Madeline found Betty taking off her doll’s dress by dim candle-light, which she hoped would escape the eagle eye of the night-watchman. “I’ve come to tell you that the wires are all down again,” she began, and went on to tell the story of Jean’s carefully timed insinuations.
“I almost believe that the Blunderbuss was the tool of the Hill crowd,” she said angrily. “At any rate they used her while she served, and now they’re ready to take a hand themselves.”
Betty stared at her in solemn silence. “What an awful lot it costs to lose your reputation,” she said sadly.
“And it costs a good deal to be everybody’s guardian angel, doesn’t it, dearie?” Madeline said affectionately. “I oughtn’t to have bothered you, but I seem to have made a dreadful mess of things so far.”
“Oh, no, you haven’t,” Betty assured her. “Eleanor knows how queer Jean is, and what horrid things she says about people who won’t follow her lead. None of that crowd would help about the toy-shop except Kate Denise, but every one else has been fine. And I know they haven’t thought that Eleanor was trying to get anything out of them.”
Madeline sighed mournfully. “In Bohemia people don’t think that sort of thing,” she said. “It complicates life so to have to consider it always. Good-night, Betty.”
“Good-night,” returned Betty cheerfully. “Don’t forget that the senior ‘Merry Hearts’ have a tea-drinking to-morrow.”
“I’m not likely to,” laughed Madeline. “Every one of them that I’ve seen has mentioned it. They’re all agog with curiosity.”
“They’ll be more so with joy, when I’ve told them the news,” declared Betty, holding her candle high above her head to light Madeline through the hall.
“Dear me! I wish there could be a class without officers and committees and editors and commencement plays,” she told the greenlizard a little later. “Those things make such a lot of worry and hard feeling. But then I suppose it wouldn’t be much of a class, if it wasn’t worth worrying about. And anyway it’s almost vacation.”
CHAPTER IXA WEDDING AND A VISIT TO BOHEMIA
Betty and Madeline went to their class meeting on the following afternoon very much as a trembling freshman goes to her first midyears, but nothing disastrous happened.
“I fancy that Jean has taken more than Eleanor and me into her confidence,” Madeline whispered. Besides, the Blunderbuss was in her place, her placid but unyielding presence offering an effectual reminder to the girls who had been admiring Eleanor’s executive ability and resourcefulness that it would be safer not to mention her name in connection with the play committee.
But before that was elected the preliminary committee, which, to quote Katherine Kittredge, had been hunting down the masterpieces of Willy Shakespeare ever since the middle of junior year, made its report. The members had not been able to agree unanimously on a play, so the chairman read themajority’s opinion, in favor of “As You Like It,” and then Katherine Kittredge explained the position of the minority, who wanted to be very ambitious indeed and try “The Merchant of Venice.” There was a spirited debate between the two sets of partisans, after which, to Katherine’s infinite satisfaction, 19— voted to give “The Merchant of Venice” at its commencement.
Then the committee to manage the play was chosen, and Betty Wales was the only person who was much surprised when she was unanimously elected to the post of costume member.
“I on that committee!” she exclaimed in dismay. “Why, I don’t know anything about Shakespeare.”
“You will before you get through with this business,” laughed Barbara Gordon, who had been made chairman. “The course begins to-morrow at two in my room. No cuts allowed.”
"I DO CARE ABOUT HAVING FRIENDS LIKE YOU," SHE SAID.“I DO CARE ABOUT HAVING FRIENDS LIKE YOU,” SHE SAID.
Betty’s pleasure in this unexpected honor was rather dampened by the fact that Jean Eastman had proposed her name, making it seem almost as if she were taking sides with Eleanor’s enemies. But Madeline only laughed at what she called Jean’s neat little scheme for getting the last word.
“Ruth Ford was all ready to nominate you,” she said, “but Jean dashed in ahead of her. She wanted to assure me that I hadn’t silenced her for long.”
So Betty gave herself up to the happy feeling of having shown herself worthy to be trusted with part of 19—’s most momentous undertaking.
“I must write Nan to-night,” she said, “but I don’t think I shall mention the costume part. She would think I was just as frivolous as ever, and Barbara says that all the committee are expected to help with things in general.”
Whereupon she remembered her tea-drinking, and hurried home to find most of the guests already assembled, and Eleanor, who had not gone to the class meeting but who had heard all about it from the others, waiting on the stairs to congratulate her.
“I don’t care half as much about being on the committee as I do about having friends like you to say they’re glad,” declared Betty, hugging Eleanor because there were a greatmany things that she didn’t know how to say to her.
“Yes, friends are what count,” said Eleanor earnestly, “and Betty, I think I’m going to leave Harding with a good many. At least I’ve made some new ones this week.”
And that was all the reference that was ever made to the way Eleanor’s oldest friend at Harding had treated her.
