"I really don't know what you will do with all that truck, Miss
Fielding. The rooms at Dare are rather small. You could not possibly get
all those bags and the trunk--and certainly not that hat-box--into one
of these rooms."

"My name isn't Fielding," said the strange girl, paling now, but whether
from anger or as a forerunner to tears it would have been hard to tell.
Her face was not one to be easily read.

"Your name isn't _Fielding_?" gasped Edie Phelps, while the latter's
friends burst into laughter. "'R. F.'! What does that stand for, pray?"

At this moment the fleshy girl who had been all this time in the
background on the porch, flung herself forward, burst through the group,
and ran down the steps. She had spied Ruth and Helen approaching.

"Ruthie! Helen! _Ruth Fielding!_ Isn't this delightsome?"

The fleshy girl tried to hug both the chums from Cheslow at once. Edie
Phelps and the rest of the girls on the porch gazed and listened in
amazement. Edie turned upon the girl with the heap of baggage,
accusingly.

"You're a good one! What do you mean by coming here and fooling us all
in this way? What's your name?"

"Rebecca Frayne--if you think you have a right to ask," said the new
girl, sharply.

"And you're not the canned drama authoress?"

"I don't know what you mean, I'm sure," said Rebecca Frayne. "But I
_would_ like to know what I'm to do with this baggage."

Ruth had come to the foot of the steps now with Helen and the fleshy
girl, whom the chums had hailed gladly as "Jennie Stone." The girl of
the Red Mill heard the speech of the stranger and noted her woebegone
accent. She turned with a smile to Rebecca Frayne.

"Oh! I know about that," she said. "Just leave your trunk and bags here
and put your card and the number of your room on them. The men will be
along very soon to carry them up for you. I read that in the Year Book."

"Thank you," said Rebecca Frayne.

The group of sophomores and freshmen on the porch opened a way for the
Briarwood trio to enter the house, and said never a word. Jennie Stone
was, as she confessed, grinning broadly.

CHAPTER V

GETTING SETTLED

"What does this mean, Heavy Jennie?" demanded Helen, pinching the very
comfortable arm of their fleshy friend.

"What does that mean? Ouch, Helen! You know you're pinching something
when you pinch _me_."

"That's why I like to. No fun in trying to make an impression on bones,
you know."

"But it doesn't hur