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Betty Wales, Sophomore: A Story for Girls

by Edith K. Dunton · English · Gutenberg #6432 · 364,201 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Betty Wales, Sophomore: A Story for Girls

Author: Edith K. Dunton


        
Release date: September 1, 2004 [eBook #6432]
                Most recently updated: December 29, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6432

Credits: Produced by Jason Kwong, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BETTY WALES, SOPHOMORE: A STORY FOR GIRLS ***




Produced by Jason Kwong, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.





[Illustration: THE "SHOW" WAS A TREMENDOUS SUCCESS]

BETTY WALES, SOPHOMORE
A STORY FOR GIRLS

BY MARGARET WARDE

Author of
"Betty Wales, Freshman"
"Betty Wales, Junior"
"Betty Wales, Senior"
"Betty Wales, B.A."


Illustrated by
EVA M. NAGEL

1905




CONTENTS

CHAP
       INTRODUCTION
    I  MOVING IN
   II  ELEANOR'S FRESHMAN
  III  PARADES AND PARTIES
   IV  ELEANOR WATSON, AUTHORESS
    V  POINTS OF VIEW
   VI  ON AMBITION
  VII  ON TO MIDYEARS
 VIII  THE "FIRST FOUR"
   IX  THE COMPLICATIONS OF LIFE
    X  IN THE "ARGUS" SANCTUM
   XI  A PROBLEM IN ETHICS
  XII  A BRIEF FOR THE DEFENSE
 XIII  VICTORY OR DEFEAT
  XIV  A DISTINGUISHED GUEST
   XV  DISAPPOINTMENTS
  XVI  DORA CARLSON'S "SUGARING-OFF"
 XVII  A MAY-DAY RESOLUTION
XVIII  TRIUMPHS AND TROUBLES
  XIX  GOOD-BYES




ILLUSTRATIONS

THE "SHOW" WAS A TREMENDOUS SUCCESS

"DON'T PUT THAT GREEN VASE THERE"

"WELL," SAID MISS FERRIS, "THAT WON'T BE
NEW WORK"

"LET US MAKE A FAIR START," HE SAID

THE GREEN LINE WAS SHOUTING ITSELF HOARSE

ELEANOR DID NOT ANSWER

"NEVER MIND THAT NOW," SAID BETTY




INTRODUCTION

Readers who did not make the acquaintance of Betty Wales and her friends
while they were freshmen may like to know that there were nine girls in
all who spent their first year together at Mrs. Chapin's. Two of them,
however, took very little part in the life of the house and left college
at the end of the year. Katherine Kittredge, "of Kankakee," was the fly-
away of the group, Rachel Morrison its steadiest, strongest member. Shy,
sensitive Roberta Lewis found her complement in a volatile little
sophomore, the only one in the house, named Mary Brooks. Mary had a
talent for practical jokes and original methods of entertainment, and
supplied much of the fun and frolic at the Chapin house. It was she who
put Betty's picture into the sophomore "grind book," who let out the
secret of the Mountain Day mishap, and who frightened not only the Chapin
house freshmen but the whole class with an absurd "rumor" of her own
invention. Helen Adams, Betty's roommate, was a forlorn, awkward little
body, who came to college expecting to study all the time, and was amazed
and disappointed at what she considered the frivolity of her companions.
Betty Wales, in particular, with her fascinating, merry ways, her love of
fun, and her easygoing fashion of getting through her work, was a
revelation to Helen. She began by placing her roommate rather scornfully
in the category of pretty girls, who, being pretty, can afford to be
stupid, and ended by loving her dearly, and fully appreciating what Betty
had done to make her more like other girls and so happier in her
environment.

In spite of her beauty and cleverness, Eleanor Watson was not a favorite
with the Chapin house girls. She was snobbish and overbearing, intent
upon making herself prominent in class and college affairs, and utterly
regardless of the happiness of other people, as well as of the rules and
moral standards of Harding. Betty, who was unreasonably fond of Eleanor,
though she recognized her faults, unconsciously exerted a great deal of
influence over her. How she finally managed at the instigation of her
upper-class friend, Dorothy King, and with the help of Miss Ferris, a
very lovable member of the faculty, to extricate Eleanor Watson from an
extremely unpleasant position, and finally to make her willing and even
eager to finish her course at Harding, is told at length in "Betty Wales,
Freshman." There are also recorded many of the good times that she and
her house-mates and a few other friends had during the first of their
four happy years at Harding College.

The story of what Betty did at Harding and elsewhere will be found
continued in "Betty Wales, Junior," "Betty Wales, Senior," and "Betty
Wales, B.A."

Margaret Warde.




CHAPTER I

MOVING IN


Betty Wales sat down on the one small bare spot on the floor of her new
room at the Belden House, and looked about her with a sigh of mingled
relief and weariness.

"Well," she remarked to the little green lizard, who was perched jauntily
on a pile of pillows, "anyhow the things are all out of the trunks and
boxes, and I suppose after a while they'll get into their right places."

She looked at her watch. Quarter to eight,--that left just about two
hours before ten o'clock. Somebody rapped on the door.

"Come in," sang Betty.

It was Eleanor Watson. Betty leaped over a motley collection of cups and
saucers, knocked down a Japanese screen--which fortunately landed against
a bed, instead of on the cups and saucers--and caught Eleanor in her
arms.

"Isn't it great to be back?" she said when she could speak, meanwhile
setting up the screen again, and moving trunk-trays so they might sit
down on the bed. "Are you settled, Eleanor?"

"A little," said Eleanor, surveying Betty's quarters with amusement.
"Quite settled compared to this, I should say. Why do you take everything
out at once, Betty?"

"Oh, then they're all right where I can get at them," returned Betty
easily. "I hate to keep stopping to fish something out of the bottom of a
box that I haven't unpacked."

"I see," laughed Eleanor. "Did you have a lovely summer?"

"Perfectly lovely. I can swim like a fish, Eleanor, and so can Emily
Davis. You don't know her much, do you? But you must. She's lots of fun.
Did you have a good time too?"

"Beautiful," said Eleanor, eagerly. "Father is coming east before long to
see Jim and me, and he and Jim are coming on together from Cornell.
You'll help me entertain them, won't you, Betty?"

"I should think I would," Betty was saying heartily, when there was
another bang on the door and Rachel and Katherine appeared. Then there
was more leaping over teacups, more ecstatic greetings, and more
readjustment of Betty's belongings to make room for the newcomers.

"Where's Helen?" demanded Rachel, when everybody was seated.

"Coming the first thing to-morrow morning," explained Betty. "You see she
lives so near that she can come down at the last minute."

"It's lucky she's not here now," laughed Katherine. "There's no room for
her, to say nothing of her things."

"I should think not," agreed Betty, tragically. "Girls, these campus
rooms are certainly the smallest places! This isn't half as big as ours
at Mrs. Chapin's. And see the closet!" She picked her way across the
room, and threw open a door, disclosing a five-by-three cupboard. "I ask
you how we're going to get all our clothes into that."

"Helen hasn't many clothes," suggested Katherine, cheerfully.

"She has plenty to put on half those hooks," answered Betty, with
finality, closing the door on the subject, and coming back to sit between
Eleanor and Rachel.

"Isn't the Chapin house crowd scattered this year?" said Katherine. "Let
me see. You and Helen and Mary Brooks are here. Has Mary come yet?"

Betty shook her head. "Her steamer isn't due till to-morrow morning.
Didn't you know she'd been in Ireland all summer?"

"Won't it be fun to hear her tell about it?" put in Rachel.

"You three here," went on Katherine, intent on her census, "and you're at
the Hilton, aren't you, Eleanor?"

"Yes," answered Eleanor with a grimace. "I wanted to be here, of course,
but Miss Stuart wouldn't manage it. Which house are you in, Rachel?"

"I'm off the campus," answered Rachel, quietly, "at the little white
house just outside the gate. It's a dear, quaint place, and delightfully
quiet. Of course, I'd rather have been on the campus, but father couldn't
afford it this year."

"Make way, make way for us!" sang a noisy chorus out in the hall. There
were shouts and shrieks and bangs and more shrieks, and then the din died
away suddenly into an ominous stillness that evidently heralded the
approach of some dreaded power.

"It's lucky one of us lives in a quiet place, where the rest of us can
take refuge occasionally," said Eleanor.

"Isn't it?" chimed in Katherine. "I'm at the Westcott myself, and I never
heard anything like the racket there was, when the girls began to come in
from the eight o'clock train."

"Our crowd seems to have been on hand early," said Rachel.

"You know Betty's father doesn't like her to travel alone," jeered
Katherine, "especially after dark. Did he telegraph the registrar again
this year, Betty?"

"Please don't," begged Betty, blushing prettily. "Weren't we green little
freshmen though, at this time last fall?"

"And isn't it fun to be coming back as sophomores?" asked Rachel.

"We haven't quite finished with the residences of the Chapin house
girls," said Eleanor. "How about Roberta?"

"She's going to stay on at Mrs. Chapin's, I think," answered Katherine.
"She couldn't get in here at the Belden, and she and Mary want to be
together."

"And the Riches aren't coming back, I believe," added Rachel. "And now I,
for one, must go back and finish unpacking."

Katherine and Eleanor rose too, astonished to find how fast the evening
had slipped away, and how little time there was left in which to get
ready for the busy "first day" ahead of them. When they had all three
gone, Betty lay back on the bed, her head pillowed on her arms, to rest
for a moment longer. She was tired. The journey from Rockport had been
hot and disagreeable, and some of her box covers had been nailed on with
disheartening thoroughness. But besides being tired, she was also very
happy--too happy to turn her attention again at once to the trying
business of getting settled. In spite of the "perfectly lovely" summer at
the seashore, she was glad to be back at Harding. She was passionately
fond of the life there. There had been only one little blot to mar her
perfect enjoyment of freshman year, and that was Eleanor's unexplainable
defection. And now Eleanor had come back, fascinating as ever, but
wonderfully softened and sweetened. The old hauteur had not left her
face, but it was in the background, veiled, as it were, by a
determination to be different,--to meet life in a more friendly spirit,
and to make the most of it and of herself. Betty could have hugged her
for her cordial greetings to Katherine and Rachel, and for the kindly
little speech about Rachel's boarding-place. The other girls had been
tactful too, ready to meet Eleanor half-way and to let bygones be
bygones. It was all "just lovely."

Betty was picking herself up, intent upon clearing Helen's half of the
room at least, before she went to bed, when another tap sounded on the
door. "Come in," she called eagerly, expecting to see Roberta, or perhaps
Alice Waite, or even Dorothy King. Instead, a tall, stately stranger
opened the door, and entering, closed it again after her.

"May I come in and talk to you?" she asked. "I live next door--that is,
my trunks aren't here, so I haven't begun living there to any great
extent as yet. Don't stop working. I'll sit and watch; or I'll help, if I
can. There seems to be plenty doing."

And she sat down calmly in the place that Betty had just vacated.

Betty was not easily embarrassed, but the strange girl's perfect
composure and ease of manner disconcerted her. She did not know many
upper classmen in the Belden House, and she could not remember ever
having seen this one before. And yet she surely was not a freshman.

"Yes, I--I am busy," she stammered. "I mean, I ought to be. But I've had
callers all the evening long. Oh, dear! I didn't mean that. I'm truly
glad to have you come, and I will keep on working, if you don't mind."

The stranger's eyes twinkled. "Which class are you?" she asked.

"Sophomore," answered Betty promptly. "And you're an upper-class girl,
aren't you?"

The stranger shook her head.

"No?" questioned Betty in bewilderment. "Why, I'm sure you're not a
sophomore--I know all the girls in my class at least by sight,--and of
course you're not a freshman."

"Why not?" demanded the new girl gaily.

Betty laughed. "I know," she said, "but I don't believe I can explain.
You seem too much at home, and too sure of yourself somehow. Now, are you
a freshman?"

The stranger laughed in her turn. "Technically, yes," she said, "really,
no. This is my first year here, but I've passed up all the French and
Spanish and Italian that the institution offers, and some of the German.
I think myself that I ought to rank as a graduate student, but it seems
there are some little preliminaries in the way of Math, and Latin and
Logic that I have to take before I can have my sheepskin, and there's
also some history and some English literature which the family demand
that I take. So I don't know just how long I may hang on here."

"How--how funny!" gasped Betty. "Where do you live?"

"Bohemia, New York," answered the new girl promptly.

Betty looked puzzled.

"Why, you see," explained her mysterious friend, "it's no use saying one
lives in New York. Everybody--all sorts and conditions of people--live in
New York. So I always add Bohemia."

"Bohemia?" repeated Betty helplessly.

"Yes, Bohemia--the artistic New York. We have a studio and some other
rooms up at the top of one of those queer old houses on Washington
Square--you know it,--funny, ramshackle old place. Father has afternoons,
and mother and I feed the lions and the lesser animals with tea and
strawberry jam. It's very good fun, living in Bohemia."

"And how did you learn so many languages?"

"Oh, a little from tutors, but mostly from living abroad. We're not in
Bohemia, New York, very much. We have a villa near Sorrento--awfully out-
at-elbows, but still a villa; and we've been in Spain a good deal, and
once father illustrated a book on Vienna--that was where I learned my
German. Let me see--oh, it's French that I haven't accounted for. Well, we
have some French relatives. They love to have us visit them at their
funny old chateau, because mother mends their moth-eaten tapestries
beautifully, and father paints the family portraits."

"And what do you do?" inquired Betty, much impressed.

"I? Oh, I teach the girls American slang. It doesn't amount to much,
teaching French girls slang, because they never have any chance to get it
off on the men. But they always like it."

"Don't you know any other languages?"

"No--why, yes I do, too. I know Bengali. When Mademoiselle asked me that
very question this noon I forgot Bengali. I learned one winter in India.
I guess I'll telephone her--or no--I'd rather see her august face when I
remind her of my humble linguistic existence. My name is Madeline Ayres.
Now it's your turn," ended the new girl suddenly.

"But I haven't anything to tell," objected Betty, "except that I'm Betty
Wales, in the sophomore class, and live in Cleveland. Please go on. It
sounds exactly like a fairy tale."

Madeline Ayres shook her head. "It may now," she said, "but when you come
to think it over, you'll decide that I talk too much. Don't put that
green vase there. It belongs on the bookcase. It just litters your desk
and spoils the effect of that lovely water-color. Do you mind my telling
you?"

It was ten o'clock when Miss Ayres took her departure. Between them, she
and Betty had made astonishing progress toward bringing order out of the
chaos that had reigned supreme an hour earlier.

"It's so pretty, too," declared Betty, alone once more with the little
green lizard. "Whatever she touches goes right into place. I suppose
that's because she's always lived with artists. Oh, dear, I wish I could
do something interesting!"

There was a tap on the door, and Betty sprang for her light, for she had
the new girl's terror of breaking the ten-o'clock rule, which is supposed
by outsiders to be kept to the letter on the campus. However, it wasn't
the matron, but only Nita Reese, who had a single room on the fourth floor
and had come to say that the three B's were spending the night with her,
and that they wished Betty to hurry right along and help eat up the food.

[Illustration: "Don't put that green vase there."]

"Lights don't count on the first night, they say," explained Nita, who,
like Betty, had spent her freshman year off the campus. "So we've got to
make the most of it."

"But what are the B's doing over here?" demanded Betty in perplexity.
"Have they moved away from the Westcott?"

Nita laughed. "No indeed, but the rest of their floor hadn't come, and
they felt lonely and came over to see me. They say their matron won't
miss them the first night, and I'm sure I hope ours won't find them here.
They seem to think it's all right."

Betty pulled on her gray kimono, brushed the hair out of her eyes, and
followed Nita through the hall and up-stairs to the fourth floor. There
was a wilderness of trunks in the narrow passages. Every girl must have
three at least, Betty thought. And their owners appeared to be in no
haste about unpacking; the serious business of the hour was conversation.
They stopped to talk with their neighbors to greet newcomers, to help or
hinder other workers with questions and suggestions. Betty and Nita felt
lost and rather friendless in the big house, and were strangely glad to
see one familiar face down the corridor and to get a brisk little nod
from a senior hurrying past them on the stairs. But on the fourth floor
the B's pranced gaily out to meet them.

"Poor little lambs, just come on the campus," sang Babe.

"'Fraid to death of the matron," jeered Bob.

"We've come to cheer you up," ended Babbie.

"Girls," said Betty, when the five-pound box of chocolates that Bob's
father had thoughtfully provided was nearly empty, "wouldn't it be
dreadful if we didn't know each other or anybody? How did we ever manage
last fall?"

"Oh, you can always do what you have to," returned Bob practically.

"One mattress is too narrow for four, though," announced Babbie, somewhat
irrelevantly. "I'm going down to sleep with you, Betty. Come along."

Thus ended Betty's first evening on the campus.




CHAPTER II

ELEANOR'S FRESHMAN


It was early in the afternoon of the great day of the sophomore reception
that Betty Wales ran up two flights of stairs at the Hilton House, and
bursting into Eleanor's "extra-priced" corner single, flung herself, hot
and breathless, into Eleanor's Morris chair.

"Oh, but I'm tired," she said, as soon as she could speak. "And dirty,"
she added, looking ruefully at the green stains on the front of her pink
linen suit.

"You also seem to be in a hurry," observed Eleanor, who was always vastly
entertained by Betty's impetuous, haphazard methods.