“Well,” said Betty, when everybody had congratulated her and Rachel, whose appointment on all 19—’s important committees had come to be a foregone conclusion, “I hope Nita and Rachel and K. won’t be sorry they came. You three aren’t so much mixed up in it as the rest of us, but I thought I’d ask you anyway.”
“Do you mean that I can’t have my usual three slices of lemon?” demanded Katherine indignantly.
“Hush, material-minded one,” admonished Nita. “There’s more than tea and lemon in this. There’s a great secret. Of course we shall be interested in it. Fire away, Betty.”
“And everybody stop watching the kettle,” commanded Babbie, who had taken it incharge, “and then perhaps it will begin to boil.”
“What I wanted to tell you,” began Betty, impressively, “is that Miss Hale is going to be married this vacation.”
“Good for Miss Hale!” cried Bob, throwing up a pillow. “Did her sister get well?”
“Yes,” said Betty. “She was dreadfully ill all summer, and then she had to go away for a change. Ethel wanted to wait until she was perfectly strong, because she had looked forward so to being maid-of-honor.”
“I think we ought to send Miss Hale a present,” said Babe, decisively. “Madame President, please instruct the secretary—— Why, we haven’t any president now,” ended Babe in dismay.
“Let’s elect Betty,” suggested Nita.
“She’s too young for such a responsible position,” objected Bob. “It’s only the dramatics committee that takes infants.”
“And besides, her hair curls,” added Madeline, reaching out to pull one of the offending ringlets. “Curly-haired people don’t deserve to be elected to offices.”
“Let’s have Babe,” suggested Rachel.
“She’s older than her name, her hair has always been straight——”
“Except once,” put in Katherine, and everybody shrieked with laughter at the recollection of Babe’s one disastrous experience with a marcelle wave.
“And then she looked like a wild woman of Borneo,” went on Rachel, “so it shouldn’t count against her. Furthermore this society was organized to give her a chance.”
“All right,” agreed Nita. “I withdraw my nomination. Babe, you’re elected. Instruct the secretary to cast a unanimous ballot for yourself.”
“Very well,” said Babe with much dignity. “Please do it, Madeline, and then I appoint you and Betty and Eleanor to choose a present for Miss Hale. I was just going to say, when I interrupted myself to remark upon the extraordinary absence of a presiding officer”—Babe coughed and dropped her presidential manner abruptly—“I was going to say that I’m all for a stuffed turtle, like those we got in Nassau. I think a ripping big one would be the very thing.”
“Babe!” said Babbie scornfully. “Imaginehow a turtle would look among her wedding presents.”
“I think it would look stunning,” persisted Babe, “and it would be so appropriate from us.”
“Don’t be dictatorial, Babe,” advised Rachel. “It isn’t seemly in a president. Perhaps your committee can think of something appropriate that won’t be quite so startling as a turtle. When is the wedding, Betty?”
“The thirty-first of December at half-past eight,” explained Betty.
“New Year’s eve—what a nice, poetical time,” interposed Babbie, thoughtfully. “I think that if I ever marry——”
“Hush, Babbie,” commanded Nita. “You probably never will. Do let Betty finish her story.”
“Well, it’s to be a very small wedding,” went on Betty, hastily, “with no cards, but announcements, but Ethel wrote me herself and she wants us all—the Nassau ones, I mean—and Mary Brooks, to come.”
“Jolly for Miss Hale!” cried Bob, tossing up two pillows this time.
“How perfectly dear of her!” said Babbie.
“The biggest turtle we can get won’t be a bit too good for her,” declared Babe.
“But where could we stay over night?” asked Helen, the practical-minded.
“You don’t give me a chance to tell you the whole of anything,” complained Betty, sadly. “We’re invited guests—specially invited, I mean, and it’s all arranged where we are to stay. Ethel is going to have her sister and four bridesmaids to walk with her, and she wants us girls to hold a laurel rope along the line of march of the wedding-party, as they go through the rooms.”
“Jolly,” began Babe, but she was promptly suppressed by Madeline, who tumbled her flat on her back and held her down with a pillow while she ordered Betty to proceed.
“I’ll read you what else she says,” went on Betty, triumphantly producing Miss Hale’s letter. “She says, ‘There won’t be many people to get in the way of the procession, but the aisle effect will be pretty, and besides I want my match-makers to have a part in the grand dénouement of all their efforts. Will you ask the others and write Mary Brooks, whose address I don’t know. Myuncle’s big house next door to us will have room for you all, and you must come in time for my bridesmaids’ luncheon and a little dance, both on the thirtieth.’ Now isn’t that splendid?”
“Perfectly splendid,” echoed her auditors.
“Why, we shall be almost bridesmaids,” said Roberta Lewis in awestruck tones. “Does Mary know?”
Betty nodded. “She hasn’t had time to answer yet, but she can certainly go, as she lives so near Ethel.”
“The only difficulty about our going,” said Babe, “is what to do with the few days between the wedding and the opening of college.”
