d
if Mr. Foster would do. Mr. Foster would not do. With her clear mind and
recently acquired knowledge of criminal law, she knew the situation was
serious. She called up Fanny Piers and found she was spending the day in
town. Noel came to the telephone. He was very casual.

"Yes, poor Lydia," he said; "uncomfortable sort of thing to have
happened to you."

"Rather more than uncomfortable," answered Eleanor. "Do you know if
she's been arrested?"

Piers laughed over the telephone. Of course she hadn't been. Really, his
tone seemed to say, Eleanor allowed her socialistic ideas to run away
with her judgment. Poor Lydia hadn't meant any harm--it was the sort of
thing that might happen to anyone. Oh, they might try her--as a matter
of form. But what could they do to her?

"Well," said Eleanor, "people have been known to go to prison for
killing someone on the highway."

Piers agreed as if her point was irrelevant.

"Oh, yes, some of those careless chauffeurs. But a thing like this is
always arranged. You'll see. You couldn't get a grand jury to indict a
girl like Lydia. It will be arranged."

"Arranged," thought Eleanor as she hung up the receiver, "only at the
expense of Dan O'Bannon's honor or career."

She did not want that, and yet she did want to help Lydia. She felt
deeply concerned for the girl, more aware than usual of her warm, honest
affection for her. She often thought of Lydia as she had appeared on her
first day at school. The head mistress had brought her into the study
and introduced her to the teacher in charge. All the girls had looked up
and stared at the small, black-eyed new pupil with the bobbed hair and
slim legs in black silk stockings, one of which she was cleverly
twisting about the other. She was shy and monosyllabic, utterly unused
to children of her own age; and yet even then she had shown a certain
capacity for comradeship, for under the elbows of the two tall teachers
she had directed a slow, shy smile at the girls as much as to say, "Wait
till we get together! We'll fix them!"

She was very well turned out, for Miss Bennett had just taken charge,
but not so well equipped mentally, the long succession of her
governesses having each spent more time in destroying the teachings of
her predecessors than in making progress on her own account. Much to
Lydia's chagrin, she was put in a class of children younger than she.

This was shortly before Christmas. Before the second term she had
man