"DEAR DOROTHY--
"If you are perfectly sure that there is nobody else to go--"

"DEAR DOROTHY--
"Don't you think that Mary Brooks or Marion Lawrence would be a lot
better? Mary can always talk--"

"Oh, Dorothy, I don't know what to say--"

Betty had slipped up-stairs to her room the minute dinner was over. The
rest of the Belden House girls still lingered in the parlors, talking or
dancing,--enjoying the brief after-dinner respite that is a welcome
feature of each busy day at Harding. Ida Ludwig was playing for them. She
had a way of dashing off waltzes and two-steps that gave them a perfectly
irresistible swing. As Betty wrote, her foot beat time to the music that
floated up, faint and sweet and alluring, through her half-open door. The
floor around her was strewn with sheets of paper which she had torn, one
after another, from her pad, and tossed impatiently out of her way.

"Such a goose as I am, trying to write before I've made up my mind what
to say!" she told the green lizard, as she sent the seventh attempt
flying after the others. "And I can't make it up," she added
despondently, and shut her fountain pen with a vicious little snap. She
would go down and have a two-step with Roberta, who had been Mary's guest
at dinner. Roberta could lead beautifully--as well as a man--and the
music was too good to lose. Besides, Roberta might feel hurt at her
having run off the minute dinner was over.

A shadow suddenly darkened the door and Betty turned to find Eleanor