“But, mother,” gasped Elnora.  “You don’t understand!”

“Oh, yes, I do!” said Mrs. Comstock.  “I understand perfectly.  So long as the money lasted, you held up your head, and went sailing without even explaining how you got it from the stuff you gathered.  Goodness knows I couldn’t see.  But now it’s gone, you come whining to me.  What have I got?  Have you forgot that the ditch and the road completely strapped me?  I haven’t any money.  There’s nothing for you to do but get out of it.”

“I can’t!” said Elnora desperately.  “I’ve gone on too long.  It would make a break in everything.  They wouldn’t let me have my diploma!”

“What’s the difference?  You’ve got the stuff in your head.  I wouldn’t give a rap for a scrap of paper.  That don’t mean anything!”

“But I’ve worked four years for it, and I can’t enter—­I ought to have it to help me get a school, when I want to teach.  If I don’t have my grades to show, people will think I quit because I couldn’t pass my examinations.  I must have my diploma!”

“Then get it!” said Mrs. Comstock.

“The only way is to graduate with the others.”

“Well, graduate if you are bound to!”

“But I can’t, unless I have things enough like the class, that I don’t look as I did that first day.”

“Well, please remember I didn’t get you into this, and I can’t get you out.  You are set on having your own way.  Go on, and have it, and see how you like it!”

Elnora went upstairs and did not come down again that night, which her mother called pouting.

“I’ve thought all night,” said the girl at breakfast, “and I can’t see any way but to borrow the money of Uncle Wesley and pay it back from some that the Bird Woman will owe me, when I get one more specimen.  But that means that I can’t go to—­that I will have to teach this winter, if I can get a city grade or a country school.”

“Just you dare go dinging after Wesley Sinton for money,” cried Mrs. Comstock.  “You won’t do any such a thing!”

“I can’t see any other way.  I’ve got to have the money!”

“Quit, I tell you!”

“I can’t quit!—­I’ve gone too far!”

“Well then, let me get your clothes, and you can pay me back.”

“But you said you had no money!”

“Maybe I can borrow some at the bank.  Then you can return it when the Bird Woman pays you.”

“All right,” said Elnora.  “I don’t need expensive things.  Just some kind of a pretty cheap white dress for the sermon, and a white one a little better than I had last summer, for Commencement and the ball.  I can use the white gloves and shoes I got myself for last year, and you can get my dress made at the same place you did that one.  They have my measurements, and do perfect work.  Don’t get expensive things.  It will be warm so I can go bareheaded.”

Then she started to school, but was so tired and discouraged she scarcely could walk.  Four years’ plans going in one day!  For she felt that if she did not start to college that fall she never would.  Instead of feeling relieved at her mother’s offer, she was almost too ill to go on.  For the thousandth time she groaned:  “Oh, why didn’t I keep account of my money?”