When the hour had gone the class filed back to the study room and Elnora followed in desperation, because she did not know where else to go.  She could not study as she had no books, and when the class again left the room to go to another professor for the next recitation, she went also.  At least they could put her out if she did not belong there.  Noon came at last, and she kept with the others until they dispersed on the sidewalk.  She was so abnormally self-conscious she fancied all the hundreds of that laughing, throng saw and jested at her.  When she passed the brown-eyed boy walking with the girl of her encounter, she knew, for she heard him say:  “Did you really let that gawky piece of calico get ahead of you?” The answer was indistinct.

Elnora hurried from the city.  She intended to get her lunch, eat it in the shade of the first tree, and then decide whether she would go back or go home.  She knelt on the bridge and reached for her box, but it was so very light that she was prepared for the fact that it was empty, before opening it.  There was one thing for which to be thankful.  The boy or tramp who had seen her hide it, had left the napkin.  She would not have to face her mother and account for its loss.  She put it in her pocket, and threw the box into the ditch.  Then she sat on the bridge and tried to think, but her brain was confused.

“Perhaps the worst is over,” she said at last.  “I will go back.  What would mother say to me if I came home now?”

So she returned to the high school, followed some other pupils to the coat room, hung her hat, and found her way to the study where she had been in the morning.  Twice that afternoon, with aching head and empty stomach, she faced strange professors, in different branches.  Once she escaped notice; the second time the worst happened.  She was asked a question she could not answer.

“Have you not decided on your course, and secured your books?” inquired the professor.

“I have decided on my course,” replied Elnora, “I do not know where to ask for my books.”

“Ask?” the professor was bewildered.

“I understood the books were furnished,” faltered Elnora.

“Only to those bringing an order from the township trustee,” replied the Professor.

“No!  Oh no!” cried Elnora.  “I will have them to-morrow,” and gripped her desk for support for she knew that was not true.  Four books, ranging perhaps at a dollar and a half apiece; would her mother buy them?  Of course she would not—­could not.

Did not Elnora know the story of old.  There was enough land, but no one to do clearing and farm.  Tax on all those acres, recently the new gravel road tax added, the expense of living and only the work of two women to meet all of it.  She was insane to think she could come to the city to school.  Her mother had been right.  The girl decided that if only she lived to reach home, she would stay there and lead any sort of life to avoid more of this torture.  Bad as what she wished to escape had been, it was nothing like this.  She never could live down the movement that went through the class when she inadvertently revealed the fact that she had expected books to be furnished.  Her mother would not secure them; that settled the question.