“And that’s easily settled,” said Madeline promptly. “Miss Hale lives just out of New York, doesn’t she? Well, you are all to come and stay in the flat with me. Hasn’t it just been beautifully cleaned? And aren’t you all longing for a glimpse of Bohemia?”
That was the climax of the tea drinking. The Merry Match-Makers spent the evening writing home to their parents for permission to go to the wedding and considering momentousproblems of dress. For Roberta’s best evening-gown was lavender and Babbie’s was pink, and the question was how to distribute Betty, Babe and Helen in white, Bob in blue, Eleanor in her favorite yellow, Madeline in ecru, and Mary in any one of a bewildering number of possible toilettes, so as to justify Ethel’s hope that the aisle would be ornamental as well as useful.
How the days flew after that! For besides the wedding there were the luncheon and the dance to anticipate and plan for, as well as the unknown joys of Bohemia, New York, not to mention the regular excitement of going home, the fun of tucking Christmas presents into the corners of half-packed trunks, and the terrors of the written lesson that some inhuman member of the faculty always saves for the crowded last week of the term.
On the afternoon of the twenty-ninth the Merry Match-Makers met in New York. Babbie had sent a sad little note to Miss Hale and a tearful one to Betty to say that her mother, who was a good deal of an invalid, had “looked pretty blue over my running off early, and so of course I won’t leave her;”and Helen Adams had decided that considering all the extra expenses of senior year she couldn’t afford the trip to New York. So there were only seven “almost bridesmaids,” as Roberta called them, or “posts,” which was Bob’s name for them, to fall upon one another as if they had been separated for years, instead of a week, say thank you for the presents that were each “just what I wanted,” and exclaim excitedly over Betty’s new suit, Mary’s fur coat, and the sole-leather kit-bag that Santa Claus had brought Roberta.
“It’s queer,” said Bob. “I feel as if I’d had one whole vacation already, and ought to be unpacking and digging on psychology 6 and history 10. Whereas in reality I’m just beginning on another whole vacation. It’s like having two Thanksgiving dinners in one year.”
“Not quite like that, I hope,” laughed Eleanor, as they started off to inspect the wedding present, a beautiful pair of tall silver candlesticks. Madeline had ransacked New York to find them, and every one but Babe, who clung to her turtle as far superior to any “musty old antiques,” thought them just oddand distinctive enough to please Ethel’s fastidious taste. And after that there was barely time to catch the train they had arranged to take out to Ethel’s home.
Interest in the bride and in their own part of the wedding ceremony had caused the “Merry Hearts” to forget Dr. Eaton, and they had never once considered that of course his college chum, John Alison, would leave the railroad he was building in Arizona and come east to be Dr. Eaton’s best man. And it was Mr. John Alison who had “finished” Georgia Ames. He inquired for her at once and so did his brother Tom, who was an usher, and who explained that he had been invited to keep John in order, and to intercede for him with the “posts.”
“And in return for my services as peacemaker,” he said solemnly, “I expect to be treated with special consideration by everybody.” Subsequent events seemed to show that the special consideration referred to meant a chance to see as much as possible of Betty Wales.
Even more surprising to three of the posts was the presence of Mr. Richard Blake in thewedding-party—Richard Blake, editor of “The Quiver,” and one-time lecturer at Harding on the tendencies of modern drama.
Eleanor’s face was a study when she recognized him, but before Miss Hale could begin any introductions Madeline greeted him enthusiastically and got him into a corner, where they exchanged low-toned confidences for a moment.
“I’m particularly glad to meet you again, Miss Watson,” he said in a tone of unmistakable sincerity, when he was presented. “We had a jolly dinner together once, didn’t we?”
“Dick’s such an old dear,” Madeline whispered to Betty half an hour later. “He confided to me just now that the first evening he saw Eleanor he thought her the most fascinating girl he had ever met, and then he hastened to assure me that that had absolutely nothing to do with his deciding to keep dark about her story. I don’t doubt him for a moment—Dick perfectly detests cheating. But he can’t make me believe that he’s being nice to her now just on my account.”
There were plenty of other men at the wedding. “We’re the only girls in thewhole family,” Charlotte, Ethel’s younger sister explained, “and we have thirty own cousins, most of them grown-up.”
“Was that one of the thirty that you were sitting on the stairs with at the dance?” inquired Mary Brooks sweetly.
Charlotte blushed and Bob flew to her rescue. “We all know why Mary isn’t monopolizing any one,” she said. “Are you taking notes for future use, Mary?”
Mary shrugged her shoulders loftily. “I scorn to answer such nonsense,” she retorted. “I’m going to be an old maid and make matches for all my friends.”
“We’ll come and be posts for you any time after commencement,” Babe assured her amiably. “Did you know, girls, that Mary can’t stay over with Madeline because her mother is giving a New Year’s dinner-party. Who do you suppose will be there?”
