“And so she did not hurry,Nor sit up late to cram,Nor have the blues and worry,But–she failed in her exam.”
“And so she did not hurry,Nor sit up late to cram,Nor have the blues and worry,But–she failed in her exam.”
Mary Brooks took pains that all her “young friends,” as she called them, should hear of this instructive little poem.
“I really thought,” said Betty on the first evening of the examination week, “when that hateful rumor was contradicted, that I should never be scared again, but I am.”
“There’s unfortunately nothing rumorous about these exams.,” muttered Katherinewrathfully. “The one I had to-day was the real article, all right.”
“And I have my three worst to-morrow and next day,” mourned Betty, “so I’ve got permission to sit up after ten to-night. Don’t all the rest of you want to come in here and work? Then some one else can ask Mrs. Chapin for the other nights.”
“But we must all attend strictly to business,” said Mary Rich, whereat Helen Adams looked relieved.
And business was the order of the week. An unwonted stillness reigned over the Chapin house, broken occasionally by wild outbursts of hilarity, which meant that some examination or other was over and had not been so bad after all. Every evening at ten the girls who felt it necessary to sit up later assembled in one room, comfortably attired in kimonos–all except Roberta, who had never been seen without her collar–and armed with formidable piles of books; and presently work began in earnest. There was really no reason, as Rachel observed, why they should not stay in their own rooms, if they were going to sit up at all. This wasn’tthe campus, where there was a night-watchman to report lights, and Mrs. Chapin was very accommodating about giving permission.
“This method benefits her gas bill though,” said Katherine, “and therefore keeps her accommodating. Besides, it’s much easier to stick to it in a crowd.”
Eleanor never went through the formality of asking Mrs. Chapin’s permission to do anything, and she did not care for the moral support of numbers. She was never sleepy, she said, pointing significantly to her brass samovar, and she could work best alone in her own room. She held aloof, too, from the discussions about the examinations which were the burden of the week’s table-talk, only once in a while volunteering a suggestion about the possible answer to an obscure or ambiguous question. Her ideas invariably astonished the other freshmen by their depth and originality, but when any one exclaimed, Eleanor would say, sharply, “Why, it’s all in the text-book!” and then relapse into gloomy silence.
“I suppose she talks more to her friends outside,” suggested Rachel, after an encounter of this sort.
“Not on your life,” retorted Katherine. “She’s one of the kind that keeps herself to herself. She hates us because we have to know as much about her as we do, living here in the house with her. I hope she gets through all right.”
“She’s awfully clever,” said Mary Rich admiringly. “She’d never have said that a leviathan was some kind of a church creed, as I did in English.”
“Yes, she’s a clever–blunderer, but she’s also a sadly mistaken young person,” amended Katherine.
It was convenient to have one’s examinations scattered evenly through the week with time for study between them, but pleasanter on the whole to be through by Thursday or Friday, with several days of delicious idleness before the new semester began. And as a certain faction of the college always manages to suit its own convenience in such matters, the campus, which is the unfailing index of college sentiment, began to wear a leisurely, holiday air some time before the dreaded week was over.
The ground was covered deeply with snowwhich a sudden thaw and as sudden a freeze had coated with a thick, hard crust. This put a stop to snow-shoeing and delayed the work of clearing the ice off Paradise pond, where there was to be a moonlight carnival on the evening of the holiday that follows mid-year week. But it made splendid coasting. Toboggans, “bobs” and hand sleds appeared mysteriously in various quarters, and the pasture hills north of the town swarmed with Harding girls out for fresh air, exercise and fun.
On Friday afternoon an ingenious damsel who had no sled conceived the idea of substituting a dust-pan. So she borrowed one of an obliging chambermaid and went out to the little slope which divides the front from the back campus to try her experiment. In twenty minutes the hill was alive with girls, all the available dust-pans had been pressed into service, and large tin pans were found to do nearly as well. Envious groups of girls who could get neither the one nor the other watched the absurd spectacle from the windows of the nearest campus houses or hurried down-town to buy tinware. Sleds were neglected,toboggans despised; the dust-pan fad had taken possession of the college.
Betty, who had the happy faculty of being on hand at interesting moments, was crossing the campus on her way home from the Hilton House. She had taken her last examination, had helped Alice Waite finish up a box of candy, and now had nothing to do until dinner time, so she stopped to watch the novel coasting, and even had one delicious ride herself on Dorothy King’s dust-pan.
Near the gate she met Mary Brooks and Roberta and asked them if they had been through the campus.
“No,” said Mary, “we’ve been having chocolate at Cuyler’s.” And she dragged her companions back to within sight of the hill. Then she abruptly turned them about and hurried them off in the other direction.
“Let’s go straight down and buy some dust-pans,” she began enthusiastically. “We have just time before dinner, and we can slide all to-morrow afternoon.”
“Oh, no,” demurred Roberta. “I couldn’t.”
Betty laughed at her expression of alarm, and Mary demanded, “Why not?”
“Oh, I couldn’t,” repeated Roberta. “It looks dangerous, and, besides, I have to dress for dinner.”
“Dangerous nothing!” jeered Mary. “Don’t be so everlastingly neat and lady-like, child. What’s the use? Well,” as Roberta still hung back, “carry my fountain pen home, then, and don’t spill it. Come on, Betty,” and the two raced off down the hill.
Roberta looked after them admiringly, wishing she were not such a “muff” at outdoor sports.
The next afternoon Betty and Mary hurried over to the campus directly after luncheon to try their new toys. The crust was still firm and the new sport popular as ever.
“You see it’s much more exciting than a ‘bob,’” a tall senior was explaining to a group of on-lookers. “You can’t steer, so you’re just as likely to go down backward as frontward; and being so near the ground gives you a lovely creepy sensation.”
“The point is, it’s such a splendid antidote for overstudying. It just satisfies that absolutely idiotic feeling that every one has after mid-years,” added an athletic young woman ina gray sweater, as she joined the group with her dust-pan tucked scientifically under her arm.
She was Marion Lawrence, sophomore vice-president, and Mary Brooks’s best friend. Betty, fearing to be in the way, joined another lone freshman from the Belden House.
“Do you suppose you could sit up to study to-night if you had to?” inquired the freshman as they stood waiting their turns to go down.
“No, only it seems as if you always could do what you have to,” answered Betty, starting off.
She decided presently that dust-pan coasting was not so much fun as it looked. Mary Brooks, coming to find her and ask her to join a racing tournament captained by herself and Marion Lawrence, declared noisily that she was having “the time of her gay young life,” but Betty after the first coast or two began to think of going home. Perhaps it was because she was so tired. It seemed so much trouble to walk up on the slippery crust and such a long way round by the path. So she refused to enter the tournament. “I’m not going tostay long enough,” she explained. “I shall just have two more slides. Then I’m going home to take a nap. That’s my best antidote for overstudy.”
