"Well, I suppose I shall have to do a little something then myself,"

said Eleanor, "but I shan't bother yet awhile. Here comes the sleigh,"

she added, looking out of the window. "Paul's driving, and your Mr.

Parsons has asked Georgie Arnold. What do you think of that?"

"I should certainly hope he wouldn't ask the same girl to everything, if that's what you mean," said Betty calmly, helping Eleanor into her new coat.

Eleanor shrugged her shoulders. "Good-bye," she said. "For my part, I prefer to be the one and only--while I last," and s.n.a.t.c.hing up her furs she was off.

Betty found Mary and Katherine in possession of her room and engaged in an animated discussion about the rules of hockey.

"I tell you that when the thing-um-bob is in play," began Katherine.

"Not a bit of it," cut in Mary.

"Come along, girls," interrupted Betty, fishing her skates from under her couch, and pulling on her "p.u.s.s.y" mittens. "Never mind those rules.

You can't play hockey to-day. You promised to skate with me."

It was an ideal winter's afternoon, clear, cold and still. The ice on Paradise was smooth and hard, and the little pond was fairly alive with skaters, most of them Harding girls. Betty was a novice, with one weak ankle that had an annoying habit of turning over suddenly and tripping her up; so she was timid about skating alone. But between Mary and Katherine she got on famously, and thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon. At four Mary had a committee meeting, Katherine an engagement to play basket-ball, and Betty had agreed to meet Rachel. So with great reluctance they took off their skates and started up the steep path that led past the boat-house to the back gate of the campus.

"Goodness, but I'm stiff," groaned Mary, stopping to rest a minute half way up. "I'd have skated until dinner time though, if it hadn't been for this bothering committee. Never be on committees, children."

"Why don't you apply your own rules?" inquired Katherine saucily.

"Oh, because I'm a vain peac.o.c.k like the rest of the world. The cla.s.s president comes to me and says, 'Now Mary, n.o.body but you knows every girl in the cla.s.s. You can find out the sentiments of all sorts and conditions on this matter. And then you have such fine executive ability. I know you hate committees, but----' Of course I feel pleased by her base flattery, and I don't come to my senses until it's too late to escape. Is to-day the sixteenth?"

"No, it's Sat.u.r.day, the twentieth," said Katherine. "Two weeks next Monday to mid-years."

"The twentieth!" repeated Mary in tones of alarm. "Then, my psychology paper is due a week from Tuesday. I haven't done a thing to it, and I shall be so busy next week that I can't touch it till Friday or Sat.u.r.day. How time does fly!"

"Don't you even know what you're going to write on or anything that you're going to say?" asked Betty, who always wrote her papers as soon as they were a.s.signed, to get them off her mind, and who longed to know the secret of waiting serenely until the eleventh hour.

"Why, I had a plan," answered Mary absently, "but I've waited so long that I hardly know if I can use it."

Just then Alice Waite and her roommate came panting up the hill, and Mary, who seldom took much exercise and was very tired, fell back to the rear of the procession. But when the freshmen stopped in front of the Hilton House she trilled and waved her hand to attract their attention.

"Oh. Betty, please take my skates home," she said as she limped up to the group. Then she smiled what Roberta had named her "beamish" smile.

"I know what you girls are talking about," she said. "Will you give me a supper at Holmes's if I'm right?"

"Yes," said Katherine recklessly, "for you couldn't possibly guess. What was it?"

"You're wondering about those fifty freshmen," answered Mary promptly.

"What freshmen?" demanded the four girls in a chorus, utterly ignoring the lost wager.

"Why, those fifty who, according to a perfectly baseless rumor, are going to be sent home after mid-years."

"What do you mean?" gasped Betty.

"Hadn't you heard?" asked Mary soothingly. "Well, I'm sure it will be all over the college by this afternoon. Now understand, I don't believe it's true. If it were ten or even twenty it might be, but fifty--why, girls, it's preposterous!"

"But I don't understand you," said Miss Madison excitedly. She had grown very pale and was hanging on to Katherine's arm. "Do you mean that there is such a story--that fifty freshmen are to be sent home after mid-years?"

