d they must be having a good time if they laughed like
that--really genuine, side-shaking laughter and no lip-smiles for
politeness' sake.

"Who's heard the news about Judith Blount?" asked one of the Williamses,
after the party had broken up and only the Queen's girls remained.

Molly and Judy and Nance exchanged telegraphic glances. They had been
careful to keep secret what Mrs. Kean had written her daughter, and they
were curious to know just how much the others knew on the subject,
which was now always uppermost, at least in Molly's mind.

"She's sub-let her apartment, furnished, to that rich freshman from New
York, whose father's worth a fortune a minute from gold mines and oil
wells, and she, I mean Judith, is taking the empty singleton here."

"You don't mean it!" cried a chorus of voices.

"It seems to me I heard that a Mr. Blount lost a lot of money," observed
Margaret. "It must have been her father."

"How are the mighty fallen!" exclaimed Edith Williams. "I should think
she'd have gone anywhere rather than here."

"She couldn't get in any of the less expensive places unless she had
taken a room over the post office in the village."

"Poor Judith!" ejaculated Jessie. "I've known it for a week."

To save her life Molly could not keep a tiny little barbed thought from
piercing her mind: "Is it fair for Judith to stay at college when I
have to leave? Has she any right to the money that's paying her
tuition?"

Molly turned quickly and began gathering up the debris from the
tea-tables. Anything to get that bitter notion out of her head.

"Let's be awfully nice to her, girls," she said presently. "I'm sure
she's terribly unhappy. Remember what success we had with Frances
Andrews last year just through a little kind treatment."

"Judith is a different subject altogether," said Margaret,
argumentatively. "She has such a dreadful temper. You never can tell
when it's going to break loose."

With the Goddess of War sitting among them at this moment, nobody dared
betray by the flick of an eyelash that there were others whose tempers
were rather uncertain. Only Jessie observed:

"Well, Margaret, dear, you got the better of her that time at the
Ledges, temper or no temper."

"I doubt if she takes to poverty as a duck to water," here put in Judy.
"She'll make a very impatient tutor, and I'd hate to have her black my
boots. She might throw them at my head."

"She is certainly not subdued by her reverses," r