t to go back on it. Besides, it'll set us
all topsy-turvey with our accounts, for if you don't go of course you
won't turn in your share of the tax, and we couldn't ask any one at the
last minute just to come as a make-shift and expect her to pay for the
privilege. The end of it will be the rest of us will have to make it
up, and if you think that's fair I don't!"

"I'll gladly pay my dues," returned Nan, more meekly than Ruth had ever
heard her speak. "You can ask any one you choose as my substitute, and
say anything you please to explain my not going, and I'll stand by you."

This began to sound serious, and Ruth felt it was time to clinch her
argument.

"If you go out Louie Hawes will, too. Her mother said she'd let Lu go
if Miss Blake would let you, but that if Miss Blake objected she
thought it would be best not to have Lu join. She said she made Lu's
going entirely conditional on yours. So, you see, if you back out
you'll not alone be breaking your promise, but you'll be breaking up
the party and making a mess of it all round. I told Mrs. Hawes you
were going, and Lu's heart is set on it. If she has to stay back now,
at the last minute like this, it will disappoint her dreadfully, and I
wouldn't blame her if she never spoke to you again."

Nan felt that she had been driven into a corner, and that there was but
one way out of it. In spite of her strong desire to go with the girls,
she had determined to stick to her resolve to stay behind. She had
hardly known why she had tried to avoid them all these days. But now
she knew. It was because she was afraid they would shake her
resolution. Once she would have called herself cowardly for trying to
spare herself such temptation, but now she knew better; she saw she had
been simply wise. It would not have been brave, but merely reckless,
to have done otherwise. She had known ever since Miss Blake spoke that
she was free to do as she pleased. That she was held by no promise;
that she was compelled by no stronger claim than Miss Blake's
disapproval, which might be, after all, only a groundless personal
prejudice, she thought. She hardly realized why she felt bound to
obey. And now along came Ruth to prove that there were other claims
outside Miss Blake's. She remembered perfectly having said that Ruth
could count on her. Here was a very definite promise, although it had
been made in half-ignorance, and she understood clearly that Ruth meant
to make h