The wedding festivities were over at last. “It was all perfectly scrumptious,” Babe wrote Babbie enthusiastically, “and I’m bringing you a little white satin slipper like those we had filled with puffed rice for luncheon favors, and a lovely pin that MissHale wants you to have just as if you had come. The nicest thing of all is that vacation isn’t over yet. Is it two weeks or two years since I saw you?”
And next came Bohemia. Before they had quite reached Washington Square Madeline tumbled her guests hastily off their car.
“I forgot to tell Mrs. McLean when to expect us,” she explained. “She is our cook. So we’ll hunt her up now and we might as well buy the luncheon as we go along.”
So first they found Mrs. McLean, a placid old Scotch woman who was not at all surprised when Madeline announced that she was giving a house-party for five and had forgotten to mention it sooner. She had a delicious Scotch burr and an irresistible way of standing in the dining-room door and saying, “Come awa’, my dears,” when she had served a meal. Like everything else connected with the Ayres establishment, she was always there when you wanted her; between times she disappeared mysteriously, leaving the kitchen quite clear for Madeline and her guests, and always turning up in time to wash the fudge-pan or the chafing-dishes.
From Mrs. McLean’s they went down a dirty, narrow street, stopping at a number of funny, foreign-looking fruit and grocery shops, where they bought whatever anybody wanted.
“Though it doesn’t matter what you have to eat,” said Roberta later, pouring cream into her coffee from an adorable little Spanish jug, “as long as you have it on this lovely old china.”
They had their coffee in the studio, sitting around the open fire, and while they were drinking it people began to drop in—Mr. Blake, who roomed just across the Square, a pretty, pale girl, who was evidently an artist because every one congratulated her on having some things “on the line” somewhere, three newspaper men from the flat above, who being on a morning daily had just gotten up and stopped in to say “Happy New Year” on their way down to Park Row, and a jolly little woman whom the others called Mrs. Bob.
“She’s promised to chaperon us,” Madeline explained to her guests. “She lives down-stairs, so we can’t go in or out without falling into her terrible clutches.”
Mrs. Bob, who was in a corner playing with the little black kitten that seemed to belong with the house, like Mrs. McLean, stopped long enough to ask if they had heard about the theatre party. They had not, so Mr. Blake explained that by a sudden change of bill at one of the theatres Mr. Sothern and Miss Marlowe were to give “The Merchant of Venice” that evening.
“And I understand from Miss Watson that you people are particularly interested in that play,” he added, “so I’ve corraled some tickets and Mrs. Bob and a bunch of men.”
“And the Carletons will have an early dinner,” put in Mrs. Bob. “Oh, I forgot. You don’t know about that either. Mrs. Carleton won’t be back from the country until four o’clock, so she asked me to give you the invitation to have New Year’s dinner with them.”
“But did she know there were six of us?” asked Betty anxiously, whereupon everybody laughed and Mrs. Bob assured her that Mrs. Carleton had mentioned seven to her, and hadn’t seemed in the least worried.
That was the way things went all throughtheir visit. Mrs. Bob took them shopping, with frequent intermissions for cakes and tea at queer little tea-rooms, with alluring names like “The London Muffin Room,” or the “Yellow Tea-Pot.” Her husband escorted them to the east-side brass-shops, assuring them solemnly that it wasn’t everybody he showed his best finds to, and mourning when their rapturous enthusiasm prevented his getting them a real bargain. The newspaper men gave a “breakfast-luncheon” for them—breakfast for themselves, and luncheon for their guests—which was so successful that it was continued that same evening by a visit to a Russian puppet-show and supper in a Chinese restaurant. The pretty artist sold one of her pictures and invited them to help her celebrate, just as if they were old friends, who knew how hard she had struggled and how often she hadn’t had money enough to buy herself bread and butter, to say nothing of offering jam—in the shape of oysters on the half-shell and lobster Newburg—to other people.
It was all so gay and light-hearted and unexpected—the way things happened in Bohemia. Nobody hurried or worried, thougheverybody worked hard. It was just as Madeline had told them, only more so. The girls said a sorrowful good-bye to Mrs. Bob, Mrs. McLean and the little black kitten and journeyed back to Harding sure that there never had been and never would be another such vacation for them.
“How can there be?” said Bob dejectedly. “At Easter we shall all have to get clothes, and after that we shan’t know a vacation from mid-year week.”
“Which delightful function begins in exactly fourteen days,” said Katherine Kittredge. “Is there anybody here present whose notes on Hegel have the appearance of making sense?”
19— took its senior midyears gaily and quite as a matter of course, lectured its underclass friends on the evils of cramming, and kept up its spirits by going coasting with Billy Henderson, Professor Henderson’s ten-year-old son, who had admired college girls ever since he found that Bob Parker could beat him at steering a double-runner. Between times they bought up the town’s supply of “The Merchant of Venice,”—“not to learn any part,you know, but because we’re interested in our play,” each purchaser explained to her friends.
