"You've _lost_ it!" gasped Lucy, her heavy dark brows meeting in the old ominous frown.

"Yes. I tucked it inside my blouse," went on Marjorie bravely, "and when I reached home it was gone."

Lucy's green eyes fastened themselves on Marjorie in an angry stare. For a moment her great liking for the gentle girl was swallowed up in wrath at her carelessness. Intensely methodical, Lucy found such carelessness hard to excuse. Remembering tardily how much she owed Marjorie, she made a valiant effort to suppress her anger. "It's too bad," she muttered.

"I-you see-I gave you my confidence. I wouldn't care to have anyone else know all that I wrote you."

"Don't I know that?" Marjorie asked almost piteously. "I can't begin to tell you how dreadfully I feel about it. I know you think it careless in me to have tucked it inside my blouse. It _was_ careless. I've waited all day, thinking someone who might have found it would return it. My name on the envelope ought to insure a prompt return if I dropped it in or near the school building. But if I lost it in the street and a stranger found it, then I'm afraid I wouldn't stand much chance of getting it again." Marjorie made a little gesture of hopelessness. "You must know how humiliated I feel over it. But that won't bring the letter back," she concluded with deep dejection.

During this long apology Lucy's probing eyes had been riveted unblinkingly on Marjorie, as though in an effort to plumb the precise degree of the latter's regret for the accident. "Don't worry about it any more," she said rather brusquely. "It may not amount to anything after all. If you dropped it in the street, the wind may have blown it away; then no one would ever see it. If you dropped it in the school building, it may be returned to you, or perhaps to me. My full name was signed at the end of it. It has taught me a lesson, though."

Within herself Lucy knew that this last speech bordered on the unkind.

Yet she could not resist making it. Although she was earnestly endeavoring to live up to the new line of conduct which she had laid down for herself on the day when she had confessed her fault to Marjorie, much of her former antagonistic att.i.tude toward life still remained. Having, for years, cultivated a spirit of envy and bitterness, she was still more ready to blame than condone. A kind of fierce, new-born grat.i.tude and loyalty toward Marjorie transcended momentarily her personal displeasure. It was not quite powerful enough, however, to check that one caustic remark. She had not yet learned the true secret of grat.i.tude.

"I can't blame you for feeling that I am not a safe confidant," Marjorie made honest reply. "Still it hurts me to hear it. I must go now, Lucy.

The girls are waiting for me outside. We are all going down to Sargent's for ice cream. I'd love to have you come, too, if you are through with your work and would care to join us."

"Thank you, but I shall be busy here for the next half hour," Lucy returned, a tinge of stiffness in the reply. She wondered how Marjorie could thus so easily dismiss the annoying matter of the lost letter.

Perhaps, after all, she was not half so sorry as she pretended to be.

"Please don't think that I am trying to make light of my misdeed,"

Marjorie said eagerly. Lucy's curt refusal of the invitation bore a hint of offended pride. "I shall have that letter on my mind all the time until we learn what has become of it, or are sure that it hasn't fallen into unfriendly hands."

At the words "unfriendly hands" Lucy's heavy brows again met. She mentally saw herself held up as an object for ridicule by some unknown person whom the letter might apprise of her secret ambitions. "That's just the trouble," she flashed forth sharply. "Hardly any of the girls at Sanford High understand me in the least. I am sure some of them would be only too glad for an opportunity to make fun of me. It wouldn't be very pleasant for me if some morning I should walk into school and find that about half the girls here knew all about my personal business. You know, as well as I, how fast news travels among a lot of girls."

"I understand-all-that-perfectly." There was a faint catch in Marjorie's clear utterance. "I can only say again that I am very, very sorry for my carelessness."

"That won't bring back my letter," was the testy retort. "But never mind. Let's not say anything more about it." With a little shrug her green eyes sought the pile of papers on her desk.

Marjorie immediately took it as a sign that Lucy did not wish to talk further to her. Not angry, but distinctly hurt, she did not try to prolong the conversation but merely said: "Good-bye, Lucy. If I hear anything about the letter I will let you know at once." Then she quietly left the office, trying not to blame Lucy for being so austere regarding the lost letter. Yet Marjorie was too human not to feel that having once freely forgiven Lucy of a far greater fault, she had expected to receive a certain amount of clemency in return, which the peculiar, self-contained senior had not offered.

CHAPTER IV-LAYING A CORNERSTONE

"Well, how about it?" challenged the irrepressible Jerry Macy. Marjorie joined the stout girl and Constance, who stood waiting for her across the street from the high school. Both friends knew why Marjorie had lingered in the school building when the afternoon session was over.

They were among the first to whom she confided the news of yesterday's loss. She had announced to them her intention of apprising Lucy Warner of the unpleasant fact, and Jerry in particular was curious to know what effect the disclosure would have upon Lucy.

"I'm glad _that's_ over." Marjorie gave a little sigh. "It was pretty hard for me to tell Lucy. It served me right for being so careless, though."

"What did she say? Was she mad?" Curiosity looked forth from Jerry's round face.

