"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!