Jennie?" asked Belle Tingley, looking over her shoulder.
"Why! look at all those figures. Are you weighing the sun or counting the
hairs of the sun-dogs?"

"Don't laugh," begged the plump girl. "This is a serious matter. I've been
figuring up what I should probably have spent for candy from now till June
if I'd been left to my own will."

"What is it, Heavy?" asked somebody. "I wager it would pay for erecting
the new dormitory without the rest of us putting up a cent."

"No," said the plump girl, gravely. "But it figures up to a good round
sum. I never would have believed it! Girls, I'll give fifty dollars."

"Oh, Heavy! you _never_ could eat so much sweets before graduation,"
gasped one.

"I could; but I sha'n't," declared Miss Stone, with continued gravity.
"I'll practise self-denial."

With all the fun and joking, the girls of Briarwood Hall were very much in
earnest. They elected a committee of five--Ruth, Nettie, Lluella, Sarah
Fish and Mary Cox--to have charge of the collection of the fund, and to go
immediately to Mrs. Tellingham and show her what money was already
promised and how much more could be expected within ten days.

There was enough, they knew, to warrant the preceptress in having the work
of tearing away the ruins begun. Meanwhile, the girls were each urged to
think up some new way of earning money, and as a committee of the whole to
try to invent a novel scheme of including the whole school in a plan
whereby much money might be raised.

"How we're to do it, nobody knows," said Helen gloomily, walking along
beside Ruth after the meeting. "I expected _you_ would have just the thing
to suggest."

"I wish I had," her chum returned thoughtfully.

"Mercy says, 'Great oaks from little acorns grow'----"

They turned into the hall and saw that the mail had been distributed. Ruth
was handed a letter with Mr. Hammond's name upon it. She had almost
forgotten the moving picture man and her own scenario, in these three or
four very busy days.

Ruth eagerly tore the envelope open. A green slip of paper fluttered out.
It was a check for twenty-five dollars from the Alectrion Film
Corporation. With it was a note highly praising Ruth's first effort at
scenario writing for moving pictures.

"What is it?" demanded Helen. "You look so funny. There's no--nobody
dead?"

"Do I look like that?" asked Ruth. "Far from it! Just look at these,
dear," and she thrust both the note and the check into Helen's hands.