She devoted her spare hours on Monday morning to “making them see it,” with that rare combination of tact and energy that was Eleanor Watson at her best. By noon her fears of being sent home were almost gone, and she was alert and exhilarated as she always was when there were difficulties to be surmounted.
“Now that the play is over, I’m going to work hard,” Betty announced at lunch, and Eleanor, who was still determined not to confide in anybody, added nonchalantly, “So am I.” It was going to be the best of the fun to take in the Chapin house.
But the Chapin house was not taken in for long.
“What’s come over Eleanor Watson?” inquiredKatherine, a few days later, as the girls filed out from dinner.
“She’s working,” said Mary Brooks with a grin. “And apparently she thinks work and dessert don’t jibe.”
“I’m afraid it was time,” said Rachel. “She’s always cutting classes, and that puts a girl behind faster than anything else. I wonder if she could have had a warning in anything.”
“I think she could—” began Katherine, and then stopped, laughing. “I might as well own up to one in math.,” she said.
“Well, Miss Watson is going to stay here over Thanksgiving,” said Mary Rich.
Then plans for the two days’ vacation were discussed, and Eleanor’s affairs forgotten, much to the relief of Betty Wales, who feared every moment lest she should in some way betray Eleanor’s confidence.
On the Wednesday after Thanksgiving Eleanor burst in on her merrily, as she was dressing for dinner.
“I just wanted to tell you that some of those conditions that worry you so are made up,” she said. “I almost wore out my tutor,and I surprised the history department into a compliment, but I’m through. That is, I have only math., and one other little thing.”
“I don’t see how you did it,” sighed Betty. “I should never dare to get behind. I have all I want to do with the regular work.”
Eleanor leaned luxuriously back among the couch cushions. “Yes,” she said loftily. “I suppose you haven’t the faintest idea what real, downright hard work is, and neither can you appreciate the joys of downright idleness. I shall try that as soon as I’ve finished the math.”
“Why?” asked Betty. “Do you like making it up later?”
“I shouldn’t have to. You know I’m getting a reputation as an earnest, thorough student. That’s what the history department called me. A reputation is a wonderful thing to lean back upon. I ought to have gone in for one in September. I was at the Hill School for three years, and I never studied after the first three months. There’s everything in making people believe in you from the first.”
“What’s the use in making people believeyou’re something that you’re not?” demanded Betty.
“What a question! It saves you the trouble of being that something. If the history department once gets into the habit of thinking me a thorough, earnest student, it won’t condition me because I fail in a written recitation or two. It will suppose I had an off day.”
“But you’d have to do well sometimes.”
“Oh, yes, occasionally. That’s easy.”
“Not for me,” said Betty, “so I shall have to do respectable work all the time. But I shall tell Helen about your idea. She works all the time, and it makes her dull and cross. She must have secured a reputation by this time; and I shall insist upon her leaning back on it for a while and taking more walks.”
“I feel as if there were about three days between Thanksgiving and Christmas,” said Rachel, coming up the stairs, to Betty, who stood in the door of her room half in and half out of her white evening dress.
“That leaves one day and a half, then, before vacation,” laughed Betty. “I’m sorry to bother you when you’re so pressed for time, but could you hook me up? Helen is at the library, and every one else seems to be off somewhere.”
“Certainly,” said Rachel, dropping her armful of bundles on the floor. “I’m only making Christmas presents. Is the ΚΦ dance coming off at last?”
“Yes–another one, that is; and Mr. Parsons asked me, to make up for the one I had to miss. Now, would you hold my coat?”
“Betty! Betty Wales! Wait a minute,” called somebody just as Betty reached theMain Street corner, and Eleanor Watson appeared, also dressed for the dance.
“Why didn’t you say you were going to Winsted?” she demanded breathlessly. “Good, here’s a car.”
“Why didn’t you say you were going?” demanded Betty in her turn as they scrambled on.
“Because I didn’t intend to until the last minute. Then I decided that I’d earned a little recreation, so I telegraphed Paul West that I’d come after all. Who is your chaperon?”
“Miss Hale.”
“Well please introduce me when we get down-town, so that I can ask if I may join her party.”
Ethel Hale received Betty with enthusiasm, and Eleanor with a peculiar smile and a very formal permission to go to Winsted under her escort. As the two were starting off to buy their tickets, she called Betty back.
“Aren’t you going to sit with me on the way over, little sister?” she asked.
“Of course,” said Betty, and they settled themselves together a moment later for the short ride.
“You never come to see me, Betty,” Miss Hale began, when they were seated.
“I’m afraid to,” confessed Betty sheepishly. “When you’re a faculty and I’m only a freshman.”
“Nonsense,” laughed Miss Hale. Then she glanced at Eleanor, who sat several seats in front of them, and changed the subject abruptly. “What sort of girl is Miss Watson?” she asked.
