CHAPTER XIA DARK HORSE DEFINED
“Did you see Mr. Masters in chapel this morning with Miss Kingston?”
This was the choice tid-bit of news that 19— passed from hand to hand as it took its way to its various nine o’clock classes.
“I thought he wasn’t coming until to-morrow,” said Teddie Wilson, who followed every move of the play committee with mournful interest.
“He wasn’t,” explained Barbara Gordon, “but he found he could get off better to-day. It’s only for the Shylocks and Portias, you know. We can’t do much until they’re definitely decided, so we can tell who is left for the other parts.”
“Gratiano and the Gobbos will come in the next lot,” sighed Teddie. “Seems as if I should die to be out of it all!”
Jean Eastman was just ahead of them in the crowd. “Poor Teddie!” Barbara began,“I only wish—-” She broke off abruptly. She didn’t want Jean for Shylock, but it would have been the height of impropriety to let even Teddie, whose misfortunes made her a privileged person, know it. “It’s a perfect shame,” she went on hastily. “You don’t feel half so bad about it as we do.”
Ted stared incredulously. “Don’t I? I say, Barbara, did you know there was a girl in last year’s cast who had had a condition at midyears? She kept still and somehow it wasn’t reported to Miss Stuart until very late, and by that time it would have made a lot of trouble to take her out. So they hushed it up and she kept her part. A last year’s girl wrote me about it.”
“I don’t believe she had much fun out of it, do you, Ted?” asked Barbara. “Anyhow I’m sure you—”
“Oh, of course not,” interrupted Ted with emphasis.
“What in the world are you two talking about?” demanded Jean Eastman curiously, dropping back to join them.
“Talking play of course!” laughed Barbara, trying to be extra cordial because she hadso nearly said a disagreeable thing a minute before.
Meanwhile Ted, who felt that she should break the tenth commandment to atoms if she stayed in Jean’s neighborhood another minute, slipped off down a side hall and joined a group of her classmates who were bound like herself for Miss Raymond’s English novelists. They were talking play too, of course,—it was in the air this morning,—and they welcomed Ted joyously and deferred to her opinion as that of an expert.
“Who’ll be Shylock, Teddie?” demanded Bob Parker. “That’s the only thing I’m curious about.”
“Jean,” returned Ted calmly, “or at least the committee think so. I can tell by the way Barbara looks at her.”
“Beastly shame,” muttered Bob. “Why couldn’t Emily and Christy have braced up and got it themselves?”
“Now, Bob,” Nita Reese remonstrated, “don’t you think you’re a bit hard on Jean this time? I know she’s a good deal of a land-grabber, but now she’s gone into an open competition just like any one else,and if she wins it will be because she deserves to.”
“Ye-es,” admitted Bob grudgingly. “Yes, of course it will. I know that as well as you do, Nita Reese. Just the same she’s never any good in Gest and Pant, is she, Teddie?”
“In what?” demanded Helen Adams and Clara Madison together.
“Gest and Pant—short for Gesture and Pantomime, senior course in elocution,” explained Teddie rapidly. “Oh, I don’t know. I think she’s done some pretty good things once in a while. And anyhow she can’t fool the committee and Mr. Masters.”
“Of course not,” agreed Bob.
“Just the same,” said Madeline Ayres, who had come up in time to hear the end of the argument, “we’ll stand for her if she gets the part, but until she does we can hope against hope for a dark horse, can’t we, Bob?”
“What’s a dark horse?” asked Clara Madison in her funny, slow drawl.
“Your vocabulary’s getting a big increase this morning, isn’t it, Clara?” said Madeline quizzically. “Gest and Pant, short for Gesture and Pantomime; dark horse, shortfor a person like—— Girls, run in, quick. She’s begun calling the roll.”
It was a long morning. The committee watched its hours go by complacently enough. They had heard Jean again and liked her better; and the two girls who were to compete with her had improved, too, on second trial. There was no doubt that the Portias were good. They were also nervous. Kate Denise didn’t even pretend to “Take notes, young ladies,” though Dr. Hinsdale looked straight at her when he said it, and Babbie Hildreth made herself the butt of endless jibes by absent-mindedly mentioning Nerissa instead of Napoleon in History 10. Jean, on the other hand, was as cool as possible. She sat beside Teddie Wilson in philosophy, much to the annoyance of that unhappy young person, and added insult to injury by trying to discuss the play. Teddie was as unresponsive as she thought consistent with the duty of being lady-like, but Jean didn’t seem to mind, for she went off to lunch smiling a satisfied, triumphant little smile that seemed to say she had gotten just what she wanted out of Teddie.
