“Oh, she’ll pull through, I think,” said Grace.  “She is really brilliant in mathematics, and always has kept up in other things.”

“I know,” persisted Anne, “but she has finished her mathematics’ group, and her studies this year are things she doesn’t care for, and consequently left them until the last.  We wouldn’t want a Phi Sigma Tau to fail, you know.”

“I should say not,” was Grace’s emphatic response.  “What shall we do about it?”

Anne pondered for a little.  “We might take turns coaching her.  We have all passed in astronomy.  I don’t know how she is in her other studies,” she said.  “Do you suppose she’d be angry if we proposed it to her?”

“I don’t know,” said Grace doubtfully.  “She hasn’t been to the last two Phi Sigma Tau meetings, and she is awfully cool to me.  That’s because I don’t approve of Henry Hammond.  To tell you the truth, I believe he absorbs her attention so completely that she doesn’t have time for her studies.”

“It’s a pity her mother is away just at the time when Marian needs her most,” Anne remarked.

“Yes,” said Grace.  “You know I asked her to come and stay with me, when we came back from the judge’s, but she refused rather sharply, and practically told me that she was able to take care of herself.”

Just then the gong sounded, and the girls had no further opportunity to discuss the subject until school closed for the day, then while waiting in the locker-room for Nora and Jessica, the talk was again renewed, and after swearing Anne to secrecy, Grace imparted to her the conversation between Marian and Henry Hammond that she and Tom had overheard on New Year’s Night.

“I was so uneasy about it that I went all around town the next day to see what I could find out about him.  I didn’t get much satisfaction, however.  He claims to be a real estate agent, and Mr. Furlow in the First National Bank says that he has interested a number of Oakdale citizens in land in the west.  He is well liked, and it’s surprising the way the business men have taken him up,” concluded Grace.

“Perhaps what you heard him say to Marian was nothing of importance after all,” said Anne.

But Grace shook her head obstinately.  “No, Anne,” she answered, “my intuitions never fail me.  Henry Hammond is a rascal, and some day I shall prove it.  As for Marian we’d better have a meeting of the Phi Sigma Tau to-morrow night and especially request her to be present.  Then we’ll all turn in and offer to help her get ready for the exams.  Here come the girls now.”

Nora, Jessica, Miriam and Eva Allen entered the senior locker-room together.

“Where’s Marian?” asked Grace.

“You’d never guess if we told you,” exclaimed Nora.  “I never was more surprised in my life.”

“Why?  What’s the matter?” asked Anne and Grace together.

“Who is the last person you’d expect to see her with?” asked Jessica.