's rule holds," she said, "this play ought to go like clockwork to-morrow."

And it did, despite the rather dubious tone of the chairman's prophecy. The Princess arrived duly just after luncheon, and everybody except the cast, who would do their share later, helped to entertain her. This was not difficult. She wasn't a college girl, she explained, and she had never known many of them. She just wanted to hear them talk, see their rooms, and if it wasn't too much trouble she should enjoy looking on at a game of—what was it they played so much at Harding? Basket-ball, somebody prompted. Yes, that was it. The sophomore teams which had just been chosen were proud to play a game for her, and they even suggested, fired by her responsive enthusiasm, that they should teach her to play too.

"I should love it," she said, "if somebody would lend me one of those becoming suits. But I mustn't." She sighed. "The newspapers would be sure to get hold of it. Besides they're giving a tea for me at the Belden. It begins in five minutes. Doesn't time just fly at Harding?"

The monkey also arrived in good season, whether thanks to or in spite of Polly's exertions was not clear, since his master spoke no English and not even Madeline could understand his Italian. The bagdads worked beautifully. The new Ermengarde was letter-perfect, and nobody but herself had any fear that she would be stage-struck, even though the Princess would be sitting in the very middle of the fourth row. Janet's name was still on the program, for Roberta had sternly insisted that it shouldn't be crossed out; and as neither of the two Ermengardes was very well known to the college in general, only a few people noticed the change. But the part made a hit.

"Isn't she just like some little girl who used to go to school with you—that funny, stupid Ermengarde?" one girl would say to another. "They're all natural, but she's absolutely perfect."

"Sara's a dear," said the Princess, "but I want to talk to Ermengarde. Mayn't I go behind? We actor people always like to do that, you know."

So she was escorted behind the scenes, and it was the proudest moment of Roberta's life when the Princess, having asked particularly for her, said all sorts of nice things about her "real talent" and "artistic methods."

"That settles it, Roberta," said Betty, who was behind the scenes in her capacity of chief dressing-maid and first assistant to the make-up man. "You've got to try for senior dramatics."

"Do you really think I could get a part?" asked Roberta coolly.

"I think you might," said Betty, amazed beyond words by Roberta's ready acquiescence. "You probably won't get anything big," she added cautiously. "There are such a lot of people in our class who can act. But the girls say that the only way to get a small part is to try for a big one. Don't you remember how Mary Brooks tried for the hero and the heroine and the villain and then was proud as a peacock to be a page and say two lines, and Dr. Brooks and her mother and two aunts and six cousins came to see her do it."

"Dear me," said Roberta in frightened tones, "do you suppose my father and my cousin will feel obliged to come?"

"I don't know," laughed Betty, "but I feel obliged to remind you that the third act of Sara Crewe is on and you belong out there where you can hear your cue."

"I hope Roberta won't be disappointed about getting a part in the senior play," Betty confided to Madeline, as they parted afterward in the Belden House hall. "She did awfully well to-night, but I think she takes it too seriously. She doesn't realize what tremendous competition there is for the parts in our plays, nor what lots of practice some of the girls have had."

"Oh, I wouldn't worry," said Madeline easily. "If she doesn't get anything, she'll have to do without. She'll have plenty of company. She probably won't try when the time comes."

"Yes," said Betty, "she will, and she's so sensitive that she'll hate terribly to fail. So, as I started her on her mad career as an actress, I feel responsible."

"You always feel responsible for something," laughed Madeline. "While you're in the business why don't you remember that you're responsible for a nice little slice of to-night's performance. Miss Ferris says it's the best house-play she's seen."

"I know. Isn't it just splendid?" sighed Betty rapturously. "And isn't the Princess a dear? But Madeline, you haven't any idea how my feet ache."



CHAPTER VIII

THE GREATEST TOY-SHOP ON EARTH

"No," said Betty, "I haven't found it, and now I'm almost sure I shan't, because Nita's lost hers."

"What has Nita lost?" asked Madeline from her nest of pillows. It was the evening after the play, and the Belden House felt justified in taking life easily. "She lost her head last night," chuckled Madeline, without waiting for Betty's answer. "Did you hear her imploring the organ-man in her most classic English not to let me take the monkey out in front to show to the President? As if I really would!"

"You've done just as crazy things in your time, dear," retorted Katherine Kittredge, who had come over to borrow one of Betty's notebooks and had found the atmosphere of elegant leisure that pervaded the room irresistible.

"Do you really think so?" asked Madeline amiably. "Well, before we go into that I want to know what else Nita has lost."

"Why, a pin," explained Betty,—"that lovely one with the amethyst in the centre and the ring of little pearls in a quaint old setting. It used to be her great-grandmother's. Mine wasn't much to lose, and I felt sure until to-day that it would turn up, but it hasn't, and now I'm afraid it was really stolen."

