udith insolently.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," said Molly. "I didn't mean that of course."

Then she sighed and turned toward the fire with a trembly, unnerved
feeling.

"I don't believe I'll ever get used to having people cross to me," she
thought. "It always frightens me. I suppose I'm too sensitive." She
began to shiver slightly. "The wind is surely in the East now," she
added to herself.

When the young men came back bearing each a tray with supper for two,
she was grateful for the cup of steaming coffee.

"Will you hold this for a minute, Miss Molly," asked Lawrence Upton,
"while I get a chair to rest it on? Lap tables are about as unsteady as
tables on shipboard."

Judith's partner had followed Lawrence's example, and presently the two
students were seen hurrying through the throng, each pushing a chair in
front of him. By some strange fatality, history was to repeat itself.
Just as he reached the girls, the young person who had more money than
brains slipped on a fragment of buttered bread which had fallen off
somebody's plate, skidded along, bumped his chair into Lawrence, who
lost his balance and fell against poor Molly's tray. Then, oh, dreadful
calamity! over went the cup of coffee straight onto Judith's yellow
satin frock.

Molly could have sunk into the floor with the misery of that moment, and
yet she had not in the least been the cause of the accident. It was the
small-brained rich individual who was to blame. But Judith was not in
any condition to reckon with original causes. Molly had been carrying
the tray with the coffee cups and that was enough for her. She leapt to
her feet, shaking her drenched dress and scattering drops of coffee in
every direction.

"You awkward, clumsy creature!" she cried, stamping her foot as she
faced Molly. "Why do you ever touch a coffee cup? Are you always going
to upset coffee on me and my family? You have ruined my dress. You did
it on purpose. I saw you were very angry a moment ago and you did it for
revenge."

Molly shrank back in her seat, her face turning from crimson to white
and back to crimson again.

"Don't answer her," said a small voice in her mind. "Be silent! Be
silent!"

"But, Miss Blount," began her supper partner, feeling vaguely that
justice must be done, "I stumbled, don't you know? Awfully awkward of
me, of course, but I slipped on an infernal piece of banana peel or
something and fell against Upton. Hope your gown isn't ruined."

"It is r