, with a glance at the fat
girl in the background who, although taking no part in the discussion,
was very much amused, especially every time Ruth Fielding's name was
brought up.

"Well, I don't know why we shouldn't speak of it," said Dora Parton, who
was likewise a sophomore. "The whole college knew it at the time. When
Margaret Rolff left they discovered that the beautiful silver vase was
gone, too, from the library----"

"Oh, hush!" exclaimed May MacGreggor, sharply.

"Won't hush--so now!" said the other girl, smartly, making a face at the
Scotch lassie. "Didn't Miss Cullam go wailing all over the college about
it?"

"That's so," Edith agreed. "You'd have thought it was her vase that had
been stolen."

"I don't believe the vase was stolen at all," May said. "It was mixed up
in that initiation and lost. I know that the Kappa Alpha girls are
raising a fund to pay for it."

"Pay for it!" scoffed some one. "Why, they couldn't do that in a
thousand years. That was an Egyptian curio--very old and very valuable.
Pay for it, indeed! Those Kappa Alphas, as well as the other sororities,
are paying for their fun in another way."

"But, anyway," said the quiet girl, "it was a terrible experience for
Miss Rolff."

"Unless she 'put it on' and got away with the loot herself," said Edith.

"Oh, scissors! _now_ who's coarse?" demanded May MacGreggor.

But the conversation came back to the expected Ruth Fielding. These
girls had all arrived at Ardmore several days in advance of the opening
of the semester. Indeed, it is always advisable for freshmen,
especially, to be on hand at least two days before the opening, for
there is much preparation for newcomers.

The fleshy girl who had thus far taken no part in the conversation
recorded, save to be amused by it, had already been on the ground long
enough to know her way about. But she was not yet acquainted with any of
her classmates or with the sophomores.

If she knew Ruth Fielding, she said nothing about it when Edith Phelps
began to discuss the girl of the Red Mill again.

"Miss Cullam spoke to me about this Fielding. It seems she has an
acquaintance who teaches at that backwoods' school the child went
to----"

"Briarwood a backwoods' school!" said May. "Not much!"

"Well, it's somewhere up in New York State among the yaps," declared
Edith. "And Cullam's friend wrote her that Fielding is a wonder. Dear
me! how I _do_ abominate wonders."

"Perhaps we are malignin