“She wanted to return it unopened if she didn’t like its contents. It proved to be perfectly horrid; he not only didn’t acknowledge that he was in the wrong, but he actually brought forward facts to prove that she was! Of course, no girl would endure that, so—” “Do you mean to say that Annie told you that?” asked the girl with the eyeglasses. “I didn’t think it possible that any girl—” “Oh, I don’t see any harm in that; of course every girl wants her own way. Well, she sealed up the letter again, wrote on it, ‘Returned unopened’ and sent it back.” “H’m,” said the girl with the Roman nose, “I was thinking that might have been Clarissa, but she is too intellectual to do anything so clever. Anyhow, I’m glad she got the better of him.” “But she didn’t, dear. She discovered, after the messenger had been gone an hour, that she had sealed up the envelope without replacing the letter in it! Can any of you guess who it was that—” “Not I,” said the blue-eyed girl, “but if I had done such a thing, I should never have trusted Annie with it. Why, are you going, dear?” “I’m going over to Annie’s this very minute,” said the girl with the eyeglasses. “I—I have something to say to her that will touch even _her_ hardened conscience!” “So it was Marion, after all,” mused the girl with the dimple in her chin, after the door had closed behind her friend; “well, at any rate, after this Annie will tell me the whole of a story when she begins it.” “I must say, though, that if I was in her place it would be a long time before I began one,” said the brown-eyed blonde. “So you, too, have been confiding in Annie?” said the blue-eyed girl, sweetly. “By the way, I am to stay over night with her, but I promise you that whatever she may repeat will be safe with me.” “While we are discussing currency problems, I want to say what a nuisance the check system is,” said the girl with the classic profile. “I always did hate to get my money in that way, and I had an experience the other day which surely ought to cure my father of giving them to me.” “Mercy, you weren’t suspected of being a forger, were you?” asked the president, turning pale. “N—no, I believe not, but—it happened that my father gave me a check when I was going shopping, and I found before I cashed it that I must have five dollars more. Father had gone to Indianapolis, and mother, well—the fact is, that she will not loan me money any more, because I sometimes forget to return it. I didn’t know what to do until I suddenly remembered that Ned Goldie was the person who had to cash the check for me at the bank; then I knew I was safe. Pshaw, it just shows that you can never depend on a man!” “He surely did not refuse to cash it?” asked the president.