“Laura Bennett called us into her room,” obediently recited Norma.  “Miss Lacey was talking to Ada and Ruth.  You could hear every word without listening—­that is without eavesdropping—­you know what I mean.  Mrs. Eustice must have spoken to Miss Lacey, because she told the girls they would have to send all the trunks home except one apiece.  Ada must put all her jewelry in the school safe and at the Christmas holidays she is to take it home and leave it there.  Both of them have to wear their hair down or in a knot—­you know they have it waved now and done up just like my mother’s.  And Miss Lacey is to go over their clothes to-morrow and tell ’em what they can keep!”

“I’m glad some one has some sense!” was Bobby’s terse comment.

Something in Norma’s face told Betty that she would like to speak to her alone, so half an hour later when the girls had dispersed for the night, she made a bent nail file an excuse to go to the Guerins’ room.

“I was hoping you’d come, Betty,” said Norma gratefully.  “We have to put out the lights at ten, don’t we?  I’ll try to talk fast.  You see, Alice and I want to tell you something.”

A fleecy old-fashioned shawl lay across the bed and Norma flung this about Betty’s shoulders.

“Alice’s kimono is flannel and so is mine,” she explained in answer to the protest.  “You never met Grandma Macklin, did you, Betty?”

“No-o, I’m sure I never did,” responded Betty thoughtfully.  “Does she live with you?”

“Yes.  But while you were at the Peabodys she was visiting her half-sister in Georgia,” explained Norma.  “She is mother’s mother, you know.”

“What was it Mrs. Eustice said about her?” questioned Betty with interest.  “Did she live near here?  Was that when your mother went to this school?”

“It was a day school then, you know,” put in the laconic Alice.

“Yes, and grandma lived in a perfectly wonderful big house,” said Norma.  “It must be fully five miles from here.  Uncle Goliath, an old colored man, used to drive her over every day and call for her in the afternoon.  Mother has always been determined Alice and I should graduate from Shadyside.”

“Well then, it’s lovely she is to have her wish,” commented Betty brightly.

“Oh, goodness, I don’t see that we’re ever going to have four years,” confessed Norma.  “If you knew what they’ve given up at home to send us for this term!  And though we wouldn’t say anything, mother and grandma worked so hard to get us ready, Alice and I are positively ashamed of our clothes.  You see, Betty, I think when you’re poor, you ought to go where you’ll meet other poor girls.  Alice and I ought to have entered the Glenside high school, I think.  But when I said something like that to dad he said it would break mother’s heart.  But if she knew how hard it was to be poor and to have to rub elbows with girls who have everything—­”

“I don’t think you ought to feel that way,” urged Betty.  “You have something that no amount of money could buy for you, and no lack can take away—­birth and breeding.  And the training your mother wants you to have is worth sacrificing other things for.  Ever since I heard Mrs. Eustice talk I feel that I know what makes her school really successful.”