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“You poor thing!” said Mary sympathetically. “I suppose it was a freshman cousin or something.”

Betty nodded. “Lucile Merrifield. She’s a dear, and she said she didn’t need me one bit, but her mother and my mother settled it that I was to come. And of course Lucile was busy with her exams. and I didn’t have anything to do all day but sit around and think what a lovely summer I’d been having. And that horrid woman we stayed with thought I was the freshman and asked me right before a whole tableful of them if I was homesick—just because Lucile happens to be tall and dignified, and her hair is straight.” Betty gave a vicious pull to the yellow curl that would escape from its companions and fall over her eyes.

Mary grinned sympathetically. “Too bad about your childish ringlets,” she said. “But I’ll bet your cousin isn’t a circumstance to mine—the eighth one from Wisconsin that came on for her examinations last June. Was yours the weeping kind?”

“Weeping!” repeated Betty, laughing at the idea of the stately Lucile dissolved in tears. “Not much. She was so calm and cool that I thought she must have flunked and was trying to cover it up. She had five examinations, Mary, and they might have been five afternoon teas for all she seemed to care; and she isn’t a dig or a prod, or anything of that kind, either. So I got worried and made her go all over the questions with me. As far as I could see, she did awfully well. Anyhow I don’t believe she can possibly have flunked.”