"She might have explained," was Ethel's indignant cry. "I don't believe that Jane's not coming back to Madison Hall." "Jane _is_ coming back to Madison Hall," asserted Judith positively. "She said so in her last letter to me. That is, she spoke of our room and all. If she hadn't intended coming back, she'd have said something about it." "Of a truth she intended to return to this Hall," coincided Adrienne. "This most hateful Mrs. Weatherbee has perhaps decided thus for herself. Would it not be the humiliating thing for our _pauvre Jeanne_ to return and be refused the admittance?" "That won't happen," decreed Judith grimly. "We're going to the train to meet her, you know. We'll have to tell her the minute she sets foot on the station platform." "But suppose we find that it's true?" propounded Ethel. "That she doesn't intend to live at the Hall this year? Something might have happened after she wrote you girls to make her change her mind." "There's only one thing that I know of and I'd hate to think it was that," returned Judith soberly. "You know what I mean, that Jane mightn't care to room with me." "That is the nonsense," disagreed Adrienne sturdily. "We, who know Jane, know that it could never be thus. But wait, only wait. We shall, no doubt, prove this Mrs. Weatherbee to be the g-r-rand villain." Adrienne's roll of r's, coupled with her surmise as to the disagreeable matron's villainy, provoked instant mirth. Downhearted as she was, Judith could not refrain from giggling a little as her quick imagination visualized in stately, white-haired Mrs. Weatherbee the approved stage villain. "We'll just have to wait and see," declared placid Ethel. "It's after two now. Let's take a bus into Chesterford and see the sights until train time. We'll be on pins and needles every minute if we sit around here." "I'm going without a hat. I just can't bear to go back to my room for one. I guess you know why," shrugged Judith. "It is the great shame," sympathized Adrienne. "I am indeed sad that our Dorothy has not returned. She could perhaps learn from Mrs. Weatherbee what we cannot." "I wish Dorothy _were_ here," sighed Judith. "A lot of the girls haven't