Betty laughed. “All sorts, I think,” she said. “I never knew any one who could be so nice one minute and so trying the next.”
“How do you happen to know her well?” pursued Miss Hale seriously.
Betty explained.
“And you think that on the whole she’s worth while?”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand—” Betty was beginning to feel as if she was taking an examination on Eleanor’s characteristics.
“You think that on the whole she’s more good than bad; and that there’s something to her, besides beauty. That’s all I want to know. She is lovely, isn’t she?”
“Yes, indeed,” agreed Betty enthusiastically. “But she’s very bright too. She’s done a lotof extra work lately and so quickly and well. She’s very nice to me always, but she dislikes my roommate and she and I are always disagreeing about that or something else. I don’t think–you know she wouldn’t do a dishonorable thing for the world, but I don’t approve of some of her ideas; they don’t seem quite fair and square, Ethel.”
“Um,” assented Ethel absently. “I’m glad you could tell me all this, Betty. I shouldn’t have asked you, perhaps; it’s rather taking advantage of our private friendship. But I really needed to know. Ah, here we are!”
As she spoke, the train slowed down and a gay party of Winsted men sprang on to the platform, and jostled one another down the aisles, noisily greeting the girls they knew and each one hunting for his particular guest of the afternoon. They had brought a barge down to take the girls to the college, and in the confusion of crowding into it Betty found herself separated from Ethel. “I wish I’d asked her why she wanted to know all that,” she thought, and then she forgot everything but the delicious excitement of actually being on the way to a dance at Winsted.
Most of the fraternity house was thrown open to the visitors, and between the dances in the library, which was big enough to make an excellent ball-room also, they wandered through it, finding all sorts of interesting things to admire, and pleasantly retired nooks and corners to rest in. Mr. Parsons was a very attentive host, providing partners in plenty; and Betty, who was passionately fond of dancing and had been to only one “truly grown-up” dance before, was in her element. But every once in awhile she forgot her own pleasure to notice Eleanor and to wonder at her beauty and vivacity. She was easily belle of the ball. She seemed to know all the men, and they crowded eagerly around her, begging for dances and hanging on her every word. Eleanor’s usually listless face was radiant. She had a smile and a gay sally for every one; there was never a hint of the studied coldness with which she received any advances from Helen or the Riches, nor of the scornful ennui with which she faced the social life of her own college.
“Aren’t you glad you came?” said Betty, when they met at the frappé table.
“Rather,” said Eleanor laconically. “This is life, and I’ve only existed for months and months. What would the world be like without men and music?”
“Goodness! what a wise-sounding remark,” laughed Betty.
Just then Miss Hale came up in charge of a very young and callow freshman.
“Please lend me your fan, Betty,” she said. “I was afraid it would look forward for a chaperon to bring one, and I’m desperately warm.”
Eleanor, who had turned aside to speak to her partner, looked up quickly as Ethel spoke, and meeting Miss Hale’s gray eyes she flushed suddenly and moved away.
Betty handed Ethel the fan. “I wish—” she began, looking after Eleanor’s retreating figure. But as she spoke the music started again and a vivacious youth hurried up and whisked her away before she had time to finish her sentence; and she could not get near Ethel again.
“Men do make better partners than girls,” she said to Mr. Parsons as they danced the last waltz together. “And I think theirrooms are prettier than ours, if these are fair samples. But they can’t have any better time at college than we do.”
“We certainly couldn’t get on at all without you girls across the river,” Mr. Parsons was saying gallantly, when the music stopped and Eleanor, followed by Mr. West, hurried up to Betty.
“Excuse me one moment, Mr. Parsons,” she said, as she drew Betty aside. “I’ve been trying to get at you for ever so long,” she went on. “I’m in a dreadful fix. You know I told you I hadn’t intended to come here to-day, but I didn’t tell you the reason why. The reason was that to-day was the time set for my math. exam, with Miss Mansfield. I tried to get her to change it, but I couldn’t, so finally I telephoned her that I was ill. Some one else answered the ’phone for her, saying that she was engaged and, Betty–I’m sure it was Miss Hale.”
Betty looked at her in blank amazement. “You said you were ill and then came here!” she began. “Oh, Eleanor, how could you! But what makes you think that Miss Hale knows?”
“I’m sure I recognized her voice when she asked you for the fan, and then haven’t you noticed her distant manner?” said Eleanor gloomily. “Are they friends, do you know?”
“They live in the same house.”
“Then that settles it. You seem to be very chummy with Miss Hale, Betty. You couldn’t reconcile it with your tender conscience to say a good word for me, I suppose?”
“I–why, what could I say after that dreadful message?” Then she brightened suddenly. “Why, Eleanor, I did. We talked about you all the way over here. Ethel asked questions and I answered them. I told her a lot of nice things,” added Betty reassuringly, “though of course I couldn’t imagine why she wanted to know. What luck that you hadn’t told me sooner!”