For there is no use in proclaiming your aspirations to be a Portia or a Shylock until you are sure that your dramatic talent is going to be appreciated. Of course there were exceptions to this rule, but the girl who said at a campus dinner-table, “If I am Portia, who is there tall enough for Bassanio?” became a college proverb in favor of keeping your hopes to yourself, and everybody was secretly delighted when she decided that she “really didn’t care” to be in the mob.
CHAPTER XTRYING FOR PARTS
“Teddie Wilson has gone and got herself conditioned in psych.,” announced Bob Parker, bouncing unceremoniously through Betty’s half-open door.
“Oh, Bob!” Betty’s tone was fairly tragic. “Does that mean that she can’t try for a part in the play?”
Bob nodded. “Cast-iron rule. And she’d have made a perfect Gobbo, young or old, and a stunning Gratiano. Well, her being out of it will give K. a better chance.”
“But I’m sure Katherine wouldn’t want her chance to come this way,” said Betty sadly. “Besides—oh, Bob, have you looked at the bulletin-board this afternoon?”
“Babe did,” said Bob with a grin, “so you needn’t worry yet, my child. Ted says she ought to have expected it, because she’d cut a lot and let things go awfully,—depended on the—faculty—knowing—us—well—enoughby—this—time—to—pass—over—any small—deficiencies, and all that sort of talk. And this just shows, she says, how well they do know her. She’s awfully plucky about it, but she cares. I didn’t suppose Ted had it in her to care so about anything,” declared Bob solemnly. “But of course it’s a lot to lose—the star comedy part that was going to be handed out to her by her admiring little classmates, who think that nobody can act like Teddie. I wish I was as sure of a part in the mob.”
“What are you going to try for, Bob?” asked Betty sympathetically.
Bob blushed. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, with a fine assumption of indifference. “Everybody says that you ought to begin at the top and then the grateful committee won’t forget to throw you a crumb when they get to passing out the ‘supers.’” Bob paused and her air of unconcern dropped from her like a mask. “I say, Betty, I do want my family to be proud of me for once. Promise you won’t laugh if I come up for Bassanio.”
“Of course I won’t,” said Betty indignantly. “I’m sure you’ll make love beautifully. Do you know who’s going to try for Shylock?”
“Only Jean Eastman,” said Bob, “and Christy and Emily are thinking of it. I came up from down-town with Jean just now. She thinks she’s got a sure thing, though of course she isn’t goose enough to say so. If Kate Denise gets Portia, as everybody seems to think she will, it will be quite like freshman year, with the Hill crowd on top all around. I think Jean has been aiming for that, and I also think—you don’t mind if I say it, Betty?”
“I haven’t the least idea what you’re going to say,” laughed Betty, “but I don’t believe I shall mind.”
“Well,” said Bob earnestly, “I think Jean’s counting on you to help her with her Shylock deal.”
“I help her!” said Betty in bewilderment. “How could I?”
“What a little innocent you are, Betty Wales,” declared Bob. “Have you forgotten that you are on the all-powerful play-committee, and that you five and Miss Kingston, head of the elocution department, practically decide upon the cast?”
“Oh!” said Betty slowly. “But I can’t seewhy Jean should expect me to push her, of all people.”
“She’ll remind you why,” said Bob, “or perhaps she expects me to do it for her. Can’t you honestly think of anything that she might make a handle of?”
Betty considered, struggling to recall her recent meetings with Jean. “She has been extra-cordial lately,” she said, “but she hasn’t done anything in particular—oh, Bob, I know what you mean. She expects me to help her because she nominated me for the committee.”
Bob nodded. “As if fifty other people wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t. I may be wrong, Betty, but she had a lot to say all the way up from Cuyler’s about how glad she was that you were on the committee, how she felt you were the only one for the place and was glad the girls agreed with her, how hard she had talked you up beforehand, and so on,—all about her great and momentous efforts in your behalf. I told her that Miss Ferris said once that you had a perfect command of the art of dress and that every one knew you planned the costumes for the Belden play and for the Dramatic Club’s masque last spring,also that Barbara Gordon particularly wanted you on if she was chairman, so I didn’t see that you needed any great amount of talking up. But she laughed her horrid, sarcastic little laugh and said she guessed I hadn’t had much experience with class politics.”
Betty’s eyes flashed angrily. “And in return for what she did, she expects me to work for her, no matter whether or not I think she would make the best Shylock. Is that what you mean, Bob?”
“Yes, but perhaps I was mistaken,” said Bob soothingly, “and any way I doubt if she ever says anything to you directly. She’ll just drop judicious hints in the ears of your worldly friends, who can be trusted to appreciate the debt of gratitude you owe her.”
“Bob.” Betty stared at her hard for a moment. “You don’t think—oh, of course you don’t! The parts in the play ought to go to the ones who can do them best and the committee ought not to think of anybody or anything but that.”
“And I know at least one committee woman who won’t think of anybody or anything but that,” declared Bob loyally. “I only thoughtI’d tell you about Jean so that, if she should say anything, you would be ready for her. Now I must go and study Bassanio,” and Bob departed murmuring,
“‘What find I here?Fair Portia’s counterfeit?’”
in tones so amorous that Belden House Annie, who was sweeping on the stairs, dropped her dust-pan with a clatter, declaring that she was “jist overcome, that she was!”
