Judy flung herself on the divan and buried her face in the pillows.
For a moment Molly almost lost faith in the President's promise.
"What do you mean when you say you must go, Judy?" she asked.
"It can't be true," burst out Nance, whose love for Judy sometimes clothed that young woman's sins in a garment of light.
"Not expelled?" added Molly, in a whisper.
"No, no, not that; but suspended. I can come back just before mid-years, but don't you see the trick? How can I pass my exams then? And Mama and Papa, what will they think? And, oh, the Jubilee and all of you and Wellington? Molly, I've been a wicked idiot and some of my sins have been against you. I was jealous about that Jimmy Lufton because he had seemed to be my property and you took him away. And, Nance, I was mad with you because you were always preaching. I didn't really like Adele Windsor. I think she is horrid. She's malicious and she makes trouble. I've found that out, but she got me in her toils somehow——"
And so poor Judy rambled on, confessing her sins and moaning like a person in mortal pain. She had worked herself into a fever, her face was hot and she looked at the girls with burning, unseeing eyes.
"Papa will be so disappointed," she went on. "It will be harder on him than on Mama for me not to graduate with the class, and oh, I did love all of you—I really did."
Tears, which Molly had never seen Judy shed but once before, now worked two tortuous little paths down her flushed cheeks.
Molly and Nance comforted and nursed her into quiet. They bathed her face and loosened her dyed locks which were now beginning to show a strange tawny yellow at the roots and a rusty brownish color at the ends. All the time Molly was thinking very hard.