"I am," said Betty. "We're awfully behind with the decorating, and I
ought to rush back to the gym. this very minute, but I--" she paused, then
finished quickly. "I wanted to see you."

"That was nice of you," said Eleanor absently, sorting over the pages of
a theme she had just finished copying. "I helped wind the balcony
railings with yellow cheese-cloth all the morning, and I thought I'd
better finish this before I went back. I'm bound not to get behind with
my work this year."

"Good for you," returned Betty, cheerfully. "But I'm glad you're through
now. I was hoping you would be."

"Did the chairman send you after me?" asked Eleanor, fastening her sheets
together, and writing her name on the first one.

"Oh, no," said Betty, quickly. "She didn't at all. I wanted to see you
myself."

Eleanor was too preoccupied to notice Betty's embarrassment. "Who is it
that you're going to take to-night?" she asked. "You told me, but I've
forgotten, and I want to put her name on my card."

"I asked Madeline Ayres--" began Betty.

"You lucky thing!" broke in Eleanor. "She's the most interesting girl in
her class, I think, and she's going to be terribly popular. She's a class
officer already, isn't she?"

"Yes, secretary. I'm glad you like her, because I came over to see if you
wouldn't take her, in my place."

"I?" said Eleanor, in perplexity. "Why, I'm going to take Polly Eastman,
--Jean's freshman cousin, you know. Do you mean you want me to take Miss
Ayres too? Are you sick, Betty?"

"No," said Betty, hastily, "but Polly Eastman is. She's got the mumps or
the measles or something. Jean told me about it, and an A.D.T. boy was
just leaving a note for you--from Polly, I suppose--when I came up.
She's gone to the infirmary."

"Poor child," said Eleanor. "She missed the freshman frolic, and she's
been counting on to-night. I had such a lovely card for her, too. Pity
it's got to go to waste. Well, she can have her violets all the same.
I'll go down and telephone Clarke's to send them to the infirmary. But I
don't see yet why you want me to take Miss Ayres, Betty."

"Because," said Betty, "we've just discovered a left-over freshman. She
lives way down at the end of Market Street, and she entered late, and
somehow her name wasn't put on the official list. But this morning she
was talking to a girl in her Math. division, and when the other girl
spoke about the reception this one--her name is Dora Carlson--hadn't
heard of it. So the other freshmen very sensibly went in and told the
registrar about it, and the registrar sent word to the gym. And then Jean
said that her cousin was ill, so I came over to see if you'd take
Madeline, and let me take Miss Carlson. Now please say 'yes' right off,
so that I can go and change my dress and hurry down and ask the poor
little thing."

Eleanor got up and came over to sit on the arm of the Morris chair.
"Betty Wales," she said, with mock severity, but with an undertone of
very real compunction in her voice, "do you think I'd do that? Have I
ever been quite so mean as you make me out? Did you really think I'd take
Miss Ayres and let you take Miss Carlson? You're absurd, Betty,--you are
absurd sometimes, you know."

"Yes, I suppose I am," began Betty, "but--"

"It's perfectly simple," broke in Eleanor. "You go straight back to the
gym. and work for the two of us, while I go and invite Miss Carlson to go
with me to the reception. Where did you say she lives?"

"Number 50 Market Street. Oh, Eleanor, will you really take her? She's
probably--oh, not a bit your kind, you know," ended Betty, doubtfully.

"Trust me to give her the time of her life all the same," said Eleanor,
decidedly, putting on her hat.

"Oh, Eleanor, you are a gem," declared Betty, excitedly. "I'll go and get
Helen to take your place at the gym. Good-bye." And she was off.

As Eleanor went down the steps of the Hilton House, she looked
regretfully over at the gymnasium. They were dumping another load of
evergreen boughs at the door. The horse was restless. It took three girls
to hold him, and three more, with much shouting and laughter, to unload
the boughs. Through one window she could see Rachel and Alice Waite
stringing incandescent lights into Japanese lanterns. Katherine Kittredge
was standing behind them in her gym suit. She had evidently been hanging
lanterns along the rafters. It had been bad enough to stay at home and
copy her theme. Now the decorating would be finished and the fun almost
over, before she could get back. Eleanor shrugged her shoulders and
turned resolutely away, trying to remember whether Market Street was just
above or just below the station.

Before she had reached the campus gate, she heard some one calling her
name. It was Jean Eastman.

"What's your hurry?" panted Jean. "Did you get Polly's note? And why
aren't you at the gym.?"

"Yes, I got the note," answered Eleanor. "I'm more than sorry for Polly,
and for myself, too. I shall get back to the gym. as soon as I can, but I
have to ask another freshman to the reception first."

"Who?" demanded Jean.

"Miss Carlson," answered Eleanor simply.

"Oh, that! Don't you think, Eleanor, that you're getting a little
quixotic in your old age?"

Her scornful tone was very exasperating, and Eleanor straightened
haughtily. "I don't think either of us need worry about being too
charitable just yet awhile," she began. Then she caught herself up
sharply. "Don't let's get to bickering, Jean. You know I ought to ask
her, and you know how much I want to. But I'm going to do it, and I
expect every girl on my program to help make her have just as good a time
as if she were one of us." And Eleanor was off down the hill, leaving
Jean gazing amazedly after her.

Jean had no clue to the new Eleanor, whose strange toleration of the
world in general annoyed the "Hill girls" (as those who had come from the
Hill School were called) more than her high-handed attempts to run her
own set, and her eventual wrecking of its influence, had done the year
before. But the Hill girls appreciated Eleanor's ability, and they had
resolved among themselves to wait a little and see what happened, before
declaring open war.

Somebody came to call just before dinner, and Betty was consequently late
in dressing for the reception. But in the midst of her frantic efforts to
make her own toilette and help Helen with hers, she had time to wonder
what Dora Carlson was like and how she and Eleanor would get on together.
She knew that Eleanor was equal to any emergency, if she cared to exert
herself, but the question was: would Dora Carlson in the concrete arouse
the best--or the worst--of her nature? Betty loved Eleanor in spite of
everything, but she had to admit to herself that a timid little freshman
might infinitely prefer staying at home from the sophomore reception to
going in Eleanor's company, if she happened to be in a bad mood. And
furthermore, as Betty lost her temper over Helen's girdle, which would go
up in front and down behind, completely spoiling the effect of an
otherwise pretty evening dress, she was in a position to realize that
trying to help is by no means the soul-inspiring thing that it sometimes
seems in contemplation.

But she need not have worried about Dora Carlson, who, having lived alone
with her father on a farm in the environs of a little village in Ohio,
and kept house for him ever since she was twelve years old, was
abundantly able to take care of herself. She was not at all timid, though
she was not aggressive either, and she had a quaint way of expressing
herself that would have interested almost any one. But it was the frank
good-nature with which she accepted her eleventh hour invitation that
appealed most to Eleanor, newly alive to the charm that lies in
courageously making the best of a bad matter. For half an hour Eleanor
devoted herself to finding out something about Miss Carlson and to making
her feel at ease and happy in her company. Then she went off to order a
carriage and twice as many violets as she had sent to Polly Eastman, and
to find a maid who would press out her white mull dress,--this in spite
of her decision, an hour earlier, that the white mull was much too pretty
to waste on a promiscuous crush like the sophomore reception.

As a result of all these preparations, Dora Carlson arrived at the
gymnasium in a state of mind that she herself aptly compared to
Cinderella's on the night of her first ball. She had a keen appreciation
of the beautiful, and she had never seen any one so absolutely lovely as
Eleanor in evening dress. It was pleasure enough just to watch her, to
hear her talk to other people, and to feel that she--Dora Carlson--had
some part and lot in this fascinating being, who had suddenly appeared to
her as from another world. But Eleanor had no intention of keeping her
freshman in the background. All through the reception that preceded the
dancing she took her from group to group, introducing her to sophomores
whom she would dance with later and to prominent members of her own
class. Eleanor Watson might be considered odd and freakish by the Hill
girls, and very snobbish by the rest of the college; but nobody of either
persuasion cared to ignore her, when she chose to make advances. And
there was, besides, a good deal of curiosity about the short, dark little
freshman, with the merry brown eyes, the big, humorous mouth, and the
enormous bunch of Parma violets pinned to the front of her much-washed,
tight-sleeved muslin. Why in the world had the "snob of snobs" chosen to
bring her to the reception? Eleanor knew how to utilize this curiosity
for Miss Carlson's advantage. She took pains, too, to turn the
conversation to topics in which the child could join. She was determined
that, as far as this one evening went, the plucky little freshman from
Ohio should have her chance. Afterward her place in the college world
would of course depend largely on herself.

"Do you dance?" asked Eleanor, when the music for the first waltz began.
And when Miss Carlson answered with a delighted "yes," Eleanor, who always
refused to lead, and detested both crowds and "girl dances," resolutely
picked up her train and started off.

Betty Wales and Jean Eastman, who had taken their freshmen up into the
gallery, where they could look down at the dancers, saw her and exchanged
glances.

"More than she's ever done for me," said Jean, resignedly.

"Isn't it nice of her?" returned Betty, with enthusiasm.

And Jean, meditating on the matter later, decided shrewdly that Betty
Wales was somehow at the bottom of Eleanor's unexplainable change of
heart, and advised the Hill girls to make a determined effort to
monopolize Eleanor's time and interest, before she had become hopelessly
estranged from their counsels. But to all their attentions Eleanor paid
as little heed as she did to the persistent appeals of Paul West, a
friend at Winsted College, a few miles away, that she should give up
"slaving over something you don't care about and come over to our next
dance." To the Hill girls Eleanor gave courteous but firm denials, and
she wrote Paul West that once in three weeks was as often as she had time
for callers.

"And you really had a good time?" said Eleanor, riding down to Market
Street to see Miss Carlson home.

"Splendid!" said Miss Carlson, heartily. "I'm sorry your first partner
was sick, but I guess I enjoyed it fully as much as she would. Your
friends were all so nice to me."

"I'm glad of that," said Eleanor, relieved to find that Dora had not
apparently noticed Jean Eastman's insolent manner, nor the careless self-
absorption of one or two of her other partners. "And now that you've met
the girls," she added practically, "you mustn't let them forget you.
Making friends is one of the nicest things about college."

"Yes, isn't it?" responded the little freshman, quickly. "I quite agree
with you, but I don't expect to make any. I guess it's like other gifts.
It doesn't come natural to some people. But," she added, brightening, "I
came here to learn Greek and Latin, so that I can teach and support my
father in his old age. And the good time I've had to-night is enough to
last me for one while, I guess."

Eleanor put out a slim, white hand and caught Miss Carlson's hard, brown
one impetuously in hers, "Don't," she said. "That isn't the way things
are here. Good times don't have to last, because one always leads to
another. Why, I know another that's coming to you very soon. I've had a
good deal of company for dinner lately and I can't ask for a place again
right away, but the first Sunday that I can arrange it, you're coming up
to have dinner with me at the Hilton House. Will you?"

Jean Eastman had a great deal to say about Eleanor's freshman crush, as
she called Dora Carlson. It was foolish, she said, and not in good taste,
to send a bunch of violets as big as your head to a perfect stranger,
whom you never expected to see again. Later, after Dora's appearance at
the Hilton for Sunday dinner, Jean declared that it was a shame for
Eleanor to invite her up there and make her think she really liked her,
when it was only done for effect, and she would drop the poor child like
a hot coal the minute she felt inclined to.

Even Betty Wales failed to understand Eleanor's interest in the quaint
little freshman, and she and the other Chapin house girls rallied her
heartily about Miss Carlson's open and unbounded adoration.

"Please don't encourage the poor thing so," laughed Katherine, one day
not long after the reception. "Why, yesterday morning at chapel I looked
up in the gallery and there she was in the front row, hanging over the
railing as far as she dared, with her eyes glued to you. Some day she'll
fall off, and then think how you'll feel, when the president talks about
the terrible evils of the crush system, and stares straight at you."

Eleanor took their banter with perfect good-nature, and seemed rather
pleased than otherwise at Miss Carlson's devotion.

"I like her," she said stoutly. "That's why I encourage her, as you call
it. Now, Helen Adams doesn't interest me at all. She keeps herself to
herself too much. But Dora Carlson is so absolutely frank and
straightforward, and so competent and quick to see through things. She
ought to have been a man. Then she could go west and make her fortune. As
it is--" Eleanor shrugged her shoulders, in token that she had no
feasible suggestion ready in regard to Dora Carlson's future.

To Betty, in private, she went much further. "You don't know what you did
for me, Betty, when you made me ask that child to the reception. Nobody
ever cared for me, or trusted me, as she does--or for the reasons that
she does. I hope I can show her that I'm worth it, but it's going to be
hard work. And it will be a bad thing for her, and a worse thing for me,
if I fail."




CHAPTER III

PARADES AND PARTIES


It was surprising how well the girl from Bohemia fitted into the life at
Harding. She had never experienced an examination or even a formal
recitation until the beginning of her freshman term. She had seldom lived
three months in any one place, and she had grown up absolutely without
reference to the rules and regulations and conventions that meant so much
to the majority of her fellow-students. But she did not find the
recitations frightful, nor the simple routine of life irksome. She was
willing to tell everybody who cared to listen what she had seen of French
pensions, Italian beggars, or Spanish bullfights. It astonished her to
find that her experiences were unique, because she had always accepted
them as comparatively commonplace; but her pity for the girls who had
never been east of Cape Cod nor west of Harding,--there were two of them
at the Belden,--was quite untinged with self-congratulation.

She was very much amused and not a little pleased, by her election to the
post of class secretary.

"They did it because I passed up four languages," she explained to Betty.
"Somehow it got around--I'm sure I never meant to boast of it--and they
seemed to think they ought to show their appreciation. Nice of them,
wasn't it? But I fancy I shan't have a large international
correspondence. It would have been more to the point if they'd found out
whether I can write plainly." And the girl from Bohemia chuckled softly.

"What's the joke?" inquired Betty.

"Nothing," answered Madeline, "only I can't. Miss Felton made me spell
off every word of my Spanish examination paper, because she couldn't read
it, and I can't read my last theme myself," and she laughed again
merrily.

"Let's see it," demanded Betty, reaching for the paper at the top of the
pile on Madeline's desk.

"That's next week's," said Madeline. "I thought I'd do them both while I
was at it. But this week's is funnier."

"This week's" proved to be an absurd incident founded upon the
illegibility of Henry Ward Beecher's handwriting. It was cleverly told,
but the cream of its humor lay in the fact that Madeline's writing, if
not so bad as Mr. Beecher's, was certainly bad enough.

"Maybe Miss Raymond can make out what he really wrote, but I've forgotten
now, and I can't," said Madeline, tossing the theme back on the pile.
"And I didn't try to write badly either. It just happened."

Everything "just happened" with Madeline Ayres. Betty had said that
things fell into place for her, and people seemed to have a good deal the
same pleasant tendency. But if they did not, Madeline seldom exerted
herself to make them do her bidding. She admired hard work, and did a
good deal of it by fits and starts. But she detested wire-pulling, and
took an instant dislike to Eleanor Watson because some injudicious person
told her that Eleanor had said she was sure to be popular and prominent
at Harding.

"What nonsense!" she said, with a flash of scorn in her slumberous hazel
eyes. "How it spoils life to count up the chances like that! How it takes
the fun out of everything! The right way is to go ahead and enjoy
yourself, and work your prettiest, and take things when they come. They
always come--if you give them a little time," she added with a return of
her usual serenity.

So it was wholly a matter of chance that Madeline Ayres should have
succeeded in turning Helen Chase Adams into an athlete. Helen had come to
college with several very definite theories about life, most of which had
been shattered at the start. She had promptly revised her idea of a
college in conformity with what she found--and loved--at Harding. She had
decided, with some reluctance, that she had been mistaken in supposing
that all pretty girls were stupid. But she still believed that genius is
an infinite capacity for taking pains--laying no very stringent emphasis
on the "infinite"; and she was determined to prove the truth of that
bold, if somewhat elusive, assertion, at least to the extent of showing
that she, Helen Chase Adams, could make a thoroughgoing success of her
college course.

Success may mean anything. To Helen Adams it had meant, ever since the
day of the sophomore-freshman basket-ball game, the ability to write
something that would interest her classmates. It might be a song that
they would care to sing, or a little verse or a story that Miss Raymond
would read in her theme class, as she had Mary Brooks's version of the
Chapin house freshmen's letters home, and that the girls would listen to
and laugh over, and later discuss and compliment her upon. It was not
that she wanted the compliments, but they would measure her success.

Helen admired the girl from Bohemia because she could write--Betty had
told her about the Henry Ward Beecher theme,--also because she was quick
and keen, seldom hurried or worried out of her habitual serenity, and
finally because Betty admired her. Madeline Ayres, for her part, thought
of Helen chiefly as Betty's roommate, noticed the awkward little forward
tilt of her head just as she had noticed the inharmonious arrangement of
Betty's green vase, and commented upon the one in exactly the same spirit
that she had called attention to the other.

"You ought to go in for gym," she said one afternoon when she had
strolled into Betty's room and found only Helen. "It would straighten you
up, and make you look like a different person. I'm going in for it
myself, hard. I'm hoping that it will cure my slouchy walk, and turn me
out 'a marvel of grace and beauty,' as the physical culture
advertisements always say. Let's be in the same class, so that we can
practice things together at home."