The next coast was nicer. Perhaps the dust-pan had been too new. The Belden House freshman said that hers went better since her roommate had used it and scraped off all the paint in a collision.
“I wonder there aren’t more collisions,” said Betty, preparing for her last slide.
Half-way down she discovered that the other freshman and the rest hadn’t started–that the hill was almost clear. Then somebody called shrilly, “Look out, Miss Wales.” She turned her head back toward the voice, the dust-pan swirled, and she turned back again to find herself slipping rapidly sidewise straight toward a little lady who was walking serenely along the path that cut the coast at right angles. She was a faculty–Betty hadn’t the least idea what her name was, but she had noticed her on the “faculty row” at chapel. In an instant more she was certainly going to run into her. Betty dug her heels frantically into the crust. It would not break.
“Oh, I beg your pardon, but I can’t stop!” she called.
At that the little lady, who was walking rapidly with her head bent against the wind, looked up and apparently for the first time noticed the dust-pan coasters. Mirth and confusion overcame her. She stopped an instant to laugh, then started back, then changed her mind and dashed wildly forward, with the inevitable result that she fell in an undignified heap on top of Betty and the dust-pan. The accident took place on the edge of the path where the crust was jagged and icy. Betty, who had gone head-first through it, emerged with a bleeding scratch on one cheek and a stinging, throbbing wrist. Fortunately her companion was not hurt.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” sighed Betty, trying to brush the snow off her victim with one hand. “I do hope you’ll forgive me for being so careless.” Then she sat down suddenly on the broken crust. “It’s only that my wrist hurts a little,” she finished abruptly.
The girls had gathered around them by this time, sympathizing and lamenting that they had not warned Betty in time. “But wethought of course you saw Miss Ferris,” said the tall senior, “and we supposed she was looking out for you.”
So this was Miss Ferris–the great Miss Ferris. Rachel had sophomore zoology with her and Mary Brooks had said that she was considered the most brilliant woman on the faculty. She was “house-teacher” at the Hilton, and Alice Waite and Miss Madison were always singing her praises.
She cut Betty’s apologies and the girls’ inquiries short. “My dear child, it was all my fault, and you’re the one who’s hurt. Why didn’t you girls stop me sooner–call to me to go round the other way? I was in a hurry and didn’t see or hear you up there.” Then she sat down on the crust beside Betty. “Forgive me for laughing,” she said, “but you did look so exactly like a giant crab sidling along on that ridiculous dust-pan. Have you sprained your wrist? Then you must come straight over to my room and wait for a carriage.”
Betty’s feeble protests were promptly overruled, and supported by Mary Brooks on one side and Miss Ferris on the other she was hurriedover to the Hilton House and tucked up in Miss Ferris’s Morris chair by her open fire, to await the arrival of the college doctor and a carriage. In spite of her embarrassment at having upset so important a personage, and the sharp pains that went shooting up and down her arm, she was almost sorry when doctor and carriage arrived together. Miss Ferris was even nicer than the girls had said. Somehow she made one feel at home immediately as she bustled about bringing a towel and a lotion for Betty’s face, hot water for her wrist, and “butter-thins” spread with delicious strawberry jam to keep her courage up. Before she knew it, Betty was telling her all about her direful experiences during examination week, how frightened she had been, and how sleepy she was now,–“not just now of course”–and how she had been all ready to go home when the spill came. And Miss Ferris nodded knowingly at Mary and laughed her little rippling laugh.
“Just like these foolish little freshmen; isn’t it?” she said, exactly as if she had been one last year too. And yet there was a suspicion of gray in her hair, and she was a doctor ofphilosophy and had written the leading article in the learned German magazine that lay on her table.
“You must come again, both of you, when I can make tea for you properly,” she said as she closed the carriage door.
Betty, leaning whitely back on Mary’s shoulder, with her arm on Miss Ferris’s softest down pillow, smiled happily between the throbs. If she was fated to have sprained her wrist, she was glad that she had met Miss Ferris.
Saturday night and Sunday were long and dismal beyond belief. The wrist ached, the cheek smarted, and a bad cold added its quota to Betty’s miseries. But she slept late Monday morning, and when she woke felt able to sit up in bed and enjoy her flowers and her notoriety. Just after luncheon the entire Chapin house came in to congratulate and condole with her.
“It’s too windy to have any fun outdoors,” began Rachel consolingly.
“Who sent you those violets?” demanded Katherine.
“Miss Ferris. Wasn’t it dear of her? There was a note with them, too, that said she consideredherself still ‘deeply in my debt,’ because of her carelessness–think of her saying that to me!–and that she hopes I won’t hesitate to call on her if she ‘can ever be of the slightest assistance.’ And Mary, she said for us not to forget that Friday is her day at home.”
“You are the luckiest thing, Betty Wales,” sighed Rachel, who worshiped Miss Ferris from afar.
“Now if I’d knocked the august Miss Ferris down,” declared Katherine, “I should probably have been expelled forthwith. Whereas you—” She finished the sentence with an expressive little gesture.
“Who gave you the rest of this conservatory, Betty?” asked Mary Brooks.
“Clara Madison brought the carnations, and Nita Reese, a girl in my geometry division, sent the white roses, and Eleanor the pink ones, and the freshman I was sliding with these lilies-of-the-valley. It’s almost worth a sprained wrist to find out how kind people are to you,” said Betty gratefully.
“Too bad you’ll miss to-night,” said Mary, “but maybe it will snow.”
“I don’t mind that. The worst thing is my not being able to get my conditions off the bulletin,” said Betty, making a wry face.
“Goodness! That is a calamity!” said Katherine with mock seriousness.
“Nonsense! You’ve studied,” from Rachel.
“If you should have any conditions, I’ll bring them to you,” volunteered Eleanor quietly. Then she looked straight at Rachel and Katherine and smiled pleasantly. “I’m sorry to say that I haven’t studied,” she said.
Betty thanked her, feeling more pleased at the apparent harmony of the household than she had been with all her flowers. It was so difficult to like Eleanor and Rachel and Katherine and Helen, all four, so well, when Rachel and Katherine had good reason for disliking Eleanor, and Helen wouldn’t hitch with any of the rest.
“Do you know that Prexy had forbidden sliding on dust-pans?” asked Mary Rich in the awkward pause that followed.
“Oh, yes,” added Mary Brooks, “I forgot to tell you. So it’s just as well that I lost mine in the shuffle.”