At two o’clock Mr. Masters and Miss Kingstonmet the play committee in Miss Kingston’s office, and the Shylock trials began. At ten minutes before three the great Mr. Masters appeared in the door of the office and tossing a careless “Back at four-thirty sharp” over his shoulder, ran down the stairs as lightly as though he were not leaving riot and ruin behind him. A minute later Barbara Gordon came to the door and explained to the Portias who were waiting to come on at three, that it had been found necessary to delay their appearance until evening. Barbara always looked calm and unruffled under the most trying circumstances, but she shut the door unnecessarily hard and the Portias exchanged amazed glances.
“Something’s happened,” declared Babe, sagely.
“‘Oh, wise young judge!’” quoted Nita. “Why don’t you tell us what it is?”
“I must go if we have to come back this evening,” said Kate Denise, and hurried off to find Jean, who had promised to meet her in the library.
Kate understood Jean very well and often disapproved of her, but she had known her along time and was genuinely fond of her and anxious for her success. Jean had complained of a headache at luncheon and seemed nervous and absent-minded. Kate wondered if she could possibly have broken down and spoiled her chance with Mr. Masters, thus disarranging the committee’s plans.
But Jean scoffed at this idea. “I did my best,” she declared, “and he was awfully nice. You’ll like him, Katie. I suppose he had an engagement, or was tired and wanted to go off somewhere and smoke. He gets up plays all the time, you know. It must be horribly boring.”
Meanwhile Miss Kingston and the play committee sat in mournful conclave. Nobody had much to say. Clara Ellis looked “I told you so” at the rest, and the rest looked back astonishment, dismay and annoyance at Clara.
“Is he generally so—so decided and, well,—so quick to make up his mind?” asked Betty, finally.
Miss Kingston laughed at Betty’s carefully chosen adjectives and shook her head. “He’s generally very patient and encouraging, but to-day something seems to have spoiled histemper. I don’t believe, though, that his irritability has affected his judgment. I agree perfectly with what he said about Miss Eastman.”
“Yes,” agreed Barbara, “he put into words what we all felt when we first heard her. Afterward we wanted so much to think she was good that we actually cheated ourselves into thinking so.”
“Do tell me what happened,” begged Rachel Morrison. She had been kept at home by a belligerent sophomore who insisted upon being tutored at her regular hour, and had arrived only just in time for Mr. Masters’s dramatic exit.
“Why, he was perfectly calm while the Shylocks were performing,” explained Barbara. “We had Jean come last because we thought that would give them all the best chance. He smiled blandly while she was going through her part and bowed her out as if she had been a second Booth. Then he sat back and looked at me and said ‘Well?’ and I said, ‘Do you like her best, Mr. Masters?’ He glared at me for a minute and then began to talk about the seriousness of giving aShakespearean play and the confidence he’d felt in us to advise us to give this one, and the reasons why none of the girls he’d heard would do at all for Shylock. When he was through he just picked up his hat and coat and told us to go and get the other girls who tried, as he’d be ready to see them at half-past four. After that he apologized to Miss Kingston if he’d been ‘in the least abrupt’—and went.”
“And what are we to do now?” demanded Clara, wearily.
“Get them—the forlorn hopes, as he called them,” said Barbara, determined to be cheerful, “and hope that we shall be happily disappointed in them. Somebody’s got to be Shylock, you know. Betty, will you go for these three girls on Main Street?” She handed Betty a slip of paper. “Clara, will you try to find Emily Davis? Rachel, you look tired to death. Go home and rest. Josephine and I can manage the campus people.”
“There’s no use in your getting the Miller girls,” said Clara, decisively. “One lisps and the other stammers.”
“That’s true,” agreed Barbara, cheerily. “We’ll leave them out, and Kitty Lacy hasgone home ill. I wish we could think of some promising people who haven’t tried at all. Eleanor Watson used to act very cleverly. Betty, do you suppose she would be willing to come and read the part?”
Betty shook her head. “I don’t think she would take a part under any circumstances, but certainly not if she had to compete with Jean. They’re such old friends.”
