She had nine minutes to reach the auditorium or be late.  Should she go to school, or to the Bird Woman?  Several girls passed her walking swiftly and she remembered their faces.  They were hurrying to school.  Elnora caught the infection.  She would see the Bird Woman at noon.  Algebra came first, and that professor was kind.  Perhaps she could slip to the superintendent and ask him for a book for the next lesson, and at noon—­“Oh, dear Lord make it come true,” prayed Elnora, at noon possibly she could sell some of those wonderful shining-winged things she had been collecting all her life around the outskirts of the Limberlost.

As she went down the long hall she noticed the professor of mathematics standing in the door of his recitation room.  When she passed him he smiled and spoke to her.

“I have been watching for you,” he said, and Elnora stopped bewildered.

“For me?” she questioned.

“Yes,” said Professor Henley.  “Step inside.”

Elnora followed him into the room and closed the door behind them.

“At teachers’ meeting last evening, one of the professors mentioned that a pupil had betrayed in class that she had expected her books to be furnished by the city.  I thought possibly it was you.  Was it?”

“Yes,” breathed Elnora.

“That being the case,” said Professor Henley, “it just occurred to me as you had expected that, you might require a little time to secure them, and you are too fine a mathematician to fall behind for want of supplies.  So I telephoned one of our Sophomores to bring her last year’s books this morning.  I am sorry to say they are somewhat abused, but the text is all here.  You can have them for two dollars, and pay when you are ready.  Would you care to take them?”

Elnora sat suddenly, because she could not stand another instant.  She reached both hands for the books, and said never a word.  The professor was silent also.  At last Eleanor arose, hugging those books to her heart as a mother clasps a baby.

“One thing more,” said the professor.  “You may pay your tuition quarterly.  You need not bother about the first instalment this month.  Any time in October will do.”

It seemed as if Elnora’s gasp of relief must have reached the soles of her brogans.

“Did any one ever tell you how beautiful you are!” she cried.

As the professor was lank, tow-haired and so near-sighted, that he peered at his pupils through spectacles, no one ever had.

“No,” said Professor Henley, “I’ve waited some time for that; for which reason I shall appreciate it all the more.  Come now, or we shall be late for opening exercises.”