“I feel as if there were about three days between Thanksgiving and Christmas,” said Rachel, coming up the stairs, to Betty, who stood in the door of her room half in and half out of her white evening dress.

“That leaves one day and a half, then, before vacation,” laughed Betty. “I’m sorry to bother you when you’re so pressed for time, but could you hook me up? Helen is at the library, and every one else seems to be off somewhere.”

“Certainly,” said Rachel, dropping her armful of bundles on the floor. “I’m only making Christmas presents. Is the ?F dance coming off at last?”

“Yes–another one, that is; and Mr. Parsons asked me, to make up for the one I had to miss. Now, would you hold my coat?”

“Betty! Betty Wales! Wait a minute,” called somebody just as Betty reached the Main Street corner, and Eleanor Watson appeared, also dressed for the dance.

“Why didn’t you say you were going to Winsted?” she demanded breathlessly. “Good, here’s a car.”

“Why didn’t you say you were going?” demanded Betty in her turn as they scrambled on.

“Because I didn’t intend to until the last minute. Then I decided that I’d earned a little recreation, so I telegraphed Paul West that I’d come after all. Who is your chaperon?”

“Miss Hale.”

“Well please introduce me when we get down-town, so that I can ask if I may join her party.”

Ethel Hale received Betty with enthusiasm, and Eleanor with a peculiar smile and a very formal permission to go to Winsted under her escort. As the two were starting off to buy their tickets, she called Betty back.

“Aren’t you going to sit with me on the way over, little sister?” she asked.

“Of course,” said Betty, and they settled themselves together a moment later for the short ride.“You never come to see me, Betty,” Miss Hale began, when they were seated.

“I’m afraid to,” confessed Betty sheepishly. “When you’re a faculty and I’m only a freshman.”

“Nonsense,” laughed Miss Hale. Then she glanced at Eleanor, who sat several seats in front of them, and changed the subject abruptly. “What sort of girl is Miss Watson?” she asked.

Betty laughed. “All sorts, I think,” she said. “I never knew any one who could be so nice one minute and so trying the next.”

“How do you happen to know her well?” pursued Miss Hale seriously.

Betty explained.

“And you think that on the whole she’s worth while?”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand—” Betty was beginning to feel as if she was taking an examination on Eleanor’s characteristics.

“You think that on the whole she’s more good than bad; and that there’s something to her, besides beauty. That’s all I want to know. She is lovely, isn’t she?”

“Yes, indeed,” agreed Betty enthusiastically. “But she’s very bright too. She’s done a lot of extra work lately and so quickly and well. She’s very nice to me always, but she dislikes my roommate and she and I are always disagreeing about that or something else. I don’t think–you know she wouldn’t do a dishonorable thing for the world, but I don’t approve of some of her ideas; they don’t seem quite fair and square, Ethel.”

“Um,” assented Ethel absently. “I’m glad you could tell me all this, Betty. I shouldn’t have asked you, perhaps; it’s rather taking advantage of our private friendship. But I really needed to know. Ah, here we are!”

As she spoke, the train slowed down and a gay party of Winsted men sprang on to the platform, and jostled one another down the aisles, noisily greeting the girls they knew and each one hunting for his particular guest of the afternoon. They had brought a barge down to take the girls to the college, and in the confusion of crowding into it Betty found herself separated from Ethel. “I wish I’d asked her why she wanted to know all that,” she thought, and then she forgot everything but the delicious excitement of actually being on the way to a dance at Winsted.Most of the fraternity house was thrown open to the visitors, and between the dances in the library, which was big enough to make an excellent ball-room also, they wandered through it, finding all sorts of interesting things to admire, and pleasantly retired nooks and corners to rest in. Mr. Parsons was a very attentive host, providing partners in plenty; and Betty, who was passionately fond of dancing and had been to only one “truly grown-up” dance before, was in her element. But every once in awhile she forgot her own pleasure to notice Eleanor and to wonder at her beauty and vivacity. She was easily belle of the ball. She seemed to know all the men, and they crowded eagerly around her, begging for dances and hanging on her every word. Eleanor’s usually listless face was radiant. She had a smile and a gay sally for every one; there was never a hint of the studied coldness with which she received any advances from Helen or the Riches, nor of the scornful ennui with which she faced the social life of her own college.

