nd we needn't say anything at
all about it, except--don't you think the girls here in the house will
have to know that we're going to give away the money?"

"Yes," put in Mary, "and we'll make them all give us extra orders."

"We will save out a dollar for you to live on till March," said Betty.

"Oh no, I shall borrow of you," retorted Mary, and then they all laughed
and felt better.

On St. Valentine's morning Betty posted a registered valentine. The
verse read:--

"There are three of us and three of you,
Though only one knows one,
So pray accept this little gift
And go and have some fun."

But if the rhyme went haltingly and was not quite true either, as Betty
pointed out, since Adelaide and Alice had contributed to the fund, and
the whole house had bought absurd quantities of valentines because it
was such a "worthy object" ("just as if I wasn't a worthy object!"
sighed Mary), there was nothing the matter with the "little gift," which
consisted of three crisp ten dollar bills.

"Oh, if they should feel hurt!" thought Betty anxiously, and dodged
Emily Davis so successfully that until the day of the rally they did not
meet.

That week was a tremendously exciting one. To begin with, on the
twentieth the members of both the freshman basket-ball teams were
announced. Rachel was a "home" on the regular team, and Katherine a
guard on the "sub," so the Chapin house fairly bubbled over with pride
and pleasure in its double honors. Then on the morning of the
twenty-second came the rally with its tumultuous display of class and
college loyalty, its songs written especially for the occasion, its
shrieks of triumph or derision (which no intrusive reporter should make
bold to interpret or describe as "class yells," since such masculine
modes of expression are unknown at Harding), and its mock-heroic debate
on the vital issue, "Did or did not George Washington cut down that
cherry-tree?"

Every speaker was clever and amusing, but Emily Davis easily scored the
hit of the morning. For whereas most freshmen are frightened and appear
to disadvantage on such an occasion, she was perfectly calm and
self-possessed, and made her points with exactly the same irresistible
gaucherie and daring infusion of local color that had distinguished her
performance at the class meeting. Besides, she was a "dark horse"; she
did not belong to the leading set in her class, nor to any other set,
for that matter, and this f