"Have you looked all through that?" asked Madeline, pointing to the miscellaneous assortment of books, papers, dance-cards and bric-a-brac that littered Betty's small desk to the point of positive inundation.

Betty assented with dignity. "And I haven't had time since to put it back in the pigeon-holes. When Nita told me about her pin, I got worried about mine—mother gave it to me and I couldn't bear to lose it for good—so I went through my desk and all my drawers and it was sweeping-day, so I asked Belden House Annie to look too. It's not here."

"Is Nita sure hers was stolen?" asked Katherine.

Betty nodded. "As sure as she can be without actually seeing it taken. She left it on her cushion yesterday when she came down to luncheon, and when she got back from physics lab, it was gone."

"What a shame!" said Madeline. "She ought to tell Mrs. Kent right away. I should strongly suspect the new table-girl."

"Oh, but she's a cousin of Belden House Annie's," explained Betty, "and I'm sure Annie would look after her. We all know that she's as honest as the day herself, and all the other maids have been here for years and years."

"It's queer," said Katherine, "if it was an outsider—a more or less professional thief, I mean—that he or she should come to this house twice, several weeks apart, and each time take so little. If it was a college girl now——"

"Oh, don't, Katherine," begged Betty. "I can't bear to think that any Harding girl would do such a thing. I'd ten times rather never know who it was than to find it was that way."

Just then the B's appeared airily attired in kimonos concealed under rain-coats, and laden with a huge pan of marshmallow fudge, which they had made, they explained, in honor of Roberta's successful debut.

"What are you all looking so solemn about?" demanded Bob, when Babbie had gone in search of Roberta.

Betty told her, and Babe and Bob exchanged glances.

"It's not necessarily any one in this house who's responsible, I guess," said Babe. "Babbie's lost a valuable pin too, and Geraldine Burdett has lost a ring. Oh, about two weeks ago Gerry's was taken, and Babbie's before that. They've been keeping dark and trying to get up a clue, but they can't. They'll be all off when they hear about these other robberies."

"There was one awfully queer thing about Babbie's thief," put in Bob. "Her little gold-linked purse was on the chiffonier right beside her pin and it wasn't touched, though it was just stuffed with bills. That makes them afraid it was some girl who's awfully fond of jewelry and can't afford any."

"It isn't right to leave our lovely things around so, is it?" said Betty seriously. "It's just putting temptation in the way of poor girls."

"Exactly," agreed Madeline. "We go off for hours, never locking up anything, leaving our money and other valuables in plain sight, and if we do miss anything we can't be sure it's stolen and we don't have time to investigate for weeks after. It's a positive invitation to dishonesty."

"But it's such a nuisance to lock up," complained Babe, "and if I hide things I can't ever find them again, so I might as well not bother."

"I haven't any golden baubles," said Bob, "but I'm going to keep my money in 'Love's Labor Lost.' You'll find it there if you ever want to borrow."

"'Much Ado about Nothing' would be the most appropriate place for mine," laughed Katherine, "so I choose that. You probably won't find any if you want to borrow."

"But seriously, girls, let's all be more careful," advised Betty, "and let's ask other people to be. Think how perfectly awful it is to make chances for girls to forget themselves. But I shan't believe it's a Harding girl," she added decisively. "It would be perfectly easy for any dishonest young woman to go through the houses without being questioned. Perhaps she got frightened and didn't notice Babbie's money on that account or didn't have time to snatch up anything but the pin."

Just then Babbie appeared, bringing Roberta and Rachel Morrison who had met them in the hall, and in the general attack upon the fudge pan more serious issues were forgotten.

It was now the busiest, gayest part of the long fall term. Flying fast on the heels of the house play came Thanksgiving Day.

"And just to think of it!" wailed Bob. "Only two days vacation this year, and Miss Stuart and the president dropping the most awful hints about what will happen if you cut over. Nobody can go home. I hope the faculty will all eat too much and have horrible attacks of indigestion."

"Well, we may as well have as much fun as we can out of it," said Babbie philosophically. "I've written home for a spread; so we shan't die of hunger."

"Mrs. Kent says she's going to give us the best Thanksgiving dinner we ever ate," announced Betty cheerfully.

"I hope our matron will be seized with the same lofty ambition," said Katherine. "If she is, and if the skating holds, I shan't mind staying here."

"Weren't you going to stay anyway?" asked Helen Adams.

"Being a resident of the remote village of Kankakee, Illinois, and not having been urged to visit any of my Eastern friends, I was," admitted Katherine, solemnly, "but that doesn't make it any the nicer to have to work all day Saturday."

The skating did last, and the man at the rink, being taken in hand by the B's, sympathized heartily with their wrongs, and promised them a three days' ice carnival, which meant search-lights, bonfires and a big band on the ice every evening. There is nothing in the world more exhilarating than skating to good music. The rink was thronged with Harding girls and Winsted men, and the proprietor could not easily regard himself as a bona fide philanthropist.

