“Going home,” said Caroline sullenly.
“Why?” demanded Eleanor.
“Public reason–trouble with my eyes; real reason–haven’t touched my conditions yet and now I have been warned and told to tutor in three classes. I can’t possibly do it all.”
“Why Caroline Barnes, do you mean you are sent home?”
Caroline nodded. “It amounts to that. I was advised to go home now, and work off the entrance conditions and come again next fall. I thought maybe you’d be taking the same train,” she added with a nervous laugh.
Eleanor turned white. “Nonsense!” she said sharply. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you said you hadn’t done anything about your conditions, and you’ve cut and flunked and scraped along much as I have, I fancy.”
“I’m sorry, Caroline,” said Eleanor, ignoring the digression. “I don’t know that you care, though. You’ve said you were bored to death up here.”
“I–I say a great deal that I don’t mean,” gulped Caroline. “Good-bye, Eleanor. Shall I see you in New York at Christmas? And don’t forget–trouble with my eyes. Oh, the family won’t mind. They didn’t like my coming up in the first place. I shall go abroad in the spring. Good-bye.”
Eleanor walked swiftly back through the campus. In the main building she consulted the official bulletin-board with anxious eyes, and fairly tore off a note addressed to “Miss Eleanor Watson, First Class.” It had come–a “warning” in Latin. Once back in her own room, Eleanor sat down to consider the situation calmly. But the more she thought about it, the more frightened and ashamed she grew. Thanksgiving was next week, and she had been given only until Christmas to work off her entrance conditions. She had meant to leave them till the last moment, rush through the work with a tutor, and if she needed it get an extension of time by some specious excuse. Had the last minute passed? The Latin warning meant more extra work. There were other things too. She had “cut” classes recklessly–three on the day of the sophomore reception, and four on a Monday morning when she had promised to be back from Boston in time for chapel. Also, she had borrowed Lil Day’s last year’s literature paper and copied most of it verbatim. She could make a sophistical defence of her morals to Betty Wales, but she understood perfectly what the faculty would think about them. The only question was, how much did they know?