"Tell me about it, dear," soothed Betty. "I'll help you, you know I will.
Has it anything to do with school?"
She was totally unprepared for Libbie's next words.
"I have to have some money—a lot of money, Betty. I've spent my last allowance and I can't write home for more because they will ask me why I want it. I've borrowed so much from Louise that I can't ask her again! I ought to pay it back. But I've got to have twenty dollars by to-morrow night."
"What for? What's the matter?" asked Betty, in alarm.
"You'll promise not to tell Bobby?" demanded Libbie intensely. "Promise me you won't tell Bobby? She'd scold so. And Mrs. Eustice would expel me. If you won't tell Bobby or Mrs. Eustice, Betty, I'll tell you."
Betty was now thoroughly aroused. She knew that impulsive novel-reading
Libbie went about with her pretty head filled with all sorts of trashy
ideas, and she didn't know what lengths she might have gone to. If Mrs.
Eustice would expel her, the affair must be serious indeed.
"I'll promise," said Betty rashly. "Tell me everything, Libbie, and if I can I'll help you."
"Well, you remember when we went nutting?" said Libbie. "I carried a bottle with me with—with my name and address written on a slip of paper inside. I read about that in a book. And I said to leave an answer in the same bottle. I—I buried it just at the foot of the hill, before we began to climb. Louise was with me, but she was hunting for specimens for her botany book."
"So that's why you hung back, was it?" said Betty. "I wish to goodness Louise was more interested in what is going on around her. She might have stopped you. Go on—what happened to your silly bottle?"
"I buried it," repeated Libbie, "and two days after I went out and dug it up. And there was an answer in it."