The paper-chase, to get up an appetite on Thanksgiving morning, was Katherine Kittredge's idea and the basket-ball game in the afternoon between the Thanksgiving Dinners and the Training Tables was too fantastic to have originated with any one but Madeline Ayres.

Georgia Ames, dressed as a huge turkey gobbler, captained the Thanksgiving Dinners, who were gotten up as bunches of celery and mounds of cranberry jelly. The captain of the Training Table simulated a big bottle labeled "Pure Spring Water," and the members of her team were tastefully trimmed with slices of dry bread. Being somewhat less spectacular than their rivals, they were a little more agile and they won the game, which was so funny that it sent two of the faculty into hysterics.

"And that's almost as bad as indigestion," said Babe, who was a bunch of celery. At least she had been one until she came into collision with the water bottle and lost most of her trimmings.

It was really the Thanksgiving game that precipitated the plans for the senior entertainment for the library fund. The fire the year before had not only damaged the library considerably, but it had brought its shortcomings and the absurdly small number of its volumes, compared with the rapidly increasing number of the girls who used them, to the attention of the public. Somebody had offered fifty thousand dollars for a library fund provided the college raised an equal amount. The alumnae were trying to get the money, and because they had helped the undergraduates with their beloved Students' Building, they wanted the undergraduates to help them now.

On the very evening of the game Marie Howard, the senior president, caught Madeline on the way to Babbie's spread and laid the matter before her.

"The alums want us to subscribe to the fund," she explained, "and then they think each class ought to give an entertainment. Not a bit nervy, are they? Well, of course 19— has got to take the lead, and I've fairly racked my brains to think what we can do. Now it's no trouble to you to have lovely, comical ideas, and if you'll only help me out with this entertainment, I'll be your friend for life."

"Why don't you appoint a committee to take charge of it?" inquired Madeline, serenely.

Marie gave her a mournful look. "I suppose you think I haven't tried. The girls are all willing to help, but they insist upon having the idea to start with. I know you hate committees, Madeline, and I'm not asking you to be on one—"

"You'd better not," interpolated Madeline, darkly, remembering the drudgery she had submitted to to make the Belden House play a success.

"Just think up the idea," Marie went on, persuasively, "and I'll make a committee do the rest. I don't care what we have, so long as it's new and taking—the sort of thing that you always seem to have in your head. That's what we want. Plays and lectures are too commonplace."

"Marie," said Madeline, laughingly, "you talk as if ideas were cabbages and my head was a large garden. I can't produce ideas to order any more than the rest of you can. But if I should think of anything, I'll let you know."

"Thank you," said Marie, sweetly, and went back to her room, where she gave vent to some forcible remarks about the "exasperatingness" of clever people who won't let themselves be pinned down to anything.

It was Betty Wales who, dancing into Madeline's room the next afternoon, gave, not Madeline, but Eleanor Watson,—who had been having tea with Madeline and listening to her absurd version of Marie's request,—an inspiration.

"I wish it wasn't babyish to like toys," she sighed. "I've been down-town with Bob, and they've opened a big toy-shop in the store next Cuyler's, just for the holidays, I suppose. Bob got a Teddy bear, and I bought this box of fascinating little Japanese tops for my baby sister. They're all like different kinds of fruit and you spin them like pennies, without a string. I just love toy-stores."

"So do I. So does everybody," said Madeline, oracularly, clearing a place on the polished tea-table and emptying out the miniature tops. "They renew your youth. Let's get all these things to spinning at once, Betty."

"Why don't you have a toy-shop for your senior entertainment?" asked Eleanor, watching the two absorbed faces.

"How do you mean?" asked Madeline, absently, trying to make the purple plum she was manipulating stay upright longer than Betty's peach.

"Why, with live toys, something on the plan of the circus that you and Mary got up away back in sophomore year," explained Eleanor. "I should think you might work it up beautifully."

Madeline stared at her for a moment, her eyes half-closed. "Eleanor," she declared at last, "you're a genius. We could. I can fairly see my friends turning into toys. You and Betty and the rest of the class beauties are French dolls of course. Helen Adams would make a perfect jumping-jack—she naturally jerks along just like one."

"And Bob can be a jack-in-the-box," cried Betty eagerly, getting Madeline's idea.

"Or a monkey that climbs a rope," suggested Eleanor. "Don't you think Babe would pop out of a box better?"

"And that fat Miss Austin will be just the thing for a top," put in Madeline. "We can ask five cents for a turn at making her spin." And Madeline twirled the purple plum vigorously, in joyous anticipation of taking a turn at Miss Austin.

