"I thought so. Well, now, you say you're different from the other girls, and so you are in most ways, but just at present you're doing the silliest trick I know. Going off by yourself and making people miserable all around. Do you know what a fellow would do in your place? Why, he'd go straight to the man he'd heard or seen back-biting him and he'd make him come out fair and square and own up--or shut up. 'You pays your money and you takes your choice.' That's what a fellow would do. But girls prefer to be martyrs and go about 'letting concealment prey upon their damask cheeks' and all that namby-pamby nonsense. Pshaw! I wouldn't give a rush for a girl's courage. It's all humbug." "It isn't any such thing!" cried Nan, hastening to defend her sex. "It isn't because I'm afraid that I don't go straight up to the--the person. It's because I have too much pride. I wouldn't demean myself by letting her know I care." "Oh, fudge! Pride! I like that! Care? Why, whoever she is, she can see that, anyhow, with half an eye. It's as plain as preaching. You came with Lu and Ruth, and were as gay and jolly as could be. Then, all of a sudden, you turn grumpy and want to go home, and say Lu and Ruth don't like you. The explanation of that is simple enough. You've heard some one saying something about you, or pretending to repeat something Lu and Ruth have said about you. There! Now haven't I hit the nail on the head?" Nan made no reply. "I wager I have, though," continued the young fellow, watching her closely, and drawing many of his conclusions from the evidence of her tell-tale face. "And I'd be ashamed, even if I were a girl, to let myself be worried by a thing like that. Besides, it isn't fair to Lu and Ruth. You ought to give them a chance to set themselves straight. You've no right to believe things of them till you've their own word for it that it's true. Give them a chance, and if they act queer you can throw them over." "But I can't ask them," burst out Nan. "It wasn't anything they said. It was about the way they feel, and if I give them a chance they may throw me over." John laughed. "True for you. They may. But anyway, you'd have done the just thing. Whatever they did to you, you'd have played fair." Nan thought a moment. Suddenly she turned on her heel and began to retrace her steps. "I'm going back," she said, stoutly, "to find Lu and Ruth! and--and--give them that chance." "There! Now you're behaving like an honest man," announced John, with gusto. "One can't afford to be too perpendicular." But before they had taken a dozen steps they came upon the two girls themselves, running breathlessly toward them. "O Nan!" panted Louie. "What is the matter? Are you sick? Are you hurt? We couldn't find you anywhere!" "We looked all over and got terribly nervous, and at last Mary Brewster told us you had gone home," Ruth broke in, gaspingly.