could have stuck to the diet,
if----"

"Well, if what?" demanded the teacher.

"If the diet would only stick to _me_. But it doesn't. I ate _pecks_ of
string beans for lunch, and by the middle of the afternoon I felt like a
castaway after two weeks upon a desert island."

"Nonsense, Miss Stone!" exclaimed the teacher, yet laughing too. Heavy
was so ridiculous that it was impossible not to be amused. "You should
practise abstinence. Really, you are the very fattest girl at Ardmore, I
do believe."

"That sounds horrid!" declared Jennie with sudden vigor, and she did not
look pleased.

"You may as well face the truth, my dear," said the mathematics teacher,
eyeing the distressing curves of the fleshy girl without prejudice.
"Here are upwards of a thousand girls--or will be when all have arrived
and registered. And you will be locally famous."

"Oh, don't!" groaned Ruth.

"Poor Heavy!" gasped Helen.

Miss Cullam uttered a short laugh.

"Your friends evidently love you, my dear," she said, patting the fleshy
girl's plump cheek. "But you want to make new friends--you wish to be
admired, I know. It will not be pleasant to gain the reputation of being
Ardmore's heavyweight, will it?"

"It sounds pretty bad," admitted Heavy, coming out of her momentary
slough of despond. "But we all have our little troubles, don't we, Miss
Cullam?"

Somehow this question seemed to quench the teacher of mathematics' good
spirits. A cloud settled upon her countenance, and she nodded seriously.

"We all have; true enough, Miss Stone," she said. "And I hope you, as
pupils at Ardmore, will never suffer such disturbance of mind as I, a
teacher, sometimes do."

Ruth, who had started up the stairway next to the teacher, put a
friendly hand upon Miss Cullam's arm. "I hope we three will never add to
your burdens, my dear Miss Cullam," she whispered.

The instructor flashed a rather wondering look at the girl of the Red
Mill; then she smiled. It was a grouty person, indeed, who could look
into Ruth Fielding's frank countenance and not return her smile.

"Bless you! I have heard of you already, Ruth Fielding. I have no idea I
shall be troubled by you or your friends." They had fallen behind the
others a few steps. "But we never can tell. Since last term--well!"

Much, evidently, was on Miss Cullam's mind; yet she kept step with Ruth
when they came to the corridor on which the rooms of the three
Briarwoods opened. Ruth could always find