t but one ticket
left, but after lending us this you're a privileged person."

"I hoped you'd ask me," said Miss Madison gratefully. "The play does
sound so exciting. But that wasn't why I offered you the hat."

"Of course not, and it's only one reason why you are coming," said Betty
tactfully. "Now Alice, you must bring in my skirt. I have to walk so
slowly in all these things, and it must be almost ten."

When Sir Archibald Ames, villain, had been transformed into a demure
little maiden with rumpled hair and a high, stiff collar showing above
her rain-coat, Betty took her departure. A wave of literary and dramatic
enthusiasm had inundated the Chapin house. The girls were constantly
suggesting theme topics to one another--which unfortunately no one but
Mary Brooks could use, at least until the next semester; for in the
regular freshman English classes, subjects were always assigned. And
they were planning theatre parties galore, to see Jefferson, Maude
Adams, and half a dozen others if they came to Harding. Betty, who had a
happy faculty of keeping her head just above such passing waves, smiled
to herself as she hurried across the dark campus.

"Next week, when our play is over it will be something else," she
thought. Rachel was already interested in basket-ball and had prospects
of being chosen for the freshman class team. Eleanor had been practicing
hard on her guitar, hoping to "make" the mandolin club; and was
dreadfully disappointed at finding that according to a new rule freshmen
were ineligible and that her entrance conditions would have excluded her
in any case.

"So many things to do," sighed Betty, who had given up a hockey game
that afternoon to study history. "I suppose we've got to choose," she
added philosophically. "But I choose to be an all-around girl, like
Dorothy King. I can't sing though. I wonder what my one talent is.

"Helen," she said, as she opened her door, "have you noticed that all
college girls have one particular talent? I wonder what ours will turn
out to be. See what I have for the play."

Helen, who looked tired and heavy-eyed, inspected the opera hat
listlessly. "I think your talent is getting the things you want," she
said, "and I guess I haven't any. It's quarter of ten."

CHAPTER VIII

AFTER THE PLAY

"Sherlock Holmes" was quite as exciting as Miss Madison had anticipated.
Most college plays, except the elaborate ones given in the gymnasium,
which are carefully l