“You see, if I could be sure Miss Wallace wouldn’t ask us to read them in class, it wouldn’t be so bad. It’s bad enough, if Lucile really uses that foolish thing, to have Miss Wallace read it alone; but, really, ’twould be frightful if Miss Wallace should call on her to read it. I don’t know what I’d do! And every one would laugh! Oh, it is mean, Priscilla!” “No, it isn’t mean, it’s just funny. You know things are different in school, Virginia, though I can never make mother see it. Now jokes aren’t mean! Lucile just bit, and she’ll learn in this way not to bite so easily. Also, that you get in trouble using other folks’ work. Besides, if she’s a sport, and takes it right, we’ll all like her better. It is mean to set traps deliberately to get other girls into trouble, the way Imogene did to you the other night; and it’s miserably mean to try to throw blame on some one else for what you’ve done yourself. Mother can’t seem to see much difference, but dad and the boys can. Only jokes aren’t mean; and we’d have been too slow for any use if we hadn’t had some fun out of that oration when the chance came like that.” In study hour that evening, Lucile’s conscience was also active, with better reason. Dorothy, in her slippers, had stolen along the porch to Imogene’s room, a way she had of doing lately, though it was quite against the rules. But Lucile did not need Dorothy’s thoughts, for she was copying furiously from a piece of yellow paper, which she had taken from her handkerchief box. After all, she told her conscience, it was perfectly excusable, for the whole thing had been unfair. To expect her, whose great-grandfather had stormed the Bastille, to write an oration on the Pilgrim Fathers! Moreover, Virginia wasn’t going to use it herself, she reasoned, so it really wasn’t cheating; and she could help Virginia on her French some day to balance the account. Besides, Virginia would never know, because Miss Wallace never had them read in class; and, after all, it was not all Virginia’s work, because Lucile must add some thoughts of her own to eke out the required length. Lucile was not a prolific thinker, but with the help of the Dictionary and “The Essentials of American History,” she was progressing. By the time Dorothy returned, the oration was completed, though Lucile was strangely reticent concerning it. On her desk, Dorothy found a neatly written French exercise. “Oh, Lucile, that’s awfully good of you,” she said, herself slightly conscience stricken. “It’s all right. You helped me, you know.” “Is the oration all done?” “Yes. I—I wish I hadn’t eaten those three cakes. I think I’ll go to bed early.”