"But I should take sophomore gym and you'd be with the freshmen,"
objected Helen.

"Why don't you take freshman gym too? You can't do the exercises any too
well, can you?"

"No," admitted Helen, frankly. "I cut a lot last year, and I couldn't do
them anyway."

"Don't you hate to struggle along when you're not ready to go?" asked the
girl from Bohemia.

Helen agreed that she did, and a moment later they were comparing
schedules and deciding upon a class which they could both join. It came
directly in the middle of the afternoon, and Helen Adams had always
considered gym at any hour a flagrant waste of time; but she did not say
so. There had been something in Madeline's outspoken reference to her
awkward carriage that, without hurting her, had struck home. Helen Chase
Adams aspired to literary honors at Harding; to this desire was suddenly
added a violent ambition to be what Madeline had termed "a marvel of
grace."

Betty was amazed, when she came in a little later, to find Helen trying
on her gym suit.

"What in the world are you doing?" she demanded. "Gym doesn't begin for
two weeks yet."

"I know it," said Helen, "but the neck of my suit never was right. It's
awfully unbecoming. How would you fix it?"

"You frivolous thing!" laughed Betty, squinting at the unbecoming neck
for a moment. "It's too high behind, that's all. Rip off the collar and
I'll cut it down. And I have an extra blue tie that you can have--it
needs a tie. But I thought you'd manage to get an excuse from gym, when
you hate it so."

"Perhaps I shan't hate it this year," ventured Helen, and neither then
nor later did Betty exactly understand her roommate's sudden devotion to
parallel bars, ropes, the running track, and breathing exercises. But in
time she did thoroughly appreciate the results of this physical training.
Helen Chase Adams was never exactly "a marvel of grace"; but she was
erect and supple, with considerable poise and dignity of bearing, when
she left Harding.

Another thing that Madeline Ayres "happened upon" was the Republican
parade. Presidential elections had been celebrated in various ways at
Harding. There had been banners spread to the breeze, songs and bells in
the night-watches, mock caucuses and conventions, campaign speeches, and
Australian balloting, before election time. But the parade was of
Madeline's invention.

It was about eight o'clock on the evening after election day that she
appeared in Mary Brooks's door--she had made friends with Mary almost as
easily as Betty had.

"I say," she said, dropping off her rain-coat and displaying a suit of
manly black beneath, to match the short brown wig above. "Let's have a
Republican parade. Who'll be the defeated candidate, in chains?"

Then she smiled broadly, displaying rows of even white teeth, and Mary
grasped the situation in a moment.

"I'm with you, Roosevelt," she said. "Nita Reese can be the defeated one.
I'll go and get her."

"And you be leader of the band," said Madeline. "You get combs and I'll
get tin pans."

"Let's take up a collection and have ice-cream later," proposed Mary.

"All right. I'll tell Betty to see to that. I've got to lead a strenuous
life finding clothes for Fairbanks," and "President Roosevelt"
disappeared down the hall.

Promptly at nine the parade assembled on the third floor corridor. The
president elect was drawn in an express wagon, except down the stairs
between floors. Out of consideration for the weight of his chains the
defeated candidate was allowed to ride in a barouche, alias a rocking-
chair. But he objected to riding backward, and the barouche would not
move the other way round, so he accepted the arm of the leader of the
band and walked, chains and all. The vice-president walked from the
start. At intervals of five minutes one or both of the successful
candidates made speeches. The defeated candidate wished to do likewise,
but the other two drowned him out. Between times the band, composed of
all the Belden House who could play on combs or who could find tin pans,
discoursed sweet music. Those who could not do either formed what Mary
Brooks called "a female delegation of the G.O.P. from Colorado," and
closed in the rear of the procession in a most imposing manner.

The vice-president elect wanted to make a tour of the campus houses, but
the twenty minutes to ten bell rang, and there was only time to eat the
ice cream.

The fact that Roberta Lewis, who happened to be in Mary's room when the
president made his first call, laughed herself into hysterics over the
parade, proves that it was funny. The further fact that she had firmly
decided to leave college at Christmas time, but changed her mind after
she had seen the parade, shows that even "impromptu stunts" are not
always as silly and futile as they seem.

But before the Republican parade came Hallowe'en, and Hallowe'en on the
campus is not a thing to pass over lightly. Each house has some sort of
party, generally in costume. There is a good deal of rivalry, and as
every house wishes to see and judge of the achievements of its neighbors,
the most interesting encounters are likely to take place midway between
houses, on the journeys from one party to another.

In Betty's sophomore year the Belden had a masquerade ball, under the
direction of Mary Brooks and the girl from Bohemia. The Hilton House
indulged in an old-fashioned country Hallowe'en, with a spelling match,
dancing to "Roger de Coverley" and "Money Musk," apple-bobbing and all
the other traditional methods of finding out about your lover on All
Saints' Eve. The Westcott gave a "spook" party, one of the other houses a
play, still another a goblin dance, to which everybody carried jack-o'-
lanterns, and the rest celebrated the holiday in other characteristic and
amusing ways. The campus resembled a cross between the midway at a
World's Fair and the grand finale of a comic opera; for ghosts consorted
there with ballet dancers and Egyptian princesses, spooks and goblins
linked arms with pirates in top-boots and rosy farmers' daughters in
calico, and nuns and Puritan maidens chatted familiarly with villainous
and fascinating gentlemen, who twirled black mustaches and threatened to
kiss them.

By nine o'clock everybody had seen everybody else, and congratulations
for successful costumes, clever acting, and thrilling ghost stories were
nearly all distributed. Toward the end of the evening there were a good
many small gatherings, met to talk over the fun in detail and enjoy the
numerous "spreads" that had been sent on from home,--for the college
girl's family becomes almost as expert in detecting a festival afar off
as is the girl herself.

Nan never let the Wales household forget its duty in such matters, and a
merry party was assembled in Betty's room to eat the salad, sandwiches,
jelly, olives, cake, candy, nuts, and fruit that her mother had provided.

"How time flies," observed Mary Brooks sagely, helping herself to another
sandwich. "I suppose you gay young sophomores don't realize it, but it's
almost Christmas time."

"And after Christmas, midyears," wailed a freshman from her corner.

"And after midyears what?

"'To be or not to be, that is the question,'" quoted Katherine
Kittredge loudly.

"But for sophomores who survive the midyears," went on Mary, "the next
thing of importance is the society elections."

"That's so," said Betty eagerly. "We can get into your wonderful
societies after midyears, if we're brainy enough. I'd forgotten all about
them."

"Then I'll wager you're about the only sophomore who hasn't thought of
them occasionally this fall," announced Mary. "And now I'm ready for some
candy."

"Tell us how to go to work to get into those societies, can't you?" asked
Bob from her place beside the salad bowl.

"Work hard and write themes," said Mary briefly, and the subject was
dropped.

Betty thought no more about Mary's remark then, but when she and Helen
were alone it came back to her.

"I suppose some girls do think about the societies a lot, and plan and
hope to get in," she said.

"I suppose so," returned Helen. "I shan't have to. I am perfectly safe to
stay out."

"Oh, so am I, as far as that goes," said Betty carelessly.

Helen, watching her closely, wondered how any popular girl could be as
unconscious as Betty seemed. She had overheard a Belden House senior
telling Mary Brooks that Betty Wales was sure to go into a society the
minute she became eligible. Helen opened her mouth to convey this
information to Betty, but stopped just in time.

"For she's not unhappy about it," thought Helen, "and it would be
dreadful if they should be mistaken. But they can't be," concluded Helen
loyally, watching Betty's face as she read a note that her mother had
tucked in among the nuts. Most pretty girls might be stupid, but the best
of everything was none too good for Betty Wales, so thought her roommate.




CHAPTER IV

ELEANOR WATSON, AUTHORESS


Eleanor Watson leaned back in her Morris chair, her eyes fixed absently
on the opposite wall, her forehead knit in deep thought. "Somehow there
isn't enough of me to go round," she reflected. "I don't see why,--the
other girls, no quicker or brighter than I, seem to get on all right. I
wonder why I can't. I can't give up everything in the way of recreation."

It was easy enough for an outsider to analyze her difficulty. Never
before had Eleanor tried to "go round," as she put it. She had always
done what she pleased, and let alone the things that did not appeal to
her. Now she had suddenly assumed responsibilities. She really wanted to
do her college work, all of it, as it deserved to be done, and to do it
honestly, without resort to any of the various methods of deception that
she had employed almost unconsciously hitherto. She wanted to make life
pleasanter for Dora Carlson. She wanted to write the long, newsy letters
to Jim and to Judge Watson; letters that brought characteristic replies,
confidential from Jim, genially humorous from her father, but both
equally appreciative and as different as possible from their cold, formal
notes of the year before. On the other hand, she wanted, both for selfish
and unselfish reasons, to enter into the social life of the college. She
had not lost her worldly ambitions in one summer; and she had not gained,
at a bound, the concentration of mind that enabled other girls to get
through an amazing amount of work and fun with perfect ease. She knew
infinitely less of the value of time than Betty Wales; she had less sense
of proportion than Helen Adams; and she was intensely eager to win all
sorts of honors.

So it was natural that she should stare at the wall opposite for some
little time before she came to the conclusion that sitting empty-handed,
thinking about her troubles, while the morning took to itself wings, was
not the best way to mend matters. And when she did finally come back to
earth, it was only to give an angry little exclamation, pick up a
magazine from the table at her elbow, and go to reading it. At the end of
half an hour, however, she tossed it aside, and sitting resolutely down
at her desk, wrote diligently until lunch time.

"Have you done your theme, Eleanor?" asked Alice Waite, overtaking her on
the way down to the dining-room.

Eleanor nodded curtly. "Did it between twelve and one."

"Really?" Alice's brown eyes grew big with admiration. "Oh, dear, it
takes me days to do mine, and when they're done they're nothing, and
yours are just fine. I do think it's queer--"

"Nonsense," interrupted Eleanor crossly. "You don't know anything about
my themes. You never saw one."

"Oh, but Betty Wales says--" began Alice eagerly.

"Now what does Betty Wales really know about it either?" inquired Eleanor
a trifle more amiably.

"Why, I don't know," returned Alice helplessly, "but I'm sure she's
right. Is your theme a story?"

"Yes."

"Oh, and is it about a man and a girl? Betty says your man-and-girl
stories are great, specially the love parts. Now I could no more write
love-making--"

"Well, there's no love-making in this one," interrupted Eleanor crossly,
"and it's not great at all. It's so poor that I'm not even sure I shall
hand it in. So please don't say any more about it."

All through luncheon Eleanor sat silent, wearing the absent, harassed
expression which meant that she was deciding something--something about
which her better and her worse selves disagreed.

Just as she was leaving the lunch-table, Christy Mason rushed up to her
in great excitement.

"Now, Eleanor," she began, "don't say you can't come, for we simply won't
let you off. It's a construction car ride. Meet at the Main Street corner
at four--right after Lab., if you have it. It's positively the last ride
of the season and an awfully jolly crowd's going,--Betty and Jean and
Kate Denise and the three B's, and Katherine Kittredge and Nita Reese,--
oh, the whole sophomore push, you know. Now, say you'll come, and give me
twenty cents for the supper."

"Give me time to breathe," laughed Eleanor. "Now seriously, Christy, why
should I go off on one of those dirty, hard, bumping flat-cars, on a
freezing night in November--"

"It's moonlight," interrupted Christy, "and we must have your guitar to
help with the singing."

"We shall nickname you dig, if you don't come," declared Bob, who had
danced up in the midst of the colloquy. "Now, how will you like that--Dig
Watson?"

Eleanor laughed good-naturedly. "Don't be ironical," she said. "I'll
come. I hadn't any intention of not coming. I only wanted to know why you
will persist in lugging those horrid flat-cars into all your fun."

"Stunty," explained Christy.

"Different," added Bob.

"But since you're coming, we can argue about it to-night," concluded
Christy, decidedly. "What I want now is your twenty cents."

It was half past three when Eleanor started over to the main building to
deposit her theme in one of the tin boxes which Miss Raymond and her
assistants opened at specified hours on specified days,--not, as Mary
Brooks explained, because they wanted what was in the boxes, but because
they wished to discover what was not in them, in order that they might
make life a burden for those whose themes were late.

Just ahead of Eleanor a little freshman walked up to the box and slipped
in a stamped envelope.

"Pardon me, but this isn't a mail-box," explained Eleanor.

"Why, it says 'Collections made at 6 P.M. Tuesdays and Thursdays,'"
gasped the little freshman. Then she glanced at the heading, "'Themes of
Second Class, L to Z.' Oh, I thought of course that said United States
Mail."

"Evidently you're fortunate enough not to have elected themes. When you
do, remember that the collections are as prompt as the postman's," said
Eleanor. "Come back at six, and you can get out your letter."

But the freshman, blushing as red as her scarlet cap, had vanished down
the hall.

Then, instead of dropping in her theme and hurrying home, as she had
intended, to get into an old skirt and a heavy shirt-waist before four
o'clock, Eleanor sat down on the lowest step of the broad stairway, as if
she had decided to wait there until six o'clock and rescue the freshman's
letter herself. Five--ten--fifteen minutes, she sat there. Girl after
girl came through the hall to deposit themes, or consult the bulletin
boards. Among them were one or two of the "sophomore push," as Christy
had called them.

"Aren't you a lady of leisure, though," called Christy, dashing through
the hall at quarter to four. "I have to go ahead and see about the ice
cream. Don't you be late, Eleanor."

Eleanor looked after her wistfully; Christy was one of the girls who
always "went round." Then she shrugged her shoulders, got up, and dropped
her theme into the box.

"What's the odds, anyhow?" she muttered, as it fell with a soft little
swish on the top of the pile inside. "It's too late to write another
now." And she hurried after Christy down the hill.

The construction car ride was a great success. The night was decidedly
balmy for November, and the moon rode, full and glorious, in a cloudless
sky. If the car bottom made a hard seat, the passengers' spirits were
elastic enough to endure all the bumps and jolts with equanimity.
Hatless, though bundled in ulsters and sweaters, they laughed and sang
and shouted in the indefatigably light-hearted fashion that is
characteristic only of babies and collegians off on a frolic.

Eleanor's story of the absent-minded freshman was the hit of the evening,
and the tinkle of her guitar added the crowning touch to the festivity of
the occasion. As they rounded the last corner on the homeward stretch,
she turned to Betty Wales, her eyes shining softly and her hair blown
into distracting waves under her fluffy white tam.

"It is fun, Betty," she said. "Flat-car and all,--though why it should
be, I'm sure I don't see, and last year it wasn't--for me."

Then her face grew suddenly sombre, and she settled back in her corner,
dropping into a moody silence that lasted until the car had dumped its
merry load, and the "sophomore push" was making its way in noisy twos and
threes up the hill to the campus.

"Come over for a minute, can't you, Eleanor?" asked Betty, when they
reached the Belden House gate.

"Why, yes--no, I can't, either. I'm sorry," said Eleanor, and was
starting across the grass toward home, when Jean Eastman overtook her.

"Come over to the Westcott and warm up with coffee," said Jean.

Eleanor repeated her refusal.

"Why not?" demanded Jean with her usual directness.

"Because I want to see Miss Raymond a minute," returned Eleanor, coolly.

"Well, you can't do that to-night," said Jean. "She's entertaining
Professor Morris of New York. I don't suppose you care to break into
that, do you? She's probably having a select party of faculty stars in
for a chafing-dish supper."

"Oh, dear!" There was genuine distress in Eleanor's voice. "Then I'm
going home, Jean. You're perfectly certain that she'll be engaged? You're
sure this is the night he was coming?"

Having duly assured Eleanor that Professor Morris and Miss Raymond had
taken lunch at the Westcott House and that Miss Mills had been invited
out to dinner with them, Jean went home to inform her roommate that
Eleanor Watson was in more trouble over her English work--that she was
rushing around the campus at nine in the evening, trying to find Miss
Raymond.

Eleanor, left to herself at last, turned and went slowly back to the
Belden House.

Betty looked up in astonishment when she appeared in the door. "How'd you
happen to change your mind?" she asked.

"Fate was against me," said Eleanor shortly. "I wanted to see Miss
Raymond about a theme, but she's busy."

"Won't morning do?" asked Betty, sympathetically.

"Yes, I suppose so, only I wanted to have it off my hands."

"I don't wonder," agreed Betty. "She's none too agreeable about late
themes."

"It's not a late theme. I want to get back the one I handed in to-day. It
ought never to have gone in."

Betty stared at Eleanor for a moment in speechless amazement, then she
danced across the room and pulling Eleanor after her, tumbled back among
the couch cushions. "Oh, Eleanor, you are the funniest thing," she said.
"Last year you didn't care about anything, and now I believe you're a
worse fusser than Helen Chase Adams. The idea of worrying over a theme
that is done and copied and in on time! Come and tell Madeline Ayres.
She'll appreciate the joke, and she'll give us some of her lovely sweet
chocolate that her cousins sent her from Paris."

But Eleanor hung back. "Please don't say anything about it to Miss Ayres.
I'd really rather you didn't. It may be a joke to you, but it's a serious
matter to me, Betty."

