The next morning Selma joined Betty on the walk from the street-car to the school building. “Betty,” said she, “I’m really in earnest about your being on the hockey team. I’m afraid not enough of the girls are going to take an interest. I mean the kind of girls that count. You are so quick and graceful about your swimming and good at everything you do, and I saw you play hockey once last year.”

“I haven’t a quarter about me, I’m afraid,” said Betty, very soberly, looking in her small purse.

“A quarter—what for?” asked Selma before she sensed what Betty meant. “Oh, that’s all right. You needn’t pay me for the compliments, and I’m not saying it just to get you to be on the team. Miss Fox has charge of the hockey this year and she asked me to keep an eye out for good material. The team is pretty well made up, I guess, and she says that I should be captain, but that is as it may be, Betty. Please don’t mention my speaking of it to you.”

“But I want a second team to play against, and a good one at that. I’d give a lot for the sophomores to beat the other classes at hockey.”

“Hurrah for the sophomores,” remarked Betty. “I can’t get used to our being sophomores, Selma, but isn’t it nice not to be freshmen any longer?”

“Yes, though we were such unusually fine ones!” Selma chuckled. “We’re a good deal of a mob yet, but not like the freshman bunch. Were we really like that last year?”

“I suppose so. Well, Selma, I don’t know what to say about the hockey proposition. I’m pretty sure that Mother thinks hockey too rough. Perhaps not exactly that, either; and I did like to play last year occasionally, just on the side. Possibly, if it is just as a sort of substitute, I might do it. I’m a full-fledged G. A. A. and ought to help out where I can, oughtn’t I?”

“It’s your duty to be a good sophomore, too.”

“I remember how seriously I took everything last year,” said Betty, “and it was sensible. But I’m going to join anything I like this year; and if it doesn’t work, all you have to do is to stop.”

“Not to break up a team, though, Betty.”

“Oh, no. I didn’t mean that, and I like to do anything pretty thoroughly, too. All right, I’ll see about it.”

“’Lo, Betty,” said some one else.

Selma and Betty were mounting the steps of the school now, near the entrance, where pupils were going in and groups of others stood about. This was Mathilde Finn, who detached herself from one of the groups and came toward the two girls. “Bye,” immediately said Selma, whisking into the building as some one pushed open the heavy doors before her.

“Going to wait for Lucia Coletti?” asked Mathilde.

“No; she knows how to get to the home room now,” answered Betty. “Anything I can do for you?” Betty smiled pleasantly, though she intended to be a little reserved with Mathilde. From all she had heard, she did not have the greatest confidence in Mathilde’s sincerity. But Betty was always glad to be on a friendly footing with other girls. She did “hate” disagreeable undercurrents, though one could not always avoid them.

“You are a bit new yourself, aren’t you?” Betty continued.

“Oh, yes, but not like Lucia, and my work was all fixed up in plenty of time. I do feel strange in a public school and I can’t say that I like it now; but if Lucia can stand it, I think I can. You don’t have to know everybody, of course. Some of the boys and girls are too common—for words!”

That speech grated on Betty. “Perhaps so,” she answered, “but a lot of them are as fine as can be. Besides, we have to live in the world with everybody, don’t we? And I haven’t seen anybody here that wasn’t nice—well, hardly. But the boys and girls that won’t work or keep the rules get sent out.”

“Oh, I suppose they all behave well enough,” carelessly replied Mathilde. “They have to. But look at their clothes, and the way they talk!”

“I never dress up much for school myself,” said Betty, who had a sound suspicion that the reason Mathilde was attaching herself to her this morning was her relation to Lucia Coletti. “And when it comes to language, do you know, some of the worst I’ve heard came from girls out of wealthy homes. So far as I’m concerned, give me the good old public schools, though I’d love to go to boarding school some time, just for the fun of it. Why, there’s Lucia now!”

