After Miriam had gone upstairs Grace sat staring at her theme with unseeing eyes.  Disagreeable thoughts would come, and try as she might she could not drive them away.  She had been snubbed and she could not forget it.  Giving herself a little impatient shake she turned her attention to her theme and went on writing rapidly.  Half an hour later she folded it neatly, placed it inside one of her books, and went slowly upstairs.  She found Miriam, Anne and Elfreda seated on the floor deep in tea drinking.  Before them was a plate piled high with the new kind of cakes, and a five-pound box of candy that Elfreda had received from New York that morning.

“Sit down here, Grace,” invited Anne, making room for her friend.  “Give her some tea this minute, Miriam.  She is a working woman and needs nourishment.  Did you finish your theme, dear?”

Grace nodded.  Then taking the cup Miriam offered she dropped two lumps of sugar in it, and began drinking her tea in silence.

“What’s the matter, Grace?” asked Anne anxiously.

“Nothing,” replied Grace.  “I feel reflective.  I suppose that’s why I haven’t anything to say.  Did Miriam tell you about the basketball try out on Exeter Field?”

“Yes; but not for mine—­I mean—­I’m not interested in basketball,” amended Elfreda, hastily.  “I tell you this trying to cut out slang is no idle dream.”

There was a shout of laughter from the three girls.

“Now, see here,” bristled the stout girl.  “You needn’t laugh at me.  What I meant was that—­that it is very difficult to refrain from the use of slang,” finished Elfreda with such affected primness that the laughter broke forth afresh.

“Humph!” she ejaculated disgustedly.  “I don’t see anything to laugh at.  Goodness knows I’m trying hard to break myself of the habit.”

“Of course you are,” sympathized Anne.  “We aren’t laughing at you.  It was the funny way you ended your last sentence.”

Elfreda’s face relaxed into a good-natured grin.  “I am funny sometimes,” she admitted calmly.  “Even Pa, who doesn’t smile once a year, says so.”

“I must go,” said Anne, rising.  “I haven’t looked at my history lesson, and it is frightfully long, too.”

“I’ll go with you,” announced Grace.  “I must mend my blue serge dress.  I stepped on it while going upstairs this morning and tore it just above the hem.  I had to change it for this, and was almost late for chapel.”

“I waited for you in the hall as long as I could,” said Anne.  “I meant to ask you what happened, but forgot it.  Grace, what do you suppose Elfreda said before you came upstairs?”

“I can’t possibly guess,” rejoined Grace.  “J.  Elfreda’s remarks are varied and startling.”

The two girls were now in their own room.

“These are nice ones,” averred Anne.  “She said that you and Miriam and I were the first girls she’d ever cared much about.  She said that she had never tried to do anything to please any one but herself until she came here.  Then when you stood up for her, and fixed things so she could go to the reception, she said she held up her right hand and swore to herself that she’d try to be worthy of our friendship.  That’s why she’s trying not to use slang, and to be more generous.  She keeps her things in order, too.  You noticed how nice everything looked to-day.”