how. To hear her essay read aloud and criticised before the class, and
then to have it handed to her across the desk, so that anybody could see
the awful REWRITE in red ink scrawled on the outside! To be sure, all the
essays had been distributed at the same time, and nobody knew for sure
that hers had been the one read aloud. Still they might have seen the
name on it or noticed how red and pale she turned, or something. And
worse still, the examinations were coming soon, and she was sure she
would fail. If it were not for leaving Bea, she would go home that night.
She certainly would!

As she entered, Bea looked up brightly from the cardboard which she was
cutting into squares.

"Here you are!" she exclaimed in cheery greeting, though her eyes had
shadowed instantly at sight of the unhappy drooping of every line. "Sue
Merriam has been in to show me how to make you up for the play next
month. It takes quite an artistic touch to darken the brows and touch up
the lashes. Catch these corks and put them away. They're messing up my
dinner-cards."

Lila's shoulders quivered as if pricked by a spur even while she
mechanically caught the bits of black and fumbled them in her fingers.

"She meant that my brows are too thin and my lashes too light. I would
thank her to keep her criticism until it is called for."

For half a minute Bea kept her head down while her chest heaved over a
sigh of weary anticipation. Then she turned with an affectionate query:
"What has happened now, Lila? Tell me, dear."

Upon hearing about the affair of the essay, she expostulated consolingly,
"Of course that is no disgrace. She is severe with all the girls, tears
their essays into strips and empties the red ink over them. She doesn't
mean it personally, you know. How can we learn anything if nobody
corrects our mistakes? Anyway it was an honor to have it read aloud. Very
likely the girls did not see the REWRITE. She never bothers much with the
utterly hopeless papers. Come, cheer up! The red ink was a compliment."

"Do you really think so?" Lila smiled a little doubtfully. "It sounds
like one of the sophists--'to make the worse appear the better reason.'
I'd love to believe it, and you are sweet to me." She laid one arm
caressingly across Bea's shoulders. "It is queer that I don't mind more
when you scold me so outrageously."

"Scold you?" repeated the other in amazement at such a description of her
soothing speech.

Lila nodded. "I never st