Betty and Mathilde stopped in the middle of the big hall as Lucia Coletti came out of the principal’s office. Her face lit up as she saw Betty and she hurried toward the girls.

“This is—what you call luck—Betty. Good morning—and I think I met you, yesterday, Miss ——?”

“It is Mathilde Finn, Lucia,” said Betty, as Lucia looked doubtfully at Mathilde. “She has been at a private school, too, and is coming back to us now—a sophomore like the rest of us.”

Betty spoke cordially, as Betty would, and together the three made their way to their home room. But Mathilde’s manner to Lucia amused her and when lunch time came and Dotty Bradshaw fell in with her, just behind Lucia, whom Mathilde had in tow, she could not help smiling at Dotty’s comments.

“Ha!” said Dotty in a dramatic whisper. “Finny is rushing the countess, I see. Look out, Betty. She’ll cut you out with royalty.”

“Why should I mind, Dotty?” laughed Betty. “I like Lucia and I think that she’s going to take hold of things as you’d scarcely expect a girl that’s been used to everything to do. She’s got a lot of those old Romans in her, I imagine, to say nothing of what she gets of good American pep, if not so old! Oh, Dotty, I’ve got such loads to do I haven’t time to think about whether I get cut out with anybody!”

“Lessons getting on your nerves?”

“Somewhatly!”

“That’s always the way at first. Cheer up. You’re not interested, then, in hearing about the new sorority?”

“Well, I might have a little natural curiosity.”

“I’ll say! I’ll tell you everything I know at the first chance.”

This was while the crowd was mounting the stairs to the lunch room. At the top of the stairs Betty saw Mathilde usher Lucia inside of the lunch room, though Lucia turned and looked inquiringly at Betty.

Betty smiled and waved her hand, nodding approvingly as if to say “It’s all right with me,” and just then Kathryn appeared in the line behind Betty, having hurried to catch up. Dotty was by several girls beyond her in the line that was forming for the cafeteria procession; and Kathryn, having Betty’s ear in spite of the rattle of dishes and the buzz, or more appropriately “roar” of conversation, pitched above other sounds, informed her that she had “a lot to tell her.”

“Tell it now,” urged Betty.

“Fat chance, as Chauncey says. I’ll see you somewhere. Skip along, honey. I hope they’ve got plenty of good things left. I always prefer being called to first lunch.”

“How strange!” laughed Betty. “I certainly hate it when we are last to be called and all the best desserts and salads are gone. But can’t you give me an idea?”

Kathryn shook her head in the negative, concerned now with looking ahead to choose what she would have for lunch.

Betty with a full tray looked around for Lucia and saw that she and Mathilde were together at a table which was rapidly filling up. Carolyn at another table waved at Betty and Kathryn, who hurried there to join her. But the hungry girls were most interested in the business at hand and Carolyn, after the first pangs of hunger was relieved, was started on athletics, lamenting the loss of the senior football men and relating what material she had heard was available for the year’s team.

Betty saw for the first time Ted Dorrance, who was not acting at all as a senior whose heart was broken should act. With a group of senior boys he was laughing and talking at a table not far away. Betty wondered how it happened that they had had lunch at the same time, and while her eyes were turned in that direction, Ted saw her and gave her a gay salute. Poor boy, perhaps he was just putting on all that fun and was really feeling terrible about Louise. No—perhaps they had made up!

Lessons, lessons, lessons! How hard these first assignments seemed! Some of their teachers “had a heart,” as Dotty said, and others hadn’t the sign of one. Again they had to carry all their books around until lockers were assigned. Mathilde complained constantly, Betty thought; but Lucia, with a neat brief-case of leather, kept all her paraphernalia together and carried them around without a word. “Lucia Coletti is a good sport,” said Dotty Bradshaw.

Finally, toward the end of the week, Kathryn had a good opportunity to talk to Betty. It was on the street-car, but they had a back seat together and could talk in ordinary tones without being overheard. Both had errands down town, as it happened, and were to go down right after school to meet their mothers.

