n
experiment, to see how it would take. She told it to some freshmen,
saying explicitly that it wasn't true, and they told their friends, and
so it went all over the college until last Saturday Betty got Miss
Mansfield to deny it. But no one knew how it started until yesterday
when Professor Hinsdale looked over a paper in which the girl had
written it all up, as a study in the way rumors spread and grow. This
one was so big to begin with that it couldn't grow much, though it
seems, according to the paper, that some people had added to it that
half the freshmen would be conditioned in math."

"How awfully funny!" gurgled Betty. Then she jumped almost out of her
chair. "Why, Mary Brooks!" she said.

Everybody looked at Mary, who blushed guiltily and remarked with great
dignity that Professor Hinsdale was an old telltale. But when she had
assured herself that the freshmen, with the possible exception of
Eleanor, were disposed to regard the psychological experiment which had
victimized them with perfect good-nature, and herself with considerable
admiration, she condescended to accept congratulations and answer
questions.

"Seriously, girls," she said at last, "I hope no one got really scared.
I wanted to explain when I heard Betty tell how unhappy Miss Madison
was, but I really thought Miss Mansfield's denial would cheer her up
more and reach her almost as quickly, and at the same time it would help
me out so beautifully. It made such a grand conclusion!

"You see," she went on, "Professor Hinsdale put the idea into my head
when he assigned the subjects away back last month. He said he was
giving them out early so we would have time to make original
observations. When he mentioned 'Rumor,' he spoke of village gossip, and
the faked stories that are circulated on Wall Street to make stocks go
up or down, and then of the wild way we girls take up absurd reports.
The last suggestion appealed to me, but I couldn't remember anything
definite enough, so I decided to invent a rumor. Then I forgot all about
it till that Saturday that I went skating, and 'you know the rest,' as
our friend Mr. Longfellow aptly remarks. When I get my chef-d'oeuvre
back you may have a private view, in return for which I hope you'll
encourage your friends not to hate me."

"Isn't she fun?" said Betty a little later, when she and Helen were
alone together. "Do you know, I think this rumor business has been a
good thing. It's made a lot of us work h