Page:Betty Gordon at Boarding School.djvu/127

Rh thought she'd never get her eyes right again. They look red yet."

Sure enough, Alice's eyes were suspiciously pink about the corners. Betty knew that the Guerin girls were unhappy, not alone because they could not have as many or as pretty frocks as the other girls, but because they were constantly worried about financial affairs at home. They had both been made the confidantes of their parents to a greater degree than is customary in many families, and Betty shrewdly suspected that Norma had kept her father's books for him.

"I wish I could get hold of that treasure, or a part of it," Betty thought. "Isn't it maddening to think of a string of pearls at the bottom of a chasm and the girls to whom it should go struggling along on next to nothing!"

They were half-way around the lake when the motor slowed down and the bus stopped.

"What's the matter, George?" Miss Anderson asked.

"Don't know. Ma'am," answered the driver, a rather sleepy-looking middle-aged man. "Guess I'll have to investigate her."

Scratching his head, he proceeded to "investigate," and at the end of fifteen minutes hazarded an opinion that they were "out of luck."

"Looks like I'll have to go back to the school