“Which was the only compliment my acting of Bassanio ever got,” Bob told her sadly afterward.
Betty was still hot with indignation over Bob’s disclosures when Roberta Lewis knocked on the door. Roberta was wrapped up in a fuzzy red bath-robe, a brown sweater and a pink crêpe shawl, and she looked the picture of shivering dejection.
“What in the world is the matter?” demanded Betty, emptying her history notebooks out of the easy-chair and tucking Roberta in with a green and yellow afghan, which completed the variegated color scheme to perfection.
“Please don’t bother about me,” said Roberta forlornly. “I’m going back in a minute. I’ve lost my wedding-pin—Miss Hale’s wedding-pin—well, you know what I mean,—and caught a perfectly dreadful cold.”
“You don’t think that your pin was stolen?” asked Betty quickly. There had been no robberies in the college since Christmas, and the girls were beginning to hope that the mysterious thief had been discouraged by their greater care in locking up their valuables, and had gone off in search of more lucrative territory.
“Yes, I do think so,” said Roberta. “I almost know it. You see I hadn’t been wearing my pin. I only took it out to show Polly Eastman, because she hadn’t happened to see one. Then K. came and we went off to walk. I left the pin right on my dressing-table and now it’s gone. But the queerest part is that Georgia Ames was in my room almost all the time, because hers was being swept, and before that she was in Lucy Mann’s, with the door wide open into the hall, and my door open right opposite. And yet she never saw or heard anything. Isn’t it strange?”
“She was probably busy talking and didn’t notice,” said Betty. “People are everlastingly tramping through the halls, until you don’t think anything about it. Have you looked on the floor and in all your drawers? It’s probably tumbled down somewhere and got caught in a crack under the dressing-table or the rug.”
“No, I’ve looked in all those places,” said Roberta with finality. “You know I haven’t as many things to look through as you.”
“Please don’t be sarcastic,” laughed Betty, for Roberta’s belongings were all as trim and tailor-made as herself. “How did you get your cold?”
“Why K. and I got caught in a miserable little snow flurry,” explained Roberta, pulling the pink shawl closer, “and—I got my feet wet. My throat’s horribly sore. It won’t be well for a week, and I can’t try for the play.”
Roberta struggled out of the encumbering folds of the green afghan and trailed her other draperies swiftly to the window, whose familiar view she seemed to find intensely absorbing.
“Oh, yes, you can,” said Betty comfortingly.“Why, your throat may be all right by to-morrow, and anyway it’s only the Portia and Shylock trials that come then. Were you going to try for either of those parts?”
“Yes,” gulped Roberta thickly.
Behind Roberta’s back Betty was free to pucker her mouth into a funny little grimace that denoted amusement, surprise and sympathy, all together. “Then I’ll ask Barbara Gordon to give you a separate trial later,” she said kindly. “Nothing will be really decided to-morrow. We only make tentative selections to submit to Mr. Masters when he comes up next week. He’s the professional coach, you know.”
But Roberta turned back from the window to shake her head. “I wouldn’t have you do that for anything,” she said, brushing away the tears. “I’ll try for something else if I get well in time. I’m going to bed now. Will you please ask Annie to bring up my dinner? And Betty, don’t ever say I meant to try for Shylock. I don’t know why I told you, except that you always understand.”
Betty felt that she didn’t quite understand this time, but she promised to tell Annie andcome in late herself to conduct another search for the missing pin. She had just succeeded in dismissing Ted, Jean and Roberta from her mind and concentrating it on the next day’s history lesson, when Helen Adams appeared.
“Helen,” began Betty solemnly, “if you’ve got any troubles connected with trying for parts in the play, please don’t divulge them. I don’t believe I can stand any more complications.”
“Poor thing!” said Helen compassionately. “I know how you feel from the times I have with the ‘Argus.’ Well, I shan’t bother you about trying for a part. I should just love to act, but I can’t and I know it. I only wanted to borrow some tea, and to tell you that Anne Carter has come to return my call. You know you said you’d like to meet her.”
So Betty brushed her curls smooth and, stopping to pick up Madeline on her way, went in to meet Miss Carter, whose shyness and silence melted rapidly before Betty’s tactful advances and Madeline’s appreciative references to her verses in the last “Argus.”
While Helen made the tea, Miss Carter amused them all with a droll account of herefforts to learn to play basket-ball, “because Miss Adams says it throws so much light on the philosophy of college life.”
“Then you never played before you came here?” asked Betty idly, stirring her tea.
Miss Carter shook her head. “I prepared for college in a convent in Canada. The sisters would have been horribly shocked at the idea of our tearing about in bloomers and throwing a ball just like the boys.”
