around her neck. "Do, _do_, _do_, please forgive
me? It was Marion Parke's book, and I thought no one would ever know.
I've been so sorry. I'd have given worlds, worlds, _worlds_, if I had
never seen it! O Miss Ashton, what shall I, shall I do?"

"Ask God to forgive you," Miss Ashton said solemnly. "It is another
and a greater judge than I that has the power to do so. If I were only
sure," but she did not finish her sentence, she only loosened Susan's
arms gently from around her neck, then said "good-by" to her, and
watched her once more as she went away down the corridor.

"And Marion Parke knew it all the time, but would not tell on Susan,"
she said to herself as she turned back into her room. "Marion is a
girl to be depended upon, I am glad she is to stay with me."

"Kate Underwood," she said, when Kate's time came for the farewell
counsel, taking both of the girl's hands in hers, "I'm proud of you.
You have done of late what many older and wiser persons have failed to
do,--learned the lesson, which I hope has been learned for your
lifetime, that there is no fun in things, however written or spoken,
that hurt other's feelings. I have seen you many times thoughtful and
tender, when your face was alive with the ridiculous thing you saw or
heard. Kate, I feel so much safer to let you go from me now than I
should have six, even three months ago. Tell me, will you try not to
forget?"

"I'll be good as long as I live. I'll never make fun, no, not even of
myself," burst out Kate, "though now I'm dying to get before a mirror
and see how I must have looked when you thought me so thoughtful. Was
it so, Miss Ashton?" and Kate made up a face which a sterner rebuker
than her teacher could not have seen without a smile.

"There's no use, Kate," she said; "go now, only don't forget."

And Kate made a sweeping courtesy and disappeared.

With Mamie Smythe she had a long talk, not one word of which did
either divulge. In that hour it would be safe to say Mamie learned
some life-lessons which it will be hard for her to forget.

And so the time passed on. Recitations ceased four days before
commencement, and the girls, those even who thought themselves over
busy before, found every hour brought a fresh claim upon their time.

"Our bee-hive," Miss Ashton called it, and the girls called her the
"queen bee," and made many secret plans about the various gifts they
were to give her the last night of the term. The ceremony this year