“How about Madeline Ayres?”
“She’s set her heart on being the Prince of Morocco,” laughed Betty, “because she wants to be blackened up. Anyway I don’t think—”
“No, I don’t either, Betty,” interposed Miss Kingston. “Miss Ayres couldn’t do a part like Shylock.”
“Then I don’t believe there is any one else who didn’t try before,” said Barbara. “We must just hope for the best, that’s all.”
Betty had opened the door preparatory to starting on her rounds when she happened to remember Roberta and her exaggerated disappointment over missing the last week’s trials.
“Barbara,” she began timidly, closing the door again, “I know some one who intendedto try but she was sick with the grippe and couldn’t. It’s Roberta Lewis. She told me not to speak of her having wanted to try, but I don’t see why she shouldn’t have a chance now, do you? She couldn’t be worse than some of them.”
“She certainly couldn’t,” laughed Barbara.
“She did awfully well in that little girl play you had,” said Clara Ellis, condescending to show a little real interest in the question at issue. “Did you see it, Miss Kingston?”
Miss Kingston hadn’t seen “The Little Princess” and didn’t know Roberta; but she agreed that there was no reason why any girl who was willing to take it shouldn’t have a chance to show what she could do toward satisfying Mr. Masters.
“But it isn’t that I think she will do particularly well,” Betty explained, honestly. “Only I was sorry for her because she seemed to care such a lot. Shall I stop and ask her on my way?”
Barbara said yes and Betty hurried over to the Belden. Roberta was out, but a neat sign pinned to her door promised that she would be “Back in a few minutes,” so Betty scribbleda hasty note to explain matters and hurried off again. She had not much idea that Roberta would care to try for Shylock now, but she was glad she had thought of giving her the chance. Roberta was so quiet and self-contained and so seldom expressed a wish or a preference that it was worth while taking a little trouble to please her.
“Even if there isn’t much sense in what she wants,” thought Betty, as she tramped up Main Street.
The Main Street Shylocks all lived in the same house and not one of them was in. Betty pursued them back to the campus, caught one at the library and another in chemistry “lab.,” and followed the third down town where she was discovered going into Cuyler’s for an ice. As this last captive happened to be the most promising Shylock, next to the ones that Mr. Masters had already seen, Betty led her back to the campus in triumph, too thankful at having her safe to notice that it was fully a quarter to five before they reached college hall.
Roberta was sitting by herself on a low window-seat near Miss Kingston’s door. Shelooked pale and frightened and hardly smiled in answer to Betty’s gay little nod and wave of the hand.
“Goodness, I hope she’ll do decently,” thought Betty, and was opening the door as softly as possible when somebody gave it a quick push from the other side. It was the great Mr. Masters coming out again.
“Oh, Miss Lewis,” he called over to Roberta, “have you learned the Portia scenes too? I forgot to ask you. Well, suppose you come over and read them to-night. We should all like to hear you.”
Betty stared in amazement; so did the Shylocks who crowded the stairs and windowledges. There was no mistaking the fact that this time the great Mr. Masters was genuinely pleased. He held the door open for Betty to pass into the office, assured Roberta once more that he should expect to see her in the evening, and went inside himself, leaving a buzz of excitement behind him and meeting a similar buzz that hushed politely as he came forward.
“Well, Miss Kingston,” he said, rubbing his hands together with an air of supremesatisfaction, “we’ve found our Shylock. I’m glad you let her in first this time. I was really getting worried. May I ask why you young ladies kept her up your sleeves so long?”
Barbara explained.
“But you must have known about her,” Mr. Masters persisted. “Why, she’s marvelous. She’d save your play for you, single-handed. Hasn’t she taken part in any of your college performances?”
Barbara explained about that too.
“Then how did she happen to come to light at all?” he demanded.
This time Barbara looked at Betty, who blushed and murmured, “I didn’t suppose she could act very much. I really didn’t.”
Mr. Masters laughed heartily at this. “Well, she seems to be a thorough mystery,” he said. “And now the only question is where we need her most, in case I don’t like your first choice in Portias any better than I did your Shylocks. We ought to have these other people in, I suppose. Of course there’s no question about Miss Lewis, but we’d better know what they can all do, especially if there are any more of Miss Wales’s dark horses among them.”
