ccurately at the
diminishing crack.

The next day was Saturday. Bea failed to appear at breakfast--a
catastrophe which had not occurred before in the memory of the oldest
junior. Berta who usually arrived herself half an hour late headed a
procession of inquiring friends, three of whom bore glasses of milk and
plates of rolls to supply the dire omission. A succession of crescendo
taps at her door was at length rewarded by a drowsy-eyed apparition in
bath-robe and worsted slippers.

"Oh, thank----" she exclaimed at sight of the sympathetic group, and
suddenly remembered that she must be different from her ordinary self. "I
don't want anything to eat. I didn't feel exactly like getting up early.
I seem to prefer to be alone this morning." And she managed, though with
a hand that faltered at the misdeed, to shut the door in their astonished
faces.

"Well, I never!" "What has happened?" "Was it a telegram?" "How perfectly
atrocious!" "Is she sick?" "Beatrice Leigh to treat us with such
unutterable rudeness!"

Berta listened with a queer little smile on her sensitively cut lips.
Once she noticed a hasty twist of the knob as if Bea had snatched at it
from the other side under the prick of the comments floating over the
transom. As she walked slowly away the smile faded before a shadowing
recollection. She was wondering if her own manner had truly been so
unpardonable on that autumn morning when Robbie had carried her a baked
apple with cream on it and plum bread besides. It had certainly been
irritating to be interrupted in the middle of that rondel for the sake of
which she had skipped Sunday breakfast. She had not forgotten how amazed
and disappointed Robbie had looked with the saucer in one hand, the plate
in the other, while the door swung impatiently back to its place. But
then, the poem was sufficient excuse for that discourtesy, Berta assured
herself in anxiety to justify her behavior. If she had waited to be
polite, the thought and the rhymes would doubtless have scattered beyond
recall. Nobody could condemn her for slamming the door and hurrying again
to her desk. She had saved the rondel, and it had been printed in the
Monthly. That was worth some sacrifice, even of manners to dear old
Robbie. She always understood and forgave such small transgressions of
the laws of friendship. Only it certainly looked different when somebody
else did it.

An hour or so later while Berta was bending devotedly over her notes i