Eleanor stared at her blankly. “I suppose,” she said at last, “that it will serve me right if Miss Hale tells Miss Mansfield that I was here, and Miss Mansfield refuses me another examination; but do you think she will?”
Betty glanced at Ethel. She was standing at the other end of the room, talking to twoWinsted men, and she looked so young and pretty and so like one of the girls herself that Betty said impulsively, “She couldn’t!” Then she remembered how different Ethel had seemed on the train, and that the girls in her classes stood very much in awe of her. “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “She just hates any sort of cheating. She might think it was her duty to tell. Oh, Eleanor, why did you do it?”
Eleanor shrugged her shoulders expressively. Then she turned away with a radiant smile for Mr. West. “I am sorry to have kept you men waiting,” she said. “How much more time do we have before the barge comes?”
Whatever Miss Hale meant to do, she kept her own counsel, deliberately avoiding intercourse with either Ethel or Betty. She bade the girls a gay good-bye at the station, and went off in state in the carriage they had provided for her.
“I suppose it’s no use asking if you had a good time,” said Betty sympathetically, as she and Eleanor, having decided to go home in comfort, rolled away in another.
“I had a lovely time until it flashed overme about that telephone message. After that of course I was worried almost to death, and I would give anything under the sun if I had stayed at home and passed off my math. like a person of sense.”
“Then why don’t you tell Miss Mansfield so?” suggested Betty.
“Oh, Betty, I couldn’t. But I shan’t probably have the chance,” she added dryly. “Miss Hale will see her after dinner. I hope she’ll tell her that I appeared to be enjoying life.”
The next morning when Eleanor presented herself at Miss Mansfield’s class-room for the geometry lesson, another assistant occupied the desk. “Miss Mansfield is out of town for a few days,” she announced. Eleanor gave Betty a despairing glance and tried to fix her attention on the “originals” which the new teacher was explaining. It seemed as if the class would never end. When it did she flew to the desk and inquired if Miss Mansfield would be back to-morrow.
“To-morrow? Oh no,” said the young assistant pleasantly. “She’s in Boston for some days. No, not this week; next, I believe.You are Miss Watson? No, there was no message for you, I think.”
The next week was a longer and more harassing one than any that Eleanor could remember. She had not been blind to Betty’s scorn of her action. Ever since she came to Harding she had noted with astonishment the high code of honor that held sway among the girls. They shirked when they could, assumed knowledge when they had it not, managed somehow to wear the air of leisurely go-as-you-please that Eleanor loved; but they did not cheat, and like Betty they despised those who did. So Eleanor, who a few months before would have boasted of having deceived Miss Mansfield, was now in equal fear lest Miss Hale should betray her and lest some of her mates should find her out. She wanted to ask Lil Day or Annette Gaynor what happened if you cut a special examination; but suppose they should ask why she cared to know? That would put another knot into the “tangled web” of her deception. It would have been some comfort to discuss the possibilities of the situation with Betty, but Eleanor denied herself even that outlet. No usereminding a girl that she despises you! If only Betty would not look so sad and sympathetic and inquiring when they met in the halls, in classes or at table. At other times Eleanor barricaded herself behind a “Don’t disturb” sign and studied desperately and to much purpose. And every morning she hoped against hope that Miss Mansfield would hear the geometry class.
The suspense lasted through the whole week. Then, just two days before the vacation, Miss Mansfield reappeared and Eleanor asked timidly for an appointment.
“Come to-day at two,” began Miss Mansfield.
“Oh thank you! Thank you so much!” broke in Eleanor and stopped in confusion.
But Miss Mansfield only smiled absently. “Most of my belated freshmen don’t express such fervent gratitude for my firmness in pushing them through before the vacation. They try to put me off.” She had evidently quite forgotten the other appointment.
“I shall be so glad to have it over,” Eleanor murmured.
Miss Mansfield looked after her thoughtfullyas she went down the hall. “Perhaps I’ve misjudged her,” she told herself. “When a girl is so pretty, it’s hard to take her seriously.”
She said as much to Ethel Hale when they walked home to lunch together, but Ethel was not at all enthusiastic over Miss Watson’s earnestness.
“She’s very late in working off a condition, I should say,” she observed coldly.
“Yes, but I’ve been away, you know,” explained Miss Mansfield. “Oh, Ethel, I wish you could meet him. You don’t half appreciate how happy I am.”
Ethel, who had decided after much consideration to let Eleanor’s affairs take their course, made a mental observation to the effect that an engagement induces shortness of memory and tenderness of heart. Then she said aloud that she also wished she might meet “him.”
