me just when I most
need your suggestions. The board of editors meets to-night to choose the
material for the next number of the magazine, and if they decline this
again I shan't be eligible for election next month. You promised."

"Laura, there's something I've got to ask you. If you don't come out, I
shall have to take this sign down and walk in my own self. Laura! Ah!"
The door swung open and tall Berta popped in. Slamming it behind her, she
stood with both hands on the knob, her eyes fixed with an expression of
innocent inquiry upon Lucine who had halted in the middle of her sudden
dash across the floor, her hand still outstretched toward the key.

"Excuse me, Miss Brett. Were you just going out? I'm glad I did not
disturb you. Shall I hold it open for you?" She stepped to one side and
waited gravely without moving a muscle till Lucine after a withering
stare had stalked angrily back to her window. The corner of Berta's mouth
gave a quick, queer little twitch before settling back into proper
solemnity.

"Come, Laura. You'd better. I shan't keep you long." At her imperious
gesture Laura slid out of the room at an apologetic angle, her head
twisted for a final shy glance back at Lucine who was apparently absorbed
in her papers.

When safely outside in the corridor Berta seized her about the waist and
whirled her away from all possible earshot through cracks and transom.

"Now then, exit the ogre, or rather eximus nos, leaving the ogre alone.
For what particular reason is she trampling all over you to-day? I didn't
catch all her last speech. You don't mean to say that you have promised
to help her with her writing?"

"Yes," Laura nodded her rough curly head. She was a delicate little thing
with the irregular features that generally accompany such hair. Her
beauty lay in her expression which brightened charmingly from minute to
minute since her escape. "Oh, how good the air smells!" she stopped to
lean from an open window. "Lucine shivers at every draught. It is hard to
manage the ventilation to suit two persons in the same room. I
smother----"

"Of course you smother--and you smother a good many more hours than she
shivers. Trust her for that. Such a little ninny as you are! Don't forget
that you have agreed to room with my best little sister when she enters
next fall. You would not have been thrust in with Lucine Brett this year
if I could have prevented it."

"Oh, but if I can't come back--you know, I'm alm