s encouraged, Peggy unfolded the dingy scrap, but the changes of her
expressive face did not bear out Jerry's optimistic conjecture that the
"inside" was all right. Judging from Peggy's crestfallen air, it was all
wrong. The note was not written in Lucy's usual regular hand. The
letters straggled, the lines zig-zagged across the page, and the name
signed was almost an unintelligible scrawl. But Peggy thought less of
these superficial matters than of the unwelcome news communicated.

"Dear Friend:--I shan't come to study algebra any more. I've given
up the idea of going to school any longer. I thank you very much
for trying to help me, but it's no use.

"Yours truly,
"Lucy Haines."

"I thought it was something like that," Claire remarked triumphantly
when the note was read aloud, and she reflected with some satisfaction
that she alone had suggested the rightful explanation of Lucy's action.

"I must say I'm disappointed in that girl," declared Peggy, absently
smoothing out the crumpled paper. Her bright face was clouded.
"Wednesday she was just as interested and ambitious as she could be. And
now she's given up. It doesn't seem like her."

"I must say she doesn't show a great deal of gratitude," exclaimed Ruth,
always ready to rush to Peggy's defence. "Here you've been using your
vacation to teach her, when you might have been enjoying yourself, and
then all at once she gets tired of it. It doesn't seem to occur to her
that if you were like most girls, you'd be the one to give up."

The expression of Peggy's face suggested that she was rather absorbed in
her own thoughts, and giving but scant heed to the words of her
champion.

"Do you know, girls," she said slowly, "I'm going over to see Lucy and
find out what this means."

There was a chorus of protests. "Don't you do it, Peggy," Amy cried
indignantly. And Priscilla remarked, "I wouldn't tease her into
accepting a kindness that she hadn't the sense to appreciate."

"It was too much for you to do anyway," Ruth chimed in. "I think it's a
good thing she's tired of it, myself." But Peggy was not to be dissuaded
from her purpose. Under the uncompromising statements of the bald little
note, there was something that claimed her sympathy. Even the straggling
lines, so little suggestive of the Lucy Haines she knew, carried the
suggestion of appeal. "I'm not going to co