As soon as she was out of ear-shot, Mrs. O’Toole leaned forward in her chair and addressed Betty earnestly. “Do it if you possibly can,” she begged. “It’s a foolish notion she’s got that she wants to go to college, but there ain’t anything bad about it. It ain’t as if she wanted to go on the stage, or ride bareback in a circus, or marry some good-for-nothing fellow that wants her for her money. So I’m awful anxious for her to have her way. You see, Miss Wales, I know I stand in her light some. I know I ain’t a lady, though I do dress perfect,” she added proudly, “and look so young that people are always asking Marie about her pretty older sister. But looks and money ain’t everything, Miss Wales. And Marie is always so awful nice to me and her Pa, that we aim to suit her as well as we can.” “Did Mr. O’Toole come to America too?” asked Betty, for want of anything better to say. She couldn’t help being touched by Mrs. O’Toole’s plea, but she didn’t want Mrs. O’Toole to know it yet. “Oh, he’s always in America,” explained Mrs. O’Toole, “out at the mine, you know. But that’s no place for Marie, and her Pa knows it. He wants her to have all the benefits fits of education and foreign travel. We ought to be going, Miss Wales. Day after to-morrow, did you say? All right. You’ve been awful kind, Miss Wales. Come, Marie, we must be going.” Marie came, slowly and reluctantly, with a backward smile for Tom Benson, and a murmured, “To-morrow afternoon then, and we’re staying in town at that big hotel with the queer German name.” Betty watched them go as she might have watched the curtain dropping on the last scene of a tragi-comical play. Tom Benson broke into her revery with a laughing comment. “Your friend Miss O’Toole is an accomplished little flirt, all right,” he announced. “She isn’t my friend,” Betty told him severely, “and it takes two to flirt, Tom Benson. So, as a favor to me, you’re not to call on her in town. You can come over here and see her day after to-morrow if you want to. It looks to me as if I had been tumbled into the job of chaperoning her through the first half of her freshman year at Harding, so I propose to start her out right.” “Why the first half of the freshman year only?” demanded Tom curiously. “Because,” explained Betty, “mid-years come then--at Harding. Seems to me I have heard that they come about the same time at Yale, but I suppose they don’t worry a distinguished scholar like you.” “The fair Marie doesn’t act particularly studious,” admitted Tom. “But you can’t ever tell about these pretty college girls.” Tom smiled meaningly at Betty, for whose brains he professed a vast admiration. “Well, I wasn’t flunked out at freshman mid-years,” Betty told him, “but if I didn’t think Miss Marie O’Toole would find half a year of Harding all she wants, for one reason or another, I certainly shouldn’t be contemplating acting as her special tutor.” “Are you considering it?” demanded Tom in amazement. Betty nodded calmly.