“There is a team of great renown.”
“There is a team of great renown.”
They were beaten, of course, but they were proud of that team.
“The freshmen score one goal on fouls. Score, six to eight in favor of the purple,” announced Miss Andrews after a moment. “And I want to say—”
It was unpardonably rude, but they could not help interrupting to cheer.
“That I am proud of all the players. It was a splendid game,” she finished, when the thoughtful ones had hushed the rest.
Then they cheered again. The sophomore team were carrying their captain around the gym on their shoulders; the freshmen, gathered in a brave little group, were winking hard and cheering with the rest. The gallery was emptying itself with incredible rapidity on to the floor. The stage was watching, and wishing–some of it–that it could go down on the floor and shriek and sing and be young and foolish generally.
Betty and Helen ran down with the rest.“Helen,” whispered Betty on the way, “I don’t care what happens, I will, I will, I will make them sing to me some day. Oh Helen, don’t you love 19–, and aren’t you proud of it and of T. Reed?”
At the foot of the stairs they met the three B’s. “Come on, come on,” cried the three. “We’re going to sing to the sophomores,” and they seized upon Betty and bore her off to the corner where the freshmen were assembling. Left to herself Helen got into a nook by the door and watched. It was queer how much fun it was to watch, lately.
“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them:”–she had read it in the library that morning and it kept running in her head. Was it selfish and conceited to want to be worth something to her college–to long to do something that would give her a place among the girls? A month ago Theresa had stood with her high up on the bank and watched the current sweep by. Now she was in the stream; even Betty Wales envied her; she had “achieved greatness.” Betty wanted to be sung to. Well, no doubt she would be, inspite of the “interruptions”; she was “born great.” Helen aspired only to write a song to be sung. That wasn’t very much, and she would try hard–Theresa said it was all trying and caring–for she must somehow prove herself worthy of the greatness that had been “thrust upon” her.
Betty was in the centre of an excited group of freshmen. Christy Mason was there too; probably they were planning for the serenade. “She won’t mind if I go,” thought Helen. She would have liked to speak to Theresa, but she had delayed too long; the teams had disappeared. So she slipped out alone. There would be a long, quiet evening for theme work–for Helen had elected Mary’s theme course at mid-years, though no one in the Chapin house knew it.
Betty did not get home till quarter of ten, and then she went straight off to find Katherine and Rachel. “I came to see if there’s anything left of Rachel,” she said.
“There’s a big bump on my forehead,” said Rachel, sitting up in bed with a faint smile. “I’m sure of that because it aches.”
“Poor lady!” Betty turned to Katherine.“You got your chance, didn’t you? I felt it in my bones that you would. Wasn’t it all splendid?”
“Yes indeed,” assented the contestants heartily.
“It made me feel so energetic,” Betty went on eagerly. “Of course I felt proud of you and of 19–, just as I did at the rally, but there was something else, too. You’ll see me going at things next term the way T. Reed went at that ball.”
“You’re one of the most energetic persons I know, as it is,” said Rachel, smiling at her earnestness.
“Yes,” said Betty impatiently. “I fly around and make a great commotion, but I fritter away my time, because I forget to keep my eyes on the ball. Why, I haven’t done anything this year.”
Katherine pulled Betty down beside her on the couch. “Child, you’ve done a lot,” she said. “We were just considering all you’ve done, and wondering why you weren’t asked to usher to-day. You’ve sub-subed a lot and you know so many girls on the team and are such good friends with Jean Eastman.”
To her consternation Betty felt a hot flush creeping up her neck and over her cheeks. It had been the one consolation in the trouble with Eleanor that none of the Chapin house girls had asked any questions or even appeared to notice that anything was wrong.
“Oh, I don’t know Miss Eastman much,” she said quickly. “And as for substituting on the subs, that was a great privilege. That wasn’t anything to make me an usher for.”
“Well, all the other girls who did it much ushered,” persisted Katherine. “Christy Mason and Kate Denise and that little Ruth Ford. And you’d have made such a stunning one.”
“Goosie!” said Betty, rising abruptly. “I know you girls want to go to bed. We’ll talk it all over to-morrow.”
As she closed the door, Rachel and Katherine exchanged glances. “I told you there was trouble,” said Katherine, “and mark my words, Eleanor Watson is at the bottom of it somehow.”
“Don’t let’s notice it again, though,” answered the considerate Rachel. “She evidently doesn’t want to tell us about it.”
Betty undressed almost in silence. Her exhilaration had left her all at once and her ambition; life looked very complicated and unprofitable. As she went over to turn out the light, she noticed a sheet of paper, much erased and interlined, on Helen’s desk. “Have you begun your song already?” she asked.
“Oh, no, I wrote a theme,” said Helen with what seemed needless embarrassment. But the theme was a little verse called “Happiness.” She got it back the next week heavily under-scored in red ink, and with a succinct “Try prose,” beneath it; but she was not discouraged. She had had one turn; she could afford to wait patiently for another, which, if you tried long enough and cared hard enough must come at last.
Eleanor Watson had gotten neither class spirit nor personal ambition from 19–’s “glorious old defeat,” as Katherine called it. The Saturday afternoon of the game she had spent, greatly to the disgust of her friends, on the way to New York, whither she went for a Sunday with Caroline Barnes. Caroline’s mother had been very ill, and the European trip was indefinitely postponed, but the family were going for a shorter jaunt to Bermuda. Caroline begged Eleanor to join them. “You can come as well as not,” she urged. “You know your father would let you–he always does. And we sail the very first day of your vacation too.”
“But you stay three weeks,” objected Eleanor, “and the vacation is only two.”
“What’s the difference? Say you were ill and had to stay over,” suggested Caroline promptly.
Eleanor’s eyes flashed. “Once for all, Cara, please understand that’s not my way of doing business nowadays. I should like to go, though, and I imagine my father wouldn’t object. I’ll write you if I can arrange it.”
She had quite forgotten her idle promise when, on the following Monday morning, she stood in the registrar’s office, waiting to get a record card for chapel attendance in place of one she had lost. The registrar was busy. Eleanor waited while she discussed the pedagogical value of chemistry with a sophomore who had elected it, and now, after a semester and a half of gradually deteriorating work, wished to drop it because the smells made her ill.
“Does the fact that we sent you a warning last week make the smells more unendurable?” asked the registrar suggestively, and the sophomore retreated in blushing confusion.
Next in line was a nervous little girl who inquired breathlessly if she might go home right away–four days early. Some friends who were traveling south in their private car had telegraphed her to meet them inAlbany and go with them to her home in Charleston.
“My dear, I’m sorry,” began the registrar sympathetically, “but I can’t let you go. We’re going to be very strict about this vacation. A great many girls went home early at Christmas, and it’s no exaggeration to say that a quarter of the college came back late on various trivial excuses. This time we’re not going to have that sort of thing. The girls who come back at all must come on time; the only valid excuse at either end of the vacation will be serious illness. I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” said the little girl, with a pathetic quiver in her voice. “I never rode in a private car. But–it’s no matter. Thank you, Miss Stuart.”
Eleanor had listened to the conversation with a curl of her lip for the stupid child who proffered her request in so unconvincing a manner, and an angry resentment against the authorities who should presume to dictate times and seasons. “They ought to have a system of cuts,” she thought. “That’s the only fair way. Then you can take them whenyou please, and if you cut over you know it and you do it at your peril. Here everything is in the air; you are never sure where you stand—”
“What can I do for you, Miss Watson?” asked the registrar pleasantly.
Eleanor got her chapel card and hurried home to telegraph her father for permission to go to Bermuda, and, as she knew exactly what his answer would be, to write Caroline that she might expect her. “You know I always take a dare,” she wrote. “My cuts last semester amounted to twice as much as this trip will use up, and if they make a fuss I shall just call their attention to what they let pass last time. Please buy me a steamer-rug, a blue and green plaid one, and meet me at the Forty-second Street station at two on Friday.”
Betty knew nothing about Eleanor’s plans, beyond what she had been able to gather from chance remarks of the other girls; and that was not much, for every time the subject came up she hastened to change it, lest some one should discover that Eleanor had told her nothing, and had scarcely spoken to her indeedfor weeks. When Eleanor finally went off, without a sign or a word of good-bye, Betty discovered that she was dreadfully disappointed. She had never thought of the estrangement between them as anything but a temporary affair, that would blow over when Eleanor’s mortification over the debate was forgotten. She had felt sure that long before the term ended there would come a chance for a reconciliation, and she had meant to take the chance at any sacrifice of her pride. She was still fond of Eleanor in spite of everything, and she was sorry for her too, for her quick eyes detected signs of growing unhappiness under Eleanor’s ready smiles. Besides, she hated “schoolgirl fusses.” She wanted to be on good terms with every girl in 19–. She wanted to come back to a spring term unclouded by the necessity for any of the evasions and subterfuges that concealment of the quarrel with Eleanor and Jean Eastman’s strange behavior had brought upon her. And now Eleanor was gone; the last chance until after vacation had slipped through her fingers.
At home she told Nan all about her troubles,first exacting a solemn pledge of secrecy. “Hateful thing!” said Nan promptly. “Drop her. Don’t think about her another minute.”
“Then you don’t think I was to blame?” asked Betty anxiously.
“To blame? No, certainly not. To be sure,” Nan added truthfully, “you were a little tactless. You knew she didn’t know that you were in the secret of her having to resign, and you didn’t intend to tell her, so it would have been better for you to let some one else help Miss Eastman out.”
“But I thought I was helping Eleanor out.”
“In a way you were. But you see it wouldn’t seem so to her. It would look as though you disapproved of her appointment.”
“But Nan, she knows now that I knew.”
“Then I suppose she concludes that you took advantage of knowing. You say that it made you quite prominent for a while. You see, dear, when a person isn’t quite on the square herself—”
But Betty had burst into a storm of tears. “I am to blame,” she sobbed. “I am to blame! I knew it, only I couldn’t quite seehow. Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?”
