Georgia looked hard at her queer little cousin. “Go ahead and tell me,” she said, after a long stare of amazed incredulity. “Go ahead and tell me, and I’ll tell Betty, if that’s what you want. But of all innocent, simple-minded, dense——” Georgia paused. The degree of Binks’s densely innocent simple-mindedness could not be put into words.
“Well,” began Binks intently, without noticing Georgia’s muttered epithets, “you know the way I always get mixed up with freaks—the way I did last year at the infirmary, with Mariana Ellison, who writes——”
“I know—the C. P.,” interrupted Georgia hastily.
“C. P.?” repeated Binks questioningly. “Oh, yes, the College Poet. That’s the one. And Esther Bond was there, and a scientific prod, named Jones.”
“I know—the one with the comical squint,” put in Georgia, smiling at the recollection.
“Well, she’s got a sister,” went on Binks quickly, “a freshman. They thought they had enough money for two, with the junior one’s scholarship and what she earns tutoring. And then they found they hadn’t, and the Student’s Aid doesn’t generally help freshmen.” Binks frowned. “You can’t blame the poor things. The junior got Miss Wales to give her a loan, and then she passed it over to her sister. And now after it’s gone and she can’t pay it back, it has worried her so that she’s about sick, and Dr. Carter wants her to give up tutoring and get another loan to carry her through the term.
“And she wouldn’t! She came to me and told me and cried, and I said—well, I suppose I promised to fix it up. Wasn’t that foolish, when I can’t even explain it to you so that it sounds plausible? Why, I’ve actually left out both her best excuses for doing what looks so dishonest! One is that she could honestly say she needed the loan herself, because she did. She’s gone without enough to eat lots of times this year. The other is that the freshman is awfully bright and not very strong, and if her uncle—— Goodness, I forgot to say that an uncle promised to help the freshman, and then, after she’d given up her country school and come to Harding, he backed out. Don’t you think there is a good deal of excuse for her, Georgia? Of course the freshman isn’t to blame at all, because she didn’t, and doesn’t know where her sister got the money. There! That’s another point I forgot to bring in in its proper place.”
“You have got a rather disorderly mind, Binks,” admitted Georgia. “You’ve entirely left out the point that interests me most of all. Why did Miss Jones tell you her story?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” returned Binks plaintively. “I never know why people tell me queer things. Of course you understand that she had to tell somebody to get it off her mind. And now I’ve got it off my mind, and I must go right back home. Miss Ellison might be waiting for me.”
“Let her wait,” advised Georgia coolly. “Did Miss Jones tell you to do as you thought best with her unpleasant little tale?”