Many girls, it seemed, had already written home begging contributions to the fund which they expected would be raised for the new building.  Some even were ready to offer money of their very own toward the amount necessary to start the work.

Even Ruth agreed to this first effort to get money.  She pledged a hundred dollars herself and Nettie Parsons quietly put down the same sum as her own personal offering.

“Oh, gracious, goodness, me, girls!” gasped Jennie Stone, who had been figuring desperately upon a sheet of paper.  “Wait till I get this sum done; then I can tell you what I will give.  There!  Can it be possible?”

“What is it, Jennie?” asked Belle Tingley, looking over her shoulder.  “Why! look at all those figures.  Are you weighing the sun or counting the hairs of the sun-dogs?”

“Don’t laugh,” begged the plump girl.  “This is a serious matter.  I’ve been figuring up what I should probably have spent for candy from now till June if I’d been left to my own will.”

“What is it, Heavy?” asked somebody.  “I wager it would pay for erecting the new dormitory without the rest of us putting up a cent.”

“No,” said the plump girl, gravely.  “But it figures up to a good round sum.  I never would have believed it!  Girls, I’ll give fifty dollars.”

“Oh, Heavy! you never could eat so much sweets before graduation,” gasped one.

“I could; but I sha’n’t,” declared Miss Stone, with continued gravity.  “I’ll practise self-denial.”

With all the fun and joking, the girls of Briarwood Hall were very much in earnest.  They elected a committee of five—­Ruth, Nettie, Lluella, Sarah Fish and Mary Cox—­to have charge of the collection of the fund, and to go immediately to Mrs. Tellingham and show her what money was already promised and how much more could be expected within ten days.

There was enough, they knew, to warrant the preceptress in having the work of tearing away the ruins begun.  Meanwhile, the girls were each urged to think up some new way of earning money, and as a committee of the whole to try to invent a novel scheme of including the whole school in a plan whereby much money might be raised.

“How we’re to do it, nobody knows,” said Helen gloomily, walking along beside Ruth after the meeting.  “I expected you would have just the thing to suggest.”

“I wish I had,” her chum returned thoughtfully.

“Mercy says, ’Great oaks from little acorns grow’——­”

They turned into the hall and saw that the mail had been distributed.  Ruth was handed a letter with Mr. Hammond’s name upon it.  She had almost forgotten the moving picture man and her own scenario, in these three or four very busy days.

Ruth eagerly tore the envelope open.  A green slip of paper fluttered out.  It was a check for twenty-five dollars from the Alectrion Film Corporation.  With it was a note highly praising Ruth’s first effort at scenario writing for moving pictures.