So more people than Eleanor were surprised the next afternoon to find
that the clever story which Miss Raymond read with great gusto to her
prize theme class, and commented upon as "extraordinary work for an
undergraduate," should prove to be Eleanor Watson's.

As early in the morning as she dared Eleanor had gone over to get back
her theme "that should never have gone in," and to ask permission to try
again. But Miss Raymond had been up betimes, working over her new batch
of papers, and she met Eleanor's apologies with amused approval of
sophomores, who, contrary to the popular tradition about their cock-
sureness, were inclined to underestimate their abilities, and imagine,
like freshmen before midyears, that their work was below grade. So there
was nothing for Eleanor to do but submit gracefully and leave the theme.
It did not occur to her to caution Miss Raymond against reading it to her
class.

In spite of hard struggles and little disappointments like Helen Adams's,
it really takes very little to make a college reputation. One brilliant
recitation may turn an unassuming student into a "prod."; and on the
strength of one clever bit of writing another is given the title of
"genius." This last distinction was at once bestowed on Eleanor. She was
showered with congratulations and compliments. Her old school friends
like Lilian Day and Jean Eastman hastened to declare that they had always
known Eleanor Watson could write. Solid, dependable students like Dorothy
King and Marion Lawrence regarded her with new respect; awed little
freshmen pointed her out to one another as "that awfully pretty Miss
Watson, who is a perfect star in themes, you know"; and her own class,
who had cordially disliked her the year before, and not known what to
think of her recent friendliness, immediately prepared to make a class
heroine of her and lauded her performance to the skies.

But Eleanor would have none of all this "pleasant fuss," as Mary Brooks
called it. Suddenly and most inexplicably she reverted to her sarcastic,
ungracious manner of the year before. She either ignored the pretty
speeches that people made to her, or received them with a stare and a
haughty "I really don't know what you mean," which fairly frightened her
admirers into silence.

"I hope," said Mary Brooks to Betty, after having received a particularly
scathing retort, "that hereafter Miss Raymond can be induced not to
approve of the lady Eleanor's themes. I've heard that prosperity turns
people's heads, but I never knew it made them into bears. She's actually
more unpleasant than she was before she reformed. And the moral of that
is, don't reform," added Mary sententiously.

Betty Wales was completely mystified and bitterly disappointed by
Eleanor's strange behavior.

"Eleanor dear," she ventured timidly, "don't be so queer and--and
disagreeable about your theme. Why, you even hurt my feelings when I
spoke to you about it, and the other girls think it's awfully funny that
you shouldn't be pleased, and like to have them congratulate you. The
theme must have been good, you see. Miss Raymond knows, and she liked it
ever so much. She told the class about your rushing over to get it that
morning, and she thought it was such a good joke. Do cheer up, Eleanor.
Why, I should be so proud if I were you!"

Eleanor was silent for a moment, then she smiled suddenly, her flashing,
radiant smile. "Well, I'll try to be pleasant, Betty, if you want me to,"
she said. "There's no use crying over spilt milk. I am queer--you know
that--but I hadn't meant to hurt people's feelings. You're going to the
library, aren't you? Well, Dora Carlson's up there. Tell her, please,
that I was tired when she came in just now--that I didn't intend to be
disagreeable, and that I love her just the same. Will you?"

So when, just after Betty had left, Dorothy King came in and plunged at
once into the familiar "I want to congratulate you on that story, Miss
Watson," Eleanor smiled pleasantly and murmured, "It's nothing,--just a
stupid little tale," in conventional college fashion.

"And of course," went on Dorothy briskly, "we want it for the 'Argus.'
I'm not a literary editor myself,--just business manager,--but Frances
West is so busy that she asked me to stop in and see you on my way to a
meeting of the Editorial board. Frances is the editor-in-chief, you
know."

A dull red flush spread itself over Eleanor's pale face. "I'm sorry, Miss
King, very sorry, but--but--I can't let the 'Argus' use my story."

Dorothy stared. "We can't have it? Why--well, of course it's very good.
Were you going to try to sell it to a regular magazine?"

Eleanor shook her head. "No," she said with an odd little laugh. "No, I'm
not going to try to sell it."

Dorothy looked puzzled. "Most people are very glad to get into the
'Argus.' We don't often have to ask twice for contributions. And we want
this very, very much. Miss Raymond likes it so well and all. Can't I
persuade you to change your mind?"

"No," said Eleanor curtly.

In spite of her poise and her apparently even temper, Dorothy King was a
rather spoiled young person, used to having her own way and irritable
when other people insisted, without reason, upon having theirs. She
disliked Eleanor Watson, and now Eleanor's manner nettled her beyond
endurance. She rose suddenly.

"Oh, very well, Miss Watson," she said. "But I really don't understand
why you should raise such a tempest in a teapot over a theme. You make me
quite curious to see it, I assure you. It must be a very strange piece of
work."

Eleanor's face went white instantly. "I beg your pardon, Miss King. I
didn't mean to be either rude or disobliging or even--queer. Here is the
story, and if the 'Argus' can really use it, I shall be delighted, of
course."

On the campus Dorothy met Betty Wales. "I've got it," she cried, waving
the theme aloft in triumph. "She didn't want to give it to me at first,
and I lost my temper--she is so trying--but later she was lovely, and I
apologized, and now we're fast friends."

Betty was on her way to gym, but she stole five minutes in which to run
up and see Eleanor.

"Hurrah for you!" she cried. "I saw Dorothy and she told me the great
news. Eleanor, you'll be on the Argus board yourself, if you're not
careful."

"Would you mind not staying now, Betty?" asked Eleanor, who was lying
buried among her pillows. "I have a dreadful headache, and talking makes
it worse."




CHAPTER V

POINTS OF VIEW


During the first part of their year at the Chapin house Betty and her
friends had taken very little interest in the Harding Aid Society. It had
been to them only a name, about which Mary Brooks, who was a member of
the aid committee of her class, talked glibly, and in behalf of which she
exacted onerous contributions, whenever the spirit moved her. But at the
time of the valentine episode, when Emily Davis and her two friends
suddenly appeared upon Betty's horizon, Betty and Katherine realized all
at once what the Aid Society must mean to some of their classmates.
During the rest of the year they seconded Mary's efforts warmly, and the
whole house got interested and plied Mary with questions about the work
of the society, until, in sheer desperation, she admitted that she knew
very little about it, and set herself to get some definite information.
The head of the committee, pleased with Mary's sudden enthusiasm, sent
her to one of the faculty trustees, and for a few days Mary, who was
entirely a creature of impulse, could talk of nothing but the splendid
work of the Harding Aid Society in helping the poorer members of the
college to meet their expenses.

It was perfectly marvelous how little some girls got along on. To many of
them a loan of twenty-five dollars actually meant the difference between
going home and staying in college a year longer.

"Now fancy that!" interpolated Mary. "It would mean just about the price
of a new hat to me."

And each dollar helped an endless chain of girls; for the society made
loans, not gifts; and the girls always paid up the moment they could get
the money together.

"One girl paid back two hundred dollars out of a five hundred dollar
salary that she got for teaching, the year after she graduated. Imagine
that if you can!" said Mary.

The Aid Society managed the bulletin boards in the gymnasium basement. It
ran an employment agency, a blue-print shop, and a second-hand book-
store. It was astonishing, said Mary, with a mysterious shake of her
head, how many splendid girls--the very finest at Harding--the society
was helping. Confidentially, she whispered to the valentine coterie that
Emily Davis and her two friends had just been placed on the list of
beneficiaries. Her eloquence extorted a ten dollar contribution from
Roberta, and smaller amounts from the rest of the girls. But then came
spring term, and the Harding Aid Society was forgotten for golf,
bicycling, the bird club, and the other absorbing joys of the season.

But it was only natural that Mary, casting about for a "Cause," in behalf
of which to exercise her dramatic talent, should remember the Aid
Society, and the effort it was making to complete its ten-thousand-dollar
loan fund before Christmas. Mary was no longer on the aid committee, but
that was no reason why she should not help complete the fund, for which
everybody,--alumnae, friends of the college, and undergraduates,--were
expected to work. Mary was a born entertainer, never so happy as when she
was getting up what in college-girl parlance is called a "show." She had
discovered how to utilize her talent at Harding, at the time of the
Sherlock Holmes dramatization. It had lain dormant again until the
Hallowe'en party brought it once more to light, and the election parade
kindled it into fresh vigor.

In all her enterprises Mary found a kindred spirit in Madeline Ayres.
Madeline had taken part in amateur theatricals ever since she could talk.

"And I've always been wild to do men's parts," she said. "I hope I can up
here."

"Of course you can," returned Mary, promptly. "Do you know any actors or
actresses?"

"Oh, two or three," answered Madeline, carelessly. "Or at least father
does--he knows everybody that's interesting--and I've talked to them. And
once I 'suped.' It was a week when I'd been to the theatre three times,
and I didn't want to ask father for any more money. So I went to the
manager and got a chance to be in the mob--that's the crowd that don't
have speaking parts, you know. And the people who'd promised to take me
home forgot and went off to supper without me, and the leading lady heard
about it and took me home in her carriage. So mother asked her to tea,
and she came, and was a dear, though she couldn't act at all. I forget
her name. But the family wouldn't let me go on again. They said it
wouldn't do, even in Bohemia."

"Goodness!" exclaimed Mary, excitedly. "Wasn't that a lark! Madeline, do
let's get up a play."

"But how can we?" objected Madeline, lazily. "Hallowe'en is over, there
aren't any more elections or holidays coming, and we're not either of us
on the committee for house plays. We can't just walk in and offer our
services, can we?"

Mary stared at her absently. "That's so," she said. "That's the bother of
being on the campus, where they have committees for everything. Oh, dear!
Isn't there something we can have a play for?" Then her face lighted
suddenly. "The Harding Aid! The very thing!" she shrieked, and seizing
the stately Madeline around the waist, she twirled her violently across
the room.

"I haven't the ghost of an idea what you are talking about," said
Madeline, gravely, when she had at last succeeded in disentangling
herself from Mary's bearish embraces. "But I'm with you, anyway. What
shall it be?"

"Why, a--a play."

"Don't you like vaudeville shows better?" inquired Madeline, "and
circuses, and nice little stunts? Girls can do that sort of thing a lot
better than they can act regular plays. And besides it brings in a bigger
cast and takes fewer bothering old rehearsals."

This time Mary danced a jig all by herself.

"Come over to Marion Lawrence's," she commanded, breathlessly. "She's
chairman of the big Loan Fund Committee. She'll make us two a special
entertainment committee, and tell the rest to let us go ahead and do what
we please."

But Madeline shook her head. "I loathe committees," she explained. "You
go along and see Miss Lawrence and be on your committee, if you like. And
when you want some help with the stunts or the costumes--I have a lot of
drapery and jewelry and such stuff--why, come and tell me, and I'll do
what I can."

And no amount of persuasion on the part of Mary, Marion Lawrence, or the
Loan Fund Committee _en masse_, could induce Madeline to change her
mind. "Why, I can't be on a committee," she said. "I get around to
recitations and meals and class meetings, and that's all I can possibly
manage. You don't realize that I'd never had to be on time for anything
in all my life till I came here, except for trains sometimes,--and you
can generally count on their being a little late. No, I can't and won't
come to committee meetings and be bored. But all that I have is yours,"
and Madeline tossed a long and beautifully curled mustache at Mary, and a
roll of Persian silk at Marion. "For the circus barker," she explained,
"and the Indian juggler's turban. I'll make the turban, if the juggler
doesn't know how. They're apt to come apart, if you don't get the right
twist. And I'll see about that little show of my own, if you really think
it's worth having."

So, though her name did not appear on the list of the committee or on the
posters, it was largely due to Madeline Ayres that the Harding Aid "Show"
was such a tremendous success.

"The way to get up a good thing," she declared, "is to let each person
see to her own stunt. Then it's no trouble to any one else. And you'd
better have the show next week, before we all get bored to death with the
idea."

These theories were exactly in accordance with Harding sentiment, so next
week the "Show" was,--in the gymnasium, for it rapidly outgrew the Belden
House parlors, where Mary and Madeline had at first thought of holding
it. It was amazing how much talent Madeline and the committee, between
them, managed to unearth. The little dressing-rooms at the ends of the
big hall had to be called into requisition, and the college doctor's
office, and Miss Andrews' room, and even the swimming tank in the
basement (it leaked and so the water had all been drained off), with an
improvised roof made by pinning Bagdad couch-covers together. All along
the sides of the gymnasium hall there were little curtained booths, while
the four corners of the gallery were turned respectively into a gypsy
tent, a witch's den, the grotesque abode of an Egyptian sorceress, and
the businesslike offices of a dapper little French medium, just over from
Paris.

You could have your fortune told in whichever corner you preferred,--or
in all four if your money lasted. Then you could descend to the floor
below, and eat and drink as many concoctions as your digestion could
stand, sandwiching between your "rabbits," Japanese or Russian tea,
fudges, chocolate, and creamed oysters, visits to the circus, the
menagerie, the vaudeville, and the multitude of side-shows. "Side-show,"
so the posters announced, was the designation of "a bewildering variety
of elegant one-act specialties." Mary Brooks was very proud of that
phrasing.

Mary herself was in charge of the menagerie. "Not to be compared for a
single instant with the animals of the biggest show on earth," she
shouted through her megaphone, accompanying her remarks with impressive
waves of her riding-whip.

Then the white baby elephant walked forth from its lair. It was composed
of one piece of white cheese-cloth and two of Mary's most ardent freshman
admirers. There was a certain wobbly buoyancy in its gait and a
jauntiness about its waving white trunk,--which was locked at the end, as
Mary explained, to guard against the ferocious assaults of this terrible
man-eater,--which never failed to convulse the audience and put them in
the proper humor for the rest of the performance. The snake-charmer
exhibited her paper pets. The lion, made up on the principle of the one
in "Midsummer Night's Dream" pawed and roared and assured timid ladies
that she was not a lion at all, but only that far more awful creature, a
Harding senior. And finally Mary opened the cage containing the Happy
Family, and there filed out a quartette of strange beasts which no
Harding girl in the audience failed to recognize as the four "class
animals,"--the seniors' red lion, the juniors' purple cow, the green
dragon beloved by the sophomores, and the freshmen's yellow chicken.

"They dance" announced Mary in beatific tones, and the three four-legged
creatures stood on their hind legs and, joining paws and wings with the
chicken, went through a solemn Alice-in-Wonderland-like dance. This was
always terminated abruptly by some animal or another's being overcome by
mirth or suffocation, and rushing unceremoniously back into the cage to
recuperate. When the Happy Family was again reunited, Mary announced that
they could also sing, and, each in a different key, the creatures burst
forth with the "Animal Song," dear to the hearts of all Harding girls:

  "I went to the Animal Fair; the great Red Lion was there.
   The Purple Cow was telling how
   She'd come to take the air.
   The Dragon he looked sick, and the little Yellow Chick,
   Looked awfully blue, and I think, don't you,
   He'd better clear out quick--quick!"

At the end of this ditty, the chick hopped solemnly forward, gave vent to
a most realistic cluck, scratched vigorously for worms, and the Happy
Family vanished amid an uproar of applause, while Mary piloted her
audience into the circus proper, managed by Emily Davis.

Here Mlle. Zita, beautiful in pink tarleton,--only her skirt had been
mislaid at the last moment and she had been compelled to substitute the
Westcott House lamp shade,--Mlle. Zita balanced herself on a chair, and
gave so vivid an imitation of wire-walking, on solid ground all the time,
that the audience was actually fooled into holding its breath. Then Bob's
pet collie did an act, and the juggler juggled, in his turban, and some
gym "stars" did turns on bars and swings. And there was an abundance of
peanuts and pink lemonade, and a clown and a band; and Emily's
introductions were alone well worth the price of admission.

At the end of her performance Emily stated that this circus, being modern
and up-to-date in all respects, had substituted for the conventional
after-concert, "a side-splitting farce which would appeal to all
intelligent and literary persons and make them laugh and cry with mirth."
So everybody, wishing to appear intelligent and literary, went in to see
the little play which Madeline Ayres had written. It was called "The
Animal Fair," and three of the class animals appeared in it. But the mis-
en-scene was an artist's studio, the great red lion was a red-faced
English dramatist, the chick a modest young lady novelist attired in yellow
chiffon, and the dragon a Scotch dialect writer. The repartee was
clever, the action absurd, and there were local hits in plenty for those
unliterary persons who did not catch the essential parody. Everybody was
enthusiastic over it, and there were frequent calls for "Author!" But
nobody responded.

"Who wrote it? Oh, some of the committee, I suppose," said the
doorkeeper, carelessly. "Perhaps Marion Lustig helped--they didn't tell
me. No, the actors don't know either. Did you give me fifty cents or a
quarter? Please don't crowd so. You'll all get in in a minute."

Meanwhile Madeline, having seen through the first performance of her
farce, in her capacity of stage manager, had left the actors to their own
devices, and wandered off to explore the other attractions. Betty met her
at the vaudeville.

"Come and get some fudge and see the sleight-of-hand stunts in the
swimming tank," whispered Madeline. "These songs are all too much alike."

It was half-past nine. The sleight-of-hand performance was being given
for the tenth and last time to an audience that packed the house. When it
was over Betty, who had been a ticket-taker at the circus all the
afternoon and evening, hurried Madeline back to see how much money Emily
had made.