"WELL, WE’VE FOUND OUR SHYLOCK," HE SAID.“WELL, WE’VE FOUND OUR SHYLOCK,” HE SAID.
By dinner time the astonishing news had spread over the campus. Roberta Lewis was going to be Shylock. She hadn’t been in but one play since she entered college and then she took somebody’s place. Nobody had thought she would get it. Nobody knew she could act except Betty Wales. Betty found out about her somehow—she was always finding out what people could do,—and she got her in at the last minute because Mr. Masters didn’t like Jean’s acting,—or somebody didn’t. Roberta’s was magnificent. They wanted her for Portia too. Mr. Masters had said it was a great pity there weren’t two of her. How did she take it? Why, she acted shy and bored and distant, just as usual. She seemed to have expected to be Shylock!
But she wasn’t “just as usual.” She was sitting by her window in the dark, with Mary Brooks’s picture clutched tightly in one hand and her father’s in the other, and she was whispering soft little messages to them.
“Dear old daddy, you were in all the fraternities and societies, and on all thecollege papers and the ’varsity eight. Well, I’m on one thing now. You’ll have one little chance to be proud of me, perhaps, after all these four years.
“Now, Mary Brooks, do you see what I can do? I couldn’t write and I couldn’t be popular or prominent or a ‘star’ in any of the classes. I’m not that kind. But after all I shall be something but just one of the Clan before I leave.
“Oh, I wonder if Mary and father would like to sit together at the play.”
While Roberta was considering the probability that they would, Betty knocked her soft little knock on the door. Roberta always knew Betty’s knock.
“Come,” she called in a queer, trembly voice. How was she ever going to thank Betty for seeing what no one else saw, and helping her to stick to it and get her chance in a nice quiet way that wouldn’t make her feel awkward if she failed?
But Betty didn’t give her time to open her mouth. “You dear old thing!” she cried. “Oh, I am so happy! I never thought you’d get it. Honestly, I didn’t. I just thoughtyou might as well try. Roberta, you ought to hear the things Mr. Masters has been saying about you.”
Roberta laughed happily. “It’s nice, isn’t it?” she said. “Didn’t you think I could get a part? You were the one who told me I ought to try.”
“Yes,” said Betty solemnly, “I thought you’d get one of the Sals probably—you know the ones I mean,—Solanio, and the others that sound like him. We call them the Sals for short, I never dreamed of your being Shylock, any more than I planned for you to be Ermengarde. You did it every bit yourself, Roberta Lewis, by just happening to come around at the right times.”
“And by coming to the right person,” added Roberta.
But Betty only laughed at her. “It’s bad enough to be blamed for things you’ve done,” she said. “I simply won’t be praised for things I haven’t done. I never was so pleased in my life. Roberta, Miss Kingston says you’re a genius. To think of my knowing a genius! I must go and tell Helen Chase Adams.”
Down-stairs Madeline was telephoning to Clara Madison, who, owing to her strong prejudice against bed-making, still lived off the campus. “A dark horse,” she explained, “is a person like Roberta Lewis. I didn’t have time to tell you this morning. Good-b——Oh! haven’t you heard? She’s going to be Shylock. No, the committee haven’t announced it yet, but Mr. Masters shouted it aloud in the corridor at college hall. Don’t forget what a dark horse is, Clara.”
The B’s, innocently supposing that Roberta was out because her windows were dark, were celebrating in Nita’s room, while they awaited her return. This meant that Babbie was doing a cake-walk with an imaginary partner, Babe a clog-dance, and Bob a highland fling, while Nita hugged her tallest vase and her prettiest teacup and besought them to stop before Mrs. Kent came to see who was tearing the house down.
Bob stopped first, though not on account of Nita’s bric-a-brac or a possible visit from Mrs. Kent.
“Nita,” she demanded breathlessly, “did you say Betty thought of Roberta?”
“Yes,” Nita assented. “Nobody else on the committee knows her at all except Rachel, and she is as surprised as the rest of us.”
“Gee!” Bob’s tone was deep with meaning. “Then I know who won’t like it.”
“Who?” Babe ended her dance to ask.
“Jean Eastman,” said Bob solemnly.
Babe gave her a disdainful glance. “How much brains do you think it takes to find that out, Bob Parker? Of course she won’t like it.”
But Bob only smiled loftily and declared that if Roberta hadn’t come in by this time they must all go straight home to dinner.
