She handed it to her chum, who, to do her credit, perhaps did not realize it was a plate and not a film. Marion seized it so carelessly that it slid from her hand, fell upon the floor, and smashed in three pieces. For an instant there was a ghastly silence. "Oh! Hard luck!" sympathized Calla. Marion was stooping to pick up the fragments. "I'm _awfully_ sorry!" she apologized. "It can be pieced together though I'm sure. I'll take it to the Kodak shop and see what they can do with it. They'll probably stipple it up so that it doesn't show in the least." In certain circumstances there is nothing more aggravating than too great optimism. To have your trials made light of, and to be told a thing will turn out all right when you are absolutely sure that such a happy ending is quite outside the bounds of all possibility, irritates rather than soothes. "All right a hundred years hence perhaps, but all wrong now!" flared Lesbia. "It _can't_ be mended, so don't talk humbug. You've smashed it, and it's done for. I wish to goodness I'd left it safely at home and never trusted it to you. Of all butter-fingered Handy Andies you're the biggest!" "Might as well let her try and get it mended," urged Calla. "No thanks. I'd rather take it home." And Lesbia, still with red spots in her cheeks, put the poor fragments tenderly back in their box, and turned away to place them inside her locker. Marion, penitent, but annoyed at being called a butter-fingered Handy Andy, let the matter slide for the moment. Marion could never keep up any quarrel, however, for longer than a morning, and before afternoon school she had made her peace, and was walking in the gymnasium with her arm round her chum's waist, very much to the indignation of Regina, who considered Lesbia her own special property.