“Not true?” angrily retorted Rose.  “Pray didn’t she have my old bonnet?”

“Yes,” answered Jenny, “but I bought it of you, and paid you for it with a bracelet Billy Bender gave me,—­you know I did.”

Rose was cornered, and as she saw noway of extricating herself, she turned on her heel and walked away, muttering about the meanness of doing a charitable deed, and then boasting of it!

The next day Jenny chanced to go for a moment to Mary’s room.  As she entered it, Mary looked up, saying, “You are just the one I want to see.  I’ve been writing about you to Billy Bender.  You can read it if you choose.”

When Jenny had finished reading the passage referred to, she said, “Oh, Mary, I didn’t suppose you overheard Rose’s unkind remarks about that bonnet.”

“But I did,” answered Mary, “and I am glad, too, for I had always supposed myself indebted to her instead of you.  Billy thought so, too, and as you see, I have undeceived him.  Did I tell you that he had left Mr. Selden’s employment, and gone into a law office?”

“Oh, good, good.  I’m so glad,” exclaimed Jenny, dancing about the room.  “Do you know whose office he is in?”

“Mr. Worthington’s,” answered Mary, and Jenny continued:  “Why, Henry is studying there.  Isn’t it funny?  But Billy will beat him, I know he will,—­he’s so smart.  How I wish he’d write to me!  Wouldn’t I feel grand to have a gentleman correspondent?”

“Suppose you write to him,” said Mary, laughingly.  “Here’s just room enough,” pointing to a vacant spot upon the paper.  “He’s always asking about you, and you can answer his questions yourself.”

“I’ll do it,” said Jenny, and seizing the pen, she thoughtlessly scribbled off a ludicrous account of her failure, and of the blunders she was constantly committing, while she spoke of Mary as the pattern for the whole school, both in scholarship and behavior.

“There!” said she, wiping her gold pen upon her silk apron (for Jenny still retained some of the habits of her childhood) “I guess he’ll think I’m crazy, but I hope he’ll answer it, any way.”

Mary hoped so too, and when at last Billy’s letter came, containing a neatly written note for Jenny, it was difficult telling which of the two girls was the happier.

Soon after Mary went to Mount Holyoke, she had received a letter from Billy, in which he expressed his pleasure that she was at school, but added that the fact of her being there interfered greatly with his plan of educating her himself.  “Mother’s ill health,” said he, “prevented me from doing any thing until now, and just as I am in a fair way to accomplish my object, some one else has stepped in before me.  But it is all right, and as you do not seem to need my services at present, I shall next week leave Mr. Selden’s employment, go into Mr. Worthington’s law office as clerk, hoping that when the proper time arrives, I shall not be defeated in another plan which was formed in boyhood, and which has become the great object of my life.”