The girls had covered the frosted field and were returning before the first period of study, and that magic beautifier, the air of early morning, left little undone in his art of tone and tonic for Jane and Judith, when they dropped their bags and hurried to the day’s tasks in mental exploits,

“This very afternoon I am going to talk with Shirley,” Jane decided.  “And wouldn’t it be wonderful, Judy, if she turned out worth while after all?”

“No, it wouldn’t,” glowered Judith.  “Any girl who can be as sick as she was and not have her brother Ted come to see her—­well, my interest lags at that point and I don’t intend to ’rouse it.”

“I still have that letter,” Jane reflected.  “Never seem to get a chance to turn it in.  And I didn’t want to destroy it.”

“Give it to me, Janie, do,” teased Judith.  “Next to knowing the darling Ted, having his letter in installments might serve.  Tonight we’ll read it over again.  It seems so long since we found it with the ghost.”

“Doesn’t it?  And even the play was given up when Shirley was stricken.”

“But they used the armor the other night in their pageant,” said Judith, “and everyone thought it wonderful.  What a shame they expunged the ghost story.”

“Freshmen are so unreliable,” sagely commented Jane.  “But I’m afraid outside influence spoiled the plot for the spook tragedy.  I hope my things come today for the prom.  I feel rather in need of a first class time under the beneficent influence of a real orchestra and prudently shaded lights.”

“Me, too,” agreed Judith promptly if inelegantly.

So the gay season advanced apace, and it was soon one round of trying on gowns and fussing with sample hair dressing in all the “dorms” of Wellington.  For the one big function known simply as The Dance all students were eligible, and it was just in advance of this that Shirley “broke loose.”

She openly and unqualifiedly “cut loose” from Dol Vin’s “interference,” as she called it.

“I’m through with her,” she told her companions; but it was to Sally she confided the details.

The girls had been planning their dance costumes and Sally was insisting she did not care to go to the dance, when Shirley took another spasm of revolt.  She would never again go into that hateful place, she declared, and more than that, she threatened exposure to the beauty shop methods if its proprietor did not soon return some of the “loans” long over due to her (Shirley).

“Kitten,” she exploded without warning, “I’ve had my lesson.  Do you know that Dol Vin is actually sending bills to my innocent dad for her entertainment of the country folks?  Imagine all she’s begged and borrowed from me to meet ‘emergencies’ in her business, and then to ask my dad to pay her dinner bills!  Of course she thinks I’m helpless, and that she has me in her power, but I am not such a ‘greenie’ now.  And we will both be free soon!”