"Your daughters will make good matches." The girls laughed till the tears ran down their cheeks at this prediction, and Mabel was quite teased. "I'd like to know why I shouldn't have a family of marriageable daughters some day," she exclaimed, blinking at them with near-sighted eyes while she wiped the moisture from her large round glasses. Nance's fortune was a very sentimental one and caused her to blush as red as a rose. "Love will not change, neither in the cold weenter time nor in the warm spreengtime under the cherry-blossoms when the moon ees bright." "Oh, thou blushing maiden," cried Judy, "canst look us in the eye after this?" Molly's was rather comforting to her troubled and unquiet heart. "Look for cleer weather when the sky ees blackest." Of all the mottoes, Judy's was the funniest. "Eef thy hus-band beat thee, geeve heem a smile." "Smile indeed," exclaimed that young woman when the laughter had died down; "I'll just turn the tables on him and beat him back, Otoyo. American young lady quite capable of giving honorable husband a good trouncing with a black-snake whip." Otoyo opened her eyes at this. It was doubtful whether she could appreciate the humor of her mottoes, but she enjoyed hearing the girls laugh; she realized they must be having a good time if they laughed like that--really genuine, side-shaking laughter and no lip-smiles for politeness' sake. "Who's heard the news about Judith Blount?" asked one of the Williamses, after the party had broken up and only the Queen's girls remained. Molly and Judy and Nance exchanged telegraphic glances. They had been careful to keep secret what Mrs. Kean had written her daughter, and they were curious to know just how much the others knew on the subject, which was now always uppermost, at least in Molly's mind. "She's sub-let her apartment, furnished, to that rich freshman from New York, whose father's worth a fortune a minute from gold mines and oil wells, and she, I mean Judith, is taking the empty singleton here." "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.