CHAPTER XIICALLING ON ANNE CARTER
Pleasant things generally submerged the unpleasant ones at Harding, so Betty’s delight in Roberta’s unexpected success quite wiped out her remembrance of Bob’s theories about Jean, until, several days after the Shylock trials, Jean herself confirmed them.
“I want to be sure that you know I’m going to try for Bassanio,” she said, overtaking Betty on the campus between classes, “so you can have plenty of time to hunt up a rival candidate. I can’t imagine who it will be unless you can make Eleanor Watson believe that it’s her duty to the class to try. But this time I hope you’ll come out into the open and play fair, or at least as nearly fair as you can, considering that you ought to be helping me. I may not be much on philanthropy, but I don’t think I can be accused of entirely lacking a sense of honor.”
“Why Jean,” began Betty, trying to rememberthat Jean was hurt and disappointed and possibly didn’t mean to be as rude as her words sounded, “please don’t feel that way. It wasn’t that I didn’t want you for Shylock. Of course Roberta is one of my best friends and I’m glad to have her get the big part in the play, because she’s never had anything else; but I didn’t dream that she would get it.”
“Then why did you drag her in at the last minute?”
Betty explained how that had happened, but Jean only laughed disagreeably. “I consider that it was a very irregular way of doing things,” she said, “and I think a good many in the class feel the same way about it. Besides—but I suppose you’ve entirely forgotten that it was I who got you on the play committee.”
“Listen, Jean,” Betty protested, anxious to avoid a discussion that would evidently be fruitless. “It was Mr. Masters, and not I or any of the other girls, who didn’t like your acting, or rather your acting of Shylock. And Mr. Masters himself suggested that you would make a better Bassanio. Didn’t Barbara tell you?”
“Oh, yes,” said Jean, “she told me. That doesn’t alter the fact that if you hadn’t produced Roberta Lewis when you did, Mr. Masters might have decided that he liked my Shylock quite well enough.”
“Jean,” said Betty, desperately, “don’t you want the play to be as good as it possibly can?”
“No,” retorted Jean, coolly, “I don’t. I want a part in it. I imagine that I want one just as badly as Roberta Lewis did. And if I don’t get Bassanio, after what Barbara and Clara Ellis have said to me, I shall know whom to blame.” She paused a moment for her words to take effect. “My father says,” she went on, “that women never have any sense of obligation. They don’t think of paying back anything but invitations to afternoon tea. I must tell him about you. He’ll find you such a splendid illustration. Good-bye, or I shall be late to chemistry.” Jean sped off in the direction of the science building.
“Oh, dear,” thought Betty, sadly, “I wish I weren’t so stupid and so meek. Madeline can always answer people back when they’redisagreeable, and Rachel is so dignified that Jean wouldn’t think of saying things like that to her.”
Then she smiled in spite of herself. It was all such a stupid tangle. Jean insisted on blaming her, and Roberta and the committee had insisted on praising her for finding 19— a Shylock, when she never intended or expected to do anything of the kind. “It just shows,” thought Betty, “that the things that seem like deep-laid schemes are very often just happenings, and the simple-looking ones are the schemes. Well, I certainly hope Jean will get Bassanio. Eleanor’s window is open. I wonder if she can hear me.”
“Oh, Eleanor,” she called, when the window had been opened wider in response to her trill, “there isn’t any committee meeting this afternoon. Don’t you want to go with me to see Anne Carter? Let’s start early and take a walk first. It’s such a lovely glitter-y day.”
The “glitter-y” day foregathered with a brisk north wind after luncheon, and it was still mid-afternoon when Betty and Eleanor ran up Miss Carter’s front steps, delighted atthe prospect of getting in out of the cold. At the door they hesitated.
“It’s so long since I’ve regularly called on anybody in college,” laughed Betty, “that I’ve forgotten how to act. Don’t we go right up to her room, Eleanor?”
“Why yes. That’s certainly what people used to do to us in our freshman year. Don’t you remember how we were always getting caught with our kimonos on and our rooms fixed for sweep-day by girls we’d never seen?”
“I should think so.” Betty smiled reminiscently. “Helen Adams used to get so fussed when she was caught doing her hair. Then let’s go right up. We want to be friendly and informal and make her feel at home. She has the front room on the second floor. Helen spoke of its being so big and pretty. I do hope she’s in.”
