tances" became a college joke.

"Bow, Betty," Katherine would whisper, whenever on their long country
walks, they met a group of girls who looked as if they might belong to
the college. And then, "Is it possible I've found somebody you don't
know? Better look them up right away."

"It's splendid training for your memory," Betty declared, and it was,
and splendid training besides in helpfulness and social service, though
Betty did not put it so grandly. To her it was just trying to take
Dorothy King's place, and not succeeding very well either.

In looking up strangers, Betty did not forget her friends. Nobody could
be more deserving of help than Rachel Morrison. Her hard summer's work
had worn on her and made the busy round of tutoring and study seem
particularly irksome. But Rachel, while she was pleased to think that
she had been the joint committee's first choice, refused the money.

"I could only take it as a loan," she said, "and I don't want to have a
debt hanging over my head next year. I'm not so tired now as I was when
I first got back, and I can rest all next summer. Did I tell you that
Babbie Hildreth's uncle has offered me a position in his school for next
fall?"

Emily Davis, on the other hand, was very glad to accept a
scholarship,--"As a loan of course," she stipulated. She had practically
supported herself for the whole four years at Harding, and the strain
and worry had begun to tell on her. A little easier time this year would
mean better fitness for the necessarily hard year of teaching that was
to follow, without the interval of rest that Rachel counted upon.
Emily's mother was dead now, and her father made no effort to help his
ambitious daughter. She might have had a place in the woolen mills,
where he worked years before, he argued; since she had not taken it, she
must look out for herself.

But with the serious side of life was mixed, for Betty and the rest,
plenty of gaiety. 19-- might not be greatly missed after they had gone
out into the wide, wide world, but while they stayed at Harding
everybody seemed bent on treating them royally.

"You know this is the last fall you'll have here," Polly Eastman would
say, pleading with Betty to come for a drive. "There's no such beautiful
autumn foliage near Cleveland."

Or, "You must come to our house dance," Babbie Hildreth would declare.
"Just think how few Harding dances there are left for us to go to!"

Even the most commonplace events, suc