“But I’m sorry to have been the one to stop the fun,” said Betty sadly.
“Oh, it wasn’t wholly that. Two other girls banged into each other after we left.”
“But you’re the famous one,” added Rachel, “because you knocked over Miss Ferris. She looked so funny and knowing when Prexy announced it in chapel.”
“I wish I could do something for you too,” said Helen timidly, after the rest had drifted out of the room.
“Why you have,” Betty assured her. “You helped a lot both times the doctor came, and you’ve stayed out of the room whenever I wanted to sleep, and brought up all my meals, and written home for me.”
Helen flushed. “That’s nothing. I meant something pretty like those,” and she pointed to the tableful of flowers, and then going over to it buried her face in the bowl of English violets.
Betty watched her for a moment with a vague feeling of pity. “I don’t suppose she has ten cents a month to spend on such things,” she thought, “and as for having them sent to her—” Then she said aloud, “Wecertainly don’t need any more of those at present. Were you going to the basket-ball game?”
“I thought I would, if you didn’t want me.”
“Not a bit, and you’re to wear some violets–a nice big bunch. Hand me the bowl, please, and I’ll tie them up.”
Helen gave a little gasp of pleasure. Then her face clouded. “But I couldn’t take your violets,” she added quickly.
Betty laughed and went on tying up the bunch, only making it bigger than she had at first intended. After Helen had gone she cried just a little. “I don’t believe she ever had any violets before,” she said to the green lizard. “Why, her eyes were like stars–she was positively pretty.”
More than one person noticed the happy little girl who sat quite alone in the running track, dividing her eager attention between the game and the violets which she wore pinned to her shabby, old-fashioned brown jacket.
Meanwhile Betty, propped up among her pillows, was trying to answer Nan’s last letter.
“You seem to be interested in so many other people’s affairs,” Nan had written, “that you haven’t any time for your own. Don’t make the mistake of being a hanger-on.”
“You see, Nan,” wrote Betty, “I am at last a heroine, an interesting invalid, with scars, and five bouquets of flowers on my table. I am sorry that I don’t amount to more usually. The trouble is that the other people here are so clever or so something-or-other that I can’t help being more interested in them. I’m afraid I am only an average girl, but I do seem to have a lot of friends and Miss Ferris, whom you are always admiring, has asked me to five o’clock tea. Perhaps, some day—”
Writing with one’s left hand was too laborious, so Betty put the letter in a pigeon-hole of her desk to be finished later. As she slipped the sheets in, Miss Ferris’s note dropped out. “I wonder if I shall ever want to ask her anything,” thought Betty, as she put it carefully away in the small drawer of her desk that held her dearest treasures.
By Wednesday Betty was well enough to go to classes, though she felt very conspicuous with her scratched face and her wrist in a sling. And so when early Wednesday afternoon Eleanor pounced on her and Katherine and demanded why they were not starting to class-meeting, she replied that she at least was not going.
“Nor I,” said Katherine decidedly. “It’s sure to be stupid.”
“I’m sorry,” said Eleanor. “We may need you badly; every one is so busy this week. Perhaps you’ll change your minds before two-thirty, and if you do, please bring all the other girls that you can along. You know the notice was marked important.”
“Evidently all arranged beforehand,” sniffed Katherine, as Eleanor departed, explaining that she had promised to be on hand early, ready to drum up a quorum if necessary.
Betty looked out at the clear winter sunshine. “I wanted a little walk,” she said. “Let’s go. If it’s long and stupid we can leave; and we ought to be loyal to our class.”
“All right,” agreed Katherine. “I’ll go if you will. I should rather like to see what they have on hand this time.”
“They” meant the Hill-School contingent, who from the initial meeting had continued to run the affairs of the class of 19–. Some of the girls were indignant, and a few openly rebellious, but the majority were either indifferent or satisfied that the Hill clique was as good as any other that might get control in its stead. So the active opposition had been able to accomplish nothing, and Hill’s machine, as a cynical sophomore had dubbed it, had elected its candidates for three class officers and the freshman representative on the Students’ Commission, while the various class committees were largely made up of Jean Eastman’s intimate friends.
“I hope that some of the crowd have nicer manners than our dear Eleanor and are better students,” Mary Brooks had said to Betty. “Otherwise I’m afraid your ship of state willrun into a snag of faculty prejudices some fine day.”
Betty belonged to the indifferent faction of the class. She was greatly interested in all its activities, and prepared to be proud of its achievements, but she possessed none of the instincts of a wire-puller. So long as the class offices were creditably filled she cared not who held them, and comparing her ignorance of parliamentary procedure with the glib self-confidence of Jean, Eleanor and their friends, she even felt grateful to them for rescuing the class from the pitfalls that beset inexperience.
Katherine, on the other hand, was a bitter opponent of what she called “ring rule,” and Adelaide Rich, who was the only recruit that they could succeed in adding to their party, had never forgotten the depths of iniquity which her pessimistic acquaintance had revealed in the seemingly innocent and well conducted first meeting, and was prepared to distrust everything, down to the reading of the minutes.
The three were vigorously applauded when they appeared in the door of No. 19, the biggest recitation room in the main building and sothe one invariably appropriated to freshman assemblies. Katherine whispered to Mary that she had not known Betty was quite so popular as all that; but a girl on the row behind the one in which they found seats explained matters by whispering that three had been the exact number needed to make up a quorum.
The secretary’s report was hastily read and accepted, and then Miss Eastman stated that the business of the meeting was to elect a class representative for the Washington’s Birthday debate.
“Some of you know,” she continued, “that the Students’ Commission has decided to make a humorous debate the main feature of the morning rally. We and the juniors are to take one side, and the senior and sophomore representatives the other. Now I suppose the first thing to decide is how our representative shall be chosen.”
A buzz of talk spread over the room. “Why didn’t they let us know beforehand–give us time to think who we’d have?” inquired the talkative girl on the row behind.
The president rapped for order as KateDenise, her roommate, rose to make a motion.
“Madame president, I move that the freshman representative aforesaid be chosen by the chair. Of course,” she went on less formally, turning to the girls, “that is by far the quickest way, and Jean knows the girls as a whole so well–much better than any of us, I’m sure. I think that a lot depends on choosing just the right person for our debater, and we ought not to trust to a haphazard election.”
“Haphazard is good,” muttered the loquacious freshman, in tones plainly audible at the front of the room.
“Of course that means a great responsibility for me,” murmured the president modestly.
“Put it to vote,” commanded a voice from the front row, which was always occupied by the ruling faction. “And remember, all of you, that if we ballot for representative we don’t get out of here till four o’clock.”
