"You don't mean it!" cried a chorus of voices.
"It seems to me I heard that a Mr. Blount lost a lot of money," observed Margaret. "It must have been her father."
"How are the mighty fallen!" exclaimed Edith Williams. "I should think she'd have gone anywhere rather than here."
"She couldn't get in any of the less expensive places unless she had taken a room over the post office in the village."
"Poor Judith!" ejaculated Jessie. "I've known it for a week."
To save her life Molly could not keep a tiny little barbed thought from piercing her mind: "Is it fair for Judith to stay at college when I have to leave? Has she any right to the money that's paying her tuition?"
Molly turned quickly and began gathering up the débris from the tea-tables. Anything to get that bitter notion out of her head.
"Let's be awfully nice to her, girls," she said presently. "I'm sure she's terribly unhappy. Remember what success we had with Frances Andrews last year just through a little kind treatment."
"Judith is a different subject altogether," said Margaret, argumentatively. "She has such a dreadful temper. You never can tell when it's going to break loose."
With the Goddess of War sitting among them at this moment, nobody dared betray by the flick of an eyelash that there were others whose tempers were rather uncertain. Only Jessie observed: