--to treat Ruth Fielding
as Jennie's roommates did.

"They say you went and told Picolet we were going to have the party in
your room," Heavy said to Ruth, frankly, "and that's how you got out of
it so easily. But I tell them that's all nonsense, you know. If you'd
wanted to make us trouble, you would have let Helen have the party in
our room, as she wanted to, and so you could have stayed home and not
been in it at all."

"As she wanted to?" repeated Ruth, slowly. "Did Helen first plan to
have the supper in your quartette?"

"Of course she did. It was strictly a Upede affair--or would have been
if you hadn't been in it. But you're a good little thing, Ruth
Fielding, and I tell them you never in this world told Picolet."

"I did not indeed, Jennie," said Ruth, sadly.

"Well, you couldn't make The Fox believe that. She's sure about it,
you see," the stout girl said. "When Mary Cox wants to be mean, she
can be, now I tell you!"

Indeed, Heavy was not like the other three girls in the next room.
Mary, Belle and Lluella never looked at Ruth if they could help it, and
never spoke to her. Ruth was not so much hurt over losing such girls
for friends, for she could not honestly say she had liked them at the
start; but that they should so misjudge and injure her was another
matter.

She said nothing to Helen about all this; and Helen was as firmly
convinced that Mary Cox and the other Upedes were jolly girls, as ever.
Indeed, they were jolly enough; most of their larks were innocent fun,
too. But it was a fact that most of those girls who received extra
tasks during those first few weeks of the half belonged to the Up and
Doing Club.

That Helen escaped punishment was more by good fortune than anything
else. In the study, however, she and Ruth and Mercy had many merry
times. Mercy kept both the other girls up to their school tasks, for
all lessons seemed to come easy to the lame girl and she helped her two
friends not a little in the preparation of their own.

"The Triumvirate" the other girls in the dormitory building called the
three girls from Cheslow. Before Thanksgiving, Ruth, Helen, and Mercy
began to stand high in their several classes. And Ruth was booked for
the Glee Club, too. She sang every Sunday in the chorus, while Helen
played second violin in the orchestra, having taken some lessons on
that instrument before coming to Briarwood.

Dr. Cranfew came often at first to see Mercy; but he decl