HANCE TO HELP

Eleanor Watson had gotten neither class spirit nor personal ambition
from 19--'s "glorious old defeat," as Katherine called it. The Saturday
afternoon of the game she had spent, greatly to the disgust of her
friends, on the way to New York, whither she went for a Sunday with
Caroline Barnes. Caroline's mother had been very ill, and the European
trip was indefinitely postponed, but the family were going for a shorter
jaunt to Bermuda. Caroline begged Eleanor to join them. "You can come as
well as not," she urged. "You know your father would let you--he always
does. And we sail the very first day of your vacation too."

"But you stay three weeks," objected Eleanor, "and the vacation is only
two."

"What's the difference? Say you were ill and had to stay over,"
suggested Caroline promptly.

Eleanor's eyes flashed. "Once for all, Cara, please understand that's
not my way of doing business nowadays. I should like to go, though, and
I imagine my father wouldn't object. I'll write you if I can arrange
it."

She had quite forgotten her idle promise when, on the following Monday
morning, she stood in the registrar's office, waiting to get a record
card for chapel attendance in place of one she had lost. The registrar
was busy. Eleanor waited while she discussed the pedagogical value of
chemistry with a sophomore who had elected it, and now, after a semester
and a half of gradually deteriorating work, wished to drop it because
the smells made her ill.

"Does the fact that we sent you a warning last week make the smells more
unendurable?" asked the registrar suggestively, and the sophomore
retreated in blushing confusion.

Next in line was a nervous little girl who inquired breathlessly if she
might go home right away--four days early. Some friends who were
traveling south in their private car had telegraphed her to meet them in
Albany and go with them to her home in Charleston.

"My dear, I'm sorry," began the registrar sympathetically, "but I can't
let you go. We're going to be very strict about this vacation. A great
many girls went home early at Christmas, and it's no exaggeration to say
that a quarter of the college came back late on various trivial excuses.
This time we're not going to have that sort of thing. The girls who come
back at all must come on time; the only valid excuse at either end of
the vacation will be serious illness. I'm sorry."

"So am I," said the little girl, with a pathetic q