"No; that is, not exactly. Still, she wasn't very well pleased,"

admitted Marjorie. "I hope someone finds the letter yet and brings it to me. But where are the rest of the girls?" She decided that a change of subject was in order. Lucy's too-evident umbrage had hurt her considerably. She therefore preferred to try to forget it for a time at least.

"They've gone on ahead," informed Constance. "Muriel had an errand to do in town and so had Susan. Irma and Harriet went with them. They are to meet us at Sargent's at four-thirty."

"Then we had better be starting for there." Marjorie consulted her wrist watch. "It's ten after four now. Let's hurry along. Did either of you have a chance to talk with Veronica after school?" she continued as they set off for Sargent's three abreast.

"I saw her for a moment in the locker room," replied Constance. "She seemed to be in quite a hurry. She smiled at me but didn't say anything.

Then she put on her hat and left the locker room without stopping to talk to any of us."

"I suppose she has to go straight home from school and help Miss Archer's sister," surmised Jerry. "I'd hate to have to study all day and then go home and sh.e.l.l peas or scrub floors or answer the doorbell or do whatever had to be done. I guess we ought to be thankful that we don't have to earn our board and keep."

"I ought to be doubly thankful," agreed Constance seriously. "Not so very far back in my life I had no time to play, either. Every once in a while when I feel specially self-satisfied, I take a walk past the little gray house where I used to live before my aunt played fairy G.o.d-mother to all of us. It makes me remember that my good fortune was just a lucky accident and takes all the conceit out of me."

"Now that we are seniors I believe we ought to make it our business to do all we can for the girls in school who aren't able to have the good times we do," stated Marjorie soberly. "It seems to me that we might band ourselves together into some sort of welfare club. If we do well with it we can pa.s.s it on to the next senior cla.s.s when we have been graduated from Sanford High."

"Hurrah!" Jerry waved a plump hand on high. "That's the talk. Every since last year I've had that club idea on my mind. Let's hurry up and organize it at once. For that matter we can do it this afternoon; the minute we meet the girls at Sargent's. There will be seven of us to start with. Then we can decide on how many more girls we'd like to have in it."

"Oh, splendid!" exclaimed Marjorie, the sober expression vanishing from her pretty face. "Once we organize a club and get it well started, who knows what distinguished members we may become."

As the three girls swung blithely along toward Sargent's the incessant flow of conversation that went on among them betokened their signal interest and enthusiasm in the new project.

"Here we are," proclaimed Jerry noisily to the quartette of girls seated at a rear table in the smart little shop. "Strictly on time, too, or rather five minutes ahead of it. How long have you been here?"

"Oh, we just came." It was Muriel Harding who answered. "Maybe we didn't hustle our errands through, though. Sit down and we'll order our ice cream. Then we can talk."

"The time has come, the walrus said, To talk of many things,"

quoted Jerry mysteriously as she seated herself.

"Well, Walrus, what's on your mind?" giggled Susan Atwell, promptly applying Jerry's quotation to the stout girl herself.

"I'm no walrus. I don't consider that I resemble one in the least,"

retorted Jerry good-humoredly. "I'm sorry you don't recognize a quotation when you hear one. But I forgive you, giggling Susan."

The approach of a white-clad youth to take their order interrupted Jerry's discourse. The instant the order had been given she continued: "Girls, as I just said, the time has come."

"For what?" demanded Harriet, smiling.

"Marjorie will answer that. She's the real promoter of the enterprise. I am merely the press agent. Go ahead, little Faithful."

Marjorie's cheeks grew rosy at the broadly-implied compliment. "You're a goose, Jerry," she affectionately chided. "You tell the girls about it."

"I'd rather be a goose than a walrus," grinned Jerry. "As for telling; let Marjorie do it. No; I mean, I'd rather you'd spring it on them. Oh, what's the use? Slang and I are one." Jerry sighed an exaggerated sorrow over her vain effort at eliminating inelegant English from her vocabulary.

"It must be something very important," put in Susan, with a derisive chuckle, "or Jeremiah would _never_ resort to slang."

Jerry's grin merely widened. "Go ahead and tell them, Marjorie. Hurry up."

"It's just this way, children." Marjorie leaned forward a trifle, her brown eyes roving over the little group of eager-faced listeners. "For a long time Jerry and I have had the idea of forming a club. We talked of it last year, after Christmas, and again after we gave the operetta. But you know what a hard year we had over basketball, and then so many of us became sick that somehow the club idea was put away and forgotten. But now, as Jerry says, 'the time has come.' What we'd like to do is to form a club from a certain number of girls in the senior cla.s.s. It mustn't be just a social affair but one devoted to the purpose of looking out for anyone that needs our help. Of course when first we start we won't be able to do much. Later we may find it in our power to do a good deal."

"And if the club's a success," interposed Jerry, "Marjorie thinks it would be nice to pa.s.s it along, name and all, to the next senior cla.s.s.

Then they could will it to the next and so on. It would be a sorority, only I hope you won't go and burden it with a Greek letter name. We ought to give it a name that would mean a lot to anyone who happens to hear of it." Despite her insistence that Marjorie should put forward the project, Jerry could not resist having her say, too.

"That's a fine idea," glowed Harriet Delaney. "How many girls ought we to have in it?"