Libbie was much improved in the morning—so well, in fact, that after breakfast in bed she was permitted to dress and go to her room, though strictly forbidden to attend classes or go out of doors. Betty brought her the twenty dollars and when school was in session, the benighted Libbie sped out to her buried bottle and put the money in it, regaining her room without detection.
Two days later there was another demand for money, and two days after that, another. Libbie visited the bottle regularly, afraid to let a day pass lest the blackmailer expose her to the principal. Betty had seen Bob at a football game, and had borrowed fifteen dollars from him. She could not write her uncle, for communication with him was uncertain and her generous allowance came to her regularly through his Philadelphia lawyer.
"He wants twenty-five dollars by to-morrow night!" whispered Libbie, meeting Betty in the hall after her last visit to the buried bottle. "Oh, Betty, what shall we do?"
Both girls had watched patiently and furtively in their spare time in an effort to detect the person who dug up the bottle, but they had never seen any one go near the spot.
As it happened, when Libbie whispered her news to Betty, they were both on their way to recitation with Miss Jessup whose current events class both girls nominally enjoyed. To-day Betty found it impossible to fix her mind on the brisk discussions, and half in a dream heard Libbie flunk dismally.
When next she was conscious of what was going on about her—she had been turning Libbie's troubles over and over in her mind without result—Miss Jessup was speaking to her class about the "association of ideas."
"We won't go very deeply into it this morning," she was saying, "but you'll find even the surface of the subject fascinating."
Then she began a rapid fire of questions to which Betty paid small attention till the sound of Ada Nansen's name aroused her.
"Key, Ada?" asked Miss Jessup.
The answers were supposed to indicate definite ideas.