about and much to show each other in the way of beautiful gifts
which had fallen to their lot.

Judith was jubilant over the acquisition of a knitted white silk
sweater, which she assured Jane was an exact counterpart of the one Mrs.
Weatherbee had knitted for her niece.

"My Aunt Jennie made it for me," she explained, as she proudly exhibited
it to Jane. "I bought the silk and she did the work. I told her about
the one Mrs. Weatherbee made for her niece and dandy Aunt Jennie offered
to knit one for me like it. Wasn't that nice in her? I'm going to show
it to the girls and then put it away until Spring. It will be sweet
with a white wash satin skirt. I'm going to have some made just to wear
with it. Let's give a spread, Jane, to the crowd. Then we can show them
our Christmas presents. It will give you a chance, too, to get that
great secret idea of yours off your mind. You see I haven't forgotten
about it."

Jane smilingly agreed that it would be a good opportunity and the spread
was accordingly planned for the next evening. Christine, Barbara,
Dorothy, Norma, Alicia, Adrienne, Ethel and Mary Ashton were the chosen
few to be invited.

It was not until the little feast provided by Judith and Jane had been
eaten and the ten girls still sat about the makeshift banqueting board,
that Jane, urged by Judith to "Speak up, Janie," began rather
diffidently to speak of her cherished new idea.

"I don't know whether you'll agree with me or not," she said. "If you
don't, please say so frankly, because if we should decide to do what I'm
going to propose we'll all have to be united in thinking it a good idea.

"It's like this," she continued. "We all spend a good deal of money on
luncheons and dinners and spreads. We feel, of course, that we have a
perfect right to do as we please with our allowance checks. So we have.
Still, when one stops to think about quite a number of girls at
Wellington who are straining every nerve to put themselves through
college, it seems a little bit selfish to spend so much on one's own
pleasures.

"Suppose we agreed to give only two spreads a month. There are ten of us
here. We could each put a dollar a month into a common fund. That would
give us ten dollars to spend on the two spreads, five dollars on each.
During the month we'd see how much of our allowances we could save.
Whatever we had left at the end of the month would go into the common
fund. No one of us would be obliged to give any par