“Here you’ve kept me in suspense all week, Kathryn,” Betty accused her friend.

“I suppose you’ve laid awake nights over it, Betty.”

“Oh, yes, of course. My dear, I have laid awake a while over a lesson or two!”

“I’ve had reason enough to, but not I. When my head strikes the pillow not even anything Mathilde or anybody could say, to say nothing of mere lessons, could keep me awake!”

“By the way, is it clothes you’re going to see about this afternoon, Kathryn?”

“Yes. I’m going to get a hat and a dress, and look at coats.”

“Here, too, Kathryn, but I’ll wait to buy a coat till I see what you get, I think.”

Upon this there followed a discussion of styles and materials quite interesting to Betty, who did want to look like the rest but had had little experience so far in city shopping. Kathryn advised her a little about the best places to shop, where “things were expensive” and where one could get good values for a reasonable sum. They concluded to get the mothers together at some store and arranged the meeting place before any school matter was touched upon again.

Then Kathryn began. “I could have told you that everything is all right about Peggy, but some way I wanted to have a good chance all by ourselves before I did. You know how we went out to Carolyn’s that time. We had a good deal of fun over that lunch, and Peggy was just as much fun as she always is and I never acted any different from the way I always do. I just thought, if Peggy didn’t like me and talked about me, I couldn’t help it anyhow and there was no use in acting ‘sore’ about it. That is what my brother always says, Betty.”

“You needn’t apologize, Gypsy. I have a brother, too.”

Kathryn laughed. “It’s very convenient when you want to use slang to quote from your brother, isn’t it?”

“Very.”

“Well, it seems that Peggy had overheard you call me Gypsy, though how I don’t know.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Kathryn. I meant that for our little secret!”

“I know it, but really I don’t care. I rather like it now. You remember that we told Carolyn about it, at your house.”

“Yes.”

“Carolyn told me afterwards that she had it in mind when she asked us for lunch; and didn’t Peggy call me ‘Gypsy’ as she passed me the sandwiches?”

“No! Why, what did you think when she did that?”

“I was startled, of course. She said, ‘Gypsy, have another sandwich!’ and I looked up at her in amazement, though not a bit offended, you know, and she laughed. ‘Who started that name for you?’ she asked. ‘You’re looking so surprised that maybe you don’t like it,’ she went on. ‘I just heard Betty Lee call you that one time and I thought it cute. I told Mathilde Finn just the other day that you looked like a gypsy queen or something awfully romantic.’

“There it was, Betty, just the sweet way you thought about it and not the way Mathilde told me. You were right. I don’t believe Peggy Pollard would say mean things about a girl she knows as well as she does me, and maybe not about anybody, though you are too trustful of your friends, Betty!”

“Am I?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so; but I think it’s a good fault and I’m going to cultivate it.”

Kathryn slipped her hand through Betty’s arm as she spoke. “Well, just then Carolyn spoke up. ‘Mathilde Finn didn’t say it that way when she repeated it to Kathryn,’ she said.”

“‘What do you mean, Carolyn?’ Peggy asked. She looked just as surprised as could be. Then she whirled around to me. ‘Kathryn, what did Mathilde tell you?’

“I sort of hesitated, you know. A body would. And Peggy asked me again. ‘From what Carolyn says, I imagine that Mathilde has said something horrid,’ she said.

“Well, I just got the impression, Peggy, that you were criticising my looks and while I’m not posing as a beauty, it wasn’t awfully pleasant to think that you would say what Mathilde said you did.”

“‘Kathryn!’ Peggy said. She looked sort of helpless, you know, as if she didn’t know what to say and probably thought I wouldn’t believe her. Then, I don’t remember how it all came around, but Carolyn helped out and quoted what Peggy had just said and asked me to believe Peggy and I said I would and Peggy said a lot of things and I hated to have them think I wanted to be thought pretty and so I said so and I told just exactly what Mathilde had said and Peggy told as nearly as she could remember just exactly what she had said, and the girls all said that they didn’t think me sensitive about my looks and knew that I just cared about having Peggy like me. So it turned out all right and it was Carolyn that did it after all. You can like Carolyn better than me any time, Betty!”

