At the cedars a shrill train whistle warned Jane she had but a few seconds more to make the little Bingham station, and she promptly imparted the same message to Firefly.

“We’ll make it, boy,” she whispered.  “Take Janie to the station, careful—­careful—­” in that droning, even voice a horse always knows how to interpret.

There, she touched the back platform, told her horse to wait, and threw his strap over the livery post; then she hurried to the front to find her freshmen.

There they were!  Bags in hand, standing now as the train was pulling in.

Jane saw them some seconds before they espied her, and quick as a flash she had a hand on each of the others.

“Girls,” she called, “drop those bags.  Where are you going?”

Sally dropped her bag from sheer surprise, but Bobbie had a firmer grip.

“Oh, please, Miss Allen,” begged Bobbie tearfully, “don’t detain us, we must go.  This is our train.”

“If you go you must take me with you—­and this way,” she included her gym togs in the statement.  “Just be reasonable and rational.  There, let the train go” (it was going).  “There are others.  But you just come over to that bench and tell me.  What does all this mean?” There was no time for recrimination.  The story so long bound up in the hearts of these two girls sprung freely to their lips.

“You will hate us both, Miss Allen,” stumbled Sally.  “But we never meant to deceive you for so long a time.”

“We were silly geese,” retorted the impetuous Bobbie, “and I suppose now, outside of Wellington grounds, we may as well try—­to confess.  We have both deceived you!  There is Shirley Duncan and I am Sally Howland.”

“What!” gasped Jane, unable to understand the shifting of names from one to the other.

“I never won your father’s scholarship,” went on Bobbie, her voice trailing evenly over every incriminating word.  “Shirley won it and—­ "

“I sold it to her,” sobbed the other, eager to have done with the hateful admission.

“Sold it?”

“Yes, there was no other way.  Ted—­my brother Ted—­had to have two hundred dollars to get back to Yorktown, and everything seemed gone when uncle died.  I had won the scholarship, to come to Wellington, but I couldn’t leave Ted stranded in his junior year,” choked the little freshman.

“That was it!” exclaimed Jane, leading the girls away from the tracks, now cleared of the New York express, and guiding them to the back of the station where Firefly waited proudly.  What a relief!

“You rode—­that way?” gasped Bobbie.  “Without a saddle?”

“Why certainly.  It was the best gallop I’ve had in months.  Now, naughty girls, wait.  Sit down.  I’m too excited to stand up.  You” (to Sally) “are Shirley Duncan, and you” (to Bobbie) “are Sally Rowland?”

“Yes,” replied both miserably.

Then she, whom we must know as the real Shirley, spoke.