nd sofa pillows and
cushions for the chairs, and innumerable pictures.

Before night the study looked as homelike as the old room had at the
preparatory school. They had rugs, too, and one big lounging chair,
purchased second-hand, that Heavy had, of course, occupied most of the
afternoon.

"Well! I hope you've finished at last," sighed the fleshy girl when the
warning bell for dinner rang. "I'm about tired out."

"You should be," agreed Ruth, commiseratingly. "You've helped so much."

"Advising is harder than moving furniture and tacking up pictures,"
proclaimed Jennie. "Brain-fag is the trouble with me and hunger."

"We admit the final symptom," said Helen. "But if your brain is ever
fagged, Heavy, it will only be from thinking up new and touching menus.
Come on, now, we're going to scramble into some fresh frocks. You go and
do the same, Miss Lazybones."

CHAPTER VI

MISS CULLAM'S TROUBLE

Ruth and Helen were much more amply supplied with frocks of a somewhat
dressy order than when they began a semester at Briarwood Hall. Their
wardrobes here were well filled, and of course there was no supervision
of what they wore as there had been at the preparatory school.

When they went downstairs to the dining-room with Jennie Stone, they
found they had made no mistake in "putting their best foot forward," as
Helen called it.

"My! I feel quite as though I were going to a party," Ruth confessed.

The girls rustled through the corridors and down the wide stairways,
laughing and talking, many of the freshmen, it was evident, already
having made friends.

"There's that girl," whispered Jennie Stone, suddenly.

"What girl?" asked Helen.

"Oh! the girl with all the luggage," laughed Ruth.

"Yes," said the fleshy girl. "What was her name?"

"Rebecca Frayne," said Ruth, who had a good memory.

She bowed to the rather over-dressed freshman. She saw that nobody was
walking with Rebecca Frayne.

"I hope she sits at our table," Ruth added.

"Of course," Helen rejoined, with a smile, "Ruth has already spied
somebody to be good to."

"Shucks!" said Jennie. "I don't think she'd make a particularly pleasant
addition to our party."

"What does _that_ matter?" demanded Helen, roguishly. "Ruth is always
picking up the sore-eyed kittens."

"I think that is unkind," returned Ruth, shaking her head. "Maybe Miss
Frayne is a very nice girl."

"I wonder what she's got in all those bags and the big trunk?" said
J