{{betlep232.png}} can't tell you about what we said just now." To Betty's own surprise her voice shook and at her mother's sympathetic look the tears came. "I think I've got to go off and cry," she said in a squeaky tone and as she fled toward her room she heard her mother say that she would keep Doris away if she came home too soon. One lovely thing about Mother was that she wasn't curious! She could wait until her chil- dren felt like telling her things. Betty, however, had some repentant thoughts. It would have been better, perhaps, to have braved the opposition, or criticism, or disagree- able circumstances at the party, as her father had suggested, to telephone to him at home, rather than to have risked coming home so late and alone. A city was no place for that. But if she wrote an apology to her hostess it might "mess things up worse than ever," she con- cluded. Hereafter she would try to "keep her head," but also never to get caught in such a situation. [[232]]