The motion was summarily put to vote, and the ayes had it at once, as the ayes are likely to do unless a matter has been thoroughly discussed.
“I name Eleanor Watson, then,” said Miss Eastman with suspicious promptness. “Will somebody move to adjourn?”
“Well, of all ridiculous appointments!” exclaimed the loquacious girl under cover of the applause and the noise of moving chairs.
“Right you are!” responded Katherine, laughing at Adelaide Rich’s disgusted expression.
But Betty was smiling happily with her eyes on the merry group around Eleanor. “Aren’t you glad, girls?” she said. “Won’t she do well, and won’t the house be proud of her?”
“I for one never noticed that she was a single bit humorous,” began Mary indignantly.
Katherine pinched her arm vigorously. “Don’t! What’s the use?” she whispered.
“Nor I, but I suppose Miss Eastman knows that she can be funny,” answered Betty confidently, as she hurried off to congratulate Eleanor.
She was invited to the supper to be given at Cuyler’s that night in Eleanor’s honor, and went home blissfully unconscious that halfthe class was talking itself hoarse over Jean Eastman’s bad taste in appointing a notorious “cutter” and “flunker” to represent them on so important an occasion, just because she happened to be the best dressed and prettiest girl in the Hill crowd.
The next afternoon most of the girls were at gym or the library, and Betty, who was still necessarily excused from her daily exercise, was working away on her Latin, when some one knocked imperatively on her door. It was Jean Eastman.
“Good-afternoon, Miss Wales,” she said hurriedly. “Will you lend me a pencil and paper? Eleanor has such a habit of keeping her desk locked, and I want to leave her a note.”
She scribbled rapidly for a moment, frowned as she read through what she had written, and looked doubtfully from it to Betty. Then she rose to go. “Will you call her attention to this, please?” she said. “It’s very important. And, Miss Wales,–if she should consult you, do advise her to resign quietly and leave it to me to smooth things over.”
“Resign?” repeated Betty vaguely.
“Yes,” said Jean. “You see–well, I might as well tell you now, that I’ve said so much. The faculty object to her taking the debate. Perhaps you know that she’s very much in their black books but I didn’t. And I never dreamed that they would think it any of their business who was our debater, but I assure you they do. At least half a dozen of them have spoken to me about her poor work and her cutting. They say that she is just as much ineligible for this as she would be for the musical clubs or the basket-ball team. Now what I want is for Eleanor to write a sweet little note of resignation to-night, so that I can appoint some one else bright and early in the morning.”
Betty’s eyes grew big with anxiety. “But won’t the girls guess the reason?” she cried. “Think how proud Eleanor is, Miss Eastman. It would hurt her terribly if any one found out that she had been conditioned. You shouldn’t have told me–indeed you shouldn’t!”
Jean laughed carelessly. “Well, you know now, and there’s no use crying over spilt milk. I used that argument about the publicity of the affair to the faculty, but itwas no go. So the only thing for you to do is to help Eleanor write a nice, convincing note of resignation that I can read at the next meeting, when I announce my second appointment.”
“But Eleanor won’t ask my help,” said Betty decidedly, “and, besides, what can she say, after accepting all the congratulations, and having the supper?”
Jean laughed again. “I’m afraid you’re not a bit ingenious, Miss Wales,” she said rising to go, “but fortunately Eleanor is. Good-bye.”
When Betty handed Eleanor the note she read it through unconcernedly, unconcernedly tore it into bits as she talked, and spent the entire evening, apparently, in perfect contentment and utter idleness, strumming softly on her guitar.
The next morning Betty met Jean on the campus. “Did she tell you?” asked Jean.
Betty shook her head.
“I thought likely she hadn’t. Well, what do you suppose? She won’t resign. She says that there’s no real reason she can give, and that she’s now making it a rule to tell thetruth; that I’m in a box, not she, and I may climb out of it as best as I can.”
“Did she really say that?” demanded Betty, a note of pleasure in her voice.
“Yes,” snapped Jean, “and since you’re so extremely cheerful over it, perhaps you can tell me what to do next.”
Betty stared at her blankly. “I forgot,” she said. “The girls mustn’t know. We must cover it up somehow.”
“Exactly,” agreed Jean crossly, “but what I want to know is–how.”
“Why not ask the class to choose its speaker? All the other classes did.”
Jean looked doubtful. “I know they did. That would make it very awkward for me, but I suppose I might say there had been dissatisfaction–that’s true enough,–and we could have it all arranged—Well, when I call a meeting, be sure to come and help us out.”
The meeting was posted for Saturday, and all the Chapin house girls, except Helen, who never had time for such things, and Eleanor, attended it. Eleanor was expecting a caller, she said. Besides, as she hadn’t been to classesin the morning there was no sense in emphasizing the fact by parading through the campus in the afternoon.
At the last minute she called Betty back. “Paul may not get over to-day,” she said. “Won’t you come home right off to tell me about it? I–well, you’ll see later why I want to know–if you haven’t guessed already.”
The class of 19– had an inkling that something unusual was in the wind and had turned out in full force. There was no need of waiting for a quorum this time. After the usual preliminaries Jean Eastman rose and began a halting, nervous little speech.
“I have heard,” she began, “that is–a great many people in and out of the class have spoken to me about the matter of the Washington’s Birthday debate. I mean, about the way in which our debater was appointed. I understand there is a great deal of dissatisfaction–that some of the class say they did not understand which way they were voting, and so on. So I thought you might like to reconsider your vote. I certainly, considering position in the matter, want you to havethe chance to do so. Now, can we have this point thoroughly discussed?” Then, as no one rose, “Miss Wales, won’t you tell us what you think?”
Betty stared helplessly at Jean for a moment and then, assisted by vigorous pushes from Katherine and Rachel, who sat on either side of her, rose hesitatingly to her feet. “Miss Eastman,–I mean, madame president,” she began. She stopped for an instant to look at her audience. Apparently the class of 19– was merely astonished and puzzled by Jean’s suggestion; there was no indication that any one–except possibly a few of the Hill girls–had any idea of her motive. “Madame president,” repeated Betty, forcing back the lump that had risen in her throat when she realized that the keeping of Eleanor’s secret lay largely with her, “Miss Watson is my friend, and I was very much pleased to have her for our representative. But I do feel, and I believe the other girls do, as they come to think it over, that it would have been better to elect our representative. Then we should every one of us have had a direct interest in the result of the debate. Besides, all the other classeselected theirs, and so I think, if Miss Watson is willing—”
“Miss Watson is perfectly willing,” broke in Jean. “A positive engagement unfortunately prevents her being here to say so, but she authorized me to state that she preferred the elective choice herself, and to tell you to do just as you think best in the matter. She—Go on, Miss Wales.”