“Aren’t you glad you came?” said Betty, when they met at the frappÉ table.“Rather,” said Eleanor laconically. “This is life, and I’ve only existed for months and months. What would the world be like without men and music?”

“Goodness! what a wise-sounding remark,” laughed Betty.

Just then Miss Hale came up in charge of a very young and callow freshman.

“Please lend me your fan, Betty,” she said. “I was afraid it would look forward for a chaperon to bring one, and I’m desperately warm.”

Eleanor, who had turned aside to speak to her partner, looked up quickly as Ethel spoke, and meeting Miss Hale’s gray eyes she flushed suddenly and moved away.

Betty handed Ethel the fan. “I wish—” she began, looking after Eleanor’s retreating figure. But as she spoke the music started again and a vivacious youth hurried up and whisked her away before she had time to finish her sentence; and she could not get near Ethel again.

“Men do make better partners than girls,” she said to Mr. Parsons as they danced the last waltz together. “And I think their rooms are prettier than ours, if these are fair samples. But they can’t have any better time at college than we do.”

“We certainly couldn’t get on at all without you girls across the river,” Mr. Parsons was saying gallantly, when the music stopped and Eleanor, followed by Mr. West, hurried up to Betty.

“Excuse me one moment, Mr. Parsons,” she said, as she drew Betty aside. “I’ve been trying to get at you for ever so long,” she went on. “I’m in a dreadful fix. You know I told you I hadn’t intended to come here to-day, but I didn’t tell you the reason why. The reason was that to-day was the time set for my math. exam, with Miss Mansfield. I tried to get her to change it, but I couldn’t, so finally I telephoned her that I was ill. Some one else answered the ’phone for her, saying that she was engaged and, Betty–I’m sure it was Miss Hale.”

Betty looked at her in blank amazement. “You said you were ill and then came here!” she began. “Oh, Eleanor, how could you! But what makes you think that Miss Hale knows?”“I’m sure I recognized her voice when she asked you for the fan, and then haven’t you noticed her distant manner?” said Eleanor gloomily. “Are they friends, do you know?”

“They live in the same house.”

“Then that settles it. You seem to be very chummy with Miss Hale, Betty. You couldn’t reconcile it with your tender conscience to say a good word for me, I suppose?”

“I–why, what could I say after that dreadful message?” Then she brightened suddenly. “Why, Eleanor, I did. We talked about you all the way over here. Ethel asked questions and I answered them. I told her a lot of nice things,” added Betty reassuringly, “though of course I couldn’t imagine why she wanted to know. What luck that you hadn’t told me sooner!”

Eleanor stared at her blankly. “I suppose,” she said at last, “that it will serve me right if Miss Hale tells Miss Mansfield that I was here, and Miss Mansfield refuses me another examination; but do you think she will?”

Betty glanced at Ethel. She was standing at the other end of the room, talking to two Winsted men, and she looked so young and pretty and so like one of the girls herself that Betty said impulsively, “She couldn’t!” Then she remembered how different Ethel had seemed on the train, and that the girls in her classes stood very much in awe of her. “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “She just hates any sort of cheating. She might think it was her duty to tell. Oh, Eleanor, why did you do it?”

Eleanor shrugged her shoulders expressively. Then she turned away with a radiant smile for Mr. West. “I am sorry to have kept you men waiting,” she said. “How much more time do we have before the barge comes?”

Whatever Miss Hale meant to do, she kept her own counsel, deliberately avoiding intercourse with either Ethel or Betty. She bade the girls a gay good-bye at the station, and went off in state in the carriage they had provided for her.

“I suppose it’s no use asking if you had a good time,” said Betty sympathetically, as she and Eleanor, having decided to go home in comfort, rolled away in another.

“I had a lovely time until it flashed over me about that telephone message. After that of course I was worried almost to death, and I would give anything under the sun if I had stayed at home and passed off my math. like a person of sense.”

