the barge ride, which had also been "theme afternoon." Betty remembered
because her monthly allowance always came on the third. She had borrowed
her quarter for the ride of Helen and paid her out of the instalment that
arrived the very next morning. That settled it,--and as Dorothy had
pointed out, all Eleanor's seemingly inexplicable queerness about the
story was now explained.

Betty threw the magazine on the table and going to the window gazed
drearily out at the snow-covered campus. The next thing to settle was
whether it were right to help Eleanor to cover up her deceit? Dorothy
felt, from the little she knew of Eleanor, that open disgrace would take
away her last chance of being honest and upright. "She is terribly
sensitive," Dorothy argued, "and if she feels that nice people don't
trust her, she will go as far as she dares to show them that they are
right. Perhaps she can be led, but she certainly can't be driven. She
isn't strong enough to meet disgrace and down it." That might be true,
but there was the mathematics examination of the year before. Miss Hale
had argued as Dorothy did. In the hope of ultimately winning Eleanor by
kindness, she had not let Miss Meredith know that Eleanor had told her an
untruth. For a while afterward Eleanor had been scrupulously honorable,
but now she had done something infinitely more dishonest than the
deception of Miss Meredith. No doubt Dorothy regarded the affair of the
story as a first offense, and Betty could not tell her that it wasn't.
She had been glad enough to help save Eleanor from the consequences of
her foolish bragging, the year before; but saving her from the
consequences of deliberate dishonesty was a different matter. Betty had
been taught to despise cheating in any form, and to avoid the least
suspicion of it with scrupulous care. And now Dorothy wanted her to aid
and abet a--a thief. Betty flushed hotly as she applied the hard name.