She was in, for she called a brisk “come” in answer to Betty’s knock. She was sitting at a table-desk by the window, with her back to her door, and when it opened she did not turn her head. Neither did Jean Eastman who sat beside her, their heads together over the same book. Jean was reading aloud inhesitating, badly accented French, and paid even less attention to the intruders than Miss Carter, who called hastily, “In just one minute, Miss Harrison,” and then cautioned Jean not to forget the elisions.
“But we’re not Miss Harrison,” said Betty laughingly, amazed and embarrassed at the idea of meeting Jean here.
At the sound of her voice both the girls turned quickly and Miss Carter came forward with a hearty apology for her mistake. “I was expecting some one else,” she said, “and I thought of course it was she who came in. It was very stupid of me. Won’t you sit down?”
“But aren’t we interrupting?” asked Betty, introducing Eleanor.
“Nothing more important than the tail end of some French,” answered Jean Eastman curtly, going to get her coat, which hung over a chair near the door. As she passed Miss Carter she gave her a keen, questioning look which meant, so Betty decided, that Jean was as much surprised to find that this quiet sophomore knew Betty Wales and her crowd, as Betty had been to see Jean established in MissCarter’s room on a footing of apparent intimacy.
“I’ve been here ever since luncheon,” Jean went on, “and I was just going, wasn’t I, Miss Carter? Oh, no, you’re not driving me away—not in the least. I should be delighted to stay and talk to you both if I had time.” And with a disagreeable little laugh Jean pinned on her hat, swept up her books, and started for the door.
Strange to say, Miss Carter seemed to take her hasty departure as a matter of course and devoted herself entirely to her other visitors, until, just as Jean was leaving, she turned to her with a question.
“Oh, Miss Eastman, I don’t remember—did you say to-morrow at four?”
For a full minute Jean stared at her, her expression a queer mixture of anger and amused reproach. “No, I said to-morrow at three,” she answered at last and went off down the stairs, humming a gay little tune.
Betty and Eleanor exchanged wondering glances. Jean was notorious for knowing only prominent girls. Her presence here and her peculiar manner together formed a puzzlethat made it very difficult to give one’s full attention to what Miss Carter was saying. There was also Miss Harrison. Was she the senior Harrison, better known as the Champion Blunderbuss? And if she was coming, why didn’t she come?
Betty found herself furtively watching the door, which Jean had left open, and she barely repressed a little cry of relief when the Champion’s ample figure appeared at the head of the stairs.
“I’m terribly late,” she called out cheerfully. “I thought you’d probably get tired of waiting and go out. Oh,” as she noticed Miss Carter’s visitors, “I guess I’d better come back at five. I can as well as not.”
But Betty and Eleanor insisted that she should do nothing of the kind.
“We’ll come to see you again when you’re not so busy,” Betty promised Miss Carter, who gave them a sad little smile but didn’t offer any objection to their leaving the Blunderbuss in possession.
“Well, haven’t we had a funny time?” said Eleanor, when they were outside. “Did you know that Miss Carter tutored in French?”
“No,” answered Betty. “Helen never gave me the impression that she was poor. Her room doesn’t look much as if she was helping to put herself through college, does it?”
“Not a bit,” agreed Eleanor, “nor her clothes, and yet Miss Harrison certainly acted as if she had come on business.”
“Yes, exactly like Rachel’s pupils. They always come bouncing in late, when she’s given them up and we’re all having a lovely time. Miss Carter acted businesslike too. She seemed to expect us to go.”
“Well then, what about Jean?” asked Eleanor. “I couldn’t make her out at all. Has she struck up some sort of queer friendship with Miss Carter or was she being tutored too?”
Betty gave a little gasp of dismay. “Oh, I don’t know. I hoped you would. You see—she’s trying for a part in the play.”
“Then she can’t be conditioned,” said Eleanor easily. “Teddie Wilson has advertised the rule about that far and wide, poor child.”
“And you don’t think Jean could possiblynot have heard of it?” Betty asked anxiously.
“Why, I shouldn’t think so, but you might ask her to make sure. She certainly acted very much as if we had caught her at something she was ashamed of. Would you mind coming just a little way down-town, Betty? I want to buy some violets and a new magazine.”
