Page:Betty Gordon at Boarding School.djvu/181

Rh the tables up through the twelves. Of what use will a's and b's and x's, y's and z's ever be to me?"

"Constance, you know that's nonsense," Bobby told her. "We're every one of us here because we want to play a bigger part in life than the two-plus-two-is-four people, and we've got to dig in and prepare ourselves. If you'd do your work when you ought to, you wouldn't be in such an upset state now."

"Yes'm," grinned Constance, and went back to her belated work.

Betty had found that her year away from school had made it hard for her to concentrate her mind on her studies, and while she had not deliberately neglected her work, as Constance had in her algebra, she had not always kept up to the highest pitch. She was working furiously now, with the tests to face so soon, and with it went the resolve to be more studious from day to day during the rest of the school year. The concentration was becoming easier, too, as the term advanced, and, the teaching at Shadyside being of the best, she felt sure she would feel that she had accomplished something by the end of the year.

The Dramatic Club of Shadyslde woke to ambition as the term progressed. Soon after the mid-term tests, which all the girls, even Constance, passed successfully, by dint of threat and