Roberta received the joyful news more calmly. “We may any of us flunk our mid-years yet,” she said.
“But we can study for them in peace and comfort,” said Adelaide Rich.
Mary Brooks asked endless questions at luncheon. Did the girls all accept Miss Mansfield’s denial as authoritative? Did it travel as fast as the original story had done? How did people think the rumor had started?
“Why, nobody mentioned that,” said Rachel in surprise. “How odd that we shouldn’t have wondered!”
“Shows your sheep-like natures,” said Mary, rising abruptly. “Well, now I can finish my psychology paper.”
“Haven’t you worked on it any?” inquired Betty.
“Oh, yes, I made an outline and developed some topics last night. But I couldn’t finish until to-day. I was so worried about you children.”
Toward the end of the next week Rachel came in to dinner late and in high spirits. “I’ve had such a fine walk!” she exclaimed. “Hester Gulick and I went to the bridge, and on the way back we overtook a senior named Janet Andrews. She is such fun. She’d walked down-town with Professor Hinsdale. He teaches psychology, doesn’t he? They seem to be very good friends, and he told her such a funny thing about the fifty-freshmen story. How do you suppose it started?”
“Oh, please tell us,” cried everybody at once.
“Why, an awfully clever girl in his sophomore class started it as an experiment, to see how it would take. She told it to some freshmen, saying explicitly that it wasn’t true, and they told their friends, and so it went all over the college until last Saturday Betty got Miss Mansfield to deny it. But no one knew how it started until yesterday when Professor Hinsdale looked over a paper in which the girl had written it all up, as a study in the way rumors spread and grow. This one was so big to begin with that it couldn’t grow much, though it seems, according to the paper, that some people had added to it that half the freshmen would be conditioned in math.”