of nine. There was still
time to go back to the Belden. But after a moment's wavering Betty began
getting out of her dress and into a kimono. Since the day of the
basket-ball game she had honestly tried not to let the little things
interfere with the big, nor the mere "interruptions" that were fun and
very little more loom too large in her scale of living. "Livy to-night
and golf to-morrow," she told the green lizard, as she sat down again
and went resolutely to work.

When Eleanor came in to dinner the next evening Betty could hardly
conceal her excitement. Would she say anything? If she said nothing what
would it mean? The interview had apparently not been a stormy one.
Eleanor looked tired, but not in the least disturbed or defiant. She ate
her dinner almost in silence, answering questions politely but briefly
and making none of her usual effort to control and direct the
conversation. But just as the girls were ready to leave the table she
broke her silence. "Wait a minute," she said. "I want to ask you please
to forget all the foolish things I said last night at dinner. I've said
them a good many times, and I can't contradict them to every one, but I
can here--and I want to. I've thought more about it since yesterday, and
I see that I hadn't at all the right idea of the situation. The students
at a college are supposed to be old enough to do the right thing about
vacations without the attaching of any childish penalty to the wrong
thing. But we all of us get careless; then a public sentiment must be
created against the wrong things, like cutting over. That was what the
registrar was trying to do. Anybody who stays over as I did makes it
less possible to do without rules and regulations and penalties--in
other words hurts the tone of the college, just as a man who likes to
live in a town where there are churches but never goes to them himself,
unfairly throws the responsibility of church-going on to the rest of the
community. I hadn't thought of it in that way; I didn't mean to be a
shirk, but I was one."

A profound silence greeted Eleanor's argument. Mary Rich, who had been
loud in her championship of Eleanor's sentiments the night before,
looked angry at this sudden desertion; and Mary Brooks tried rather
unsuccessfully not to smile. The rest were merely astonished at so
sudden a change of mind. Finally Betty gave a little nervous cough and
in sheer desperation began to talk. "That's a good enough argument to
ch