"Fifty dollars," said Emily, with shining eyes. "Think of it! I've helped
to make fifty dollars for the Aid Society that's helping me through
college."

"Splendid!" said Betty, too tired to be very enthusiastic over anything
that night.

Madeline led her to a deserted corner of the gallery, and they sank down
on a heap of pillows that had composed the gypsy queen's throne.

"I suppose I ought to care about the money," said Madeline, when they
were seated, "but I don't much. I care because it's all been so funny and
jolly and so little trouble. We can help to make money for good causes
all our lives, but most of us will forget how to make such good times out
of so little fuss and feathers when we leave here."

Betty looked at her wonderingly. Madeline's philosophy was a constant
source of interest and amazement to all her friends. She had a way of
saying the things that they had always thought, but never put into words.

"That's so," she agreed at last, "but I don't see how you knew it. You
haven't been here a term yet. How do you find out so much about
college?"

Madeline laughed merrily. "Oh, I came from Bohemia," she said, "and the
reason I like it up here is because this place isn't so very different
from Bohemia. Money doesn't matter here, and talent does, and brains; and
fun is easy to come by, and trouble easy to get away from. But not for
everybody," she ended quickly.

Eleanor Watson, still in her gypsy fortune-teller's costume, was hurrying
up to the big pile of pillows, six devoted freshmen following close at
her heels.

"Hop up, girls," she called gaily to Betty and Madeline. "My faithful
slaves have come to empty the throne room."

"Aren't you tired, Eleanor?" asked Betty. "You've been at it since three
o'clock, haven't you? I should think you'd be dead."

Eleanor shrugged her shoulders. "Oh, I'm a bit tired," she answered,
indifferently, "But I couldn't stop. The girls simply wouldn't let me,
though Blanche Norton was willing to take my place. I was a goose to tell
them that I could read palms. Look out for that white satin pillow,
Maudie. Yes, the yellow one is mine, but I can't carry it. I'm too done
up to carry anything but myself."

"Now that," said Madeline, decidedly, as soon as Eleanor was out of
hearing, "that is all wrong,--every bit of it. It's not the fun she
wants. She doesn't even care about the money for the good cause. It's the
honor and the chance to show off her own cleverness that she's after."
Madeline waited a moment. "Is she so clever, Betty?"

"Oh, yes," cried Betty eagerly. "Don't you remember her theme?"

"To be sure." Madeline's eyes twinkled. "I'd forgotten her wonderful
theme. Oh, well, then I suppose she is clever--but I'm sorry for her."

"Why?" asked Betty quickly. Surely Madeline could not know anything about
Eleanor's stepmother, and nowadays her career at Harding was a series of
delightful triumphs. More reason why Madeline should envy, than pity her,
Betty thought.

"Oh, for lots of reasons," answered Madeline easily, "but chiefly because
she's so anxious about getting things for herself that she can't enjoy
them when she's got them; and secondly because something worries her.
Watch her face when she isn't smiling, and when she thinks nobody is
noticing her. It's so wonderfully sad and so perfectly beautiful that it
makes me pity her in spite of myself," ended Madeline with a sudden rush
of feeling. "But I can't love her, even for you, you funny child," she
added playfully, pulling one of Betty's curls.

"I'm not a child," retorted Betty, with great dignity. "I'm a sophomore
and you're only a little freshman, please remember, and you have no
business pulling my hair."

"Lights out in two minutes, young ladies," called the night-watchman from
below, and freshman and sophomore raced for the stairs.




CHAPTER VI

ON AMBITION


"It was awfully good of you to come and take me out for a walk, little
sister. My head ached and I knew I ought to get some fresh air, but I
hadn't the resolution to start off alone."

Betty and Miss Hale, the "faculty" who was an intimate friend of Betty's
older sister, had been for a long, brisk tramp through the woods. Now
they were swinging home in the frosty December dusk, tired and wind
blown, and yet refreshed by the keen air and the vigorous exercise.

Betty turned off the path to scuffle through a tempting bed of dry
leaves. "I think it's you who are awfully good to let me come for you,"
she said, stopping to wait for Miss Hale at the end of her run. "I do get
so tired sometimes of seeing nobody but girls, and such crowds of them.
It's a great relief to have a walk and a talk with you. It seems almost
like going home."

"But you still like college, don't you, Betty?"

"Oh, yes!" assented Betty eagerly. "I just love it." Then she laughed
merrily. "You and Nan told me the summer before I came here that all nice
girls liked college, so it's hardly polite of you to ask me now if I like
it, Ethel."

Then Miss Hale laughed in her turn. "And who are your friends this year?"
she pursued. "Has your last year's crowd broken up?"

"Oh, no! We're all too fond of one another for that. Of course we're in
different houses now, some of us, and we've all made lots of new friends
down on the campus. Do you know Madeline Ayres?"

Miss Hale nodded. "I'm glad you know her, Betty; she's a splendid girl.
And how is your protege, Miss Watson, getting on nowadays?"

"Beautifully." Betty launched into an enthusiastic account of Eleanor's
literary triumph, her softened manner, her sudden popularity, and her
improved scholarship.

Miss Hale listened attentively. "That's very interesting," she said. "I
had no idea that Miss Watson would ever make anything out of her college
course. And do you see as much of her as ever, or has she dropped her old
friends now that she has so many new ones?"

"Oh, dear!" said Betty sadly. "You don't like her one bit, do you, Ethel?
I'm so sorry. Nan didn't like her either. Of course I know she has her
faults, but I do love her so--"

"I'm glad of that," broke in Miss Hale heartily. "She would have left
Harding in disgrace last June, if she hadn't had such a loyal friend in
you. We can't help people unless we care for them, Betty,--and sometimes
not then," added Ethel soberly. "The only way is to take all your
opportunities, and then if you fail with one, as I did with Miss Watson,
you may succeed with some one else. And it's the finest thing in college,
Betty, or in life,--the feeling that you really mean something to
somebody. I wish I'd learned to appreciate it sooner."

They walked on for a while in silence, Betty wondering if she did "really
mean something" to Eleanor or to Helen Adams, Miss Hale harking back to
her own college days and questioning whether she and her set had ever
spared a thought for anything beyond their own fun and ambitions and
successes. She blushed guiltily in the dark, as she remembered how they
had snubbed Nan Wales, until Nan actually forced them to recognize her
ability, and later to discover that they all wanted her for a friend.

"I wonder if Nan's forgotten," she thought. "I wonder if she's told Betty
anything about it, and if that's why Betty is so different."

Thinking of Nan finally brought Miss Hale out of her reverie. "Little
sister," she said, "I mustn't forget to ask you about Nan. Isn't that
European trip of hers almost over? She wrote me that she should surely be
back in time for Christmas."

"Yes," assented Betty, "she will. Her steamer is due on the eighth."

"The eighth--why that's to-day," said Miss Hale. "Isn't she going to stop
here on her way west?"

"I'm afraid not," answered Betty, sadly. "Will is going to meet her in
New York, and when I wrote home and wanted them to stop, he wrote back
that he didn't propose to come up here to be the only man among a
thousand girls. And I suppose Nan will be so tired of traveling around
sight-seeing that she won't care about stopping, either."

They had reached Miss Hale's boarding-place by this time, and Betty said
good-night and hurried back to the campus, full of excitement over Nan's
return.

"Just think," she told Helen, as she dressed for the Hilton House dance
to which Alice Waite had invited her that evening, "Nan's ship came in
to-day, and I pretty nearly forgot all about it. Oh, dear! it seems as if
I must see her right off, and it's two whole weeks to vacation."

Just as she spoke, there was a knock at the door, and a maid held out a
telegram. "For Miss Wales," she said.

"Oh, it's from Nan," cried Betty, snatching at the bit of yellow paper.
"And she's coming to-night," she shrieked so loudly that the whole third
floor heard her and flocked out into the corridor to see what in the
world was the matter.

The message was provokingly short:--

"Meet the 7:10 to-night.
"WILL."

"Oh, I wonder if he's going to stop too," said Betty, dropping the
telegram into the wash-bowl and diving under the bed for her gold chain,
which she had tossed there in her excitement. "How long do you suppose
they'll stay?"

"I don't see that you can tell about that till they come," said Helen,
practically. "Are you going to wear that dress to the station to meet
them?"

Betty stopped short in her frantic efforts to fasten her belt, and stared
blankly at her filmy white gown and high-heeled satin slippers. Then she
dropped down on the bed and gave a long despairing sigh. "I haven't a bit
of sense left," she said. "Tell me what else I've forgotten."

"Well, where are they going to sleep?"

"Goodness!" ejaculated Betty. "I ought to go out this minute and hunt for
rooms."

"And what about the Hilton House dance? Oughtn't you to send word if
you're not going?"

"Gracious!" exclaimed Betty. "Of course I ought. Alice has a card all
made out for me."

Just then Mary Brooks and Madeline Ayres sauntered in. "Don't worry,
child. You've got oceans of time," said Mary, when she had heard the
great news. "We'll get you some rooms. I know a place just around the
corner. And Helen can go and tell the gentle Alice Waite that you'll be
along later in the evening with your family. If you want your brother to
fall in love with Harding, you must be sure to have him see that dance.
Men always go crazy over girl dances. And if I was offered sufficient
inducement," added Mary, demurely, "I might possibly go over to the
gallery myself, and help you amuse him--since none of my Hilton House
friends have invited me to adorn the floor with my presence."

So Mary and Madeline departed in one direction and Helen in another,
while an obliging senior who roomed across the hall put Betty's half of
the room to rights--Helen's was always in order,--a freshman next door
helped Betty into a white linen suit, which is the Harding girl's regular
compromise between street and evening dress, and somebody else telephoned
to Miss Hale that Nan was coming. And the pleasant thing about it was
that everybody took exactly the same interest in the situation as if the
guests and the hurry and excitement had belonged to her instead of to
Betty Wales. It is thus that things are done at Harding.

As a matter of fact, Will did not wait until he had seen the Hilton House
dance to become enamored of Harding College. When he and Nan arrived they
announced that they had only stopped over for the evening, and should go
west on the sleeper that same night. But as they were sitting in the
Belden House parlor, while Nan and Betty discussed plans for showing Will
as much as possible of the college in one evening, Mary Brooks sauntered
through the hall, ostensibly on her way to do an errand at the Westcott
House. Of course Betty called her in, and five minutes later Will
announced that he couldn't think of not occupying the room which Miss
Brooks had been good enough to engage for him; and he and Mary went off
to the gymnasium gallery, which is as near as man may come to the joys of
a "girl dance" at Harding. There Betty promised to join them as soon as
Miss Hale arrived to spend the evening with Nan. And Miss Hale had no
sooner appeared than Nan telephoned for her trunks and made a dinner
engagement that would keep her until the next night at least. In the
morning Will remembered that John Parsons was still at Winsted, and
announced that he should spend the following day on an exploring tour
over there. And Mr. Parsons insisted that you could not see Winsted
properly unless you had some Harding girls along, and as the first snow
of the season had just fallen, he organized a sleighing party, with Nan
and Miss Hale as chaperons. Then Will gave a return dinner at Cuyler's,
which took another day, so that a week sped by before Betty's guests
could possibly get away from Harding.

"And now," said Betty to Will on the afternoon before the one set for
their departure, "I think you'd better stay another week and see me."

"Wish we could," said Will absently. "I haven't had time to call on Miss
Waite. I've only been snow-shoeing once with Miss Ayres, and I've got to
have another skate with Miss Kittredge. She's a stunner on the ice. I
say, Betty, you don't suppose she'd get up and go before breakfast, do
you? I'd ask her to cut chapel, only I promised to take Miss Brooks."

"Indeed!" said Betty, with feigned indignation. "I guess that on the
whole it's a good thing you're going to-morrow."

"Now why do you say that? Haven't I behaved like a scholar and a
gentleman?" demanded Will gaily.

"It's your conduct as a brother that I object to," returned Betty
severely. "Nobody pays any attention to me. Nan's gone off sleighing with
Roberta, and you're only enduring my society until Dorothy King finishes
her Lab, and you can go off walking with her. Then I shall be left to my
own devices."

"To your studies you mean, my child," corrected Will. "Do you think that
Nan and I would be so inconsiderate as to come down here and break up the
regular routine of your college work?"

"How about the regular routine of Dorothy King's work?" inquired Betty
saucily. "And Mary Brooks's?"

Will took out a card from his pocket and consulted its entries
industriously. "I have only one date with Miss Brooks to-morrow, and none
at all with Miss King, more's the pity."

"It's queer," said Betty reflectively. "You never can prophesy what girls
men will take to. Now I should have supposed that you'd like Nita Reese
and Eleanor Watson best of all the ones you've met. They're both so
pretty."

"That's all right," said Will severely. "We men don't go so much by looks
as some of you think we do. And anyhow Miss Brooks and Miss King are
good-lookers too. Miss Reese is a nice girl, but she's a little too quiet
for me, and Miss Watson--let's see, she was at that dance the first
night, wasn't she? I didn't see much of her, but I remember she's a
stunner."

"She's one of my best friends," said Betty, proudly. "Oh, here comes
Dorothy," she added, glancing out the window. "I hope you'll have a nice
walk."

"See here, little sister," began Will, blocking Betty's progress to the
door. "You weren't in earnest about my having run off and left you so
much?"

Betty laughed merrily. "I should think not," she said. "If you must know
it, I'm awfully proud of my popular family. I hope you understand that
Mary Brooks and Dorothy King don't take the trouble to entertain
everybody's brother. Now hurry up, or she'll get way into the house
before you can catch her."

"Wait a minute," commanded Will. "Have we anything on for to-night?"

"Nan has, but you and I haven't."

"Then let's eat a nice little dinner at Cuyler's," suggested Will. "Just
you and I and one more for variety. You ask any one you like, and I'll
call for you at six."

"Lovely! Don't you really care whom I ask?"

"Pick out a good-looker," called Will, striding off to meet Dorothy.

Betty had no trouble in choosing the third person to make up the dinner
party. It should be Eleanor Watson, of course. Will would like her--men
always did. She had been tired and not in a mood to exert herself the
night of the Hilton House dance; and one thing or another had interfered
with her joining in any of the festivities since.

"But she'll be all ready for a celebration to-day, with her story just
out in the 'Argus,'" reflected Betty, and started at once for the Hilton
House.

Eleanor was curled up in her easy chair by the window, poring over a mass
of type-written sheets. "Studying my part for a little play we're giving
next Saturday night," she announced gaily, as Betty came in. "So
remember, you're not to stay long."

"I don't believe there's anything you can't do, Eleanor," declared Betty,
admiringly. "I'm awfully proud of knowing such a star. I read your story
in the 'Argus' the first thing after lunch, and I thought it was
perfectly splendid."

"Did you?" said Eleanor, carelessly. "Well, I suppose it must be good for
something, to have so much said about it; but I for one am thoroughly
tired of it. I'm going to try to act so well on Saturday that people will
have something else to talk to me about."

"You will," said Betty, with decision. "You made a splendid leading lady
last year in Sherlock Holmes, and you didn't try at all then. Well," she
added quickly, "you said I mustn't stay long, so I must hurry and tell
you what I came for. I want you to have dinner with Will and me to-night
at Cuyler's."

"That's very good of you," said Eleanor formally, "and I'm sorry that I
can't come. But it's quite impossible."

"Oh dear!" There was nothing perfunctory about Betty's regret. "Couldn't
you learn your part this evening? It won't take you any longer to eat at
Cuyler's than it would here, and you can come right back."

"Oh, it's not the play," said Eleanor. "I could manage that; but Beatrice
Egerton is going to be here for dinner."

"Oh, of course if you've asked any one to dinner--" began Betty.

"No," broke in Eleanor, impatiently, "I haven't asked her, but Lil Day
has. She's invited me to sit with them, and she'd be awfully vexed if I
ran off. You know," went on Eleanor, impressively, "Beatrice Egerton is
the most prominent girl in the senior class."

"Oh!" said Betty, blankly.

"And I barely know her," continued Eleanor, "so this is my opportunity,
you see. Lil thinks she'll like me. She's very influential, and she
doesn't seem to have any particular friends in our class. Do you know her
at all?"

Betty shook her head.

"But you're so solid with Dorothy King," said Eleanor. "She's just about
as prominent as Bess Egerton. We have to look out for those things, don't
we, Betty?"

"If you mean," began Betty, slowly, "that I like Dorothy King because
she's an influential senior, why, please never think so again, Eleanor. I
like her just as I like any one else, because she's so dear and sweet and
such a fine, all-around girl."

Eleanor laughed scornfully. "Oh, of course," she said, "but you have your
little plans, I suppose, like all the rest of the world. Anyhow, if you
haven't, I have; and I put future honors ahead of present bliss, so I
can't go with you to Cuyler's. Please tell your brother that I'm very
sorry."

"Yes," said Betty. "He will be sorry, too. Good-bye, Eleanor."

It seemed a long walk back to the Belden House. The snow had turned to
slush, and Betty sank into it at every step. The raw wind blew her hair
into her eyes. The world looked dull and uninteresting all of a sudden.
When she reached home, Helen was getting ready for gym.

"Helen Chase Adams," began Betty, savagely. "Do you see any use in
ambition?"

"Why, yes," gasped Helen.

"What?" demanded Betty.

"Why--it helps you to get things," ventured Helen.

