"Your luggage. You changed your boarding place in such a hurry
you forgot to settle, and as I made the arrangement, I had to pay
it."

"Do please excuse me," said Kate. "I was so bewildered, I
forgot."

"Certainly!" said the girl and Kate dropped the money into the
extended hand and hurried past, her face scorched red with shame,
for one of them had said: "That's a good one! I wouldn't have
thought it of her."

Kate went back to her hot, stuffy room and tried to study, but she
succeeded only in being miserable, for she realized that she had
lost her second chance to have either companions or friends, by
not saying the few words of explanation that would have righted
her in the opinion of those she would meet each day for six weeks.
It was not a good beginning, while the end was what might have
been expected. A young man from her neighbourhood spoke to her
and the girls seeing, asked him about Kate, learning thereby that
her father was worth more money than all of theirs put together.
Some of them had accepted the explanation that Kate was
"bewildered" and had acted hastily; but when the young man
finished Bates history, they merely thought her mean, and left her
severely to herself, so her only recourse was to study so
diligently, and recite so perfectly that none of them could equal
her, and this she did.

In acute discomfort and with a sore heart, Kate passed her first