“Oh!” said Betty, with a sudden flash of recognition. “Then it was at the convent where you got the beautiful French accent that mademoiselle raves over. You’re in my senior French class. I ought to have remembered you.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” said Miss Carter bitterly, and then she flushed and apologized. “I’m so ugly that I’m always glad not to be remembered or noticed. But I didn’t mean to say so, and I do hope you’ll come to see me, both of you,—if seniors ever do come to see sophomores.”
The girls laughingly assured her that seniors did sometimes condescend so far, andshe went off with a happy look in her great gray eyes.
“We must have her in the ‘Merry Hearts,’” said Madeline. “She’s our kind if she can only get over that morbid feeling about her scar.”
“But we must be very careful,” Helen warned them, with a vivid remembrance of her first interview with Miss Carter. “We mustn’t ask her to join until most of us have been to see her and really made friends. She would just hate to feel that we pitied her.”
“We’ll be careful,” Betty promised her. “I’ll go to see her, for one, the very first of next week,” and she skipped gaily off to dress for dinner. After all there were plenty of things in the world besides the class play with its unhappy tangle of rivalries and heartburnings.
“And what’s the use of borrowing trouble?” Betty inquired the next evening of the green lizard. “If you do, you never borrow the right kind.”
Jean, to be sure, had done a good deal to justify Bob’s theory. She had remembered an urgent message from home which must bedelivered to Polly immediately after luncheon, and she kept her innocent little cousin busily engaged in conversation in the lower hall of the Belden House until Betty appeared, having waited until the very last minute in the vain hope of avoiding Jean. But when they opened the door there was Barbara Gordon, also bound for Miss Kingston’s office, and much relieved to find that her committee were not all waiting indignantly for their chairman’s tardy arrival. So whatever Jean had meant to say to Betty in private necessarily went unsaid.
And then, after all her worriment, Jean was the best Shylock!
“Which is perfectly comical considering Bob’s suspicions,” Betty told the green lizard, the only confidant to whom she could trust the play committee’s state-secrets.
All the committee had been astonished at Jean’s success, and most of them were disappointed. Christy or Emily Davis would have been so much pleasanter to work with, or even Kitty Lacy, whom Miss Kingston considered very talented. But Emily was theatrical, except in funny parts, Christy was lifeless, andKitty Lacy had not taken the trouble to learn the lines properly and broke down at least once in every long speech, thereby justifying the popular inversion of her name to Lazy Kitty, a pseudonym which some college wag had fastened upon her early in her freshman year.
“And because she’s Kitty, it isn’t safe to give her another chance,” said Miss Kingston regretfully, when the fifteen aspiring Shylocks had played their parts and the committee were comparing opinions. “Yes, I agree with Barbara that Jean Eastman is by far the most promising candidate, but——”
“But you don’t think she’s very good, now do you, Miss Kingston?” asked Clara Ellis, a rather lugubrious individual, who had been put on the committee because she was a “prod” in “English lit.,” and not because she had the least bit of executive ability.
Miss Kingston hesitated. “Why no, Clara, I don’t. I’m afraid she won’t work up well; she doesn’t seem to take criticism very kindly. But it’s too soon to judge of that. At present she certainly has a much better conception of the part than any of the others.”
“You don’t think we’ve been too ambitious, do you, Miss Kingston?” asked Barbara, anxiously. Barbara knew Jean well and the prospect of managing the play with her capricious, selfish temperament to be catered to at every turn was not a pleasant one.
“I’ve thought so all along,” put in Clara Ellis, decidedly, before Miss Kingston had had a chance to answer. “I think we ought to have made sure of a good Shylock before we voted to give this play. It will be perfectly awful to make a fizzle of it, and everything depends on getting a good Shylock, doesn’t it, Miss Kingston?”
“A great deal certainly depends on that,” agreed Miss Kingston. “But it’s much too early to decide that you can’t get a good Shylock.”
“Why, who else is there?” demanded Clara, dismally. “Surely every possible and impossible person has tried to-day.”
Nobody seemed ready to answer this argument, and Betty, glancing at the doleful faces of her fellow-workers felt very much depressed until a new idea struck her.
“Miss Kingston,” she said, “there havebeen fifteen senior plays at Harding, haven’t there? And hasn’t each one been better than any of those that came before it?”
“So each class and its friends have thought,” admitted Miss Kingston, smiling at Betty’s eagerness, “and in the main I think they have been right.”
“Then,” said Betty, looking appealingly at Clara and Barbara, “I guess we can safely go on thinking that our play will be still better. 19— is the biggest class that ever graduated here, and it’s certainly one of the brightest.”
Everybody laughed at this outburst of patriotism and the atmosphere brightened immediately, so Betty felt that perhaps she was of some use on the committee even if she couldn’t understand all Clara’s easy references to glosses and first folio readings, or compare Booth’s interpretation of Shylock with Irving’s as glibly as Rachel did.
