stitious: you fancy that if you do your best to
expect the worst, the best will happen, because it is always the
unexpected that happens. Only of course, that isn't true at all."

Berta was smiling mistily around into the fair face. "Dear old Robbie
Belle! Will Shakespeare was right--'there's flattery in friendship'--it
makes me rejoice. The trouble, you see, sweetheart, lies in my character.
I misdoubt me that Prexie will spurn my plea if he hears how often we
have a meeting of the fudge club at a tax of two cents per head. Let's
save up that two cents for the Opera fund."

Robbie Belle drew a deep sigh. "All right," she agreed with a doleful
glance toward the particular blue plate in which she was accustomed to
pour her share of the delicacy. "Anyway the doctor calls fudge an
'abomination.' Bea will scold because she hates scrimping. But then she
doesn't care so much as we do for music unless it is convenient."

Berta's contributions were the result of more active exertions than the
other's passive self-denial. She sat up one night till two o'clock to
dress a doll. Every fall a few hundred dolls were distributed to be
dressed by the girls for the Christmas tree at the Settlement House in
the city. Some of the students took dolls and paid other girls to make
the clothes. Berta earned a dollar by helping Bea with the three which
that impulsive young woman had rashly undertaken. In February she
composed valentines and sold them to over-busy maidens who felt unequal
to rhyming in the reaction after the midyear examinations. In March she
painted Easter eggs and in April she arranged pots of growing ferns and
flowers from the woods. By May the fund was complete and the tickets were
bought.

As the longed-for event drew nearer, Berta made a string of paper dolls
and joyfully tore off one for each passing day.

At last the morning dawned. Robbie Belle was dreaming that she had fallen
asleep in fifth hour Latin. It seemed as if the instructor called her
name and then came walking down from the platform, thump, thump, thump,
in her broad-soled shoes. It was unladylike to thump so heavily, thought
Robbie Belle in the midst of her confused dismay over having lost the
place in the text as well as forgotten the translation. The thumping
sharpened to a rat-tat-tat upon the bedroom door.

"Robbie Belle, Robbie Belle, you lazybones! The night watchman has
knocked twice already. Get up, get up this instant! We're going to hear
Gr