matter with Miss Howard and make a big
fuss about it."

"She could, but would she?" demanded Judith savagely. "You know how
proud Jane is. She'd die before she'd give Mrs. Weatherbee the
satisfaction of seeing she was hurt over it. She----"

"Oh, what's the use in speculating?" interrupted Ethel. "Go and find
out, Judy. We're probably making much ado about nothing."

"It is I who will go with you," announced Adrienne decidedly. "I am also
the dear friend of Jane."

"Let's all go," proposed Judith. "There's strength in numbers. If Mrs.
Weatherbee hasn't been fair to Jane it will bother her a whole lot to
have three of us take it up."

Adrienne and Ethel concurring in this opinion, the three girls promptly
marched themselves downstairs to the matron's office to inquire into the
matter which had aroused them to take action in Jane Allen's behalf.

Ten minutes later they retired from an interview with Mrs. Weatherbee,
more amazed than when they had entered the matron's office. They were
also proportionately incensed at the reception with which they had met.

"I think she's too hateful for words!" sputtered Judith, the moment the
committee of inquiry had again shut themselves in Ethel's room.

"She might have explained," was Ethel's indignant cry. "I don't believe
that Jane's not coming back to Madison Hall."

"Jane _is_ coming back to Madison Hall," asserted Judith positively.
"She said so in her last letter to me. That is, she spoke of our room
and all. If she hadn't intended coming back, she'd have said something
about it."

"Of a truth she intended to return to this Hall," coincided Adrienne.
"This most hateful Mrs. Weatherbee has perhaps decided thus for herself.
Would it not be the humiliating thing for our _pauvre Jeanne_ to return
and be refused the admittance?"

"That won't happen," decreed Judith grimly.

"We're going to the train to meet her, you know. We'll have to tell her
the minute she sets foot on the station platform."

"But suppose we find that it's true?" propounded Ethel. "That she
doesn't intend to live at the Hall this year? Something might have
happened after she wrote you girls to make her change her mind."

"There's only one thing that I know of and I'd hate to think it was
that," returned Judith soberly. "You know what I mean, that Jane
mightn't care to room with me."

"That is the nonsense," disagreed Adrienne sturdily. "We, who know Jane,
know that it could never be thus. But wa