"What does it all mean? That's the one thing I'd like to know."

Judith Stearns plumped herself down on Ethel Lacey's couch bed with an energy that bespoke her feelings.

"It is as yet beyond the understanding," gloomily conceded Adrienne Dupree.

"You'd better go downstairs and see Mrs. Weatherbee at once, Judy," advised Ethel.

It was a most amazed and indignant trio which had gathered for a council of war in the room belonging to Ethel and Adrienne.

"I'm going to," nodded Judith with some asperity. "I have Jane's telegram here with me. I just stopped for a minute to tell you girls. Why, Jane will be in on that four o'clock train! A nice tale we'll have to tell her!"

"Oh, there's surely been a misunderstanding," repeated Ethel Lacey.

Judith shrugged her shoulders.

"It looks queer to me," she said. "You know Mrs. Weatherbee never liked Jane. It would be just like her——"

Judith paused. A significant stare conveyed untold meaning.

"She couldn't do anything so unfair and get away with it," reasoned Ethel. "Jane could take up the matter with Miss Howard and make a big fuss about it."

"She could, but would she?" demanded Judith savagely. "You know how proud Jane is. She'd die before she'd give Mrs. Weatherbee the satisfaction of seeing she was hurt over it. She——"

"Oh, what's the use in speculating?" interrupted Ethel. "Go and find out, Judy. We're probably making much ado about nothing."

"It is I who will go with you," announced Adrienne decidedly. "I am also the dear friend of Jane."

"Let's all go," proposed Judith. "There's strength in numbers. If Mrs. Weatherbee hasn't been fair to Jane it will bother her a whole lot to have three of us take it up."

Adrienne and Ethel concurring in this opinion, the three girls promptly marched themselves downstairs to the matron's office to inquire into the matter which had aroused them to take action in Jane Allen's behalf.

Ten minutes later they retired from an interview with Mrs. Weatherbee, more amazed than when they had entered the matron's office. They were also proportionately incensed at the reception with which they had met.

"I think she's too hateful for words!" sputtered Judith, the moment the committee of inquiry had again shut themselves in Ethel's room.

"She might have explained," was Ethel's indignant cry. "I don't believe that Jane's not coming back to Madison Hall."

"Jane is coming back to Madison Hall," asserted Judith positively. "She said so in her last letter to me. That is, she spoke of our room and all. If she hadn't intended coming back, she'd have said something about it."

"Of a truth she intended to return to this Hall," coincided Adrienne. "This most hateful Mrs. Weatherbee has perhaps decided thus for herself. Would it not be the humiliating thing for our pauvre Jeanne to return and be refused the admittance?"

"That won't happen," decreed Judith grimly.

"We're going to the train to meet her, you know. We'll have to tell her the minute she sets foot on the station platform."

"But suppose we find that it's true?" propounded Ethel. "That she doesn't intend to live at the Hall this year? Something might have happened after she wrote you girls to make her change her mind."

"There's only one thing that I know of and I'd hate to think it was that," returned Judith soberly. "You know what I mean, that Jane mightn't care to room with me."

"That is the nonsense," disagreed Adrienne sturdily. "We, who know Jane, know that it could never be thus. But wait, only wait. We shall, no doubt, prove this Mrs. Weatherbee to be the g-r-rand villain."

Adrienne's roll of r's, coupled with her surmise as to the disagreeable matron's villainy, provoked instant mirth.

Downhearted as she was, Judith could not refrain from giggling a little as her quick imagination visualized in stately, white-haired Mrs. Weatherbee the approved stage villain.

"We'll just have to wait and see," declared placid Ethel. "It's after two now. Let's take a bus into Chesterford and see the sights until train time. We'll be on pins and needles every minute if we sit around here."

"I'm going without a hat. I just can't bear to go back to my room for one. I guess you know why," shrugged Judith.

"It is the great shame," sympathized Adrienne. "I am indeed sad that our Dorothy has not returned. She could perhaps learn from Mrs. Weatherbee what we cannot."

"I wish Dorothy were here," sighed Judith. "A lot of the girls haven't come back yet. I thought I'd be late, but I'm here early after all. Too bad Norma couldn't come on from New York with you."

"It was most sad." Adrienne rolled her big black eyes. "She has yet one more week with the stock company. La petite has done well. She has received many excellent notices. Next summer she will no doubt be the leading woman. She has the heaven-sent talent, even as ma mÈre."

"Alicia Reynolds is back," announced Judith. "I met her coming in with her luggage about an hour ago. She was awfully cordial to me. That means she's still of the same mind as when she left Wellington last June. She's really a very nice girl. I only hope she stays away from Marian Seaton."

"Neither Marian nor Maizie Gilbert have come back yet. I wish they'd stay away," came vengefully from Ethel. "With Alicia and Edith Hammond both on their good behavior Madison Hall would get along swimmingly without those two disturbers."

"They'll probably keep to themselves this year," commented Judith grimly. "It's pretty well known here how badly they treated Jane last year and how splendidly she carried herself through it all."

"Oh, the old girls at the Hall won't bother with them, but some of the new girls may," Ethel remarked. "We're to have several new ones."

"There'll be one less new girl if I have anything to say about it," vowed Judith. "If there's been any unfairness done, little Judy will take a prompt hike over to see Miss Rutledge."

"Jane wouldn't like that," demurred Ethel.

"Can't help it. I'd just have to do it," Judith made obstinate reply. "As Jane's roommate I think I've a case of my own. If Jane has chosen to room somewhere else—then, all right. But if she hasn't—if she's been treated shabbily,—as I believe she has been—then I'll go wherever she goes, even if I have to live in a house away off the campus."