Moreover, that sum was for her first year in college.  Then she would be of age, and she meant to sell enough of her share of her father’s land to finish.  She knew her mother would oppose her bitterly in that, for Mrs. Comstock had clung to every acre and tree that belonged to her husband.  Her land was almost complete forest where her neighbours owned cleared farms, dotted with wells that every hour sucked oil from beneath her holdings, but she was too absorbed in the grief she nursed to know or care.  The Brushwood road and the redredging of the big Limberlost ditch had been more than she could pay from her income, and she had trembled before the wicket as she asked the banker if she had funds to pay it, and wondered why he laughed when he assured her she had.  For Mrs. Comstock had spent no time on compounding interest, and never added the sums she had been depositing through nearly twenty years.  Now she thought her funds were almost gone, and every day she worried over expenses.  She could see no reason in going through the forms of graduation when pupils had all in their heads that was required to graduate.  Elnora knew she had to have her diploma in order to enter the college she wanted to attend, but she did not dare utter the word, until high school was finished, for, instead of softening as she hoped her mother had begun to do, she seemed to remain very much the same.

When the girl reached the swamp she sat on a log and thought over the expense she was compelled to meet.  Every member of her particular set was having a large photograph taken to exchange with the others.  Elnora loved these girls and boys, and to say she could not have their pictures to keep was more than she could endure.  Each one would give to all the others a handsome graduation present.  She knew they would prepare gifts for her whether she could make a present in return or not.  Then it was the custom for each graduating class to give a great entertainment and use the funds to present the school with a statue for the entrance hall.  Elnora had been cast for and was practising a part in that performance.  She was expected to furnish her dress and personal necessities.  She had been told that she must have a green gauze dress, and where was it to come from?

Every girl of the class would have three beautiful new frocks for Commencement:  one for the baccalaureate sermon, another, which could be plain, for graduation exercises, and a handsome one for the banquet and ball.  Elnora faced the past three years and wondered how she could have spent so much money and not kept account of it.  She did not realize where it had gone.  She did not know what she could do now.  She thought over the photographs, and at last settled that question to her satisfaction.  She studied longer over the gifts, ten handsome ones there must be, and at last decided she could arrange for them.  The green dress came first.  The lights would be dim in the scene, and the setting deep woods.  She could manage that.  She simply could not have three dresses.  She would have to get a very simple one for the sermon and do the best she could for graduation.  Whatever she got for that must be made with a guimpe that could be taken out to make it a little more festive for the ball.  But where could she get even two pretty dresses?