Time flies between Thanksgiving and Christmas, particularly for freshmen who are looking forward to their first vacation at home. It flies faster after they get there, andwhen they are back at college it rushes on quite as swiftly but rather less merrily toward the fateful “mid-years.” None of the Chapin house girls had been home at Thanksgiving time, but they were all going for Christmas, except Eleanor Watson, who intended to spend the vacation with an aunt in New York.
They prepared for the flitting in characteristic ways. Rachel, who was very systematic, did all her Christmas shopping, so that she needn’t hurry through it at home. Roberta made but one purchase, an illustrated “Alice in Wonderland,” for her small cousins, and spent all her spare time in re-reading it herself. Helen, in spite of Betty’s suggestions about leaning back on her reputation, studied harder than ever, so that she could go home with a clear conscience, while Katherine was too excited to study at all, and Mary Brooks jeered impartially at both of them. Betty conscientiously returned all her calls and began packing several days ahead, so as to make the time seem shorter. Then just as the expressman was driving off with her trunk, she remembered that she had packed her short skirt at the very bottom.
“Thank you ever so much. If he’d got much further I should have had to go home either in this gray bath robe that I have on, or in a white duck suit,” she said to Katherine who had gone to rescue the skirt and came back with it over her arm.
She and Katherine started west together and Eleanor and Roberta went with them to the nearest junction. The jostling, excited crowd at the station, the “good-byes” and “Merry Christmases,” were great fun. Betty, remembering a certain forlorn afternoon in early autumn, laughed happily to herself.
“What’s the joke?” asked Katherine.
“I was thinking how much nicer things like this seem when you’re in them,” she said, waving her hand to Alice Waite.
At the Cleveland station, mother and Will and Nan and the smallest sister were watching eagerly for the returning wanderer.
“Why, Betty Wales, you haven’t changed one bit,” announced the smallest sister in tones of deepest wonder. “Why, I’d have known you anywhere, Betty, if I’d met you on the street.”
“Three months isn’t quite as long as allthat,” said Betty, hugging the smallest sister, “but I was hoping I looked a little older. Nobody ever mistakes me for a senior, as they do Rachel Morrison. And I ought to look years and years wiser.”
“Nonsense,” said Will with a lordly air. “Now a college girl—”
Everybody laughed. “You see we all know your theories about intellectual women,” said mother. “So suppose you take up the suit case and escort us home.”
The next morning a note arrived from Eleanor.
“Dearest Betty,” it ran:
“As you always seem to be just around the corner when I get into a box, I want to tell you that I rode down to New York with Miss Hale. She asked me to sit with her and I couldn’t well refuse, though I wanted to badly enough. She knew, Betty, but she will never tell. She said she was glad to know me on your account. She asked me how the term had gone with me, and I blushed and stammered and said that I was coming back in a different spirit. She said that college was the finest place in the world for a girl to get acquainted with herself–that cowardice andweakness of purpose and meanness and pettiness stood out so clearly against the background of fineness and squareness; and that four years was long enough to see all sorts of faults in oneself, and change them according to one’s new theories. As she said it, it didn’t sound a bit like preaching.
“I didn’t tell her that I was only in college for one year. I sent her a big bunch of violets to-day–she surely couldn’t regard it as a bribe now–and after Christmas I’ll try to show her that I’m worth while.
“Merry Christmas, Betty.
“Eleanor.”
Nan frowned when Betty told her about Eleanor. “But she isn’t a nice girl, Betty. Did I meet her?”
“Yes, she’s the one you thought so pretty–the one with the lovely eyes and hair.”
“Betty,” said Nan soberly, “you don’t do things like this?”
“I!” Betty flushed indignantly. “Weren’t there all kinds of girls when you were in college, Nan? Didn’t you ever know people who did ‘things like this’?”
Nan laughed. “There certainly were,” she said. “I’ll trust you, Betty. Only don’t seetoo much of Miss Watson, or she’ll drag you down, in spite of yourself.”
“But Ethel’s dragging her up,” objected Betty. “And I gave her the first boost, by knowing Ethel. Not that I meant to. I never seem to accomplish things when I mean to. You remember Helen Chase Adams?”
“With great pleasure. She noticed my youthful appearance.”
“Well, I’ve been all this term trying to reform her clothes, but I can’t improve her one bit, except when I set to work and do it all myself. I should think you’d be afraid she’d drag me into dowdiness, I have to see so much of her.”
Nan smiled at the dainty little figure in the big chair. “I don’t notice any indications yet,” she said. “It took you an hour to dress this morning, exactly as it always does. But you’d better take care. What are you going to do to-day?”
“Make your friend Helen Chase Adams a stock for Christmas,” announced Betty, jumping up and pulling Nan after her. “And you’ve got to help, seeing you admire her so much.”