Just then there was a smothered giggle outside the door and six lusty voices chanted, “By my troth, our little bodies are a-weary of these hard stairs,” in recognition of which pathetic appeal the committee hastily dismissed the subject of Shylock in order to hearwhat the impatient Portias had to say. They did so well, and there was such a lively discussion about the respective merits of Kate Denise, Babbie Hildreth and Nita Reese that the downcast spirits, of the committee were fully restored, and they went home to dinner resolved not to lose heart again no matter what happened, which is the most sensible resolution that any senior play committee can make.
When Betty got home she found a note waiting for her on the hall table addressed in Tom Alison’s sprawling hand and containing an invitation to Yale commencement.
“I’m asking you early,” Tom wrote, “so that you can plan for it, and be so much the surer not to disappoint me. Alice Waite is coming with Dick Grayson, and some of the other fellows will have Harding girls. My mother is going to chaperon the bunch.
“Do you remember my kid roommate, Ashley Dwight? He’s junior president this year. He’s heard a lot about Georgia Ames, real and ideal, and he’s crazy to see what the visible part of her is like. I think he meditates asking her to the prom, and making asensation with her. Can’t I bring him up to call on you some day when the real Miss Ames will probably be willing to amuse Ashley?”
As Betty joyously considered how she should answer all this, she remembered the four box tickets for the Glee Club concert that Lucile Merrifield had promised to get her—Lucile was business manager of the mandolin club this year. Betty had intended to invite Alice Waite and two Winsted men, but there was no reason why she shouldn’t ask Georgia, Tom, and the junior president instead. So she went straight to Georgia’s room.
“All right,” said Georgia calmly, when Betty had explained her project. “I was going to stand up with a crowd of freshmen, but they won’t care.”
“Georgia Ames,” broke in her roommate severely, “I should like to see you excited for once. Don’t you know the difference between going stand-up with a lot of other freshmen, and sitting in a box with Miss Wales and two Yale men?”
“Of course I know the difference,” said Georgia, smiling good-naturedly. “Didn’t Isay that I’d go in the box? But you see, Caroline, if you are only a namesake of Madeline Ayres’s deceased double you mustn’t get too much excited over the wonderful things that happen to you. Must you, Betty?”
“I don’t think you need any pointers from me, Georgia,” said Betty laughingly. “Has Caroline seen you studying yet?”
“Once,” said Georgia sadly.
“But it was in mid-year week,” explained the roommate, “the night before the Livy exam. She mended stockings all the evening and then she said she was going to sit up to study. She began at quarter past ten.”
“Propped up in bed, to be quite comfortable,” interpolated Georgia.
“And at half-past ten,” went on her roommate, “she said she was so sleepy that she couldn’t stand it any longer. So she tumbled the books and extra pillows on the floor and went to sleep.”
“Too bad you spoiled your record just for those few minutes,” laughed Betty, “but I’ll take you to the concert all the same,” and she hurried off to dress.
At dinner she entertained her end of thetable with an account of Georgia’s essay at cramming.
“But that doesn’t prove that she never studies,” Madeline defended her protégée. “That first floor room of theirs is a regular rendezvous for all the freshmen in the house, so she’s very sensible to keep away from it when she’s busy.”
“Where does she go?”
“Oh, to the library, I suppose,” said Madeline. “Most of the freshmen study there a good deal, and she camps down in Lou Waterson’s room, afternoons, because Lou has three different kinds of lab. to go to, so she’s never at home.”
“Well, it’s a wonder that Georgia isn’t completely spoiled,” said Nita Reese. “Just to think of the things that child has had done for her!”
And certainly if Georgia’s head had not been very firmly set on her square shoulders, it would have been hopelessly turned by her meteoric career at Harding. For weeks after college opened she was a spectacle, a show-sight of the place. Old girls pointed her out to one another in a fashion that was meant tobe inobtrusive but that would have flattered the vanity of any other freshman. Freshmen were regaled with stories about her, which they promptly retailed for her benefit, and then sent her flowers as a tribute to her good luck and a recognition of the amusement she added to the dull routine of life at Harding. Seniors who had been duped by the phantom Georgia asked her to Sunday dinner and introduced her to their friends, who did likewise. Foolish girls wanted her autograph, clever ones demanded to know her sensations at finding herself so oddly conspicuous, while the “Merry Hearts” amply fulfilled their promise to make up to her for unintentionally having forced her into a curious prominence. But Georgia took it all as a mere matter of course, smiled blandly at the stories, accepted the flowers and the invitations, wrote the autographs, and explained that she guessed her sensations weren’t at all remarkable,—they were just like any other freshman’s.
“All the same,” Madeline declared, whenever the subject came up, “she’s absolutely unique. If the other Georgia had never existed, this one would have made her mark here.”
But just how she would have done it even Madeline could not decide. The real Georgia was not like other girls, but in what fundamental way she was different it was difficult to say. Indeed now that the “Merry Hearts” came to know her better, she was almost as much of a puzzle to them as the other Georgia had been to the rest of the college.