“Were you warned too?” demanded Eugenia with the frankness of despair.
“N-no.” Betty was really sorry at the moment that she hadn’t been. “But lots of my friends were,” she added consolingly.
“My father and mother think I ought to have known that I wasn’t studying enough,” Eugenia explained. “You see, I didn’t pass my prep. school exams one year and my father thought that was perfectly dreadful, so he’s extra cross now. I had to write home about it, because of all the money I shall need for a tutor, and when I did that, my father said I should stay on here through the vacation and w-work.”
“It’s hard now not to go home, but you’ll be glad you didn’t next term, I guess,” Betty suggested. “The time just flies, from the day college opens again to midyears.”
“Well,” continued Eugenia gloomily, “then my tutor changed her mind at the last minute and went off and left me, and Miss Ferris—she’s our class officer—told me to come to you. I said I didn’t think you ever tutored, but she said to come all the same and she sent you a note. Oh, I ought to have given you the note first!” A big tear splashed down on the address, as she handed Miss Ferris’s note to Betty.
“Dear little helper,” Miss Ferris had written, “here’s a chance for you to cultivate the right kind of college spirit. That’s what Miss Ford needs. She seems bright enough to keep up with her class easily. You must inspire her with pride in her work and determination to do it justice. I needn’t tell you that she’s a dreadful little snob. Some day you must tell me why she begged me most pathetically to send her to anybody else but you.
“Merry Christmas,
“Margaret Ferris.”
Betty read it all through twice, while Eugenia, huddled in a forlorn little heap, watched her eagerly.
“Oh, dear, I just can’t,” she began at last. “Miss Ferris has forgotten what a stupid I was. And if you should be——” She had started to say “flunked out at midyears,” and paused in blank dismay at her own thoughtlessness.