t as can be. I'm just sure she can pass
the examinations. It would mean so much to Diantha to pass. I'm sorry
I troubled you, Miss Sweetwater--I didn't know."

But the kind-hearted Principal detained Glory and drew out the whole
wistful little story of the Other Girl. At the end, she said, "I am
glad to know of her. Such a girl must be encouraged. I will keep
mindful of her and see if I cannot help her in some way."

"Thank you. I hope you can help her. She wants to do so much if she
can ever get to earning. It seems as though almost anyone could learn
if they had a mother to help, and a Tiny Tim. There's an Aunt Hope. I
can do it for her. I'm glad I've got to work. And thanks to Di, I do
not stand so bad a show of graduating--with a great deal of honor,
too. Dear old Di!"

More of the late winter days snowed past, and there came, by and by,
hints of spring--faint suggestions of green in the bare, brown spots,
whiffs of spring tonic in the air and clear little bird-calls
overhead. New courage was born in Glory's heart and the Other Girl's,
and both studied harder and harder with each day that went by. The
Crosspatch Conductor took note of the two brown heads bent over the
book and wondered behind his grim mask.

"What is it, anyhow?" he asked one day, late in the spring, stopping
before them in the aisle.

The two pairs of eyes met his laughingly. "Oh--things. Splendid
things!" Glory said. "Certificates and diplomas some day, and sick
folks with glad faces, and little boys with twin legs! Isn't that
enough to 'pay'?"

"Umph!" the Crosspatch Conductor muttered in his beard, and strode on
down the aisle. But he beckoned Glory aside that night on the home
trip and questioned her about the Other Girl. Glory told him the
whole story in a few hurried words.

"That's why she's studying so hard," she wound up, out of breath.
"She wants to get it all and some day be a teacher."

"And you're helping her," the Crosspatch Conductor said, gruffly.

"Mercy, no! She's helping me. That's why _I'm_ studying so hard! I
don't see what you mean--oh! In the very beginning, you mean? _That?_
I'd forgotten there ever was a time when I helped her. I s'pose I
might have a little, at first."

The conductor put his big hand on Glory's shoulder with a touch as
light and caressing as that of a woman.

"You're the right kind, both o' you," he said. "It never comes amiss
to help anybody. I've half a mind to try a little of it myself. Se