“Oh, that was all,” said Betty hastily slipping back into her seat.
A group of girls in the farthest corner of the room clapped vigorously.
“Nothing cut-and-dried about that,” whispered Katherine to Adelaide Rich.
“Are there any more remarks?” inquired the president. No one seemed anxious to speak, and she went on rather aimlessly. “Miss Wales has really covered the ground, I think. The other classes all elected their debaters, and I fancy they want us to do the same. As for the faculty–well, I may as well say that they almost insist upon a change.”
“Good crawl,” whispered Katherine, who was quick to put two and two together, toAdelaide Rich, who never got the point of any but the most obvious remarks, and who now looked much perplexed.
Meanwhile Betty had been holding whispered consultations with some of the girls around her, and now she rose again. Her “madame president” was so obviously prior to Kate Denise’s that when Kate was recognized there was an ominous murmur of discontent and Jean apologized and promptly reversed her decision.
“Perhaps I oughtn’t to speak twice,” said Betty blushing at the commotion she had caused, “but if we are to change our vote, some of us think it would be fun to hold a preliminary debate now, and choose our speaker on her merits. We did that once at school—”
“Good stunt,” called some one.
“I move that Miss Wales as chairman select a committee of arrangements, and that we have a five minute recess while the committee meets.”
“I move that there be two committees, one for nominating speakers and the other for choosing a subject.”
“I move that we reconsider our other vote first.”
The motions were coming in helter-skelter from all quarters, instead of decorously from the front row as usual. The president was trying vainly to restore order and to remember whose motion should have precedence, and to make way somehow for the prearranged nomination, which so far had been entirely crowded out, when three girls in one corner of the room began thumping on their seat-arms and chanting in rhythmic, insistent chorus, “We–want–Emily–Davis. We–want–Emily–Davis. We–want–Emily–Davis.”
Hardly any one in the room had ever heard of Emily Davis, but the three girls constituted an original and very popular little coterie known individually as Babe, Babbie, and Bob, or collectively as “the three B’s.” They roomed on the top floor of the Westcott House and were famous in the house for being at the same time prime favorites of the matron and the ringleaders in every plot against her peace of mind, and outside for their unique and diverting methods of recreation. It was theywho had successfully gulled Mary Brooks with a rumor as absurd as her own; and accounts of the “spread” they had handed out to the night-watchman in a tin pail, and dangled just out of his reach, in the hope of extracting a promise from that incorruptible worthy not to report their lights, until the string incontinently broke and the ice cream and lobster salad descended as a flood, were reported to have made even the august president of the college laugh. Ergo, if they “wanted” Emily Davis, she must be worth “wanting.” So their friends took up the cry, and it quickly spread and gathered volume, until nearly everybody in the room was shouting the same thing. Finally the president stepped forward and made one determined demand for order.
“Is Miss Emily Davis present?” she called, when the tumult had slightly subsided.
“Yes,” shouted the Three and the few others who knew Miss Davis by sight.
“Then will she please–why, exactly what is it that you want of her?” questioned the president, a trifle haughtily.
“Speech!” chorused the Three.
“Will Miss Davis please speak to us?” asked the president.
At that a very tall girl who was ineffectually attempting to hide behind little Alice Waite was pulled and pushed to her feet, and amid a sudden silence began the funniest speech that most of the class of 19– had ever listened to; but it was not so much what she said as her inimitable drawling delivery and her lunging, awkward gestures that brought down the house. When she took her seat again, resolutely ignoring persistent cries of “More!” the class applauded her to the echo and elected her freshman debater by acclamation.
It was wonderful what a change those twenty riotous minutes had made in the spirit of the class of 19–. For the first time in its history it was an enthusiastic, single-hearted unit, and to the credit of the Hill girls be it said that no one was more enthusiastic or joined in the applause with greater vigor than they. They had not meant to be autocratic–except three of them; they had simply acted according to their lights, or rather, their leaders’ lights. Now they understood how affairs could be conducted at Harding, and during the rest of thecourse they never entirely forgot or ignored the new method.
To Betty’s utter astonishment and consternation the lion’s share of credit for the sudden triumph of democracy was laid at her door. The group around her after the meeting was almost as large and quite as noisy as the one that was struggling to shake hands with Miss Davis.
“Don’t! You mustn’t. Why, it was the B’s who got her, not I,” protested Betty vigorously.
“No, you began it,” said Babe.
“You bet you did,” declared Bob.
“Yes, indeed. We were too scared to speak of her until you proposed something like it,” added Babbie in her sweet, lilting treble.
“You can’t get out of it. You are the real founder of this democracy,” ended Christy Mason decidedly. Betty was proud of Christy’s approval. It was fun, too, to have the Hill girls crowding around and saying pleasant things to her.
“I almost think I’m somebody at last. Won’t Nan be pleased!” she reflected as she hurried home to keep her promise to Eleanor.Then she laughed merrily all to herself. “Those silly girls! I really didn’t do a thing,” she thought. And then she sighed. “I never get a chance to be a bit vain. I wish I could–one little wee bit. I wonder if Mr. West came.”
It did not occur to Betty as at all significant that Jean Eastman and Kate Denise had not spoken to her after the meeting, until, when she knocked on Eleanor’s door, Eleanor came formally to open it. “Jean and Kate are here,” she said coldly, “so unless you care to stop—”
Jean and Kate nodded silently from the couch where they were eating candy.
“Oh, no,” said Betty in quick astonishment. “I’ll come some other time.”
“You needn’t bother,” answered Eleanor rudely. “They’ve told me all about it,” and she shut the door, leaving Betty standing alone in the hall.
Betty winked hard to keep back the tears as she hurried to her own room. What could it all mean? She had done her best for Eleanor, and nobody had guessed–they had been too busy laughing at that ridiculousEmily Davis–and now Eleanor treated her like this. And Jean Eastman, too, when she had done exactly what Jean wanted of her. Jean’s curtness was even less explainable than Eleanor’s, though it mattered less. It was all–queer. Betty smiled faintly as she applied Alice Waite’s favorite adjective. Well, there was nothing more to be done until she could see Eleanor after dinner. So she wiped her eyes, smoothed her hair, and went resolutely off to find Roberta, whose heavy shoes–another of Roberta’s countless fads–had just clumped past her door.
“I’m writing my definitions for to-morrow’s English,” announced Roberta. “For the one we could choose ourselves I’m going to invent a word and then make up a meaning for it. Isn’t that a nice idea?”
“Very,” said Betty listlessly.
