led at the dainty little figure in the big chair. "I don't notice
any indications yet," she said. "It took you an hour to dress this
morning, exactly as it always does. But you'd better take care. What are
you going to do to-day?"

"Make your friend Helen Chase Adams a stock for Christmas," announced
Betty, jumping up and pulling Nan after her. "And you've got to help,
seeing you admire her so much."

CHAPTER X

A RUMOR

After Christmas there were goodies from home to eat and Christmas-gifts
to arrange in their new quarters. Betty's piece de resistance was a
gorgeous leather sofa pillow stamped with the head of a ferocious Indian
chief. Eleanor had a great brass bowl, which in some mysterious fashion
was kept constantly full of fresh roses, a shelf full of new books, and
more dresses than her closet would hold. Katherine had a chafing-dish,
Rachel a Persian rug, and Roberta an illustrated "Alice in Wonderland"
of her own. To Betty's great relief Helen had brought back two small
pillows for her couch, all her skirts were lengthened, and the Christmas
stock of black silk with its white linen turnovers replaced the clumsy
woolen collars that she had worn with her winter shirt-waists. And--she
was certainly learning to do her hair more becomingly. There wasn't a
very marked improvement to be sure, but if Betty could have watched
Helen's patient efforts to turn her vacation to account in the matter of
hair-dressing, she would have realized how much the little changes
meant, and would have been more hopeful about her pupil's progress. Not
until the end of her junior year did Helen Adams reach the point where
she could be sure that one's personal appearance is quite as important a
matter as one's knowledge of calculus or Kantian philosophies; but,
thanks largely to Betty, she was beginning to want to look her best, and
that was the first step toward the things that she coveted. The next,
and one for which Betty, with her open-hearted, free-and-easy fashion of
facing life, was not likely to see the need, must be to break down the
barriers that Helen's sensitive shyness had erected between herself and
the world around her. The self-confidence that Caroline Barnes had
cruelly, if unintentionally wounded, must be restored before Helen could
find the place she longed for in the little college world.

No one had had any very exciting vacation adventures except Rachel, who
was delayed on her way home by a freight wreck a