Betty laughed and squeezed the arm in hers. “How we do change,” said she. “But I told you all about how I feel about my dear friends. And you said ‘all the girls.’ Was any one there beside you and Peggy and Carolyn?”

“Sure enough—I didn’t tell you. I think from what Carolyn said she did mean to have just Peggy and me—and you, of course, if you could have come. But then, not being sure about Peggy after all, she thought perhaps she’d ask somebody else in your place. So on the car there were Dotty Bradshaw and Mary Emma Rowland and she asked them to come. They accepted after a little hesitation on account of being expected at home. But Carolyn said that they could telephone home from her house and that she would herself to let them know that it was all right, if they wanted her to. You know how hospitable Carolyn is, and her mother lets her do these things. I imagine that they knew it was the first of school and she would be wanting to see some of us. Anyhow, there was a special lunch for us, outdoors on the big porch. I’m sorry you missed it.”

“So am I. But under the circumstances I couldn’t. And now that is all over and you haven’t a worry have you?”

“No. I’d a little rather Dotty hadn’t heard what Mathilde said to me, for she almost despises Mathilde anyhow. But it can’t be helped and everybody said they wouldn’t say a word and would treat Mathilde ‘the same as ever.’ And you would have laughed to hear Dotty, when Carolyn used that expression.”

“‘The same as ever?’ she asked. ‘Then that doesn’t bind me except about this little trick of hers. Sure I’ll treat Mathilde the same as ever!’” Kathryn was laughing now.

Betty looked thoughtfully at Kathryn. “Dotty speaks too quickly and sharply, I’m afraid. I felt real uncomfortable when she had that passage at arms with Mathilde that day. But Dotty is a sincere person and she may have some reason of her own about Mathilde.”

“I haven’t a doubt. But I thought about you, Betty, when I said to the girls I’d rather not have it make any difference with the way they treated Mathilde. You’re always so fair to everybody, and this wasn’t so much after all.”

“It was the spirit it showed or you thought it showed on Peggy’s part that worried you, and that is important when it comes to a nice friend like Peggy; but I think you were wonderfully nice about it, and—thank you for your opinion of me. That’s another thing for me to live up to!”

“I don’t think you need worry about that, Betty Lee. But to change the subject, you’re going to go on the G. A. A. hike a week from Saturday, aren’t you?”

“Why, I don’t know, Kathryn. I hadn’t thought about it much. There’s so much to do at home, and Saturday is the only day there, that I’m not sure I can. I ought to help Mother, for with three of us to get ready for fall and winter in school, to say nothing of Amy Louise, and meals now for everybody, Mother is just as rushed with work as we imagine we are in school.”

“We really are,” insisted Kathryn. “I think your mother will want you to have some outdoors on Saturdays, and I know that you help some every day. So do you mind if I ask her about it, if we manage to have the mothers see each other down town?”

“I don’t mind a bit, and I think the G. A. A. hike will be great fun. Suppose Lucia Coletti will want to go?” Betty looked roguishly at Kathryn as she spoke.

“And if Lucia, then our friend Mathilde, to be sure. Well, anyhow we must be sure to ask Lucia. She’ll probably want to be a G. A. A. If she lives in Italy, she probably will know how to swim, and don’t they walk and hike a lot in Switzerland?”

Betty asked Kathryn why she was sure Lucia could swim if she lived in Italy and Kathryn replied that she might live on a hill-top for all she knew, but that rich foreigners always took trips to the water, “and isn’t the Mediterranean right there?”

Betty could not answer that it was not and so they dropped this subject, not forgetting the G. A. A. hike in prospect.