"May be they're not worth getting," snapped Betty.

"Well, isn't it better to try to get foolish things than just to sit
around and do nothing?"

"No," answered Betty with emphasis. "People who just sit around and do
nothing, as you call it, have friends and like them, and aren't all the
time thinking what they can get out of them."

"I'm sorry, but I have to go to gym," said Helen. "I don't think
ambitious people always depend on their friends."

Left to herself, Betty came to a more judicial state of mind. "I
suppose," she said to the green lizard, "I suppose I'm the kind that just
sits around and does nothing. I suppose we're irritating too. It makes
Helen mad when I write my papers any old way, while she's toiling along,
trying to do her best. And she makes me cross by fussing so. She has one
kind of ambition and Eleanor has another. I haven't any, and I suppose
they both wish I'd have some kind. Oh, dear! I don't believe Madeline
Ayres is ambitious either, and Ethel Hale called her a splendid girl.
I'll go and ask her to come to dinner with us."




CHAPTER VII

ON TO MIDYEARS


Exactly a week after Nan and Will left Harding, Betty herself was
speeding west, with Roberta Lewis as traveling companion. Nan had
discovered that Roberta's father was in California, and that she was
planning to spend her Christmas vacation in solitary state at Mrs.
Chapin's, without letting even her adored Mary Brooks know how matters
stood. But Nan's arguments, backed by Betty's powers of persuasion, were
irresistible; and Roberta finally consented to come to Cleveland instead.

It was amusing, and a little pathetic too, to watch the shy Roberta
expand in the genial, happy-go-lucky atmosphere of the Wales household. A
lonely, motherless child brought up by a father who loved her dearly,
treated her as an equal, and was too absorbed in his own affairs to
realize that she needed any companionship but his own, she had been
absolutely swept off her feet by the rush of young life at Harding. The
only close friend she had made there was Mary Brooks; and, though Mary
fully reciprocated Roberta's fondness for her, she was a person of so
many ideas and interests that Roberta was necessarily left a good deal to
herself. During her first year, the sociable atmosphere of the Chapin
house had helped to break down her reserve and bring her, in spite of
herself, into touch with the college world. But now, in a house full of
noisy, rollicking freshmen, who thought her queer and "stuck-up," she was
bitterly unhappy. So she shut herself in with her books and her thoughts,
wondered whether being on the campus would really make any difference in
her feelings about college, and stayed on only because of her devotion to
Mary and her unwillingness to disappoint her father, who was very proud
of "my daughter at Harding."

Roberta loved children, and she and the smallest sister instantly became
fast friends. Will frightened her dreadfully at first, but before the
week was out she found herself chatting with him just as familiarly as
she did with her Boston cousin, who was the only young man she knew well.
And after she had helped Mrs. Wales to trim the smallest sister's
Christmas tree, and been down town with Mr. Wales to pick out some books
for him to give Nan,--"Because you and Nan seem to be cut out of the same
piece of cloth, you see," explained Mr. Wales genially,--Roberta felt
exactly like one of the family, and hoarded the days, and then the hours,
that remained of this blissful vacation.

"It seems as if I couldn't go back," she told Betty, when the good-byes
had all been said, and the long train was rumbling through the darkness
toward Harding.

"I'm sorry to leave too," said Betty dreamily. "It's been a jolly old
vacation. But think how we should feel if we couldn't go back at all--if
the family fortune was swept away all of a sudden, or if we were sick or
anything, and had to drop out of dear old 19--."

"Yes," said Roberta briefly.

Betty looked at her curiously. "Don't you like college, Roberta?" she
asked.

"Betty, I can't bear it," declared Roberta in an unwonted burst of
confidence. "I stay on because I hate people who give things up just
because they don't like doing them. But it seems sometimes as if I
couldn't stand it much longer."

"Too bad you didn't get on the campus. Perhaps you will this term."
suggested Betty hopefully, "and then I know you'll fall absolutely in
love with college."

"I don't believe that will make a bit of difference, and anyway Miss
Stuart said I hadn't the least chance of getting on this year."

"Then," returned Betty cheerfully, "you'll just have to make the best of
it where you are. Some of the Chapin house freshmen are dear. I love that
cunning little Sara Westervelt."

"Isn't she pretty?" Roberta's drawl was almost enthusiastic. "But she
never speaks to me," she added sadly.

"Speak to her," said Betty promptly. "You probably frighten her to death,
and freeze her all up. Treat her as you did the smallest sister."

Roberta laughed merrily. "It's funny, isn't it, that I can get on with
children and most older people, but not at all with those of my own age."

"Oh, you only need practice," said Betty easily. "Go at it just as you go
at your chemistry problems. Figure out what those freshmen like and give
it to them. Have a party and do the Jabberwock for them. They'd be your
slaves for life."

"Oh, I couldn't," protested Roberta. "It would seem so like showing off."

"Don't think about yourself; think about them. And now," added Betty
yawning, "as we were up till two last night, I think we'd better go to
bed, don't you?"

"Yes," said Roberta, "and--and thank you for telling me that I'm offish,
Betty. Could you come to the Jabberwock party Monday night, if I should
decide to have it?"

Though Rachel was off the campus, her room was far and away the most
popular meeting place for the Chapin house crowd. Perhaps it was because
the quiet of the little white house round the corner was a relief after
the noisy bustle of the big campus dormitories. But besides, there was
something about Rachel that made her quite indispensable to all
gatherings of the clan. Katherine was fun when you were in the mood for
her; Roberta, if she was in the mood for you. Betty was always
fascinating, always responsive, but in many ways she was only a pretty
child. Helen and Eleanor, unlike in almost everything else, were at one
in being self-centred. Rachel was as jolly as Katherine, as sympathetic
as Betty, and far more mature than either of her friends. As Katherine
put it, "you could always bank on Rachel to know what was what."

So it was no unusual thing to find two or three of the "old guard" as
Rachel dubbed them, and perhaps two or three outsiders as well, gathered
in her tiny room, in the dark of the afternoon, talking over the
happenings of the day and drinking tea out of the cups which were the
pride of Rachel's heart, because they were all pretty and none of them
had cost more than ten cents.

One snowy afternoon in January Betty walked home with Rachel from their
four o'clock class in history.

"Come in, children" called a merry voice, as they opened Rachel's door.
"Take off your things and make yourselves at home. The tea will be ready
in about five minutes."

"Hello, Katherine," said Betty, cheerfully, tossing her note-book on the
bed and shaking the snow off her fuzzy gray tam.

"Isn't it nice to come in and find the duties of hostess taken off your
shoulders in this pleasant fashion!" laughed Rachel. "I hope you've
washed the cups," she added, settling herself cozily on the window seat.
"They haven't been dusted for three weeks."

"Indeed I haven't washed them," answered Katherine loftily. "I'm the
hostess. You can be guest, and Betty can be dish-washer."

"Not unless I can wiggle the tea-ball afterward," announced Betty firmly.

Katherine examined a blue and white cup critically. "I think you must be
mistaken, Rachel," she said. "These cups don't need washing. They're
perfectly clean, but I'll dust them off if you insist."

Then there was a grand scramble, in the course of which Betty captured
the tea-ball and the lemons, and Katherine the teakettle, while Rachel
secured two cups and retired from the scene of action to wash them for
Betty and herself. Finally Katherine agreed that Betty might "wiggle the
tea-ball" provided that she--Katherine--should be allowed two pieces of
lemon in every cup; and the three lively damsels settled down into a
sedate group of tea-drinkers.

"Do you know, girls," said Katherine, after they had compared programs
for midyears, and each decided sadly that her particular arrangement of
examinations was a great deal more onerous than the schedules of her
friends,--"Do you know, I was just beginning to like Eleanor Watson, but
I wash my hands of her now."

"Why? What's she done lately?" inquired Rachel.

"Oh, she hasn't done anything in particular," said Katherine. "It's her
manner that I object to. It was bad enough last year, but now--"
Katherine's gesture suggested indescribable insolence.

Betty said nothing. She was thinking of her last interview with Eleanor,
whom she had not seen for more than a casual moment since the day of
Will's dinner, and wondering whether after all Ethel Hale was right about
her, and she was wrong. It did seem amazingly as if Eleanor was giving up
her old friends for the new ones.

"But Katherine," began Rachel soothingly, "you must remember that her
rather dropping us now doesn't really mean much. We should never have
known her at all if we hadn't happened to be in the house with her last
year. It was only chance that threw us together, so there really isn't
any reason why she should keep up the acquaintance unless she wants to."

"Oh, no, not the slightest reason," agreed Katherine, wrathfully. "And on
the same principle let us all proceed to cut Helen Chase Adams. She isn't
exactly our kind. We should never have known her if we hadn't happened to
be in the house with her last year. So let's drop her."

"Oh, you silly child," laughed Rachel. "Of course I don't approve of
Eleanor Watson's way of doing things. I only wanted to explain what is
probably her point of view. I can understand it, but it doesn't follow
that I'm going to adopt it."

"I should hope not," snorted Katherine. "I met my lady this afternoon at
Cuyler's. I was buying molasses candy for this function--by the way, I
forgot to pass it around. Do have some. And she was in there with that
high and mighty senior, Beatrice Egerton, ordering a dinner for to-morrow
night. I had on my green sweater and an old skirt, and I don't suppose I
looked exactly like a Fifth Avenue swell. But that didn't matter; the
lady Eleanor didn't see me."

Rachel laughed merrily. "So that was it," she said. "I knew there was
something personal behind your wrath, and I was waiting for it to come
out. Never mind, K.; Betty and I won't cut you, even in your green
sweater."

"That's good of you," said Katherine, spearing a thick slice of lemon for
her third cup. "Seriously though, my green sweater aside, I do hate such
snobbishness."

"But Eleanor Watson isn't exactly a snob," objected Rachel. "There's Dora
Carlson."

"Dora Carlson!" repeated Katherine, scornfully. "You don't mean that
she's taken you in with that, Rachel? Why, it's nothing but the most
transparent sort of grand-stand play. I suppose the lady Eleanor had more
sense than to think that the Dora Carlson episode would take in any one."

Betty had been sitting quietly in her corner of the window seat, not
taking any part in the discussion, because there was nothing that she
cared to say on either side of it. Now she leaned forward suddenly. "Oh,
Katherine, please don't say that," she begged. "Indeed it isn't so! I
know--Eleanor told me herself that she is awfully fond of Dora Carlson,--
that she appreciates the way Dora feels toward her, and means to be
worthy of it if she possibly can."

"Then I'm sure I beg her pardon," said Katherine heartily. "Only--when
did she tell you that, Betty?"

"Oh, back in the fall, just a little while after the sophomore
reception."

"I thought so, and I don't doubt that she meant it when she said it. But
she's completely changed since then. Don't you remember how we used to
count on her for all our little reunions? Why, she was quite one of the
old guard for a month or two. But ever since that wonderful story of hers
came out in the 'Argus,' she's gone in for the prominent sophomore act
with such a vengeance--" Katherine stopped suddenly, noticing Betty's
distressed expression. "Oh, well," she said, "there's no use going over
it again. I suppose you and Rachel are right, and I'm wrong."

"Only you do resent the injustice done your green sweater," said Rachel,
hoping to close the discussion with a laugh.

But Katherine was in deadly earnest. "I don't care how the lady Eleanor
treats me and my green sweater," she said, "but there are some people
who've done too much for her--Well, what I mean is, I hope she'll never
go back on her real friends," she finished lamely.

"Well, if one prominent sophomore snubs us, we can always comfort
ourselves with the thought that another is going to love us to the end,"
said Rachel, reaching over a mound of pillows to squeeze Betty's hand.
"Did you know you're a prominent sophomore, Betty?"

"I'm not," said Betty, indignantly. "I wouldn't be such a thing for the
world. I hate the word prominent, the way we use it here."

Katherine exchanged rapid glances with Rachel. "Something personal behind
that, too," she reflected. "If the lady Eleanor dares to go back on
Betty, I shall start out after her scalp."

So it was fortunate that Betty and Eleanor did not meet on their
respective homeward ways until Katherine was well inside the Westcott
House, out of hearing of their colloquy. Between the darkness and the
flying snow the two girls were close together before they recognized each
other. Then Eleanor was hurrying on with some commonplace about "the
beastly weather," when Betty stopped her.

"We were just talking about you," she said, "Rachel and Katherine and I,
over in Rachel's room, wondering why you never meet with the old guard
any more."

"Why, I'm busy," said Eleanor, shortly. "Didn't you know that it's less
than a week to midyears?"

"But all this term--" protested Betty, wishing she had said nothing, yet
reluctant now to let the opportunity slip through her hands.

"Well, to tell the truth," broke in Eleanor, impatiently, "our interests
are different, Betty,--they have been from the first. You like to be
friends with everybody. I like to pick and choose. I don't really care
anything about the rest of the Chapin house girls, and I can't see you
without seeing them too."

"But this fall," began Betty.

"Well--the truth is this fall--" said Eleanor, fiercely, "this fall I
forgot who I was and what I was. Now I've come to my senses again." And
without giving Betty time to reply she swept off into the darkness.

Betty wasn't very hungry for dinner. As soon as possible she slipped out
of the noisy dining-room, up to the silence of the deserted third floor.

"What I can't understand," she told the green lizard, "is the way her
voice sounded. It certainly broke just as if she was trying not to cry.
Now, why should that be? Is she sorry to have come to her senses, I
wonder?"

The green lizard had no suggestions to offer, so Betty put on her new
kimono with butterflies in the border and a bewitching pink sash--it was
real Japanese and the envy of all her friends--and prepared to spend the
evening cramming for her history exam, with Nita Reese.




CHAPTER VIII

THE "FIRST FOUR"


Midyears were safely over, and schedules for the new term more or less
satisfactorily arranged. It was Saturday night--the gayest in all the
week--and up on the fourth floor of the Belden House Nita Reese was
giving a birthday spread. Until she came to Harding, Nita's birthday had
always been in August. At the beginning of her sophomore year she
announced that she had changed it to February ninth.

"I told the family," explained Nita, "that just because I happened to be
born in August they needn't think they could get out of sending me a
birthday box. Father wanted to know if that let him off from giving me a
sailing party next August, and I said that I'd leave it to him. I knew he
wouldn't miss that sailing party for anything."

Nita disappeared behind a screen, where, on the wash-stand, in lieu of a
buffet, the good things from the birthday box were arranged on tin-box
covers and wooden plates. There were nine china plates for the twelve
guests, and a cup and a sherbet glass apiece, which is an abundance for
any three-course supper, however elaborate.

"Girls, do you realize what's happening to-night?" said Nita, emerging
from behind the screen with a plate of sandwiches in one hand and a tray
of cake in the other. "Here, Betty Wales, have some cake. Or are you
still on salad and sandwiches?"

"I'm still on salad and sandwiches, but I do want that big piece of
chocolate cake before Madeline Ay--Oh, Madeline, aren't you ashamed?
You've made me spill coffee on Nita's Bagdad."

"I can't help that," said Madeline Ayres, composedly. "You were implying
that I'm a pig. I'm not; I'm only devoted to chocolate."

"What's happening to-night, Nita?" demanded Bob, popping up like a Jack-
in-the-box from behind Madeline's back.

"There!" exclaimed Betty, resignedly. "I've spilled it again! Where have
you been, Bob?"

"Oh, I've just been resting back there between the courses," said Bob,
edging herself to the front of the couch and beginning on the nearest
dish of strawberry ice. (The strawberry ice was not, strictly speaking, a
part of the birthday box.) "I feel quite hungry again now. What's to-
night, Nita?"

"Why, society elections, of course, goosie," answered Christy Mason from
the window where she was cooling a pan of fudge. "Girls, this fudge is
going to be elegant and creamy. Reach me the marsh-mallows, Babe, that's
a dear. Shall I make it all over marsh-mallows, Nita?"

"Yes!" chorused the occupants of the couch, vociferously.

"To hear the animals roar, you wouldn't think they'd been eating steadily
for an hour, would you, Nita?" laughed Christy, sticking in the marsh-
mallows in neat, even rows, like white tents pitched across the creamy
brown field of chocolate.

"It's not that we're hungry, Nita, dear, but we all like it better that
way, because it's newer," explained Alice Waite, who never took a joke
and couldn't bear to have Nita's feelings hurt.

"Hungry!" groaned Rachel, from her corner. "I don't believe I shall ever
be hungry again. Who do you suppose will go in tonight?"

"Go in where, Rachel?" asked Bob, dropping back again on the pillows
behind Madeline and Betty.

"Aren't you a sweet little innocent, Bob Parker?" mocked Babe,
derisively. "As if you hadn't betted me six strawberry ices and three
dinners at Cuyler's that you go into the Dramatic Club to-night, your
ownself."

"When I get you alone," began Bob, wrathfully. Then her tone changed
instantly to one of honeyed sweetness. "No," she said, "you're such an
artistic prevaricator that I'll give you one dinner at Cuyler's as your
well-earned reward."

Christy Mason dropped her pan of fudge, seized a candle from the
chiffonier and held it close to Bob's prostrate form. "Girls," she
shrieked, "it's true. Bob's blushing. She hasn't blushed since the
president spoke to her about spilling salad all over the night watchman."

