"Well, it can't be helped now," said Grace. "It is a pity that Eleanor has taken up with Edna Wright. She is the only girl in the class that I really dislike. She is frivolous and empty-headed, and Eleanor is self-willed and lawless. Put them together, and they will make a bad combination. As to the other two girls, they are sworn friends of Edna's."
"I think," said Nora, "that our reform movement is about to end in a glaring fizzle."
"How can we reform a person who won't have anything to do with us?" asked Jessica scornfully.
"Let us hold her place in this sorority open for her, and let us make it our business to be ready to help her if she needs us," said Anne thoughtfully. "Like all spoiled children, she is sure to get into mischief, and just as sure to come to grief. Mark my words, some day she'll be glad to come back to the Phi Sigma Tau."
CHAPTER IX
THE RESCUE PARTY
It was with mingled feelings of excitement and trepidation that Grace Harlowe and Jessica Bright hurried toward the office of the latter's father the following afternoon. Now that they were fairly started on their mission of rescue, they were not quite so confident as to the result. To be sure they had unlimited faith in Jessica's father, but it was so much easier to talk about taking Mabel away from Miss Brant than to do it.
"I'm terribly afraid of facing her," confided Jessica to Grace. "She is the terror of Oakdale, you know."
"She can't hurt us," said Grace. "Your father will do all the talking. All we need to do is to take charge of Mabel, after Miss Brant gives her up."