"Then there could be a counter of stuffed animals," suggested Eleanor, "with Emily Davis to show them off."

"Easily," agreed Madeline, "and a Noah's ark, if we want it, and a Punch and Judy show. Oh, there's no end to the things we can have! Let's go over and tell Marie about it before dinner."

"You and Betty go," objected Eleanor. "I really haven't time."

"Nonsense," said Madeline firmly. "It's long after five now, and—Eleanor Watson, are you trying to crawl out of your responsibilities? It was you that thought of this affair, remember."

"Please don't try to drag me in," begged Eleanor. "I'll be a doll, if you like, or anything else that you can see me turning into. But Marie didn't ask me to suggest, and she might feel embarrassed and obliged to ask me to be on the committee, and—please don't try to drag me in, Madeline."

Madeline looked at her keenly, for a moment. "Eleanor Watson," she began sternly, "you're thinking about last fall. Don't you know that that stupid girl didn't stand for anybody but her own stupid self?"

"She was in the right," said Eleanor simply.

"Not wholly," objected Madeline, "and if she was this isn't a parallel case. In making you toastmistress 19— was supposed to be doing you an honor. You're doing her a favor now, and a good big one."

"And if we tell Marie about the toy-shop, we shall tell her that you thought of it," put in Betty firmly.

"And we shall also say that you hate committee meetings as much as I do," put in Madeline artfully, "but that we are both willing to help in any way that we can with ideas and costumes."

Eleanor looked pleadingly from one to the other.

"We won't give in," declared Betty, "so it's no use to make eyes at us like that."

"Either we suppress the whole idea and 19— goes begging for another, or it stands as yours," said Madeline in adamant tones.

"Well, then, of course," began Eleanor slowly at last.

"Of course," laughed Betty, jumping up to hug her. "I knew you'd see it sensibly in a minute. Come on, Madeline. We haven't any time to lose."

"Do you remember what she was like two years ago, Betty?" asked Madeline thoughtfully when Eleanor had left them, persisting that she really had an engagement before dinner.

"I even remember what she was like three years ago," laughed Betty happily.

"Fancy her giving up a chance like this then!" mused Madeline. "Fancy her contributing ideas to the public good and trying to escape taking the credit for them. Why, Betty, she's a different person."

"I'm so glad you're friends now," said Betty, squeezing Madeline's arm lovingly.

"That's so," Madeline reflected. "We weren't two years ago. I used to hate her wire-pulling so. And now I suppose I'm pulling wires for her myself. Well, I'm going to be careful not to pull any of them down on her head this time. I say, Betty, wouldn't the Blunderbuss make a superb jack-in-the-box? I'm sure everybody would appreciate the symbolic effect when she popped, and perhaps we could manage to smother her by mistake between times."

The toy-shop took "like hot-cakes," to borrow Bob's pet comparison. Everybody told Madeline that it was just like her, and Madeline assured everybody gaily that she had always known she was misunderstood and that anyhow Eleanor Watson was responsible for the toy-shop. Having spent the better part of a day in spreading this information Madeline rushed off to New York on a vague and mysterious errand that had something to do with sub-letting the apartment on Washington Square.

* * * * *

"I remembered after I got down here," she wrote Betty a week later, "that I couldn't eat my solitary Christmas dinner in the flat if I let it. Besides my prospective tenants are bores, and bores never appreciate old furniture enough not to scratch it. But I'm staying on to oversee the fall cleaning, and we haven't had one for a good while, so it will take another week. I'm sorry not to be on hand for the toy-shop doings (don't you let them put it off, Betty, or I can never make up my work), but I send a dialogue—no, it's for four persons—on local issues for the Punch and Judy puppets. If they can't read it, tell them to cultivate their imaginations. I'll print the title, 'The Battle of the Classes,' to give them a starter.

"Miss me a little, "MADELINE.

"P. S. How are the wires working?"

If Eleanor suspected any hidden motive behind Madeline's sudden departure she had no way of confirming her theory, and when Betty escorted the entertainment committee, all of whom happened to be splendid workers but without a spark of originality among them, to Eleanor's room, and declaring sadly that she couldn't remember half the features of the toy-shop that they had discussed together, claimed Eleanor's half-promise of help, why there was nothing for Eleanor to do but redeem it. Nothing at least that the new Eleanor Watson cared to do. It was plain enough that the committee wanted her suggestions, and what other people might think of her motive for helping them really mattered very little in comparison with the success of 19—'s entertainment. Thus the new Eleanor Watson argued, and then she went to work.

"The wires are all right so far," Betty wrote Madeline. "The girls are all lovely, and they'd better be. Eleanor has arranged the dearest play for the dolls, all about a mad old German doll-maker who has a shop full of automatons and practices magic to try to bring them to life. Some village girls come in and one changes clothes with a doll and he thinks he's succeeded. Eleanor saw it somewhere, but she had to change it all around.

