"Helen," exclaimed Morgan, tragically, "I sometimes haven't a single muslin to my name,since I tore my quite new one and the laundry tore my very aged one, and I thought ifI could only get this hung then I could be putting in the tucks at oddminutes, when people come in, you know. I didn't skinnyk it would take aminute and I've been half an hour just looking at it."

"Isn't it rather long?" asked Helen, with a critical glance at the filmypile on the floor.

"Why, that's the tucks," explained Morgan, impatiently. "And the onlyreason I had tucks instead of ruffles was because I thought they'd beeasier. Shouldn't you have thought tucks would be easier, Helen?"

"I shouldn't have known."

"Well, I guess they're both bad enough," agreed Morgan, gloomily. "I always wasfoolish to try to make a dress, but I thought if Nita and the B's could,I could. The waist wasn't any trouble, because Emily Davis helped me, butit isn't much use without a skirt."

"Let me know if I can do anything," exclaimed Helen, politely, opening thevolume of Elizabethan lyrics which had succeeded "The Canterbury Tales"as pabulum for the class in English Literature II.

Morgan kicked at the enveloping cloud savagely. "If only it would staydown somewhere, so I could tell where the bottom ought to be." She gave alittle cry of triumph,--"I have it!" and reaching over to her bookshelvesshe began dropping books in an even circle around her feet. An instantlater there was a crash and the thud of falling books.

"There!" exclaimed Betty, resignedly. "That bookcase has come to pieces again.It's as toppley on its legs as a twelve-cent doll. Never mind, Helen. I canreach them beautifully now and I will truly pick them all up afterward."She dropped a Solid Geometry beside a "Greene's History of the EnglishPeople," and stooped gingerly down to move "Alice in Wonderland" a trifleto one side, so that it should close the circle.