Betty was quite willing to go down-town, but she smiled mournfully at Eleanor’s careless suggestion that she should speak to Jean. Asking Jean Eastman a delicate question, especially after the interview they had had that morning, was not likely to be a pleasant task. Betty wondered if she needed to feel responsible for Jean’s mistakes. She certainly ought to know on general principles that conditions keep you out of everything nice from the freshman team on.
A visit from Helen Adams that evening threw some new light on the matter.
“Betty,” Helen demanded, “isn’t Teddie Wilson trying for a part in our play?”
“Helen Chase Adams,” returned Betty, severely, “is it possible you don’t know that she got a condition and can’t try?”
“I certainly didn’t know it,” said Helen meekly. “Why should I, please?”
“Only because everybody else does,” said Betty, and wondered if Jean could possibly belong with Helen in the ignorant minority. It seemed very unlikely, but then it seemed a sheer impossibility that Helen should have sat at the Belden House dinner-table day after day and not have heard Teddie’s woes discussed. At any rate now was her chance to get some information about Miss Carter.
“While we are talking about conditions,” she began, “does your friend Anne Carter tutor in French?”
Helen nodded. “It’s queer, isn’t it, when she has so much money? She doesn’t like to do it either, but mademoiselle made her think it was her duty, because all the French faculty are too busy and there was no other girl who took the senior course that mademoiselle would trust. Anne thinks she’ll be through by next week.”
“Were many people conditioned in French?” asked Betty.
“Why, I don’t know. I think Anne just said several, when she told me about it.”
“What I mean is, are all those she tutors conditioned?”
“Why, I suppose so,” said Helen, vaguely. “Seniors don’t generally tutor their last term unless they have to, do they? There wouldn’t be much object in it. Why are you so interested in Anne’s pupils, Betty?”
“Oh, for no reason at all,” said Betty, carelessly. “Eleanor and I went up to see her this afternoon, and some one came in for a lesson, as I understood it, so of course we didn’t stay.”
“What a shame! You’ll go again soon, won’t you?”
“Not until after she gets through tutoring,” said Betty, decidedly.
“I wish Helen Adams had never seen that girl,” she declared savagely to the green lizard after Helen had gone. “Or at least—well, I almost wish so. Whatever I do will go wrong. If I ask Jean whether she knows about the rule, she’ll be horribly disagreeable, but if she gets Bassanio and then Miss Stuart reports her condition she’ll probably come and tell me that I ought to have seen she was conditioned and warned her. AnywayI shall feel that I ought. It’s certainly much kinder to speak to her than to ask Barbara to inquire of Miss Stuart. Eleanor can’t speak to her. No one can but me.” The lizard didn’t even blink, but Betty had an inspiration. “I know what. I’ll write to her.”
Betty spent a long time and a great deal of note-paper on that letter, but at last it read to her satisfaction:
“Dear Jean:
“After you left this afternoon Miss Harrison came in, evidently to be tutored. So I couldn’t help wondering if you could possibly have had the bad luck to get a condition, and if so, whether you know the rule about the senior play,—I mean that no one having a condition can take part. Please, please don’t think that I want to be interfering or disagreeable. I know you would rather have me ask you now than to have anything come out publicly later.
“Betty.”
Two days later Jean’s answer appeared on the Belden House table.
“If you thought I had a condition in French, why didn’t you go and ask mademoiselle about it? She would undoubtedly have received you with open arms. Yes, I believe that Miss Carter, whom you seem to know so intimately all of a sudden, tutors the Harrison person. Just why you should lump me with her, I don’t see. I know the rule about conditions and the play as well as you do, but being without either a condition or a part, I can’t see that it concerns me particularly.
“Yours most gratefully,“Jean Reaves Eastman.”
Betty read this note through twice and consigned it, torn into very small pieces, to her waste-basket. But after thinking the whole matter over a little more carefully she decided that Jean had had ample grounds for feeling annoyance, if not for showing it, and that there would be just time before dinner to find her and tell her so.
Jean looked a good deal startled and not particularly pleased when she saw Betty Wales standing in her door; but Betty, accepting Jean’s attitude as perfectly naturalunder the circumstances, went straight to the point.
“I’ve come to apologize for my mistake, Jean,” she said steadily, “and to tell you how glad I am that it is a mistake. I don’t suppose I can make you understand why I was so sure—or at least so afraid——”
“Oh, we needn’t go into that,” said Jean, with an attempt at graciousness. “I suppose Miss Carter said something misleading. You are quite excusable, I think.”