Then there was a scene of wild commotion. Shouts and laughter drowned out
Bob's angry protests, until in despair she turned her attention to Babe,
who took refuge on the fire-escape and refused to come further in than
the window-seat even when order was partially restored.

"Girls," shouted Katherine Kittredge, as soon as she could make herself
heard, "let's drink to the success of Bob's bet!"

There were clamorous demands for hot coffee, and then the toast was drunk
standing, amid riotous enthusiasm.

"Speech!" called somebody.

"Speech! Speech!" chorused everybody.

"I never bet any such thing," responded Bob, sulkily. "You all know I
didn't--and if I did, it was in fun."

"Never mind, Bob," said Nita, consolingly. "We won't tell any of the
Dramatic Club girls about it. We're all sophomores here, but Madeline
Ayres, and she's as good as a sophomore; so don't worry. You can trust
us."

"What I object to," put in Katherine Kittredge, solemnly, "is the
principle of the thing. It's not true sport to bet on a certainty, Bob.
You know that you're sure to go in to-night, and it's a mean trick to
deprive Babe of her hard-won earnings."

This sally was greeted with shrieks of laughter, for it was a standing
joke with 19-- that Babe was supposed by her adoring mother to be keeping
a French maid at Harding. In October of her freshman year she had packed
the maid off to New York and engaged Emily Davis to do her mending. But
the maid's board and wages were paid unquestioningly by her mother, who
lamented every vacation that she could get no such excellent seamstresses
as her daughter was always able to find at Harding. Meanwhile Babe rented
a riding horse by the term, reveled in dinners at Cuyler's, and stilled
her conscience with the thought that Emily Davis needed the money more
than any maid.

"I wish," said Madeline Ayres, when the tumult had subsided again, "that
you'd explain something to a poor, benighted little freshman. There's
just one thing about Harding that I don't understand. Why should Bob mind
having you know that she hopes she's going into the Dramatic Club?"

"Suppose she doesn't go?" suggested Christy. "Of course there's always a
chance that she won't."

"Seems so nervy, anyhow," muttered Bob, who was still in the sulks.

"I don't see why," persisted Madeline. "When you all say that she's
perfectly certain to go in. But in general, I mean, why will you never
admit that you want a certain thing, or hope to get a certain thing?"

"It is funny, isn't it?" said Rachel. "Wild horses couldn't drag it out
of any junior that she hopes for a place on the 'Argus' board, or the
Senior Play committee."

"Nor out of any sophomore that she hopes to make a society," added
Christy Mason.

"I suppose," said Babbie, "that it's because nothing is competitive here.
You just take what people think you ought to have. You stand or fall by
public opinion, and of course you are never sure how it will gauge you."

"College men aren't that way," said Katherine. "They talk about such
things, and discuss their chances and agree to help one another along
where they can. And if they lose they never seem to care; they joke about
it."

"But we never admit we've lost, because we never admit we were trying for
anything," put in Nita.

"I like the men's way best then," said Madeline decidedly.

"Let's try it," suggested Christy. "Girls, who of us here do you think
will make Dramatic Club in the first two elections?"

There was an awkward silence, then a general laugh.

"It won't work, you see," said Christy. "Well, of those who aren't here,
Marion Lustig will go in to-night of course,--she's our bright particular
literary star. And what do you think about Eleanor Watson?"

"Wouldn't she be more likely to go into the Clio Club next week?" asked
Nita Reese.

"Oh, no," objected Christy. "Didn't you know that Beatrice Egerton is
rushing her? And she's the president of the Dramatic Club."

"I don't care," insisted Nita. "I think Eleanor Watson is more the Clio
Club kind."

"That's another thing I want to know about," broke in Madeline Ayres.
"What is the Clio Club kind? You say the Dramatic Club isn't particularly
dramatic nowadays, but just amusing and literary, and the Clio Club is
the same. Why aren't the members the same sort too?"

"They're not, exactly," answered Christy. "I can't describe the
difference, but you'll notice it by the time you're a sophomore. The Clio
girls--oh, they have more executive ability. They're the kind that know
how to run things--all-around, capable, splendid girls. The Dramatic Club
is more for the stunty, talented, artistic sort."

"But Dorothy King is vice-president of the Dramatic Club," objected
Betty.

"She's the exception."

"Well, I still think," insisted Christy, "that which society a girl goes
into simply depends on where her friends are. Both societies want
executive ability, and they both want people who can write and act and
sing and do parlor stunts. I don't know Eleanor Watson very well, but I
have an idea that after her story in the 'Argus' the Dramatic Club will
be afraid of losing her to Clio, and so they'll take her to-night."

"Oh, I hope so," said Betty Wales under her breath to Madeline.

Later in the evening she told Helen all about the spread.

"It was so exciting," she began.

"How can a spread be exciting?" demanded Helen, sceptically.

"Oh, in lots of ways," responded Betty. "There's excitement about whether
the fudge will be done in time, and whether it will be good, and who's
going to be there, and how much of a box it is. But the most excitement
to-night was about society elections."

"Were they to-night?"

"Dramatic Club's was. It has first choice of the sophomores this year,
you know, and Clio Club has second; and we were guessing who would go in
to-night among the first four."

"Well, you know now, don't you?"

"Know? I should think not," said Betty impressively. "Helen Chase Adams,
haven't you noticed that society elections aren't announced till the next
Monday morning? Don't you remember last year how all that crowd of girls
came up to Mrs. Chapin's after Mary Brooks, and she'd gone down-town to
breakfast with Roberta, and was going to cut chapel; and how we all
rushed down after her, and how I stayed at the Main Street corner, in
case she'd left Cuyler's before the girls got there and come up the back
way? And she did just that, and what a time I had keeping her till the
girls got back!" Betty laughed heartily at the recollection.

"I didn't go down, but I do remember about it," admitted Helen. "Do they
always do it that way?"

"Always, only the four girls who go into each society first--they elect
only four at a time, you know--have about sixty times as much fuss made
over them as the ones who go in later."

"Then you'd better put your part of the room in order to-morrow," said
Helen significantly, glancing at the disorderly pile of books and papers
on Betty's desk, and at the pictures which she had brought back at
Christmas time and which still lay on the floor beside her couch, waiting
for her to find time to hang them.

Betty's glance followed Helen's to the desk and down to the floor. "I'll
hang those pictures this minute," she said, jumping up and rummaging
energetically through her desk drawer. "That is, if I can borrow some
picture wire" she added. "I remember now that mine is all gone. That's
why I've left them on the floor so long. But somebody must have some."
At the door she turned back suddenly. "But, Helen," she said, "I'm not
fixing up for society elections. I shan't go in this time--not for a
long while, if I ever do. And Helen--you know the girls never talk about
going in themselves."

"All right," said Helen submissively. "Who do you think was taken in
to-night?"

"Oh, the girls with one big talent. Didn't I tell you last year that
every Harding girl has to find out her one talent before she can amount
to anything? We think Bob will go in; she can do such beautiful
pantomimes, and she's such a prod. and such jolly fun too. Then Marion
Lustig because of her writing. Writing counts more than anything else,
and so I'm hoping for Eleanor Watson. I can't even guess who the fourth
one will be."

All day Sunday Mary Brooks and the other Dramatic Club juniors and
seniors in the Belden House went about wearing a tantalizing, don't-you-
wish-you-knew air, and after dinner when the whole house assembled in the
parlors as usual for coffee and music, they gathered in mysterious little
groups, which instantly dissolved at the approach of curious sophomores.

It seemed to Betty and Nita, interested on account of Eleanor and Bob,
that Monday morning would never come. But it did dawn at last, and after
an unconscionable delay--for the announcement committee went up to
Marion Lustig's first, and she boarded away off on the edge of the
meadows, and then to Emily Davis's, which was half a mile from the
college in quite another direction--the committee and its escort finally
reached the campus, and, gaining recruits at every step, made its
picturesque and musical way to the Westcott House after Bob. At this
point Betty and Nita joined it, and they had the exquisite pleasure of
seeing Bob blush so red that there was no need for a candle this time,
then turn very white, and clinging to the chairman's arm insist that
there must be some blunder--it couldn't be she that they wanted. Finally,
assured that the honor had indeed fallen to her, she broke into a war-
whoop which shook the house to its foundation and brought the matron on
the run to her door.

"Now Mrs. Alison, aren't you proud of your holy terror?" cried Bob in
tremulous, happy tones, holding out her tie with the Dramatic Club pin on
it. And in spite of the lateness of the hour and the wild desire of the
procession to know where it was going next, Mrs. Alison's delight over
the honor done her "holy terror" was well worth waiting to see.

And then--Betty squeezed Nita's hand till it ached. No--yes--they were
going to the Hilton! They weren't stopping on the second floor. Then it
must--oh, it must be Eleanor! And it was.

Margaret Payson was chairman of the announcement committee, but almost
before she could give Eleanor her note of invitation to the society
Beatrice Egerton had pressed forward and fastened her pin on Eleanor's
shirtwaist.

After seeing Bob's frenzied excitement it was amusing to watch Eleanor
Watson. She was perfectly composed. "Just as if she'd been expecting it,"
said little Alice Waite, who had joined the procession as it passed
through her corridor. "But she was pleased--I never saw her so pleased
before--and didn't it make her look lovely!"

As soon as the pin was safely fastened and the note read, there was
another tumult of congratulations. Then Beatrice Egerton took off the
great bunch of violets she was wearing,--"just till I could bring them
to you," she explained,--and carried Eleanor off to sit among the
seniors at chapel. Just opposite them was Emily Davis, with Dorothy King.
Emily was also wearing violets, and her plain face was almost pretty, it
was so full of happiness.

"Just to think," she whispered to Dorothy, "that you picked out me, when
you could have any one in 19--. I can't realize it!" She glanced at her
shabby coat, made over from Babe's discarded golf cape, and then at
Eleanor Watson's irreproachable blue walking suit and braided toque to
match. "Here all girls are really created free and equal, aren't they,
Miss King?"

"Of course. Don't be silly," said Dorothy, with a queer little catch in
her voice. Dorothy King was not at all sentimental, but the splendidly
democratic spirit of her college sometimes brought a lump into her
throat.

Only once that morning did the radiant smiles leave Eleanor Watson's
lovely face. That was when Katherine Kittredge, on the way out of chapel,
rallied her about her famous theme.

"Now aren't you glad Miss Raymond got up early that morning?" she said.

It was the first time that any one had referred to the story in
connection with her election to the Dramatic Club. Eleanor frowned and
turned to Beatrice Egerton, who was standing close beside her.

"Bess," she said, pouting, "did you run me in because of that footless
little story? Wasn't it for myself that you wanted me? Do say that it
was."

Miss Egerton smiled her lazy, enigmatical smile, which her admirers
considered the secret of her tremendous popularity. "Of course we wanted
you for yourself," she said, "but that footless little story, as you call
it, is a rather important asset. We expect you to keep on writing
footless little stories, remember."

"How tiresome!" said Eleanor, with a shrug of her shoulders. "That's the
bother of doing anything up here. What you do once, you are expected to
repeat indefinitely. Now my method is to do one thing as well as I can,
and then go on to something else."

"Just do them all as well as you did the story, and we shan't complain,"
said Miss Egerton. "And now, Eleanor, I must be off to Psychology One. Do
you suppose anybody will give a dinner for you to-night?"

"Yes, Miss Egerton," called Jean Eastman, appearing around the corner.
"Kate and I are giving one, and we want you to come, of course. And
Eleanor," she went on, after Miss Egerton had left them, "we want you to
answer to a toast--'My Story and How I Wrote It.' Now be just as clever
and amusing as you can. I thought I wouldn't spring it on you--"

"Jean," Eleanor broke in suddenly, "I won't answer to anything of the
sort. And if you have that story mentioned--even mentioned, remember--to-
night, I shall get up and leave. Give me your word that I shan't hear of
it in any way,--or give up the dinner."

Jean stared in astonishment. "Why certainly, Eleanor," she said, "but I
thought you had given up being so absurd. Is there any one in particular
that you want asked tonight?"

"Dora Carlson," flashed Eleanor, and hurried off, murmuring something
about a nine o'clock recitation at the other end of the main building.

Jean looked after her for a moment, her mouth twisted into a funny
grimace, and then pursued her way to the college library. At the door she
met Betty Wales. "Your face is one big smile," she said.

"Of course," laughed Betty. "Isn't it perfectly splendid about Eleanor
and Emily?"

Jean grinned cheerfully. "Considering last year I thought it was more or
less amusing to see the two of them sitting up there together on the
front row at chapel. I wonder if Eleanor remembers any of the remarks she
used to let drop about the genius of 19--. See here, Betty," she added
quickly, "have you any idea why Eleanor is so touchy about that story?
She won't even have it toasted tonight at the supper."

"No," said Betty. "I asked her, but she didn't tell me anything except
that she didn't care for it."

"Well, most people would begin to care for it a little, after it had
pulled them into the Dramatic Club among the first four," said Jean,
opening the library door and tiptoeing over to the anthropological
alcove. There she spent the hour, busily engaged in making out a new list
of toasts, that should avoid all mention of the objectionable story.

"But they must have some point," reflected Jean, sadly, as she ran her
pen through "My Story and How I Wrote It," and "The Rewards of
Literature" and "Our Rising Young Novelist," which she had intended for
herself and Kate Denise.

"Bother Eleanor's tantrums!" muttered Jean, as the ten o'clock gong rang,
and she picked up her books and hurried off to recite a French lesson
that, because of Eleanor's "tantrums," she had not learned.

And for Betty Wales Eleanor's election to the Dramatic Club also brought
disappointment. She had hoped that once Eleanor's ambition was gratified
and all her hard work and careful planning rewarded, the anxious lines
would leave her face and the sweeter, softer expression that she had worn
in September would come back. But though Eleanor professed the greatest
pleasure in the election, it did not seem to make her any less haughty or
capricious, or any better content with life. She still snubbed or
patronized her train of adoring freshmen by turns, according to her mood.
She was still a devoted admirer of Beatrice Egerton, and a member of her
very exclusive set. She received Betty's congratulations just as
cordially as she had every one's else,--it was one of Beatrice's
principles to treat everybody well "up to a certain point,"--but she did
not come to the third floor of the Belden House except on errands.




CHAPTER IX

THE COMPLICATIONS OF LIFE


By the middle of February basket-ball practice was in full swing again.
The class teams had not yet been chosen, but every Wednesday and Saturday
afternoon l9--'s last year's "regulars" and "subs" met in the gymnasium
to play exciting matches. Of course there were some changes in the make-
up of the teams. Two of the "sub" centres and a "regular" home had left
college; the guard who sprained her ankle in the great game of the year
before and whose place Katherine Kittredge had taken in the second half,
was not allowed to risk another such injury; and one or two other players
had lost interest in basket-ball and were devoting their energies to
something else. So there was a chance for outsiders, and Betty Wales, who
had almost "made" the freshman sub-team, was one of the new girls invited
to play in the practice matches.

Helen Adams had cut basket-ball all her freshman year, because Miss
Andrews never called the roll on basket-ball days. Now she could not get
enough of it, nor of regular gym. On Wednesday and Saturday afternoons
there were no classes, so she used to put on her gym. suit and go over to
watch the teams. And if some player failed to appear or was late in
arriving, T. Reed or Betty would suggest calling Helen down to take the
absentee's place. Helen was painfully awkward and not very strong, but
she had acquired T. Reed's habit of slipping under the outstretched arms
of the enemy and T. Reed's fashion of setting her teeth and getting the
ball in spite of opposition; and some of her plays were remarkably
effective.

"I believe," Betty said to her one day, as they lay side by side in a
sunny spot on the gym. floor, resting between the halves, "I believe, if
you'd begun last year when the rest of us did, you might have been on one
of the teams yourself."

Helen laughed a pleased little laugh. "Oh, no!" she said. "But I love to
play with you sometimes, and I love to watch Theresa."

"Isn't she a wonder?" said Betty dreamily. "Do you remember that game,
Helen? Wasn't it the most exciting thing? And this year it will be our
turn to win. Bob Parker has seen the picked freshman teams play, and she
thinks they haven't a chance against us."

"I hope you can be on the sub-team, Betty," said Helen.

"And I hope you can write your song for 19-- to sing to its team,"
returned Betty gaily. "You haven't forgotten about our talk the day of
the game, have you, Helen?"

"Oh, no!" said Helen, quickly. Not for worlds would she have let Betty
know how much she counted on that song. She had written another little
verse for her theme class, and that very morning it had come back with
"Good work--charming lilt," scrawled across the margin. So Helen had high
hopes for the song.

Just then the door of the gym. opened, and Lucy Merrifield, the president
of 19--, came in.

"Hello, Lucy," chorused the group of sprawling figures nearest the door.

"You're just in time to see us do up the regular team," called Elizabeth
West, who captained the "subs."

"Thank you," returned Lucy, "but I can't stay to see you do any such
unbecoming thing. I came on an errand to Betty Wales. Isn't she here?"

"Here I am," called Betty, scrambling upright and brushing the hair out
of her eyes.

"I came to tell you that you've been appointed to the Students'
Commission, to serve until Christy Mason gets back," explained Lucy.

"Till Christy gets back?" repeated Betty in bewilderment.

"Yes, she's been called home very suddenly. Her mother is ill, and
Christy is going to keep house and see to the children. She'll be away a
month anyhow and perhaps all this term. And as there are a lot of
important matters coming up just now, we decided that we would better
appoint a substitute on the commission."