“Then why don’t you tell Miss Mansfield so?” suggested Betty.

“Oh, Betty, I couldn’t. But I shan’t probably have the chance,” she added dryly. “Miss Hale will see her after dinner. I hope she’ll tell her that I appeared to be enjoying life.”

The next morning when Eleanor presented herself at Miss Mansfield’s class-room for the geometry lesson, another assistant occupied the desk. “Miss Mansfield is out of town for a few days,” she announced. Eleanor gave Betty a despairing glance and tried to fix her attention on the “originals” which the new teacher was explaining. It seemed as if the class would never end. When it did she flew to the desk and inquired if Miss Mansfield would be back to-morrow.

“To-morrow? Oh no,” said the young assistant pleasantly. “She’s in Boston for some days. No, not this week; next, I believe. You are Miss Watson? No, there was no message for you, I think.”

The next week was a longer and more harassing one than any that Eleanor could remember. She had not been blind to Betty’s scorn of her action. Ever since she came to Harding she had noted with astonishment the high code of honor that held sway among the girls. They shirked when they could, assumed knowledge when they had it not, managed somehow to wear the air of leisurely go-as-you-please that Eleanor loved; but they did not cheat, and like Betty they despised those who did. So Eleanor, who a few months before would have boasted of having deceived Miss Mansfield, was now in equal fear lest Miss Hale should betray her and lest some of her mates should find her out. She wanted to ask Lil Day or Annette Gaynor what happened if you cut a special examination; but suppose they should ask why she cared to know? That would put another knot into the “tangled web” of her deception. It would have been some comfort to discuss the possibilities of the situation with Betty, but Eleanor denied herself even that outlet. No use reminding a girl that she despises you! If only Betty would not look so sad and sympathetic and inquiring when they met in the halls, in classes or at table. At other times Eleanor barricaded herself behind a “Don’t disturb” sign and studied desperately and to much purpose. And every morning she hoped against hope that Miss Mansfield would hear the geometry class.

The suspense lasted through the whole week. Then, just two days before the vacation, Miss Mansfield reappeared and Eleanor asked timidly for an appointment.

“Come to-day at two,” began Miss Mansfield.

“Oh thank you! Thank you so much!” broke in Eleanor and stopped in confusion.

But Miss Mansfield only smiled absently. “Most of my belated freshmen don’t express such fervent gratitude for my firmness in pushing them through before the vacation. They try to put me off.” She had evidently quite forgotten the other appointment.

“I shall be so glad to have it over,” Eleanor murmured.

Miss Mansfield looked after her thoughtfully as she went down the hall. “Perhaps I’ve misjudged her,” she told herself. “When a girl is so pretty, it’s hard to take her seriously.”

She said as much to Ethel Hale when they walked home to lunch together, but Ethel was not at all enthusiastic over Miss Watson’s earnestness.

“She’s very late in working off a condition, I should say,” she observed coldly.

“Yes, but I’ve been away, you know,” explained Miss Mansfield. “Oh, Ethel, I wish you could meet him. You don’t half appreciate how happy I am.”

Ethel, who had decided after much consideration to let Eleanor’s affairs take their course, made a mental observation to the effect that an engagement induces shortness of memory and tenderness of heart. Then she said aloud that she also wished she might meet “him.”

Time flies between Thanksgiving and Christmas, particularly for freshmen who are looking forward to their first vacation at home. It flies faster after they get there, and when they are back at college it rushes on quite as swiftly but rather less merrily toward the fateful “mid-years.” None of the Chapin house girls had been home at Thanksgiving time, but they were all going for Christmas, except Eleanor Watson, who intended to spend the vacation with an aunt in New York.