“Don’t cry, dear,” said Nan in distress, at the unprecedented sight of Betty in tears. “I tell you, you were not to blame. You were a little unwise perhaps at first, but Miss Watson has refused your apologies and explanations and only laughs at you when you try to talk to her about it. I should drop her at once and forever; but, if you are bound to bring her around, the only way I can think of is to look out for some chance to serve her and so prove your real friendship–though what sort of friend she can be I can’t imagine.”
“Nan, she’s just like the girl in the rhyme,” said Betty seriously.
“‘When she was good she was very, very good,And when she was bad she was horrid.’
“‘When she was good she was very, very good,And when she was bad she was horrid.’
“Eleanor is a perfect dear most of the time. And Nan, there’s something queer about her mother. She never speaks of her, and she’s been at boarding school for eight years now, though she’s not seventeen till May. Think of that!”
“It certainly makes her excusable for agood deal,” said Nan. “How is my friend Helen Chase Adams coming on?”
“Why Nan, she’s quite blossomed out. She’s really lots of fun now. But I had an awful time with her for a while,” and she related the story of Helen’s winter of discontent. “I suppose that was my fault too,” she finished. “I seem to be a regular blunderer.”
“You’re a dear little sister, all the same,” declared Nan.
“I say girls, come and play ping-pong,” called Will from the hall below, and the interview ended summarily.
But the memory of Eleanor Watson seemed fated to pursue Betty through her vacation. A few days later an old friend of Mrs. Wales, who had gone to Denver to live some years before and was east on a round of visits, came in to call. The moment she heard that Betty was at Harding, she inquired for Eleanor. “I’m so glad you know her,” she said. “She’s quite a protégé of mine and she needs nice friends like you if ever a girl did. Don’t mention it about college, Betty, but she’s had a very sad life. Her motherwas a strange woman–but there’s no use going into that. She died when Eleanor was a tiny girl, and Eleanor and her brother Jim have been at boarding schools ever since. In the summers, though, they were always with their father in Denver. They worshiped him, particularly Eleanor, and he has always promised her that when she was through school he would open the old Watson mansion and she should keep house for him and Jim. Then last year a pretty little society girl, only four or five years older than Eleanor, set her cap for the judge and married him. Jim liked her, but Eleanor was heart-broken, and the judge, seeing storms ahead, I suppose, and hoping that Eleanor would get interested and want to finish the course, made her promise to go to Harding for a year. Now don’t betray my confidence, Betty, and do make allowances for Eleanor. I hope she’ll be willing to stay on at college. It’s just what she needs. Besides, she’d be very unhappy at home, and her aunt in New York isn’t at all the sort of person for her to live with.”
So it came about that Betty returned tocollege more than ever determined to get back upon the old footing with Eleanor, and behold, Eleanor was not there! The Chapin house was much excited over her absence, for tales of the registrar’s unprecedented hardness of heart had gone abroad, and almost nobody else had dared to risk the mysterious but awful possibilities that a late return promised. As Betty was still supposed by most of the house to be in Eleanor’s confidence, she had to parry question after question as to her whereabouts. To, “Did she tell you that she was coming back late?” she could truthfully answer “No.” But the girls only laughed when she insisted that Eleanor must be ill.
“She boasts that she’s never been ill in her life,” said Mary Brooks.
And Adelaide Rich always added with great positiveness, “It’s exactly like her to stay away on purpose, just to see what will happen.”
Unfortunately Betty could not deny this, and she was glad enough to drop the argument. She had too many pleasant things to do to care to waste time in profitless discussion.For it was spring term. Nobody but a Harding girl knows exactly what that means. The freshman is very likely to consider the much heralded event only a pretty myth, until having started from home on a cold, bleak day that is springtime only by the calendar, she arrives at Harding to find herself confronted by the genuine article. The sheltered situation of the town undoubtedly has something to do with its early springs, but the attitude of the Harding girl has far more. She knows that spring term is the beautiful crown of the college year, and she is bound that it shall be as long as possible. So she throws caution and her furs to the winds and dons a muslin gown, plans drives and picnics despite April showers, and takes twilight strolls regardless of lurking germs of pneumonia. The grass grows green perforce and the buds swell to meet her wishes, while the sun, finding a creature after his brave, warm heart, does his gallant best for her.
“Do what little studying you intend to right away,” Mary Brooks advised her freshmen. “Before you know it, it will be too warm to work.”
“But at present it’s too lovely,” objected Roberta.
“Then join the Athletic Association and trust to luck, but above all join the Athletic Association. I’m on the membership committee.”
“Can I get into the golf club section this time?” asked Betty, who had been kept on the waiting list all through the fall.
“Yes, you just squeeze in, and Christy Mason wants you to play round the course with her to-morrow.”
“I’m for tennis,” said Katherine. “Miss Lawrence and I are going to play as soon as the courts are marked out. By the way, when do the forget-me-nots blossom?”
“Has Laurie roped you into that?” asked Mary Brooks scornfully.