After Christmas there were goodies from home to eat and Christmas-gifts to arrange in their new quarters. Betty’s piêce de resistance was a gorgeous leather sofa pillow stamped with the head of a ferocious Indian chief. Eleanor had a great brass bowl, which in some mysterious fashion was kept constantly full of fresh roses, a shelf full of new books, and more dresses than her closet would hold. Katherine had a chafing-dish, Rachel a Persian rug, and Roberta an illustrated “Alice in Wonderland” of her own. To Betty’s great relief Helen had brought back two small pillows for her couch, all her skirts were lengthened, and the Christmas stock of black silk with its white linen turnovers replaced the clumsy woolen collars that she had worn with her winter shirt-waists. And–she was certainly learning to do her hair more becomingly. There wasn’t a verymarked improvement to be sure, but if Betty could have watched Helen’s patient efforts to turn her vacation to account in the matter of hair-dressing, she would have realized how much the little changes meant, and would have been more hopeful about her pupil’s progress. Not until the end of her junior year did Helen Adams reach the point where she could be sure that one’s personal appearance is quite as important a matter as one’s knowledge of calculus or Kantian philosophies; but, thanks largely to Betty, she was beginning to want to look her best, and that was the first step toward the things that she coveted. The next, and one for which Betty, with her open-hearted, free-and-easy fashion of facing life, was not likely to see the need, must be to break down the barriers that Helen’s sensitive shyness had erected between herself and the world around her. The self-confidence that Caroline Barnes had cruelly, if unintentionally wounded, must be restored before Helen could find the place she longed for in the little college world.
No one had had any very exciting vacation adventures except Rachel, who was delayedon her way home by a freight wreck and obliged to spend Christmas eve on a windswept siding with only a ham sandwich between her and starvation, and Eleanor, whose vacation had been one mad whirl of metropolitan gaiety. Her young aunt, who sympathized with her niece’s distaste for college life, and couldn’t imagine why on earth Judge Watson had insisted upon his only daughter’s trying it for a year at least, did her utmost to make Eleanor enjoy her visit. So she had dined at the Waldorf, sat in a box at the theatre and the opera, danced and shopped to her heart’s content, and had seen all the sights of New York. And at all the festivities Paul West, a friend of the family and also of Eleanor’s, was present as Eleanor’s special escort and avowed admirer. Naturally she had come back in an ill humor. Between late hours and excitement she was completely worn out. She wanted to be in New York, and failing that she wanted Paul West to come and talk New York to her, and bring her roses for the big brass bowl that she had found in a dingy little shop in the Russian quarter. She threw her good resolutions tothe winds, received Miss Hale’s thanks for the violets very coldly, and begged Betty to forget the sentimental letter that she had written before Christmas.
“But I thought it was a nice letter,” said Betty. “Eleanor, why won’t you give yourself a chance? Go and see Ethel this afternoon, and–and then set to work to show her what you said you would,” she ended lamely.
Eleanor only laughed. “Sorry, Betty, but I’m going to Winsted this afternoon. Paul has taken pity on me; there’s a sleighing party. I thought perhaps you were invited too.”
“No, but I’m going skating with Mary and Katherine,” said Betty cheerfully, “and then at four Rachel and I are going to do Latin.”
“Oh, Latin,” said Eleanor significantly. “Let me think. Is it two or three weeks to mid-years?”
“Two, just.”
“Well, I suppose I shall have to do a little something then myself,” said Eleanor, “but I shan’t bother yet awhile. Here comes the sleigh,” she added, looking out of the window. “Paul’s driving, and your Mr. Parsonshas asked Georgie Arnold. What do you think of that?”
“I should certainly hope he wouldn’t ask the same girl to everything, if that’s what you mean,” said Betty calmly, helping Eleanor into her new coat.
Eleanor shrugged her shoulders. “Good-bye,” she said. “For my part, I prefer to be the one and only–while I last,” and snatching up her furs she was off.
Betty found Mary and Katherine in possession of her room and engaged in an animated discussion about the rules of hockey.
“I tell you that when the thing-um-bob is in play,” began Katherine.
“Not a bit of it,” cut in Mary.
“Come along, girls,” interrupted Betty, fishing her skates from under her couch, and pulling on her “pussy” mittens. “Never mind those rules. You can’t play hockey to-day. You promised to skate with me.”
It was an ideal winter’s afternoon, clear, cold and still. The ice on Paradise was smooth and hard, and the little pond was fairly alive with skaters, most of them Harding girls. Betty was a novice, with one weakankle that had an annoying habit of turning over suddenly and tripping her up; so she was timid about skating alone. But between Mary and Katherine she got on famously, and thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon. At four Mary had a committee meeting, Katherine an engagement to play basket-ball, and Betty had agreed to meet Rachel. So with great reluctance they took off their skates and started up the steep path that led past the boat-house to the back gate of the campus.