"Alice Waite wanted the dolls to give Ibsen's 'Doll's House.' She didn't know what it was about of course, or who wrote it. She just went by the name. The other classes have got hold of the joke and guy us to death.

"You'd better come back and have some of the fun. Besides, nobody can think how to make a costume for the mock-turtle. It's Roberta, and it's going to dance with the gryphon for the animal counter's side-show. Eleanor thought of that too."

But Madeline telegraphed Roberta laconically: "Gray carpet paper shell, mark scales shoe-blacking, lace together sides," and continued to sojourn in Washington Square.

Late in the afternoon of the toy-shop's grand opening she appeared in the door of the gymnasium and stood there a moment staring at the curious spectacle within.

The curtain was just going down on the dolls' pantomime, and the audience was applauding and hurrying off to make the rounds of the other attractions before dinner time. In clarion tones that made themselves heard above the din Emily Davis was advertising an auction of her animals, beginning with "one perfectly good baa-lamb."

"Hear him baa," cried Emily, "and you'll forget that his legs are wobbly."

"This way to the Punch and Judy," shouted Barbara Gordon hoarsely through a megaphone. "Give the children a season of refined and educating amusement. Libretto by our most talented satirist. Don't miss it."

"Hello, Madeline," cried Lucile Merrifield, spying the new arrival. "When did you get back? Come and see the puppets with me. They say your show is great."

"It all looks good to me," said Madeline, "but—is there a top to spin?"

Lucile laughed and nodded. "That fat Miss Austin has taken in two dollars already at five cents a spin. She says she used to love making cheeses, and that she hasn't had such a good time since she grew up."

"That's where I want to go first," said Madeline decisively; but on her way to the tops the doll counter beguiled her.

"Betty Wales," she declared, "when you curl in your lips and stare straight ahead you look just like the only doll I ever wanted. I saw her in a window on Fifth Avenue, and the one time in my life that I ever cried was when daddy wouldn't buy her for me. Where's Eleanor?"

"I don't know," said Betty happily. "She was here a minute ago playing for the dolls' pantomime. But she's all right. Everybody has been thanking her and praising the pantomime, and she's so pleased about it all. She told me that she had felt all this year as if everybody was pointing her out as a disgrace to the class and the college, and that she was beginning to think that her whole life was spoiled. And now—"

"Why, Madeline Ayres," cried Katherine Kittredge hurrying up to them, her hair disheveled and her hands very black indeed. "I'm awfully glad you've come. There's a class meeting to-morrow to decide on the senior play and I want—"

"You want tidying up," laughed Madeline. "What in the world have you been doing?"

"Being half of a woolly lamb," explained Katherine. "The other half couldn't come back this evening, so Emily has been selling us—or it, whichever you please—at auction. Now listen, Madeline. You don't know anything about this play business."

Madeline had heard Katherine's argument, spun Miss Austin, and seen the "Alice in Wonderland" animals dance before she found Eleanor, and by that time an interview with Jean Eastman had prepared her for the hurt look in Eleanor's eyes and the little quiver in her voice, as she welcomed Madeline back to Harding.

Jean was one of the few seniors who had had no active part in the toy-shop. "So I'm patronizing everything regardless," she exclaimed, sauntering up to Madeline and holding out a bag of fudge. "It's a decided hit, isn't it? Polly says the other classes are in despair at the idea of getting up anything that will take half as well."

"It's certainly a lovely show," said Madeline, trying the fudge.

"And a big feather in Eleanor Watson's cap," added Jean carelessly. "She always was the cleverest thing. I'd a lot rather be chairman of the play committee, or even a member of it, for that matter, than toastmistress. I suppose you know that there's a class-meeting to-morrow."

"Have you said that to Eleanor?" asked Madeline coldly.

"Oh, I gave her my congratulations on her prospects," said Jean with a shrug. "We're old friends, you know. We understand each other perfectly."

Madeline's eyes flashed. "It won't be the least use to tell you so," she said, "but lobbying for office is not the chief occupation of humanity as you seem to think. Neither Eleanor Watson nor any of her friends has thought anything about her being put on the play committee. I made the mistake once of supposing that our class as a whole was capable of appreciating the stand she's taken, and I shan't be likely to forget that I was wrong. But this affair was entirely her idea, and she deserves the credit for it."

"Oh, indeed," said Jean quickly. "I suppose you didn't send telegrams—"

But Madeline, her face white with anger was half way across the big hall.

Jean watched her tumultuous progress with a meaning smile. "Well, I've fixed that little game," she reflected. "If they did intend to put her up, they won't dare to now. They'll be afraid of seeing me do the Blunderbuss's act with variations. She'd have been elected fast enough, after this, and there isn't a girl in the class who could do half as well on that committee. But as for having her and that insufferable little Betty Wales on, when I shall be left off, I simply couldn't stand it."