“Don’t jump at conclusions,” retorted Katherine.
“I didn’t have to jump. The wild ones blossom about the middle of May. You’ll have to think of something else if you want to make an immediate conquest of your angel. And speaking of angels,” added Mary,who was sitting by a window, “Eleanor Watson is coming up the walk.”
The girls trooped out into the hall to greet Eleanor, who met them all with the carefully restrained cordiality that she had used toward them ever since the break with Betty. Yes, Bermuda had been charming, such skies and seas. Yes, she was just a week late–exactly. No, she had not seen the registrar yet, but she had heard last term that excuses weren’t being given away by the dozen.
“I met a friend of yours during vacation,” began Betty timidly in the first pause.
Eleanor turned to her unsmilingly. “Oh yes, Mrs. Payne,” she said. “I believe she mentioned it. I saw her last night in New York.” Then she picked up her bag and walked toward her room with the remark that late comers mustn’t waste time.
The next day at luncheon some one inquired again about her excuse. Eleanor shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, that’s all right; you needn’t be at all anxious. The interview wasn’t even amusing. The week is to be counted as unexcused absence–which as far as I can see means nothing whatever.”
“You may find out differently in June,” suggested Mary, nettled by Eleanor’s superior air.
“Oh, June!” said Eleanor with another shrug. “I’m leaving in June, thank the fates!”
“Perhaps you’ll change your mind after spring term. Everybody says it’s so much nicer,” chirped Helen.
“Possibly,” said Eleanor curtly, “but I really can’t give you much encouragement, Miss Adams.” Whereat poor Helen subsided meekly, scarcely raising her eyes from her plate through the rest of the meal.
“Better caution your friend Eleanor not to air those sentiments of hers about unexcused absences too widely, or she’ll get into trouble,” said Mary Brooks to Betty on the way up-stairs; but Betty, intent on persuading Roberta to come down-town for an ice, paid no particular attention to the remark, and it was three weeks before she thought of it again.
She found Eleanor more unapproachable than ever this term, but remembering Nan’s suggestion she resolved to bide her time. Meanwhile there was no reason for not enjoyinglife to the utmost. Golf, boating, walking, tennis–there were ten ways to spend every spare minute. But golf usually triumphed. Betty played very well, and having made an excellent record in her first game with Christy, she immediately found herself reckoned among the enthusiasts and expected to get into trim for the June tournament. Some three weeks after the beginning of the term she went up to the club house in the late afternoon, intending to practice putting, which was her weak point and come home with Christy and Nita Reese, another golf fiend, who had spent the whole afternoon on the course.
But on the club house piazza she found Dorothy King. Dorothy played golf exceedingly well, as she did everything else; but as she explained to Betty, “By junior year all this athletic business gets pretty much crowded out.” She still kept her membership in the club, however, and played occasionally, “just to keep her hand in for the summer.” She had done six holes this afternoon, all alone, and now she was resting a few moments before going home. She greeted Betty warmly.“I looked for you out on the course,” she said, “but your little pals thought you weren’t coming up to-day. How’s your game?”
“Better, thank you,” said Betty, “except my putting, and I’m going to practice on that now. Did you know that Christy had asked me to play with her in the inter-class foursomes?”
“That’s good,” said Dorothy cordially. “Do you see much of Eleanor Watson these days?” she added irrelevantly.
“Why–no-t much,” stammered Betty, blushing in spite of herself. “I see her at meals of course.”
“I thought you told me once that you were very fond of her.”
“Yes, I did–I am,” said Betty quickly, wondering what in the world Dorothy was driving at.
“She was down at the house last night,” Dorothy went on, “blustering around about having come back late, saying that she’d shown what a bluff the whole excuse business is, and that now, after she has proved that it’s perfectly easy to cut over at the endof a vacation, perhaps some of us timid little creatures will dare to follow her lead. But perhaps you’ve heard her talking about it.”
“I heard her say a little about it,” admitted Betty, suddenly remembering Mary Brooks’s remark. Had the “trouble” that Mary had foreseen anything to do with Dorothy’s questions?
“She’s said a great deal about it in the last two weeks,” went on Dorothy. “Last night after she left, her senior friend, Annette Cramer, and I had a long talk about it. We both agreed that somebody ought to speak to her, but I hardly know her, and Annette says that she’s tried to talk to her about other things and finds she hasn’t a particle of influence with her.” Dorothy paused as if expecting some sort of comment or reply, but Betty was silent. “We both thought,” said Dorothy at last, “that perhaps if you’d tell her she was acting very silly and doing herself no end of harm she might believe you and stop.”
“Oh, Miss King, I couldn’t,” said Betty in consternation. “She wouldn’t let me–indeed she wouldn’t!”
“She told Annette once that she admired you more than any girl in college,” urged Dorothy quietly, “so your opinion ought to have some weight with her.”
“She said that!” gasped Betty in pleased amazement. Then her face fell. “I’m sorry, Miss King, but I’m quite sure she’s changed her mind. I couldn’t speak to her; but would you tell me please just why any one should–why you care?”
