The statement sponged the smiles from the faces of all the girls
within hearing. Unpopular as the Western girl was, the fact she had
made public somehow made the other girls taste pity for her for the
first time. Bess Harley fairly sobbed when she and Nan got to their
room with the piles of their own garments, which Mrs. Cupp had
allowed them to take from their trunks.

"It--it's _mean_ that she should have a blind mother," cried
Bess angrily. "Why, it makes us sorry for her. And she doesn't
deserve to be pitied."

"I wonder?" murmured Nan, somewhat moved herself by the incident.

As the days went by, Nan Sherwood wondered more and more about
Rhoda Hammond. Was she deserving of some sympathy for her situation
in the school or not? Frankly, Nan was puzzled.

Of course Rhoda was being absolutely left out of all the social
good times and larks of the girls who should have been her mates.
Likewise in classes and in indoor athletics she seemed out of
place.

She had been schooled mostly at home, it appeared. Nan
understood--although Rhoda did not say as much--that her mother had
personally conducted much of her education until the last two
years. Then she had had a governess.

The latter seemed to have been an English woman with rather
old-fashioned ideas. Rhoda was grounded well in certain branches
and densely ignorant in others which Dr. Prescott considered