Lydia knew if she took the matter up with Amos he would go out and borrow money for her.  She shuddered at the thought of this.  He had been so bitter about her fudge selling that she dared not broach the matter of money earning to him again.  Then she heard of the College Money Making Bureau.  She discovered that there were girls who were earning their way through college and that the Bureau was one of the quiet ways used by the University to help them.

There was the Mending Department for example.  Here were brought every week by the well-to-do students piles of mending of every variety from heelless socks and stockings, to threadbare underwear and frayed cuffs and collars.  These were made into packages and farmed out to the money needing girls.  The Department was located in a room in the rear of the Chemical laboratory, and was in charge of the old janitor, whose casual manner was a balm to the pride of the most sensitive.

Early in January, Lydia sneaked into the little room, and out again with a neat but heavy bundle.  She got home with it and smuggled it into her room without old Lizzie’s seeing it.  Socks, wristbands and torn lace—­there was fifty cents’ worth of mending in the package!  Lydia calculated that if she did a package a night for thirty nights, she would have enough money to buy the making of the party dress and cloak.

The necessity for secrecy was what made the task arduous.  Lydia finished her studying as hurriedly as possible each night and went on to her room.  It was bitter cold in the room when the door was closed, but she hung a dust cloth over the keyhole, a shawl over the window shade, wrapped herself in a quilt and unwrapped the bundle.  By two o’clock she had finished and shivering and with aching eyes, crept into bed.

Within a week she was going about her daily work with hollow eyes and without the usual glow in her cheeks.  Within two weeks, the casual glimpse of Lizzie darning one of Amos’ socks gave her a sense of nausea, but she hung on with determination worthy of a better cause.

The third week she took cold, an almost unheard-of proceeding for Lydia, and in spite of all old Lizzie’s decoctions, she could not throw it off.  Amos insisted that Lizzie see her to bed each night with hot lemonade and hot water bottle.  Lydia protested miserably until she found that it was really more comfortable to mend in bed than it was to sit quilt-wrapped in a chair.  At the end of the fourth week she carried back her last bundle, and with fifteen dollars in her pocketbook, she boarded the street-car for home.  She was trembling with fatigue and fever.

When she reached the cottage, she stretched out on the couch behind the old base burner with her sense of satisfaction dulled by her hard cough and the feverish taste in her mouth.  She was half asleep, half in a stupor when Billy came in.

“How’s the cold, Lyd?” he asked.