something pleasant to say.
This woman with the care-graved countenance smiled whimsically as she
listened, keeping at the girl's shoulder.

Evidently somewhat oppressed by the attentions of the instructor, Helen
and Heavy had disappeared into the fleshy girl's room.

"Do come in and see how nicely we have fixed our sitting-room--study, I
mean, of course," and Ruth laughed, opening the door.

"Looks homelike," confessed Miss Cullam. Then, with a startled glance
around the room, she murmured: "Why, it's the very room!"

"What is that you say?" asked Ruth, curiously.

"Do you know who had this room last year?"

"Of course I haven't the first idea," returned the girl of the Red Mill.

"Miss Rolff."

"Do I know her?" asked Ruth, somewhat puzzled.

"She left before the end of the term. I--I am not sure just what the
matter was with her. But she is connected in my mind with a great
misfortune."

"Indeed, Miss Cullam?" said the sympathetic Ruth.

It was, perhaps, the sympathy in her tone that urged the instructor to
confide her trouble to a strange girl--a freshman, at that!

"I hope I shall never have the same fears and doubts regarding you and
your friends, Miss Fielding, that I have felt about some of these girls
who are now sophomores--and some of the juniors, too."

"Oh, Miss Cullam! What do you mean?"

"Well, I'll tell you, my dear," the teacher said, taking the comfortable
chair at Ruth's gestured recommendation, as the girl switched on the
electricity. "You seem like an above-the-average sensible girl----"

Ruth laughed at that, but she dimpled, too, and Miss Cullam joined in
the laughter.

"Some of these girls were mere flyaways," she said. "But not many, after
all. Girls who come as far as college, even to the freshman course in
college, usually have something in their pretty noddles besides ideas
for dressing their hair.

"Well, I will confide in you, as I say, because I have a fancy to. I
like you. Listen to the troubles of a poor mathematics instructor."

"Yes, Miss Cullam," said Ruth, demurely.

"You see, my dear," said Miss Cullam, who had a whimsical way about her
that Ruth had begun to delight in, "after all, we college instructors
are all necessarily of the race of watch dogs."

"Oh, Miss Cullam!"

"Our girls are put upon their honor and are in the main worthy of our
confidence. But we have experiences that show us how frail human virtue
is.

"For instance, there are examinations.