"Yes," said Mary sadly, "there is, and that's what I meant. I'm sorry that I should have been the one to tell you, but you'd have heard it from some one else, I'm sure. A thing like that is always repeated so.

Remember, I a.s.sure you I don't believe a word of it. Somebody probably started it on purpose to frighten you little freshmen. If you would take my skates, Betty. I hate to lug them around till dinner time. Now good-bye, and do cheer up."

Left to themselves the four freshmen stared blankly at one another.

Finally Katherine broke the mournful silence.

"Girls," she said solemnly, "it's utter foolishness to worry about this report. Mary didn't believe it herself, and why should we?"

"She's not a freshman," suggested Alice gloomily.

"There are almost four hundred freshmen. Perhaps the fifty wouldn't be any of us," put in Betty.

Miss Madison maintained a despairing silence.

"Well," said Katherine at last, "if it is true there's nothing to be done about it now, I suppose; and if it isn't true, why it isn't; so I think I'll go to basket-ball," and she detached Miss Madison and started off.

Betty gave a prolonged sigh. "I must go too," she said. "I've promised to study Latin. I presume it isn't any use, but I can't disappoint Rachel. I wish I was a fine student like Rachel. She won't be one of the fifty."

Alice, who had been in a brown study, emerged, just as Betty turned away.

"Wait a minute," she commanded. "Of course it's awfully queer up here, but still, if they have exams. I don't see the use of cooking it all up beforehand. I mean I don't see the use of exams. if it is all decided."

Her two friends brightened perceptibly.

"That's a good idea," declared Betty. "Every one says the mid-years are so important. Let's do our best from now on, and perhaps the faculty will change their minds."

As she walked home, Betty thought of Eleanor. "She'll be dreadfully worried. I shan't tell her a word about it," she resolved. Then she remembered Mary Brooks's remark. Yes, no doubt some one else would enlighten Eleanor. It was just too bad. But perhaps Mary was right and the story was only a story.

It is hard for freshmen on the eve of their mid-year examinations to be perfectly calm and philosophical. The story of the fifty unfortunates ran like wild-fire through the college, and while upper-cla.s.s girls sniffed at it as absurd and even freshmen, particularly the clever ones, pooh-poohed it in public, it was the cause of many anxious, and some tearful moments. Betty, after her first fright, had accepted the situation with her usual cheerfulness, and so had Alice and Rachel, who could not help knowing that her work was of exceptionally high grade, while Helen irritated her house-mates by affecting an anxiety which, as Katherine put it, "No dig, who gets 'good' on all her written work, can possibly feel." Katherine was worried about her mathematics, in which she had been warned before Thanksgiving, but she confided to Betty that she had counted them up, and without being a bit conceited she really thought there were fifty stupider girls in the cla.s.s of 19--. Roberta and the Riches, however, were utterly miserable, and Eleanor wrote to Paul West that she was busy--she had written "ill" first, and then torn up the note--and indulged in another frantic fit of industry, even more violent than its predecessors had been.

"But I thought you wanted to go home," said Betty curiously one afternoon when Eleanor had come in to borrow a lexicon. "You say you hate it here, and you hate to study. So why do you take so much trouble about staying?"

Eleanor straightened proudly. "Haven't you observed yet that I have a bad case of the Watson pride?" she asked. "Do you think I'd ever show my face again if I failed?"

"Then why----" began Betty.

"Oh, that's the unutterable laziness that I get from my--from the other side of the house," interrupted Eleanor. "It's an uncomfortable combination, I a.s.sure you," and taking the book she had come for, she abruptly departed.

Betty realized suddenly that in all the year Eleanor had never once spoken of her mother.

After that she couldn't help being sorry for Eleanor, but she pitied Miss Madison more. Miss Madison was dull at books and she knew it, and had actually made herself ill with work and worry. Going to see her Hilton House friends on the Friday afternoon after the skating party, Betty found Miss Madison alone and undisguisedly crying.

"I know I'm foolish," she apologized. "Most people just laugh at that story, but I notice they study harder since they heard it. And I'm such a stupid."

Betty, who hated tears, had a sudden inspiration. "Why don't you ask about it at the registrar's office?" she suggested.