“No,” said Betty, “I’m not. I’ve studied logic and argument and I ought to know better than to depend on circumstantial evidence. I’m very, very sorry.”
Jean looked at her keenly. “I suppose you and Eleanor have discussed this affair together. What did she think?”
“I haven’t mentioned it to her since the afternoon we were at Miss Carter’s, and she doesn’t know that I wrote you. That day we both felt the same—that is, we didn’t know what to think. If you don’t mind, I should like to tell her that it’s all right.”
“Why in the world should you bother to do that?” asked Jean curiously.
“Because she’ll be so glad to know, and also because I think it’s no more than fair to all of us. You did act very queerly that afternoon, Jean.”
“Oh, did I?” said Jean oddly. “You have a queer idea of fairness. You won’t work for me when I’ve put you on a committee for that express purpose; but no matter how disagreeable I am to you about it, you won’t take a good chance to pay up, and you won’t let Eleanor take hers.”
“Let Eleanor take hers?” repeated Betty wonderingly.
“Yes, her chance to pay up her score. She owes me a long one. You know a good many of the items. Why shouldn’t she pay me back now that she has a good chance? You haven’t forgotten Mary Brooks’s rumor, have you? Eleanor could start one about this condition business without half trying.”
“Well, she won’t,” Betty assured her promptly. “She wouldn’t think of mentioning such a thing to anybody. But as long as we both misunderstood, I’m going to tell her that it’s all right. Good-bye,Jean, and please excuse me for being so hasty.”
“Certainly,” said Jean, and Betty wondered, as she ran down-stairs, whether she had only imagined that Jean’s voice shook.
The next afternoon Mr. Masters and the committee, deciding that Jean’s Bassanio was possibly just a shade more attractive than Mary Horton’s, gave her the part. Kate Denise was Portia, and everybody exclaimed over the suitability of having the lovers played by such a devoted pair of friends. As for Betty, she breathed a sigh of relief that it was all settled at last. Jean had won the part strictly on her merits, and she fully understood Betty’s construction of a committee-woman’s duty to the play. Nevertheless Betty felt that, in spite of all their recent contests and differences of opinion, they came nearer to being friends than at any time since their freshman year, and she wasn’t sorry that she had gone more than halfway in bringing about this happy result.
Meanwhile the date of the Glee Club concert was fast approaching. Georgia Amescame in one afternoon to consult Betty about the important matter of dress.
“I suppose that, as long as we’re going to sit in a box, I ought to wear an evening gown,” she said.
“Why, yes,” agreed Betty, “if you can as well as not. It’s a very dressy occasion.”
“Oh, I can,” said Georgia sadly. “I’ve got one all beautifully spick and span, because I hate it so. I never feel at home in anything but a shirt-waist. Beside my neck looks awfully bony to me, but mother says it’s no different from most people’s. The men are coming, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes, they’re coming,” assented Betty gaily, “and between us we’ve been asked to every tea on the campus, I should think. So they ought to have a good time in the afternoon, and college men are always crazy over our concerts.”
“Your man will be all right,” said Georgia admiringly, “and I’ll do my best for the other one. Truly, Betty, I am grateful to you. I think it’s awfully good of you to ask me. Even if you asked me because I’m theother Georgia’s namesake, you wouldn’t do it if you didn’t like me a little for myself, would you?”
“Of course not, you silly child,” laughed Betty.
“I want you to have my reserved seat for the basket-ball game,” went on Georgia. “The subs each have one seat to give away, and I’ve swapped mine with a sophomore, so you can sit on your own side.”
“I shall clap for you, though,” Betty told her, “and I hope you’ll get a chance to play. The other Georgia wasn’t a bit athletic, so your basket-ball record will never be mixed with hers.”
Betty repeated Georgia’s remark about being nothing but the other Georgia’s namesake to Madeline. “I think she really worries about it,” she added.
Madeline only laughed at her. “She hasn’t seemed quite so gay lately—that probably means warnings from her beloved instructors at midyears. It must be awfully hard work to keep up the freshman grind with everybody under the sun asking you to do things. Georgia hates to snub people, so she goes evenwhen she’d rather stay at home. Twice lately I’ve met her out walking with the Blunderbuss. I must talk to her about the necessity of being decently exclusive.”