Eleanor was
gone; the last chance until after vacation had slipped through her
fingers.

At home she told Nan all about her troubles, first exacting a solemn
pledge of secrecy. "Hateful thing!" said Nan promptly. "Drop her. Don't
think about her another minute."

"Then you don't think I was to blame?" asked Betty anxiously.

"To blame? No, certainly not. To be sure," Nan added truthfully, "you
were a little tactless. You knew she didn't know that you were in the
secret of her having to resign, and you didn't intend to tell her, so it
would have been better for you to let some one else help Miss Eastman
out."

"But I thought I was helping Eleanor out."

"In a way you were. But you see it wouldn't seem so to her. It would
look as though you disapproved of her appointment."

"But Nan, she knows now that I knew."

"Then I suppose she concludes that you took advantage of knowing. You
say that it made you quite prominent for a while. You see, dear, when a
person isn't quite on the square herself----"

But Betty had burst into a storm of tears. "I am to blame," she sobbed.
"I am to blame! I knew it, only I couldn't quite see how. Oh, what shall
I do? What shall I do?"

"Don't cry, dear," said Nan in distress, at the unprecedented sight of
Betty in tears. "I tell you, you were not to blame. You were a little
unwise perhaps at first, but Miss Watson has refused your apologies and
explanations and only laughs at you when you try to talk to her about
it. I should drop her at once and forever; but, if you are bound to
bring her around, the only way I can think of is to look out for some
chance to serve her and so prove your real friendship--though what sort
of friend she can be I can't imagine."

"Nan, she's just like the girl in the rhyme," said Betty seriously.

"'When she was good she was very, very good,
And when she was bad she was horrid.'

"Eleanor is a perfect dear most of the time. And Nan, there's something
queer about her mother. She never speaks of her, and she's been at
boarding school for eight years now, though she's not seventeen till
May. Think of that!"

"It certainly makes her excusable for a good deal," said Nan. "How is my
friend Helen Chase Adams coming on?"

"Why Nan, she's quite blossomed out. She's really lots of fun now. But I
had an awful time with her for a while," and she related the story of
Helen's winter of discontent. "I suppose that was my fault too," she
finished. "I se