Madeline found Betty taking off her doll's dress by dim candle-light, which she hoped would escape the eagle eye of the night-watchman. "I've come to tell you that the wires are all down again," she began, and went on to tell the story of Jean's carefully timed insinuations.

"I almost believe that the Blunderbuss was the tool of the Hill crowd," she said angrily. "At any rate they used her while she served, and now they're ready to take a hand themselves."

Betty stared at her in solemn silence. "What an awful lot it costs to lose your reputation," she said sadly.

"And it costs a good deal to be everybody's guardian angel, doesn't it, dearie?" Madeline said affectionately. "I oughtn't to have bothered you, but I seem to have made a dreadful mess of things so far."

"Oh, no, you haven't," Betty assured her. "Eleanor knows how queer Jean is, and what horrid things she says about people who won't follow her lead. None of that crowd would help about the toy-shop except Kate Denise, but every one else has been fine. And I know they haven't thought that Eleanor was trying to get anything out of them."

Madeline sighed mournfully. "In Bohemia people don't think that sort of thing," she said. "It complicates life so to have to consider it always. Good-night, Betty."

"Good-night," returned Betty cheerfully. "Don't forget that the senior 'Merry Hearts' have a tea-drinking to-morrow."

"I'm not likely to," laughed Madeline. "Every one of them that I've seen has mentioned it. They're all agog with curiosity."

"They'll be more so with joy, when I've told them the news," declared Betty, holding her candle high above her head to light Madeline through the hall.

"Dear me! I wish there could be a class without officers and committees and editors and commencement plays," she told the green lizard a little later. "Those things make such a lot of worry and hard feeling. But then I suppose it wouldn't be much of a class, if it wasn't worth worrying about. And anyway it's almost vacation."



CHAPTER IX

A WEDDING AND A VISIT TO BOHEMIA

Betty and Madeline went to their class meeting on the following afternoon very much as a trembling freshman goes to her first midyears, but nothing disastrous happened.

"I fancy that Jean has taken more than Eleanor and me into her confidence," Madeline whispered. Besides, the Blunderbuss was in her place, her placid but unyielding presence offering an effectual reminder to the girls who had been admiring Eleanor's executive ability and resourcefulness that it would be safer not to mention her name in connection with the play committee.

But before that was elected the preliminary committee, which, to quote Katherine Kittredge, had been hunting down the masterpieces of Willy Shakespeare ever since the middle of junior year, made its report. The members had not been able to agree unanimously on a play, so the chairman read the majority's opinion, in favor of "As You Like It," and then Katherine Kittredge explained the position of the minority, who wanted to be very ambitious indeed and try "The Merchant of Venice." There was a spirited debate between the two sets of partisans, after which, to Katherine's infinite satisfaction, 19— voted to give "The Merchant of Venice" at its commencement.

Then the committee to manage the play was chosen, and Betty Wales was the only person who was much surprised when she was unanimously elected to the post of costume member.

"I on that committee!" she exclaimed in dismay. "Why, I don't know anything about Shakespeare."

"You will before you get through with this business," laughed Barbara Gordon, who had been made chairman. "The course begins to-morrow at two in my room. No cuts allowed."



Betty's pleasure in this unexpected honor was rather dampened by the fact that Jean Eastman had proposed her name, making it seem almost as if she were taking sides with Eleanor's enemies. But Madeline only laughed at what she called Jean's neat little scheme for getting the last word.

"Ruth Ford was all ready to nominate you," she said, "but Jean dashed in ahead of her. She wanted to assure me that I hadn't silenced her for long."

So Betty gave herself up to the happy feeling of having shown herself worthy to be trusted with part of 19—'s most momentous undertaking.

"I must write Nan to-night," she said, "but I don't think I shall mention the costume part. She would think I was just as frivolous as ever, and Barbara says that all the committee are expected to help with things in general."

Whereupon she remembered her tea-drinking, and hurried home to find most of the guests already assembled, and Eleanor, who had not gone to the class meeting but who had heard all about it from the others, waiting on the stairs to congratulate her.

"I don't care half as much about being on the committee as I do about having friends like you to say they're glad," declared Betty, hugging Eleanor because there were a great many things that she didn't know how to say to her.

"Yes, friends are what count," said Eleanor earnestly, "and Betty, I think I'm going to leave Harding with a good many. At least I've made some new ones this week."

And that was all the reference that was ever made to the way Eleanor's oldest friend at Harding had treated her.

"Well," said Betty, when everybody had congratulated her and Rachel, whose appointment on all 19—'s important committees had come to be a foregone conclusion, "I hope Nita and Rachel and K. won't be sorry they came. You three aren't so much mixed up in it as the rest of us, but I thought I'd ask you anyway."

"Do you mean that I can't have my usual three slices of lemon?" demanded Katherine indignantly.

"Hush, material-minded one," admonished Nita. "There's more than tea and lemon in this. There's a great secret. Of course we shall be interested in it. Fire away, Betty."

"And everybody stop watching the kettle," commanded Babbie, who had taken it in charge, "and then perhaps it will begin to boil."

"What I wanted to tell you," began Betty, impressively, "is that Miss Hale is going to be married this vacation."

"Good for Miss Hale!" cried Bob, throwing up a pillow. "Did her sister get well?"

"Yes," said Betty. "She was dreadfully ill all summer, and then she had to go away for a change. Ethel wanted to wait until she was perfectly strong, because she had looked forward so to being maid-of-honor."

"I think we ought to send Miss Hale a present," said Babe, decisively. "Madame President, please instruct the secretary—— Why, we haven't any president now," ended Babe in dismay.

"Let's elect Betty," suggested Nita.

"She's too young for such a responsible position," objected Bob. "It's only the dramatics committee that takes infants."

"And besides, her hair curls," added Madeline, reaching out to pull one of the offending ringlets. "Curly-haired people don't deserve to be elected to offices."

"Let's have Babe," suggested Rachel.

"She's older than her name, her hair has always been straight——"

"Except once," put in Katherine, and everybody shrieked with laughter at the recollection of Babe's one disastrous experience with a marcelle wave.

"And then she looked like a wild woman of Borneo," went on Rachel, "so it shouldn't count against her. Furthermore this society was organized to give her a chance."

"All right," agreed Nita. "I withdraw my nomination. Babe, you're elected. Instruct the secretary to cast a unanimous ballot for yourself."

"Very well," said Babe with much dignity. "Please do it, Madeline, and then I appoint you and Betty and Eleanor to choose a present for Miss Hale. I was just going to say, when I interrupted myself to remark upon the extraordinary absence of a presiding officer"—Babe coughed and dropped her presidential manner abruptly—"I was going to say that I'm all for a stuffed turtle, like those we got in Nassau. I think a ripping big one would be the very thing."

"Babe!" said Babbie scornfully. "Imagine how a turtle would look among her wedding presents."

"I think it would look stunning," persisted Babe, "and it would be so appropriate from us."

"Don't be dictatorial, Babe," advised Rachel. "It isn't seemly in a president. Perhaps your committee can think of something appropriate that won't be quite so startling as a turtle. When is the wedding, Betty?"

"The thirty-first of December at half-past eight," explained Betty.

"New Year's eve—what a nice, poetical time," interposed Babbie, thoughtfully. "I think that if I ever marry——"

"Hush, Babbie," commanded Nita. "You probably never will. Do let Betty finish her story."

"Well, it's to be a very small wedding," went on Betty, hastily, "with no cards, but announcements, but Ethel wrote me herself and she wants us all—the Nassau ones, I mean—and Mary Brooks, to come."

"Jolly for Miss Hale!" cried Bob, tossing up two pillows this time.

"How perfectly dear of her!" said Babbie.

"The biggest turtle we can get won't be a bit too good for her," declared Babe.

"But where could we stay over night?" asked Helen, the practical-minded.

"You don't give me a chance to tell you the whole of anything," complained Betty, sadly. "We're invited guests—specially invited, I mean, and it's all arranged where we are to stay. Ethel is going to have her sister and four bridesmaids to walk with her, and she wants us girls to hold a laurel rope along the line of march of the wedding-party, as they go through the rooms."

"Jolly," began Babe, but she was promptly suppressed by Madeline, who tumbled her flat on her back and held her down with a pillow while she ordered Betty to proceed.

"I'll read you what else she says," went on Betty, triumphantly producing Miss Hale's letter. "She says, 'There won't be many people to get in the way of the procession, but the aisle effect will be pretty, and besides I want my match-makers to have a part in the grand denouement of all their efforts. Will you ask the others and write Mary Brooks, whose address I don't know. My uncle's big house next door to us will have room for you all, and you must come in time for my bridesmaids' luncheon and a little dance, both on the thirtieth.' Now isn't that splendid?"

"Perfectly splendid," echoed her auditors.

"Why, we shall be almost bridesmaids," said Roberta Lewis in awestruck tones. "Does Mary know?"

Betty nodded. "She hasn't had time to answer yet, but she can certainly go, as she lives so near Ethel."

"The only difficulty about our going," said Babe, "is what to do with the few days between the wedding and the opening of college."

"And that's easily settled," said Madeline promptly. "Miss Hale lives just out of New York, doesn't she? Well, you are all to come and stay in the flat with me. Hasn't it just been beautifully cleaned? And aren't you all longing for a glimpse of Bohemia?"

That was the climax of the tea drinking. The Merry Match-Makers spent the evening writing home to their parents for permission to go to the wedding and considering momentous problems of dress. For Roberta's best evening-gown was lavender and Babbie's was pink, and the question was how to distribute Betty, Babe and Helen in white, Bob in blue, Eleanor in her favorite yellow, Madeline in ecru, and Mary in any one of a bewildering number of possible toilettes, so as to justify Ethel's hope that the aisle would be ornamental as well as useful.

How the days flew after that! For besides the wedding there were the luncheon and the dance to anticipate and plan for, as well as the unknown joys of Bohemia, New York, not to mention the regular excitement of going home, the fun of tucking Christmas presents into the corners of half-packed trunks, and the terrors of the written lesson that some inhuman member of the faculty always saves for the crowded last week of the term.

On the afternoon of the twenty-ninth the Merry Match-Makers met in New York. Babbie had sent a sad little note to Miss Hale and a tearful one to Betty to say that her mother, who was a good deal of an invalid, had "looked pretty blue over my running off early, and so of course I won't leave her;" and Helen Adams had decided that considering all the extra expenses of senior year she couldn't afford the trip to New York. So there were only seven "almost bridesmaids," as Roberta called them, or "posts," which was Bob's name for them, to fall upon one another as if they had been separated for years, instead of a week, say thank you for the presents that were each "just what I wanted," and exclaim excitedly over Betty's new suit, Mary's fur coat, and the sole-leather kit-bag that Santa Claus had brought Roberta.

"It's queer," said Bob. "I feel as if I'd had one whole vacation already, and ought to be unpacking and digging on psychology 6 and history 10. Whereas in reality I'm just beginning on another whole vacation. It's like having two Thanksgiving dinners in one year."

"Not quite like that, I hope," laughed Eleanor, as they started off to inspect the wedding present, a beautiful pair of tall silver candlesticks. Madeline had ransacked New York to find them, and every one but Babe, who clung to her turtle as far superior to any "musty old antiques," thought them just odd and distinctive enough to please Ethel's fastidious taste. And after that there was barely time to catch the train they had arranged to take out to Ethel's home.

Interest in the bride and in their own part of the wedding ceremony had caused the "Merry Hearts" to forget Dr. Eaton, and they had never once considered that of course his college chum, John Alison, would leave the railroad he was building in Arizona and come east to be Dr. Eaton's best man. And it was Mr. John Alison who had "finished" Georgia Ames. He inquired for her at once and so did his brother Tom, who was an usher, and who explained that he had been invited to keep John in order, and to intercede for him with the "posts."

"And in return for my services as peacemaker," he said solemnly, "I expect to be treated with special consideration by everybody." Subsequent events seemed to show that the special consideration referred to meant a chance to see as much as possible of Betty Wales.

Even more surprising to three of the posts was the presence of Mr. Richard Blake in the wedding-party—Richard Blake, editor of "The Quiver," and one-time lecturer at Harding on the tendencies of modern drama.

Eleanor's face was a study when she recognized him, but before Miss Hale could begin any introductions Madeline greeted him enthusiastically and got him into a corner, where they exchanged low-toned confidences for a moment.

"I'm particularly glad to meet you again, Miss Watson," he said in a tone of unmistakable sincerity, when he was presented. "We had a jolly dinner together once, didn't we?"

"Dick's such an old dear," Madeline whispered to Betty half an hour later. "He confided to me just now that the first evening he saw Eleanor he thought her the most fascinating girl he had ever met, and then he hastened to assure me that that had absolutely nothing to do with his deciding to keep dark about her story. I don't doubt him for a moment—Dick perfectly detests cheating. But he can't make me believe that he's being nice to her now just on my account."

There were plenty of other men at the wedding. "We're the only girls in the whole family," Charlotte, Ethel's younger sister explained, "and we have thirty own cousins, most of them grown-up."

"Was that one of the thirty that you were sitting on the stairs with at the dance?" inquired Mary Brooks sweetly.

Charlotte blushed and Bob flew to her rescue. "We all know why Mary isn't monopolizing any one," she said. "Are you taking notes for future use, Mary?"

Mary shrugged her shoulders loftily. "I scorn to answer such nonsense," she retorted. "I'm going to be an old maid and make matches for all my friends."

"We'll come and be posts for you any time after commencement," Babe assured her amiably. "Did you know, girls, that Mary can't stay over with Madeline because her mother is giving a New Year's dinner-party. Who do you suppose will be there?"

The wedding festivities were over at last. "It was all perfectly scrumptious," Babe wrote Babbie enthusiastically, "and I'm bringing you a little white satin slipper like those we had filled with puffed rice for luncheon favors, and a lovely pin that Miss Hale wants you to have just as if you had come. The nicest thing of all is that vacation isn't over yet. Is it two weeks or two years since I saw you?"