“Goodness, but I’m stiff,” groaned Mary, stopping to rest a minute half way up. “I’d have skated until dinner time though, if it hadn’t been for this bothering committee. Never be on committees, children.”
“Why don’t you apply your own rules?” inquired Katherine saucily.
“Oh, because I’m a vain peacock like the rest of the world. The class president comes to me and says, ‘Now Mary, nobody but you knows every girl in the class. You can find out the sentiments of all sorts and conditions on this matter. And then you have such fine executive ability. I know you hate committees, but—’ Of course I feel pleased byher base flattery, and I don’t come to my senses until it’s too late to escape. Is to-day the sixteenth?”
“No, it’s Saturday, the twentieth,” said Katherine. “Two weeks next Monday to mid-years.”
“The twentieth!” repeated Mary in tones of alarm. “Then, my psychology paper is due a week from Tuesday. I haven’t done a thing to it, and I shall be so busy next week that I can’t touch it till Friday or Saturday. How time does fly!”
“Don’t you even know what you’re going to write on or anything that you’re going to say?” asked Betty, who always wrote her papers as soon as they were assigned, to get them off her mind, and who longed to know the secret of waiting serenely until the eleventh hour.
“Why, I had a plan,” answered Mary absently, “but I’ve waited so long that I hardly know if I can use it.”
Just then Alice Waite and her roommate came panting up the hill, and Mary, who seldom took much exercise and was very tired, fell back to the rear of the procession. Butwhen the freshmen stopped in front of the Hilton House she trilled and waved her hand to attract their attention.
“Oh. Betty, please take my skates home,” she said as she limped up to the group. Then she smiled what Roberta had named her “beamish” smile. “I know what you girls are talking about,” she said. “Will you give me a supper at Holmes’s if I’m right?”
“Yes,” said Katherine recklessly, “for you couldn’t possibly guess. What was it?”
“You’re wondering about those fifty freshmen,” answered Mary promptly.
“What freshmen?” demanded the four girls in a chorus, utterly ignoring the lost wager.
“Why, those fifty who, according to a perfectly baseless rumor, are going to be sent home after mid-years.”
“What do you mean?” gasped Betty.
“Hadn’t you heard?” asked Mary soothingly. “Well, I’m sure it will be all over the college by this afternoon. Now understand, I don’t believe it’s true. If it were ten or even twenty it might be, but fifty–why, girls, it’s preposterous!”
“But I don’t understand you,” said MissMadison excitedly. She had grown very pale and was hanging on to Katherine’s arm. “Do you mean that there is such a story–that fifty freshmen are to be sent home after mid-years?”
“Yes,” said Mary sadly, “there is, and that’s what I meant. I’m sorry that I should have been the one to tell you, but you’d have heard it from some one else, I’m sure. A thing like that is always repeated so. Remember, I assure you I don’t believe a word of it. Somebody probably started it on purpose to frighten you little freshmen. If you would take my skates, Betty. I hate to lug them around till dinner time. Now good-bye, and do cheer up.”
Left to themselves the four freshmen stared blankly at one another. Finally Katherine broke the mournful silence.
“Girls,” she said solemnly, “it’s utter foolishness to worry about this report. Mary didn’t believe it herself, and why should we?”
“She’s not a freshman,” suggested Alice gloomily.
“There are almost four hundred freshmen.Perhaps the fifty wouldn’t be any of us,” put in Betty.
Miss Madison maintained a despairing silence.
“Well,” said Katherine at last, “if it is true there’s nothing to be done about it now, I suppose; and if it isn’t true, why it isn’t; so I think I’ll go to basket-ball,” and she detached Miss Madison and started off.
Betty gave a prolonged sigh. “I must go too,” she said. “I’ve promised to study Latin. I presume it isn’t any use, but I can’t disappoint Rachel. I wish I was a fine student like Rachel. She won’t be one of the fifty.”
Alice, who had been in a brown study, emerged, just as Betty turned away.
“Wait a minute,” she commanded. “Of course it’s awfully queer up here, but still, if they have exams. I don’t see the use of cooking it all up beforehand. I mean I don’t see the use of exams. if it is all decided.”
Her two friends brightened perceptibly.
“That’s a good idea,” declared Betty. “Every one says the mid-years are so important. Let’s do our best from now on, and perhaps the faculty will change their minds.”
As she walked home, Betty thought of Eleanor. “She’ll be dreadfully worried. I shan’t tell her a word about it,” she resolved. Then she remembered Mary Brooks’s remark. Yes, no doubt some one else would enlighten Eleanor. It was just too bad. But perhaps Mary was right and the story was only a story.