They prepared for the flitting in characteristic ways. Rachel, who was very systematic, did all her Christmas shopping, so that she needn’t hurry through it at home. Roberta made but one purchase, an illustrated “Alice in Wonderland,” for her small cousins, and spent all her spare time in re-reading it herself. Helen, in spite of Betty’s suggestions about leaning back on her reputation, studied harder than ever, so that she could go home with a clear conscience, while Katherine was too excited to study at all, and Mary Brooks jeered impartially at both of them. Betty conscientiously returned all her calls and began packing several days ahead, so as to make the time seem shorter. Then just as the expressman was driving off with her trunk, she remembered that she had packed her short skirt at the very bottom.“Thank you ever so much. If he’d got much further I should have had to go home either in this gray bath robe that I have on, or in a white duck suit,” she said to Katherine who had gone to rescue the skirt and came back with it over her arm.

She and Katherine started west together and Eleanor and Roberta went with them to the nearest junction. The jostling, excited crowd at the station, the “good-byes” and “Merry Christmases,” were great fun. Betty, remembering a certain forlorn afternoon in early autumn, laughed happily to herself.

“What’s the joke?” asked Katherine.

“I was thinking how much nicer things like this seem when you’re in them,” she said, waving her hand to Alice Waite.

At the Cleveland station, mother and Will and Nan and the smallest sister were watching eagerly for the returning wanderer.

“Why, Betty Wales, you haven’t changed one bit,” announced the smallest sister in tones of deepest wonder. “Why, I’d have known you anywhere, Betty, if I’d met you on the street.”

“Three months isn’t quite as long as all that,” said Betty, hugging the smallest sister, “but I was hoping I looked a little older. Nobody ever mistakes me for a senior, as they do Rachel Morrison. And I ought to look years and years wiser.”

“Nonsense,” said Will with a lordly air. “Now a college girl—”

Everybody laughed. “You see we all know your theories about intellectual women,” said mother. “So suppose you take up the suit case and escort us home.”

The next morning a note arrived from Eleanor.

“Dearest Betty,” it ran:

“As you always seem to be just around the corner when I get into a box, I want to tell you that I rode down to New York with Miss Hale. She asked me to sit with her and I couldn’t well refuse, though I wanted to badly enough. She knew, Betty, but she will never tell. She said she was glad to know me on your account. She asked me how the term had gone with me, and I blushed and stammered and said that I was coming back in a different spirit. She said that college was the finest place in the world for a girl to get acquainted with herself–that cowardice and weakness of purpose and meanness and pettiness stood out so clearly against the background of fineness and squareness; and that four years was long enough to see all sorts of faults in oneself, and change them according to one’s new theories. As she said it, it didn’t sound a bit like preaching.

“I didn’t tell her that I was only in college for one year. I sent her a big bunch of violets to-day–she surely couldn’t regard it as a bribe now–and after Christmas I’ll try to show her that I’m worth while.

“Merry Christmas, Betty.

“Eleanor.”

Nan frowned when Betty told her about Eleanor. “But she isn’t a nice girl, Betty. Did I meet her?”

“Yes, she’s the one you thought so pretty–the one with the lovely eyes and hair.”

“Betty,” said Nan soberly, “you don’t do things like this?”

“I!” Betty flushed indignantly. “Weren’t there all kinds of girls when you were in college, Nan? Didn’t you ever know people who did ‘things like this’?”

Nan laughed. “There certainly were,” she said. “I’ll trust you, Betty. Only don’t see too much of Miss Watson, or she’ll drag you down, in spite of yourself.”

“But Ethel’s dragging her up,” objected Betty. “And I gave her the first boost, by knowing Ethel. Not that I meant to. I never seem to accomplish things when I mean to. You remember Helen Chase Adams?”

“With great pleasure. She noticed my youthful appearance.”

“Well, I’ve been all this term trying to reform her clothes, but I can’t improve her one bit, except when I set to work and do it all myself. I should think you’d be afraid she’d drag me into dowdiness, I have to see so much of her.”

Nan smiled at the dainty little figure in the big chair. “I don’t notice any indications yet,” she said. “It took you an hour to dress this morning, exactly as it always does. But you’d better take care. What are you going to do to-day?”

“Make your friend Helen Chase Adams a stock for Christmas,” announced Betty, jumping up and pulling Nan after her. “And you’ve got to help, seeing you admire her so much.”