Roberta looked at her keenly. “I believe you’re homesick,” she said. “How funny after such a jubilant afternoon.”
Betty smiled wearily. “Perhaps I am. Anyway, I wish I were at home.”
Meanwhile in Eleanor’s room an acrimonious discussion was in progress.
“The more I think of it,” Kate Denise was saying emphatically, “the surer I am that she didn’t do a thing against us this afternoon. She isn’t to blame for having started a landslide by accident, Jean. Did you see her face when Eleanor turned her down just now? She looked absolutely nonplussed.”
“Most people do when the lady Eleanor turns and rends them,” returned Jean, with a reminiscent smile.
“Just the same,” continued Kate Denise, “I say you have a lot to thank her for this afternoon, Jean Eastman. She got you out of a tight hole in splendid shape. None of us could have done it without stamping the whole thing a put-up job, and most of the outsiders who could have helped you out, wouldn’t have cared to oblige you. It was irritating to see her rallying the multitudes, I’ll admit; but I insist that it wasn’t her fault. We ought to have managed better.”
“Say I ought to have managed better and be done with it,” muttered Jean crossly.
“You certainly ought,” retorted Eleanor. “You’ve made me the laughing-stock of the whole college.”
“No, Eleanor,” broke in Kate Denise pacifically. “Truly, your dignity is intact, thanks to Miss Wales and those absurd B’s who followed her lead.”
“Never mind them. I’m talking about Betty Wales. She was a friend of mine–she was at the supper the other night. Why couldn’t she leave it to some one else to object to your appointing me?”
“Oh, if that’s all you care about,” said Jean irritably, “don’t blame Miss Wales. The thing had to be done you know. I didn’t see that it mattered who did it, and so I–well, I practically asked her. What I’m talking about is her way of going at it–her having pushed herself forward so, and really thrown us out of power by using what I–” Jean caught herself suddenly, remembering that Eleanor did not know about Betty’s having been let into the secret.
“By using what you told her,” finished Kate innocently. “Well, why did you tell her all about it, if you didn’t expect–”
Eleanor stood up suddenly, her face white with anger. “How dared you,” she challenged. “As if it wasn’t insulting enough toget me into a scrape like this, and give any one with two eyes a chance to see through your flimsy little excuses, but you have to go round telling people—”
“Eleanor, stop,” begged Jean. “She was the only one I told. I let it out quite by accident the day I came up here to see you. Not another soul knows it but Kate, and you told her yourself. You’d have told Betty Wales, too,–you know you would–if we hadn’t seen you first this afternoon.”
“Suppose I should,” Eleanor retorted hotly. “What I do is my own affair. Please go home.”
Jean stalked out in silence, but Kate, hesitating between Scylla and Charybdis, lingered to say consolingly, “Cheer up, Eleanor. When you come to think it over, it won’t seem so—”
“Please go home,” repeated Eleanor, and Kate hurried after her roommate.
If Eleanor had taken Kate’s advice and indulged in a little calm reflection, she would have realized how absolutely reasonless was her anger against Betty Wales. Betty had been told of the official objections which made it necessary for Eleanor to be withdrawn from the debate. Her action, then, had been wholly proper and perfectly friendly. But Eleanor was in no mood for reflection. A wild burst of passion held her firmly in its grasp. She hated everybody and everything in Harding–the faculty who had made such a commotion about two little low grades–for Eleanor had come surprisingly near to clearing her record at mid-years,–Jean, who had stupidly brought all this extra annoyance upon her; the class, who were glad to get rid of her, Betty, who–yes, Jean had been right about one thing–Betty, who had taken advantage of a friend’s misfortune to curry favor for herself. They were all leagued againsther. But–here the Watson pride suddenly asserted itself–they should never know that she cared, never guess that they had hurt her.
She deliberately selected the most becoming of her new evening gowns, and in an incredibly short time swept down to dinner, radiantly beautiful in the creamy lace dress, and–outwardly at least–in her sunniest, most charming mood. She insisted that the table should admire her dress, and the pearl pendant which her aunt had just sent her.
“I’m wearing it, you see, to celebrate my return to the freedom of private life,” she rattled on glibly. “I understand you’ve found a genius to take my place. I’m delighted that we have one in the class. It’s so convenient. Who of you are going to the Burton House dance to-night?”
So she led the talk from point to point and from hand to hand. She bantered Mary, deferred to Helen and the Riches, appealed in comradely fashion to Katherine and Rachel. Betty alone she utterly, though quite unostentatiously, ignored; and Betty, too much hurt to make any effort, stood aside and tried to solvethe riddle of Eleanor’s latest caprice. On the way up-stairs Eleanor spoke to her for the first time. She went up just ahead of her and at the top of the flight she turned and waited.
“I understand that you quite ran the class to-day,” she said with a flashing smile. “The girls tell me that you’re a born orator, as good in your way as the genius in hers.”
Betty rallied herself for one last effort. “Don’t make fun of me, Eleanor. Please let me come in and tell you about it. You don’t understand—”
“Possibly not,” said Eleanor coldly. “But I’m going out now.”
“Just for a moment!”
“But I have to start at once. I’m late already.”
“Oh, very well,” said Betty, and turned away to join Mary and Roberta.
Eleanor’s mind always worked with lightning rapidity, and while she dressed she had gone over the whole situation and decided exactly how she would meet it; and in the weeks that followed she kept rigidly to the course she had marked out for herself, changing only one detail. At first she hadintended to have nothing more to do with Jean, but she saw that a sudden breaking off of their friendship would be remarked upon and wondered at. So she compromised by treating Jean exactly as usual, but seeing her as little as possible. This made it necessary to refuse many of her invitations to college affairs, for wherever she went Jean was likely to go. So she spent much of her leisure time away from Harding; she went to Winsted a great deal, and often ran down to Boston or New York for Sunday, declaring that the trips meant nothing to a Westerner used to the “magnificent distances” of the plains. Naturally she grew more and more out of touch with the college life, more and more scornful of the girls who could be content with the narrow, humdrum routine at Harding. But she concealed her scorn perfectly. And she no longer neglected her work; she attended her classes regularly and managed with a modicum of preparation to recite far better than the average student. Furthermore her work was now scrupulously honest, and she was sensitively alert to the slightest imputation of untruthfulness. Sheoffered no specious explanations for her withdrawal from the debate, and when Mary Brooks innocently inquired “what little yarn” she told the registrar, that she could get away so often, Eleanor fixed her with an unpleasantly penetrative stare and answered with all her old-time hauteur that she did not tell “yarns.”
“I have a note from my father. So long as I do my work and go to all my classes, they really can’t object to my spending my Sundays as he wishes.”
Betty observed all these changes without being in the least able to reconcile them with Eleanor’s new attitude toward herself. Unlike the friendship with Jean, Eleanor’s intercourse with her had been inconspicuous, confined mostly to the Chapin house itself. Even the girls there, because Eleanor had stood so aloof from them, had seen little of it, so Eleanor was free to break it off without thinking of public opinion, and she did so ruthlessly. From the day of the class meeting she spoke to Betty only when she must, or, if no one was by, when some taunting remark occurred to her.
At first Betty tried her best to think how she could have offended, but she could not discuss the subject with any one else and endless consideration and rejection of hypotheses was fruitless, so after Eleanor had twice refused her an interview that would have settled the matter, she sensibly gave it up. Eleanor would perhaps “come round” in time. Meanwhile it was best to let her alone.
But Betty felt that she was having more than her share of trouble; Helen was quite as trying in her way as Eleanor in hers. She had entirely lost her cheerful air and seemed to have grown utterly discouraged with life.
“And no wonder, for she studies every minute,” Betty told Rachel and Katherine. “I think she feels hurt because the girls don’t get to like her better, but how can they when she doesn’t give them any chance?”
“She’s awfully touchy lately,” added Katherine.
“Poor little thing!” said Rachel.
Then the three plunged into an animated discussion of basket-ball, and Rachel and Katherine, who were on a sort of provisional team that included most of the best freshmanplayers and arrogated to itself the name of “The Stars,” showed Betty in strictest confidence the new cross-play that “T. Reed” had invented. “T. Reed” seemed to be the basket-ball genius of the freshman class. She was the only girl who was perfectly sure to be on the regular team.
It is one of the fine things about college that no matter who of your friends are temporarily lost to you, there is always somebody else to fall back upon, and some new interest to take the place of one that flags. Betty had noticed this and been amused by it early in her course. Sometimes, as she said to Miss Ferris in one of her many long talks with that lady, things change so fast that you really begin to wonder if you can be the same person you were last week.
Besides the inter-class basket-ball game, there was the Hilton House play to talk about and look forward to, and the rally; and, nearer still, St. Valentine’s day. It was a long time, to be sure, since Betty had been much excited over the last named festival; in her experience only children exchanged valentines. But at Harding it seemed to bedifferent. While the day was still several weeks off she had received three invitations to valentine parties. She consulted Mary Brooks and found that this was not at all unusual.
“All the campus houses give them,” Mary explained, “and the big ones outside, just as they do for Hallowe’en. They have valentine boxes, you know, and sometimes fancy dress balls.”
And there the matter would have dropped if Mary had not spent all her monthly allowance three full weeks before she was supposed to have any more. Poverty was Mary’s chronic state. Not that Dr. Brooks’s checks were small, but his daughter’s spending capacity was infinite.
“You wait till you’re a prominent sophomore,” she said when Katherine laughed at her, “and all your friends are making societies, and you just have to provide violets and suppers, in hopes that they’ll do as much for you later on. The whole trouble is that father wants me to be on an allowance, instead of writing home for money when I’m out. And no matter how much I say I need, it never lasts out the month.”
“Why don’t you tutor?” suggested Rachel, who got along easily on a third of what Mary spent. “I hope to next year.”
“Tutor!” repeated Mary with a reminiscent chuckle. “I tried to tutor my cousin this fall in algebra, and the poor thing flunked much worse than before. But anyway the faculty wouldn’t give me regular tutoring. I look too well-to-do. Ah! how deceitful are appearances!” sighed Mary, opening her pocketbook, where five copper pennies rattled about forlornly.
But the very next day she dashed into Betty’s room proclaiming loudly, “I have an idea, and I want you to help me, Betty Wales. You can draw and I’ll cut them out and drum up customers, and I guess I can write the verses. We ought to make our ad. to-night.”
“Our what?” inquired Betty in an absolutely mystified tone.
Then Mary explained that she proposed to sell valentines. “Lots of the girls who can’t draw buy theirs, not down-town, you know–we don’t give that kind here,–but cunning little hand-made ones with pen-and-ink drawingsand original verses. Haven’t you noticed the signs on the ‘For Sale’ bulletin?”
Betty had not even seen that bulletin board since she and Helen had hunted second-hand screens early in the fall, but the plan sounded very attractive; it would fill up her spare hours, and keep her from worrying over Eleanor, and getting cross at Helen, so she was very willing to help if Mary honestly thought she could draw well enough.
“Goodness, yes!” said Mary, rushing off to borrow Roberta’s water-color paper and Katherine’s rhyming dictionary.
So the partnership was formed, a huge red heart covered with hastily decorated samples was stuck up on the “For Sale” bulletin in the gymnasium basement, and, as Betty’s cupids were really very charming and her Christy heads quite as good as the average copy, names began to appear in profusion on the order-sheet.
Mary had written two sample verses with comparative ease, and in the first flush of confidence she had boldly printed on the sign: “Rhymed grinds for special personsfurnished at reasonable rates.” But later, when everybody seemed to want that kind, even the valuable aid of the rhyming dictionary did not disprove the adage that poets are born, not made.
“I can’t–I just can’t do them,” wailed Mary finally. “Jokes simply will not go into rhyme. What shall we do?”
“Get Roberta–she writes beautifully–and Katherine–she told me that she’d like to help,” suggested Betty, without looking up from the chubby cupid she was fashioning.
So Katherine and Roberta were duly approached and Katherine was added to the firm. Roberta at first said she couldn’t, but finally, after exacting strict pledges of secrecy, she produced half a dozen dainty little lyrics, bidding Mary use them if she wished–they were nothing. But no amount of persuasion would induce her to do any more.
However, Katherine’s genius was nothing if not profuse, and she preferred to do “grinds,” so Mary could devote herself to sentimental effusions,–which, so she declared, did not have to have any special point and so were within her powers,–and to the businessend of the project. This, in her view, consisted in perching on a centrally located window-seat in the main building, in the intervals between classes, and soliciting orders from all passers-by, to the consequent crowding of the narrow halls and the great annoyance of the serious-minded, who wished to reach their recitations promptly. But from her point of view she was strikingly successful.
“I tell you, I never appreciated how easy it is to make money if you only set about it in the right way,” she announced proudly one day at luncheon. “By the way, Betty, would you run down after gym to get our old order sheet and put up a new one? I have a special topic in psychology to-morrow, and if Professor Hinsdale really thinks I’m clever I don’t want to undeceive him too suddenly.”
Betty promised, but after gym Rachel asked her to stay and play basket-ball with “The Stars” in the place of an absent member. Naturally she forgot everything else and it was nearly six o’clock when, sauntering home from an impromptu tea-drinking at the Belden House, she remembered the ordersheet. It was very dusky in the basement. Betty, plunging down the steps that led directly into the small room where the bulletin board was, almost knocked down a girl who was curled up on the bottom step of the flight.
“Goodness! did I hurt you?” she said, a trifle exasperated that any one should want to sit alone in the damp darkness of the basement.
There was no answer, and Betty, whose eyes were growing accustomed to the dim light, observed with consternation that her companion was doing her best to stop crying.
As has already been remarked, Betty hated tears as a kitten hates rain. Personally she never cried without first locking her door, and she could imagine nothing so humiliating as to be caught, unmistakably weeping, by a stranger. So she turned aside swiftly, peered about in the shadows for the big red heart, changed the order sheet, and was wondering whether she would better hurry out past the girl or wait for her to recover her composure and depart, when the girl took the situation out of her hands by rising and sayingin cheery tones, “Good-evening, Miss Wales. Are you going my way?”
“I–why it’s Emily–I mean Miss–Davis,” cried Betty.
“Yes, it’s Emily Davis, in the blues, the more shame to her, when she ought to be at home getting supper this minute. Wait just a second, please.” Miss Davis went over to the signs, jerked down one, and picking up her books from the bottom step announced without the faintest trace of embarrassment, “Now I’m ready.”
“But are you sure you want me?” inquired Betty timidly.
“Bless you, yes,” said Miss Davis. “I’ve wanted to know you for ever so long. I’m sorry you caught me being a goose, though.”
“And I’m sorry you felt like crying,” said Betty shyly. “Why, Miss Davis, I should want to laugh all the time if I’d done what you did the other day. I should be so proud.”
Miss Davis smiled happily down at her small companion. “I was proud,” she said simply. “I only hope I can do as well week after next. But Miss Wales, that was the jamof college life. There’s the bread and butter too, you know, and sometimes that’s a lot harder to earn than the jam.”
“Do you mean—” began Betty and stopped, not wanting to risk hurting Miss Davis’s feelings.
“Yes, I mean that I’m working my way through. I have a scholarship, but there’s still my board and clothes and books.”
“And you do it all?”
Miss Davis nodded. “My cousin sends me some clothes.”
“How do you do it, please?”
“Tutor, sort papers and make typewritten copies of things for the faculty, put on dress braids (that’s how I met the B’s), mend stockings, and wait on table off and on when some one’s maid leaves suddenly. We thought it would be cheaper and pleasanter to board ourselves and earn our money in different ways than to take our board in exchange for regular table-waiting; but I don’t know. The other way is surer.”
“You mean you don’t find work enough?”
Miss Davis nodded. “It takes a good deal,” she said apologetically, “and there isn’tmuch tutoring that freshmen can do. After this year it will be easier.”
“Dear me,” gasped Betty. “Don’t you get any–any help from home?”
“Well, they haven’t been able to send any yet, but they hope to later,” said Miss Davis brightly.
“And does it pay when you have to work so hard for it?”
“Oh, yes,” answered Miss Davis promptly. “All three of us are sure that it pays.”
“Three of you live together?”
“Yes. Of course there are ever so many others in the college, and I’m sure all of them would say the same thing.”
“And–I hope I’m not being rude–but do girls–do you advertise things down on that bulletin board? I don’t know much about it. I never was there but once till I went to-day on–on an errand for a friend,” Betty concluded awkwardly. Perhaps she had been an interloper. Perhaps that bulletin board had not been meant for girls like her.
Miss Davis evidently assumed that she had been to leave an order. “You ought to buy more,” she said laughingly. “But you wantto know what I was there for, don’t you? Why yes, we do make a good deal off that bulletin board. One of the girls paints a little and she advertises picture frames–Yale and Harvard and Pennsylvania ones, you know. I sell blue-prints. A senior lends me her films. She has a lot of the faculty and the campus, and they go pretty well. We use the money we make from those things for little extras–ribbons and note-books and desserts for Sunday. We hoped to make quite a bit on valentines—”
“Valentines?” repeated Betty sharply.
“Yes, but a good many others thought of it too, and we didn’t get any orders–not one. Ours weren’t so extra pretty and it was foolish of me to be so disappointed, but we’d worked hard getting ready and we did want a little more money so much.”
They had reached Betty’s door by this time, and Miss Davis hurried on, saying it was her turn to get supper and begging Betty to come and see them. “For we’re very cozy, I assure you. You mustn’t think we have a horrid time just because–you know why.”
Betty went straight to Mary’s room, which,since she had no roommate to object to disorder, had been the chief seat of the valentine industry.
“You’re a nice one,” cried Katherine, “staying off like this when to-day is the eleventh.”
“Many orders?” inquired Mary.
Betty sat down on Mary’s couch, ruthlessly sweeping aside a mass of half finished valentines to make room. “Girls, this has got to stop,” she announced abruptly.
Mary dropped her scissors and Katherine shut the rhyming dictionary with a bang.
“What is the trouble?” they asked in chorus.
Then Betty told her story, suppressing only Emily’s name and mentioning all the details that had made up the point and pathos of it. “And just think!” she said at last. “She’s a girl you’d both be proud to know, and she works like that. And we stepped in and took away a chance of–of ribbons and note-books and dessert for Sunday.”
“May be not; perhaps hers were so homely they wouldn’t have sold anyway,” suggested Katherine with an attempt at jocoseness.
“Don’t, please,” said Betty wearily.
Mary came and sat down beside her on the couch. “Well, what’s to be done about it now?” she asked soberly.
“I don’t know. We can’t give them orders because she took her sign down. I thought perhaps–how much have we made?”
“Fifteen dollars easily. All right; we’ll send it to them.”
“Of course,” chimed in Katherine. “I was only joking. Shall we finish these up?”
“Yes indeed,” said Mary, “they’re all ordered, and the more money the better, n’est ce pas, Betty? But aren’t we to know the person’s name?”
Betty hesitated. “Why–no–that is if you don’t mind very much. You see she sort of told me about herself because she had to, so I feel as if I oughtn’t to repeat it. Do you mind?”
“Not one bit,” said Katherine quickly. “And we needn’t say anything at all about it, except–don’t you think the girls here in the house will have to know that we’re going to give away the money?”
“Yes,” put in Mary, “and we’ll make them all give us extra orders.”
“We will save out a dollar for you to live on till March,” said Betty.
“Oh no, I shall borrow of you,” retorted Mary, and then they all laughed and felt better.
On St. Valentine’s morning Betty posted a registered valentine. The verse read:–