It is hard for freshmen on the eve of their mid-year examinations to be perfectly calm and philosophical. The story of the fifty unfortunates ran like wild-fire through the college, and while upper-class girls sniffed at it as absurd and even freshmen, particularly the clever ones, pooh-poohed it in public, it was the cause of many anxious, and some tearful moments. Betty, after her first fright, had accepted the situation with her usual cheerfulness, and so had Alice and Rachel, who could not help knowing that her work was of exceptionally high grade, while Helen irritated her house-mates by affecting an anxiety which, as Katherine put it, “No dig, who gets ‘good’ on all her written work, can possibly feel.” Katherine was worried about her mathematics, in which she had been warned before Thanksgiving,but she confided to Betty that she had counted them up, and without being a bit conceited she really thought there were fifty stupider girls in the class of 19–. Roberta and the Riches, however, were utterly miserable, and Eleanor wrote to Paul West that she was busy–she had written “ill” first, and then torn up the note–and indulged in another frantic fit of industry, even more violent than its predecessors had been.
“But I thought you wanted to go home,” said Betty curiously one afternoon when Eleanor had come in to borrow a lexicon. “You say you hate it here, and you hate to study. So why do you take so much trouble about staying?”
Eleanor straightened proudly. “Haven’t you observed yet that I have a bad case of the Watson pride?” she asked. “Do you think I’d ever show my face again if I failed?”
“Then why—” began Betty.
“Oh, that’s the unutterable laziness that I get from my–from the other side of the house,” interrupted Eleanor. “It’s an uncomfortable combination, I assure you,” and taking the book she had come for, she abruptly departed.
Betty realized suddenly that in all the year Eleanor had never once spoken of her mother.
After that she couldn’t help being sorry for Eleanor, but she pitied Miss Madison more. Miss Madison was dull at books and she knew it, and had actually made herself ill with work and worry. Going to see her Hilton House friends on the Friday afternoon after the skating party, Betty found Miss Madison alone and undisguisedly crying.
“I know I’m foolish,” she apologized. “Most people just laugh at that story, but I notice they study harder since they heard it. And I’m such a stupid.”
Betty, who hated tears, had a sudden inspiration. “Why don’t you ask about it at the registrar’s office?” she suggested.
“Oh, I couldn’t,” wailed Miss Madison.
“Then I shall,” returned Betty. “That is, I shall ask one of the faculty.”
“Would you dare?”
“Yes, indeed. They’re human, like other people,” said Betty, quoting Nan. “I don’t see why some one didn’t think of it sooner.”
That night at dinner Betty announced herplan. The freshmen looked relieved and Mary Brooks showed uncalled-for enthusiasm.
“Do go,” she urged. “It’s high time such an absurd story was shown up at its real value. It’s absurd. The way we talk and talk about a report like that, and never dare to ask the faculty if it’s true.”
“Do you take any freshman courses?” inquired Eleanor sarcastically.
Mary smiled her “beamish” smile. “No,” she said, “but I’m an interested party nevertheless–quite as much so as any of the famous fifty.”
“Whom shall you ask, Betty?” pursued Katherine, ignoring the digression.
“Miss Mansfield. I have her the first hour, and besides, since she’s been engaged she’s so nice and sympathetic.”
Next day the geometry class dragged unmercifully for three persons. Eleanor beat a nervous tattoo on the seat-arm, Miss Madison stared fixedly at the clock, and Betty blushed and twisted and wished she could have seen Miss Mansfield before class. The delayed interview was beginning to seem very formidable. But it wasn’t, after the first plunge.
“What an absurd story!” laughed Miss Mansfield. “Not a word of truth in it, of course. Why I don’t believe the girl who started it thought it was true. How long has it been in circulation?”
Betty counted the days. “I didn’t really believe it,” she added shyly.
“But you worried,” said Miss Mansfield, smiling down at her. “Next time don’t be taken in one little bit,–or else come to headquarters sooner.”
Eleanor and Miss Madison were waiting outside the door when Betty dashed at them with a little squeal of ecstasy. There was a moment of rapturous congratulation; then Miss Madison picked up the note-book she had dropped and held out her hand solemnly to Betty.
“You’ve–why I think you’ve saved my life,” she said, “and now I must go to my next class.”
“You’re a little hero,” added Eleanor, catching Betty’s arm and rushing her off to a recitation in Science Hall.
Roberta received the joyful news more calmly. “We may any of us flunk our mid-years yet,” she said.
“But we can study for them in peace and comfort,” said Adelaide Rich.
Mary Brooks asked endless questions at luncheon. Did the girls all accept Miss Mansfield’s denial as authoritative? Did it travel as fast as the original story had done? How did people think the rumor had started?
“Why, nobody mentioned that,” said Rachel in surprise. “How odd that we shouldn’t have wondered!”
“Shows your sheep-like natures,” said Mary, rising abruptly. “Well, now I can finish my psychology paper.”
“Haven’t you worked on it any?” inquired Betty.