“Why, of course, it’s not exactly my business,” said Dorothy, “except that I’m on the Students’ Commission, and so anything that is going wrong is my business. Miss Watson is certainly having a bad influence on the girls she knows in college, and besides, if that sort of talk gets to the ears of the authorities, as it’s perfectly certain to do if she keeps on, she will be very severely reprimanded, and possibly asked to leave, as an insubordinate and revolutionary character. The Students’ Commission aims to avoid all that sort of thing, when a quiet hint will do it. But Miss Watson seems to be unusually difficult to approach; I’m afraid if you can’t help us out, Betty, we shall have to let the matter rest.”She gathered up her caddy-bag. “I must get the next car. Don’t do it unless you think best. Or if you like ask some one else. Annette and I couldn’t think of any one, but you know better who her friends are.” She was off across the green meadow.
Betty half rose to follow, then sank back into her chair. Dorothy had not asked for an answer; she had dropped the matter, had left it in her hands to manage as she thought fit, appealing to her as a friend of Eleanor’s, a girl whom Eleanor admired. “Whom she used to admire,” amended Betty with a sigh. But what could she do? A personal appeal was out of the question; it would effect nothing but a widening of the breach between them. Could Kate Denise help? She never came to see Eleanor now. Neither did Jean Eastman–why almost nobody did; all her really intimate friends seemed to have dropped away from her. And yet she must think of some one, for was not this the opportunity she had so coveted? It might be the very last one too, thought Betty. “If anything happened to hurt Eleanor’s feelings again, she wouldn’t wait till June. She’d go now.” She consideredgirl after girl, but rejected them all for various reasons. “She wouldn’t take it from any girl,” she decided, and with that decision came an inspiration. Why not ask Ethel Hale? Ethel had tried to help Eleanor before, was interested in her, and understood something of her moody, many-sided temperament. She had put Eleanor in her debt too; she could urge her suggestion on the ground of a return favor.
In an instant Betty’s mind was made up. She looked ruefully at her dusty shoes and mussed shirt-waist. “I can’t go to see Ethel in these,” she decided, “but if I hurry home now I can dress and go right up there after dinner, before she gets off anywhere.” The putting must wait. With one regretful glance out over the green, breezy course Betty started resolutely off toward the dusty highway and the noisy trolleys.
“I wish I could do it, Betty, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be the least use for me to try. I thought I had a little hold on her for a while, but I’m afraid I was too sure of her. She avoids me now–goes around corners and into recitation rooms when she sees me coming. You see–I wonder if she told you about our trip to New York?”
Betty nodded, wishing she dared explain the full extent of her information.
“I thought so from your coming up here to-night. Well, as you’ve just said, she’s very reserved, strangely so for a young girl; when she lets out anything about herself she wishes that she hadn’t the next minute.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed that,” admitted Betty grudgingly.
“And so, having once let me get a glimpse of her better self, and then having decided as usual that she wished she hadn’t, she neededa proof from me that I was worthy of her confidence. But I didn’t give it; I was busy and let the matter drop, and now I am the last person who could go to her. I’m very sorry.”
“Oh, dear!” said Betty forlornly.
“But isn’t it so? Don’t you agree with me?”
“I’m afraid I do.”
“Then go back and speak to her yourself, dear. She’s very fond of you, and I’m sure a little friendly hint from you is all that she needs.”
“No, I can’t speak to her either, Ethel. You wouldn’t suggest it if you knew how things are between us. But I see that you can’t. Thank you just as much. No, I mustn’t stop to-night.”
Betty walked down the elm-shaded street lost in thought. Eleanor had declaimed upon the foolishness of coming back on time after vacations through most of the dinner hour, and Betty understood as she had not that afternoon what Dorothy meant. But now her one hope had failed her; Ethel had shown good cause why she should not act asEleanor’s adviser and Betty had no idea what to do next.
“Hello, Betty Wales! Christy and I thought we saw you up at the golf club this afternoon.” Nita Reese’s room overlooked the street and she was hanging out her front window.
“I was up there,” said Betty soberly, “but I had to come right back. I didn’t play at all.”
“Then I should say it was a waste of good time to go up,” declared Nita amiably. “You’d better be on hand to-morrow. The juniors are going to be awfully hard to beat.”
“I’ll try,” said Betty unsmilingly, and Nita withdrew her head from the window, wondering what could be the matter with her usually cheerful friend.
At the corner of Meriden Place Betty hesitated. Then, noticing that Mrs. Chapin’s piazza was full of girls, she crossed Main Street and turned into the campus, following the winding path that led away from the dwelling-houses through the apple orchard. There were seats along this path. Betty chose one on the crest of the hill, screenedin by a clump of bushes and looking off toward Paradise and the hills beyond. There she sat down in the warm spring dusk to consider possibilities. And yet what was the use of bothering her head again when she had thought it all over in the afternoon? Arguments that she might have made to Ethel occurred to her now that it was too late to use them, but nothing else. She would go back to Dorothy, explain why she could not speak to Eleanor herself, and beg her to take back the responsibility which she had unwittingly shifted to the wrong shoulders. She would go straight off too. She had found an invitation to a spread at the Belden house scrawled on her blotting pad at dinner time, and she might as well be over there enjoying herself as here worrying about things she could not possibly help.
As she got up from her seat she glanced at the hill that sloped off below her. It was the dust-pan coasting ground. How different it looked now in its spring greenery! Betty smiled at the memory of her mishap. How nice Eleanor had been to her then. And Miss Ferris! If only Miss Ferris would speak toEleanor. “Why, perhaps she will,” thought Betty, suddenly remembering Miss Ferris’s note. “I could ask her to, anyway. But–she’s a faculty. Well, Ethel is too, though I never thought of it.” And Dorothy had wanted Betty’s help in keeping the matter out of the hands of the authorities. “But this is different,” Betty decided at last. “I’m asking them not as officials, but just as awfully nice people, who know what to say better than we girls do. Miss King would think that was all right.”
Without giving herself time to reconsider, Betty sped toward the Hilton house. All sorts of direful suppositions occurred to her while she waited for a maid to answer her ring. What if Miss Ferris had forgotten about writing the note, or had meant it for what Nan called “a polite nothing”? Perhaps it would be childish to speak of it anyway. Perhaps Miss Ferris would have other callers. If not, how should she tell her story?
“I ought to have taken time to think,” reflected Betty, as she followed the maid down the hall to Miss Ferris’s rooms.
Miss Ferris was alone; nevertheless Bettyfidgeted dreadfully during the preliminary small-talk. Somebody would be sure to come in before she could get started, and she should never, never dare to come again. At the first suggestion of a pause she plunged into her business.
“Miss Ferris, I want to ask you something, but I hated to do it, so I came right along as soon as I decided that I’d better, and now I don’t know how to begin.”
“Just begin,” advised Miss Ferris, laughing.
“That is what they say to you in theme classes,” said Betty, “but it never helped me so very much, somehow. Well, I might begin by telling you why I thought I could come to you.”
“Unless you really want to tell that you might skip it,” said Miss Ferris, “because I don’t need to be reminded that I shall always be glad to do anything I can for my good friend Betty Wales.”
“Oh, thank you! That helps a lot,” said Betty gratefully, and went on with her story.
Miss Ferris listened attentively. “Miss Watson is the girl with the wonderful grayeyes and the lovely dark hair. I remember. She comes down here a great deal to see Miss Cramer, I think. It’s a pity, isn’t it, that she hasn’t great good sense to match her beauty? So you want me to speak to her about her very foolish attitude toward our college life. Suppose I shouldn’t succeed in changing her mind?”
“Oh, you would succeed,” said Betty eagerly. “Mary Brooks says you can argue a person into anything.”
Miss Ferris laughed again. “I’m glad Miss Brooks approves of my argumentative ability, but are you sure that Miss Watson is the sort of person with whom argument is likely to count for anything? Did you ever know her to change her mind on a subject of this sort, because her friends disapproved of her?”
Betty hesitated. “Yes–yes, I have. Excuse me for not going into particulars, Miss Ferris, but there was a thing she did when she came here that she never does now, because she found how others felt about it. Indeed, I think there are several things.”
Miss Ferris nodded silently. “Then whynot appeal to the same people who influenced her before?”
It was the question that Betty had been dreading, but she met it unflinchingly. “One of them thinks she has lost her influence, Miss Ferris, and another one who helped a little bit before, can’t, because–I’m that one, Miss Ferris. I unintentionally did something last term that made Eleanor angry with me. It made her more dissatisfied and unhappy here too; so when I heard about this I felt as if I was a little to blame for it, and then I wanted to make up for the other time too. But of course it is a good deal to ask of you.” Betty slid forward on to the edge of her chair ready to accept a hasty dismissal.
Miss Ferris waited a moment. “I shall be very glad to do it,” she said at last. “I wanted to be sure that I understood the situation and that I could run a chance of helping Miss Watson. I think I can, but you must forgive me if I make a bad matter worse. I’ll ask her to have tea with me to-morrow. May I send a note by you?”
“Of course you won’t tell her that I spoke to you?” asked Betty anxiously, when MissFerris handed her the note. Miss Ferris promised and Betty danced out into the night. Half-way home she laughed merrily all to herself.
“What’s the joke?” said a girl suddenly appearing around the corner of the Main Building.
“It was on me,” laughed Betty, “so you can’t expect me to tell you what it was.”
It had just occurred to her that, as there was no possibility of Eleanor’s finding out her part in Miss Ferris’s intervention, a reconciliation was as far away as ever. “She wouldn’t like it if she should find out,” thought Betty, “and perhaps it was just another tactless interference. Well, I’m glad I didn’t think of all these things sooner, for I believe it was the right thing to do, and it was a lot easier doing it while I hoped it might bring us together, as Nan said. I wonder what kind of things Nan meant.”
She dropped the note on the hall table and slipped softly up-stairs. As she sat down at her desk she looked at the clock and hesitated. It was not so late as she had thought, only quarter of nine. There was still time to goback to the Belden. But after a moment’s wavering Betty began getting out of her dress and into a kimono. Since the day of the basket-ball game she had honestly tried not to let the little things interfere with the big, nor the mere “interruptions” that were fun and very little more loom too large in her scale of living. “Livy to-night and golf to-morrow,” she told the green lizard, as she sat down again and went resolutely to work.
When Eleanor came in to dinner the next evening Betty could hardly conceal her excitement. Would she say anything? If she said nothing what would it mean? The interview had apparently not been a stormy one. Eleanor looked tired, but not in the least disturbed or defiant. She ate her dinner almost in silence, answering questions politely but briefly and making none of her usual effort to control and direct the conversation. But just as the girls were ready to leave the table she broke her silence. “Wait a minute,” she said. “I want to ask you please to forget all the foolish things I said last night at dinner. I’ve said them a good many times, and I can’t contradict them to every one, but I can here–andI want to. I’ve thought more about it since yesterday, and I see that I hadn’t at all the right idea of the situation. The students at a college are supposed to be old enough to do the right thing about vacations without the attaching of any childish penalty to the wrong thing. But we all of us get careless; then a public sentiment must be created against the wrong things, like cutting over. That was what the registrar was trying to do. Anybody who stays over as I did makes it less possible to do without rules and regulations and penalties–in other words hurts the tone of the college, just as a man who likes to live in a town where there are churches but never goes to them himself, unfairly throws the responsibility of church-going on to the rest of the community. I hadn’t thought of it in that way; I didn’t mean to be a shirk, but I was one.”
A profound silence greeted Eleanor’s argument. Mary Rich, who had been loud in her championship of Eleanor’s sentiments the night before, looked angry at this sudden desertion; and Mary Brooks tried rather unsuccessfully not to smile. The rest were merely astonished at so sudden a change of mind.Finally Betty gave a little nervous cough and in sheer desperation began to talk. “That’s a good enough argument to change any one’s mind,” she said. “Isn’t it queer how many different views of a subject there are?”
“Of some subjects,” said Eleanor pointedly.
It was exactly what Betty should have expected, but she couldn’t help being a little disappointed. Eleanor had just shown herself so fine and downright, so willing to make all the reparation in her power for a course whose inconsistency had been proved to her. It was very disheartening to find that she cherished the old, reasonless grudge as warmly as ever. But if Betty had accomplished nothing for herself, she had done all that she hoped for Eleanor, and she tried to feel perfectly satisfied.
“I think too much about myself, anyway,” she told the green lizard, who was the recipient of many confidences about this time.
The rest of the month sped by like the wind. As Betty thought it over afterward, it seemed to have been mostly golf practice and bird club. Roberta organized the bird club. Its object, according to her, was to assistMary Brooks with her zoology by finding bird haunts and conveying Mary to them; its ultimate development almost wrought Mary’s ruin. Mary had elected a certain one year course in zoology on the supposition that one year, general courses are usually “snaps,” and the further theory that every well conducted student will have one “snap” on her schedule. These propositions worked well together until the spring term, when zoology 1a resolved itself into a bird-study class. Mary, who was near-sighted, detested bird-study, and hardly knew a crow from a kinglet, found life a burden, until Roberta, who loved birds and was only too glad to get a companion on her walks in search of them, organized what she picturesquely named “the Mary-bird club.” Rachel and Adelaide immediately applied for admission, and about the time that Mary appropriated the forget-me-nots that Katherine had gathered for Marion Lawrence and wore them to a dance on the plea that they exactly matched her evening dress, and also decoyed Betty into betraying her connection with the freshman grind-book, Katherine and Betty joined. They seldomaccompanied the club on its official walks, preferring to stroll off by themselves and come back with descriptions of the birds they had seen for Mary and Roberta to identify. Occasionally they met a friendly bird student who helped them with their identifications on the spot, and then, when Roberta was busy, they would take Mary out in search of “their birds,” as they called them. Oddly enough they always found these rare species a second time, though Mary, because of her near-sightedness, had to be content with a casual glance at them.
“But what you’ve seen, you’ve seen,” she said. “I’ve got to see fifty birds before June 1st; that doesn’t necessarily mean see them so you’ll know them again. Now I shouldn’t know the nestle or the shelcuff, but I can put them down, can’t I?”
“Of course,” assented Katherine, “a few rare birds like those will make your list look like something.”
The pink-headed euthuma, which came to light on the very last day of May, interested Mary so much that she told Roberta about it immediately and Roberta questioned the discoverers.Their accounts were perfectly consistent.
“Way out on Paradise path, almost to the end, we met a man dashing around as if he were crazy,” explained Betty. “We should have thought he was an escaped lunatic if we hadn’t seen others like him.”
“Yes,” continued Katherine. “But he acted too much like you to take us in. So we said we were interested in birds too, and he danced around some more and said we had come upon a rare specimen. Then he pointed to the top of an enormous pine-tree—”
“Those rare birds are always in the very tops of trees,” put in Mary eagerly.
“Of course; that’s one reason they’re rare,” went on Betty. “But that minute it flew into the top of a poplar, and we three pursued it. It was a beauty.”
“And then you came back after me, and it was still there. Tell her how it was marked,” suggested Mary. “Perhaps she knows it under some other name.”
“It had a pink head, of course,” said Katherine, “and blue wings.”
“Goodness!” exclaimed Roberta suspiciously.
“Don’t you mean black wings, Katherine?” asked Betty hastily.
“Did I say blue? I meant black of course. Mary thought they looked blue and that confused me. And its breast was white with brown marks on it.”
“What size was it?” asked Roberta.
Katherine looked doubtful. “What should you say, Mary?”
“Well, it was quite small–about the size of a sparrow or a robin, I thought.”
“They’re quite different sizes,” said Roberta wearily. “Your old man must have been color-blind. It couldn’t have had a pink head. Who ever heard of a pink-headed bird?”
“We three are not color-blind,” Katherine reminded her. “And then there’s the name.” Roberta sighed deeply. The new members of the Mary-bird club were very unmanageable.
Meanwhile Mary was industriously counting the names on her list, which must be handed in the next day. “I think I’d betterput the euthuma down, Roberta,” she said finally. “We saw it all right. They won’t look the list over very carefully, but they will notice how many birds are on it, and even with the pink-headed euthuma I haven’t but forty-five. I rather wish now that I’d bought a text-book, but I thought it was a waste of money when you knew all about the birds, and it would certainly be a waste of money now.”
“Oh, yes,” said Roberta. “If only the library hadn’t wanted its copy back quite so soon!”
“It was disagreeable of them, wasn’t it?” said Mary cheerfully, copying away on her list. “You were going to look up the nestle too. Girls, did we hear the nestle sing?”
“It whistled like a blue jay,” said Katherine promptly.
“It couldn’t,” protested Roberta. “You said it was only six inches long.”
“On the plan of a blue jay’s call, but smaller, Roberta,” explained Betty pacifically.
“Well, it’s funny that you can never find any of these birds when I’m with you,” said Roberta.
Katherine looked scornful. “We weremighty lucky to see them even twice, I think,” she retorted.
Next day Mary came home from zoology 1a, which to add to its other unpleasant features met in the afternoon, wearing the air of a martyr to circumstance. Roberta, Katherine and Betty happened to be sitting on the piazza translating Livy together. “Girls,” she demanded, as she came up the steps, “if I get you the box of Huyler’s that Mr. Burgess sent me will you tell me the truth about those birds?”
“She had the lists read in class!” shouted Katherine.
“I knew it!” said Roberta in tragic tones.
“Did you tell her about the shelcuff’s neck?” inquired Betty.
Mary sat down on the piazza railing with her feet cushioned on a lexicon. “I told her all about the shelcuff,” she said, “likewise the euthuma and the nestle. What is more, the head of the zoology department was visiting the class, so I also told him, and when I stayed to explain he stayed too, and–oh, you little wretches!”
“Not at all,” said Katherine. “We waited until you’d made a reputation for cleverness and been taken into a society. I think we were considerateness itself.”
Roberta was gazing sadly at Mary. “Why did you try all those queer ones?” she asked. “You knew I wasn’t sure of them.”
“I had to, my dear. She asked us for the rare names on our lists. I was the third one she came to, and the others had floundered around and told about birds I’d never heard of. I didn’t really know which of mine were rare, because I’d never seen any of them but once, you know, and I was afraid I should strike something that was a good deal commoner than a robin, and then it would be all up with me. So I boldly read off these three, because I was sure they were rare. You should have seen her face when I got to the pink-headed one,” said Mary, beginning suddenly to appreciate the humor of the situation. “Did you invent them?”
“Only the names,” said Betty, “and the stories about finding them. I thought of nestle, and Katherine made up the others. Aren’t they lovely names, Roberta?”
“Yes,” said Roberta, “but think of the fix Mary is in.”
Mary smiled serenely. “Don’t worry, Roberta,” she said. “The names were so lovely and the shelcuff’s neck and the note of the nestle and all, and I am honestly so near-sighted, that I don’t think Miss Carter will have the heart to condition me. But girls, where did you get the descriptions? Professor Lawrence particularly wanted to know.”
Betty looked at Katherine and the two burst into peals of laughter. “Mary Brooks, you invented most of those yourself,” explained Katherine, when she could speak. “We just showed you the first bird we happened to see and told you its new name and you’d say, ‘Why it has a green crest and yellow wings!’ or ‘How funny its neck is! It must have a pouch.’ All we had to do was to encourage you a little.”
“And suppress you a little when you put colors like pink and blue into the same bird,” continued Betty, “so Roberta wouldn’t get too suspicious.”
“Then those birds were just common, ordinary ones that I’d seen before?”
“Exactly. The nestle was a blue jay, and the euthuma was a sparrow. We couldn’t see what the shelcuff was ourselves, the tree was so tall.