it back and make the
rest push. It's a thing any one can learn, like French or bookkeeping or
how to make sugar-cookies. I hate it myself, but I don't believe it's a
difficult accomplishment."

"Perhaps not," protested Bob, "but it takes time, if it's anything like
French or cookies--I never tried the bookkeeping. We don't want to make
any experiments with our one and only commencement."

"Why, I'm an experiment," said Roberta hastily, as if she had just
thought of it and felt impelled to speak.

"Yes, but you're the exception that proves the rule," said Nita Reese
brusquely. Nita's reputation for executive ability was second only to
Christy's and she was badly overworked, and tired and cross in
consequence. "I don't think I quite get your idea, Betty. Do you want
K., for instance, to give up her part in the play to Leslie Penrose,
who was told she could have it at first and cried for a whole day when
she found there had been a mistake?"

"Come, Nita," said Madeline lazily, but with a dangerous flash in her
gray eyes. "That's not the way to take our last chance to make more
'Merry Hearts.' Let Betty tell us exactly what she does mean."

"Please do, Betty," begged Nita, half ashamed already of her
ill-tempered outburst.

"Of course I don't want K. to give up her part," began Betty with a
grateful look at Madeline and a smile for Katherine. "I only thought
that some of us are in so many things that we're tired and rushed all
the time, and not enjoying our last term half as much as we might."

"My case exactly," put in Nita repentantly.

"Whereas there are girls in the class who've never had anything to do
here but study, and who would be perfectly delighted to be on some
little unimportant commencement committee."

"But they ought to realize," said Babbie loftily, "that in a big
college like Harding very few people can have a chance to be at the head
of things. Our commencement is pretty enough to pay our families for
coming even if the girls they are particularly interested in don't have
parts. Being on a committee isn't a part anyway."

"Girls who are never on them think it is," said Helen Adams.

There was an ominous silence.

At the end of it Babbie slipped out of the hammock and sat down beside
Betty on the grass. "It's no use at all fighting you, Betty Wales," she
declared amiably. "You always twist the things we don't want to do
around until they seem simple and easy and no more than decent. Of
cours