“Oh, yes, I made an outline and developed some topics last night. But I couldn’t finish until to-day. I was so worried about you children.”
Toward the end of the next week Rachel came in to dinner late and in high spirits. “I’ve had such a fine walk!” she exclaimed. “Hester Gulick and I went to the bridge, and on the way back we overtook a senior named Janet Andrews. She is such fun. She’d walked down-town with Professor Hinsdale.He teaches psychology, doesn’t he? They seem to be very good friends, and he told her such a funny thing about the fifty-freshmen story. How do you suppose it started?”
“Oh, please tell us,” cried everybody at once.
“Why, an awfully clever girl in his sophomore class started it as an experiment, to see how it would take. She told it to some freshmen, saying explicitly that it wasn’t true, and they told their friends, and so it went all over the college until last Saturday Betty got Miss Mansfield to deny it. But no one knew how it started until yesterday when Professor Hinsdale looked over a paper in which the girl had written it all up, as a study in the way rumors spread and grow. This one was so big to begin with that it couldn’t grow much, though it seems, according to the paper, that some people had added to it that half the freshmen would be conditioned in math.”
“How awfully funny!” gurgled Betty. Then she jumped almost out of her chair. “Why, Mary Brooks!” she said.
Everybody looked at Mary, who blushed guiltily and remarked with great dignity thatProfessor Hinsdale was an old telltale. But when she had assured herself that the freshmen, with the possible exception of Eleanor, were disposed to regard the psychological experiment which had victimized them with perfect good-nature, and herself with considerable admiration, she condescended to accept congratulations and answer questions.
“Seriously, girls,” she said at last, “I hope no one got really scared. I wanted to explain when I heard Betty tell how unhappy Miss Madison was, but I really thought Miss Mansfield’s denial would cheer her up more and reach her almost as quickly, and at the same time it would help me out so beautifully. It made such a grand conclusion!
“You see,” she went on, “Professor Hinsdale put the idea into my head when he assigned the subjects away back last month. He said he was giving them out early so we would have time to make original observations. When he mentioned ‘Rumor,’ he spoke of village gossip, and the faked stories that are circulated on Wall Street to make stocks go up or down, and then of the wild way we girls take up absurd reports. The lastsuggestion appealed to me, but I couldn’t remember anything definite enough, so I decided to invent a rumor. Then I forgot all about it till that Saturday that I went skating, and ‘you know the rest,’ as our friend Mr. Longfellow aptly remarks. When I get my chef-d’œuvre back you may have a private view, in return for which I hope you’ll encourage your friends not to hate me.”
“Isn’t she fun?” said Betty a little later, when she and Helen were alone together. “Do you know, I think this rumor business has been a good thing. It’s made a lot of us work hard, and only seriously frightened three or four.”
“Yes,” said Helen primly. “I think so too. The girls here are inclined to be very frivolous.”
“Who?” demanded Betty.
Helen hesitated. “Oh, the girls as a whole.”
“That doesn’t count,” objected Betty. “Give me a name.”
“Well, Barbara Gordon.”
“Takes sixteen hours, has her themes read in Mary’s class, and in her spare momentspaints water colors that are exhibited in Boston,” said Betty promptly.
“Really?” gasped Helen.
“Really,” repeated Betty. “Of course she was very well prepared, and so her work here seems easy to her. Next year I hope that you and I won’t have to plod along so.”
Helen said nothing, but she was deeply grateful to Betty for that last sentence. “You and I”–as if there was something in common between them. The other girls set her apart in a class by herself and labeled her “dig.” If one was born slow and conscientious and plodding, was there any hope for one,–any place among these pretty girls who worked so easily and idled so gracefully? Helen shut her lips firmly and resolved to keep on hunting.
Viewed in retrospect the tragic experiences of one’s freshman year seem often the most insignificant of trifles; but that does not prevent their being at the time momentous as the fate of empires. There are mid-year examinations, for instance; after one has survived them a few times she knows that being “flunked out” is not so common an experience as report represents it to be, and as for “low grades” and “conditions,” if one has “cut” or been too often unprepared she deserves and expects them, and if she has done her best and still finds an unwelcome note or two on the official bulletin board, why, she must remember that accidents will happen, and are generally quite endurable when viewed philosophically. But in freshman year one is inexperienced and easily the dupe of mischievous sophomores. Then how is one to prepare for the dreadful ordeal? The distinction isnot at all clear between the intelligent review that the faculty recommend and the cramming that they abhor. There is a disconcerting little rhyme on this subject that has been handed down from generation to generation for so long that it has lost most of its form and comeliness; but the point is still sharp. It is about a girl who followed the faculty’s advice on the subject of cramming, took her exercise as usual, and went to bed each night at ten o’clock, as all good children should. The last stanza still rhymes, thus: