“Do you think anything more will be said?” asked Grace anxiously.

“Not if I can help it,” was the response.

It was almost midnight when, after seeing Ruth Denton home, the four girls climbed the steps of Wayne Hall.

“It was lovely, wasn’t it, Anne?” declared Grace as she slipped into her kimono and began taking the pins from her hair.

“Yes,” said Anne with a half sigh.  She was deliberating as to whether she had better tell Grace a disturbing bit of conversation she had overheard.  After all it wasn’t worth repeating.  She had simply heard one freshman say to another that she had been prepared to like Miss Harlowe, but something she had heard had caused her to change her mind.  Anne suspected that in some way Elfreda’s troubles had been shifted to Grace’s shoulders.

CHAPTER IX

DISAGREEABLE NEWS

“Hurrah!” cried Miriam Nesbit gleefully, coming into the living room of Wayne Hall where Grace sat at the old-fashioned library table absorbed in writing a theme for next day’s composition class.

“What’s happened?” asked Grace curiously, looking up from her writing.

“We’re to go over to Exeter Field to-morrow for a try out in basketball.  I do hope we’ll both make the team.”

“So do I,” agreed Grace promptly.  “But there are so many girls that we may not be even chosen as subs.  Besides, our playing may not compare with that of some of the others.”

“Nonsense,” returned Miriam stoutly.  “Your playing would stand out anywhere, Grace, even on a boys’ team.  I consider myself a fair player, too,” she added, flushing a little.

“I should say you are!” exclaimed Grace.  “Who told you about the try out?”

“It’s on the bulletin board.  I don’t see how you missed it.”

“I didn’t look at the bulletin board this morning.  I meant to, then something else took my attention, and I forgot all about it.”  The “something else” had been the extremely frigid manner in which two freshmen she particularly liked had greeted her as she caught up with them on the way to her Livy class that morning.  Grace wondered not a little at this cavalier treatment, but could arrive at no satisfactory conclusion regarding it.  She finally tried to dismiss the matter by ascribing it to over-sensitiveness on her part, but every now and then it haunted her like an offending spectre.

“I always look at the bulletin board, no matter what happens,” declared Miriam emphatically.  “I must hurry upstairs and impart the glorious news to Elfreda.  We had elected to spend Saturday afternoon in moving our furniture about, hoping to gain a few square inches of room space, but we’ll have to postpone doing it.  We can do it the first rainy Saturday.  Hurry along with your paper and come upstairs.  I’m going to make tea, and I’ve acquired a new kind of cakes.  They’re chocolate covered and taste like home and mother.”