"I'm afraid I can't be much help," began Betty, doubtfully.

"Oh, yes, you can," declared Lucy. "Come to the meeting to-morrow at two,
and we'll give you plenty to help about."

"Time's up," called the captain of the regulars, and Lucy ran for the
door, leaving Betty in a state of pleased excitement. Dorothy King was
president of her class this year, and therefore also president of the
Students' Commission. Marion Lawrence was a representative from the
junior class. To be even a temporary member of so august an assembly
seemed to Betty a very great privilege. She was so busy wondering who had
chosen her,--whether Lucy or the whole commission,--and what to-morrow's
meeting would be like, that she deliberately threw the ball twice toward
the wrong basket and never discovered her mistake until Elizabeth West
begged her please to "come to" and help her own side a little just for
variety.

On the way home Betty met Miss Ferris. "Come and have tea with me, little
girl," she said.

"Could I, like this?" asked Betty wistfully, pulling back her rain-coat
to show her gym. suit and the tightly braided pig-tails tucked inside.

Miss Ferris laughed. "I shouldn't mind, but some one else might drop in.
It takes me ten minutes to make tea. Now run!"

Exactly nine minutes and a half later. Betty, looking very slender and
stately in a clinging blue gown and a big plumed hat, her cheeks pink
with excitement and her hair blown into fascinating ringlets from her
brisk run across the campus, knocked timidly on Miss Ferris's door.

"Come in," called Miss Ferris. "You're early. The water hasn't boiled."

"It used to take me half an hour to dress, at the very fastest," said
Betty, slipping into a low chair by the fire, where she could watch Miss
Ferris making tea in a fat little silver pot, and pouring it into cups so
thin and beautiful that Betty hardly dared touch hers, and breathed a
deep sigh of relief when it was safely emptied and out of her hands.

Just as she was leaving, she told Miss Ferris about her appointment to
the Students' Commission.

"Well," said Miss Ferris, "that won't be new work for you. You were an
ex-officio member last year."

Betty looked puzzled.

"What you did for Miss Watson was Students' Commission work," explained
Miss Ferris. "And judging by the position Miss Watson seems to be taking
this year, I should call it very good work indeed."

[Illustration: "WELL," SAID MISS FERRIS, "THAT WON'T BE NEW WORK"]

"But you did it, not I," protested Betty.

"I did my part, you did yours," corrected Miss Ferris. "To be successful
nowadays, you know, you must not only work yourself, but you must get
other people to work for you."

"Yes," said Betty, vaguely. Then she laughed. "I'm afraid that I do the
second more than the first, Miss Ferris. My roommate thinks that I get a
great deal too much out of other people. And when I was at home Nan used
to tell me to be more independent and see how I could get along if I were
left on a desert island."

Miss Ferris smiled across the fire at her dainty little guest. "The best
things in the world,--which fortunately isn't a desert island,--come
about by cooperation," she said. "Be independent; think for yourself, of
course, but get all the help you can from other people in carrying out
your thoughts."

The dinner-bell began to jangle noisily in the hall and Betty rose
hastily. "I've stayed too long," she said, "but I always do that when I
come to see you. I shall tell my roommate what you said. Do you suppose I
shall ever learn to think up arguments for myself?"

"Of course," said Miss Ferris, encouragingly. "That's one thing you're
here for--to learn to argue and to dress in a hurry and to work on
Students' Commissions. You'll master them all in time. Good-bye."

When Betty got back to the Belden House the bell had rung there too, and
as the girls stood about in the halls and parlors waiting for Mrs. Cass,
the matron, to lead them in to dinner, they were all discussing what Mary
Brooks could mean by a "hair-raising."

"It sounds like a house-raising," said a girl from Nebraska. "I mean the
sort of thing they have away out west, where laborers are scarce and the
whole town turns out to help a man get up the timbers of his house."

"But there's no sense to that kind of a hair-raising," objected the
Nebraskan's roommate, who was from Boston. "I think that Mary has
invented a hair tonic and is going to try it on us before she has it
patented."

"I'm sure I hope so," said Madeline Ayres, patting her diminutive twist
of hair tenderly.

"Why, it's some kind of party she's giving for her mother," announced a
stately senior, authoritatively.

"I don't see how that tells what it is, though," said Betty. "Am I
invited?"

"Yes," explained Helen Adams. "Mary came in while you were out and asked
us."

"But she hasn't said anything about expecting her mother."

At this everybody laughed and Marion Lawrence explained that Mary, being
a very busy person, had a habit of putting away her letters unopened,
until she found time to read them.

"And somehow she thought this was a book-bill from Longstreet's--you know
how near-sighted she is--so she stuck it into her desk until she got her
next month's allowance. But to-day she found some money that she'd put in
her collar-case for safe-keeping and forgotten about; so she got out the
bill to pay it, and it turned out to be a letter from her mother, saying
she was coming up tonight. Mary wouldn't have her know for anything, so
she decided to give a hair-raising to-night, as if she'd planned for it
days ahead."

"But what is it?" demanded Betty.

If Miss Lawrence was in Mary's confidence she had no intention of
betraying it; and there was nothing to do but wait for eight o'clock, the
hour which Mary had mentioned in her invitations. Promptly on the moment
all those bidden to the hair-raising made a rush for Mary's room.

"She hasn't come back from taking dinner with her mother," said Helen.
"Her transom is dark."

But "come in, children," called Mary, sociably, and opening the door just
wide enough to admit one girl at a time she disclosed a room absolutely
dark save for a gleam of light from a Turkish lantern in one corner.

"Goodness!" cried Betty, who went in first. "What am I running into? Oh,
it's a skeleton."

"I'm all mixed up with a snake," added Katherine. "I feel my hair rising
already."

"Girls, I want you to meet my mother," said Mary, briskly.

"Here I am," called a sweet voice from the shadows. "Wouldn't you better
turn on the lights for a moment, daughter?"

"No, indeed," retorted Mary, firmly. "They're nothing to see, dear, I
assure you, but if you insist on seeing them you can all go across to
Laurie's room and come back after you've had a general inspection."

So everybody filed over to Marion Lawrence's room, where it was
discovered that Mary's mother was, as Betty Wales put it, "a perfect
little darling." She was small, like Mary, and she looked so young that
Katherine gravely asked Mary if she was quite sure she wasn't palming off
a sister on them instead of a mother. She entered into all the
absurdities of the hair-raising, which proved to be only a particularly
diverting sort of ghost party, with as much zest as any of the girls, and
her ghost stories were the feature of the evening.

"You see, dear," explained Mary, when the lights were finally turned on
and the hair-raising had resolved itself into a spread, "you see I had a
hair-raising because you tell ghost stories so well. Why, ever since I
read your letter I've been planning how I should show you off--Oh,
mother, it's too good to keep." And Mary regaled her mother with the
story of the neglected book-bill.

"Speaking of lost letters," said Marion Lawrence, "there's a letter for
Frances West over on the zoology bulletin board in Science Hall. It's
been there for two weeks."

"What a funny place for it!" said Mary. "Frances never as much as sticks
her head inside Science Hall. She thinks it's wrong to cut up frogs and
angle-worms. How did it get there, Laurie?"

"Postman dropped it, probably, and somebody who didn't know any better
stuck it up there--the janitor, maybe."

"Perhaps Frances dropped it herself," suggested Madeline Ayres.

Marion shook her head. "Anyhow if she did, she hasn't read it. I noticed
that it hadn't been opened."

"Perhaps it's a letter like Mary's, saying that her mother is coming,"
suggested Helen Adams.

"Guess again. It can't be that, because her mother wouldn't direct a
letter to the editor-in-chief of the 'Argus.'"

"Hear that, Dottie," called Mary Brooks to Dorothy King, who was sitting
on the divan below the Turkish lantern, talking busily with Mrs. Brooks.
"There's a letter for your chief over on the zoology bulletin board.
You'd better stop in and get it for her."

"Isn't it funny," said Rachel Morrison, "that, as well as Frances West is
known in college and as many juniors and seniors as look at that bulletin
board, nobody has thought to take her the letter."

"Why didn't you take it to her, Laurie?" asked Mary severely.

"Oh, because I wanted to see how long it would stop there if I didn't
take it," returned Marion easily. "I'm writing a theme on 'What's
everybody's business is nobody's business,' and I want to get the
psychology right. Oh, Mrs. Brooks," she called, getting up and going over
to the divan, "did you know that Mary had set a fashion up here? Ever
since her 'Rumor' story, we're all racking our brains to see if we can't
get up some psychological experiments that will make Professor Hinsdale
think we're clever too."

"And most of you," said Mary loftily, "just succeed in making your
friends uncomfortable. I hope Frances' letter won't upset her the way
mine did."

"Oh, I guess it isn't a hair-raiser," said Marion easily. "It's probably
a bill for printer's ink or paper, or whatever they buy for the 'Argus.'
You get it to-morrow, Dottie, and then you can tell us what is in it."

"I will," said Dorothy.

Just as she spoke the twenty-minute-to-ten bell clanged suggestively in
the corridors, and the hair-raising came to an abrupt end.

"I don't think I care much for hair-raisings," said Betty, as she and
Helen made hasty preparations for bed. "I think you have enough to worry
about and be frightened over, without getting up a lot of extra things on
purpose. I can hear that blood-hound panting under the window this very
minute. Isn't Mrs. Brooks a wonderful story-teller?"

"Yes. I didn't suppose you were ever worried or frightened over things,"
said Helen.

"Well, I am," returned Betty. "I'm worrying this very minute about my to-
morrow's recitations. I'd planned to study tonight but how could I hurt
Mary's feelings by not going to the hair-raising? I suppose," went on
Betty, when Helen did not answer, "I suppose you want to ask why I don't
sit up to study? But if I did I should be breaking a rule, and besides,"
concluded Betty, yawning prodigiously, "I am altogether too sleepy to sit
up, so I am just going to sleep and forget all my troubles." And Betty
suited the action to the word.

A few moments later she roused herself. "Life is just full of things to
decide, isn't it, Helen? And so often you can't tell which one is best--
like me going to the hair-raising to-night, or Marion Lawrence and that
letter."

"I think she ought to have delivered the letter," said Helen.

"But it was such fun not to," objected Betty. "And probably it was only
an advertisement. Now I'm really going to sleep."




CHAPTER X

IN THE "ARGUS" SANCTUM


Dorothy King hurried down the steps of Science Hall and across the campus
to the main building, carrying Frances West's belated letter in her hand.
She stopped for a moment in Miss Stuart's office to tell her that the
Students' Commission wanted to hold a mass-meeting of the whole college
at the end of the month, and waited while Miss Stuart, who was an
enthusiastic supporter of the commission, obligingly hunted up an
available date for the meeting, and promised to hold it open until the
final arrangements could be perfected. Outside the office door Dorothy
hesitated and looked at her watch. Quarter past four; laboratory work was
over for the afternoon, and there would be ten girls to one copy of
Ward's "Poets" in the library.

"I'll go up there this evening," she decided swiftly, "and now for a
skate before dinner," and she swung off toward the Hilton House to get
her skates and her sweater. As she put out her hand to open the door, she
suddenly noticed that she was still carrying Frances' letter, and gave an
impatient little exclamation. "All out of my way," she thought, "so I
might as well take it back now and get rid of it."

The editorial office of the "Argus" was in the Students' Building, over
behind the gym. As she went, Dorothy congratulated herself that it was
this errand, and not the one to Miss Stuart, which she had forgotten; for
the main building was twice as far away. She wondered idly whether
Frances would be in the "sanctum"; she often spent her free afternoons
there, for the big building, which was used chiefly in the evening for
club meetings, plays, and other social and semi-social functions, was
generally silent and deserted earlier in the day; and the quiet and the
view over Paradise river from the west windows of the sanctum appealed to
the poetic soul of the chief editor. Dorothy, who was a very practical
person herself, had a vast admiration for Frances' dreamy, imaginative
temperament, and enjoyed her work as business manager of the "Argus"
chiefly because it brought her into close contact with Frances; while
Frances in her turn admired Dorothy's executive ability, and depended on
her to soften the hearts of obdurate printers, stir the consciences of
careless assistant editors, and in short to stand as a sort of buffer
between her beloved "Argus" and a careless world. Dorothy hoped that
Frances would be in the sanctum; it would be fun to tell her about the
letter. But if not, all responsibility could be fulfilled by dropping it
and a note of explanation into the editorial mail-box.

But Frances was there, and also Beatrice Egerton, who, as exchange editor
of the "Argus," Dorothy had come to know well and to like for her quick
wit and her daring, piquant ways, while she thoroughly disapproved of her
worldly, self-seeking attitude toward college life.

"Hello, Dottie," called Beatrice, when Dorothy opened the door. "We
thought you weren't coming, Frances and I."

"Why should I be coming?" inquired Dorothy curiously, tossing the letter
into Frances' lap.

"Proof!" exclaimed Beatrice, with a funny little grimace.

Dorothy sank down on the long window seat, which ran across two sides of
the sanctum, with a groan and a gesture of despair. "I entirely forgot,"
she said. "I was going skating. Could it possibly wait till to-morrow?"

Frances West looked helplessly at Beatrice. "I'm sure I don't know," she
said. "You told me that to-day was the time. I always depend on you to
keep track."

Beatrice laughed gaily. "I'm so glad I happened in," she said. "It's such
a lovely spectacle to see the methodical Dottie King trying to persuade
the poetical and always-behind-time Frances to put off till to-morrow
what she ought to have done day before yesterday. Come, Dottie, take off
your coat and go to work."

"I'm sorry I'm always late," said Frances, sweetly. "I've decided to try
to be on time now that we've got our new rugs and these lovely green
curtains. So I bought a calendar pad and put down my date for reading
proof with you last week, when you first reminded me of it."

Dorothy had followed Beatrice's instruction to take off her coat. Now she
sat down resignedly before the writing-table, pulled a long strip of
printer's proof off the spindle, and dipped her pen in the ink, ready for
work. "How do you happen to be here, Bess?" she asked.

"Came to read my mail," said Beatrice. "Some of the best exchanges are
out about this time in the month. When you didn't come, I tried to
correct proof with Frances, but we couldn't either of us remember the
printers' marks; and our Webster's dictionary, that has them in the back,
got lost in the shuffle of house-cleaning last vacation."

"Then if the dictionary is lost, you must stay," said Dorothy, "because I
can correct proof, but I can't spell, and neither can Frances. Come,
Frances, here's the copy for you to read."

Frances West's voice had a peculiarly charming quality, and her manner of
reading was so absorbed and sympathetic that she never failed to interest
her auditors; so that even the mechanical drudgery of correcting proof
was endurable with her help. The work went on rapidly, Dorothy bending
over the long printers' galleys, adding mysterious little marks here and
there in the wide margins, Frances reading as expressively as though she
were doing her best to entertain Beatrice Egerton, who curled herself up
on the window-seat, listened, made flippant comments, perused her
exchanges when the "Argus" articles did not interest her, and when
appealed to by Dorothy, acted as substitute for the missing Webster's
dictionary.

"Well, that's over," said Dorothy, at last, straightening in her chair
and stretching out her cramped arms over her head. "Next month will be
Laura Dale's turn again. I wonder if she'll do it."

"Poor Dottie!" mimicked Beatrice. "'Could you do it just once more? I
can't seem to learn the marks.' That's what she'll say. You shouldn't be
so capable, Dottie, and then you could go skating afternoons instead of
doing your own work and the assistant business manager's too."

"Oh, I don't mind," said Dorothy, who was really very tired indeed, and
so preferred not to talk about it. "Laura is a great deal of help with
some parts of the work, and I don't blame any one for not wanting to
correct proof--though I don't mind doing it so long as Frances will read
for me. Aren't our new curtains lovely?"

"Such a cool, woodsy green," said Frances.

"Just right for poets to write behind," supplemented Beatrice, who loved
to tease Frances, though in her heart she admired her as much as Dorothy
did.

"Girls, it's long after six," said Dorothy, rising abruptly, "and I must
go. I have an evening's work still before me."

As she picked up her gloves, she noticed Frances' letter still lying
neglected on the window-seat. "Here, Frances," she said, "do just open
this letter, and tell me that it's dreadfully important. I want to bother
Laurie about it. She saw it on the zoology bulletin board last week and
didn't trouble herself to bring it to you."

"Oh, I presume it's nothing," said Frances, dreamily. She was watching
the sunset glowing gold and scarlet between the green draperies.

"Here, Frances," laughed Beatrice, thrusting the letter into her hands.
"Read it by the light of the dying sun, if you prefer that to good green-
shaded electricity. You owe it to Dorothy to take an interest when she
bothered herself to bring it to you, and so got caught and deprived of
her afternoon's fun. Poor Dottie! can't you go skating tomorrow?"

They were animatedly discussing the possibility of Miss Mills's
neglecting to call for a recitation on Ward's "Poets" the next day, when
Frances gave a little exclamation.

"Why, girls," she began, excitedly. "I don't understand. Isn't to-day the
twentieth of February?"

"Yes, dear," said Beatrice. "You knew from that wonderful calendar pad,
didn't you?"

Frances disregarded the question. "Then--Why, this letter is dated
February second. Where has it been all the time?"

"I just told you," repeated Dorothy, "that Laurie saw it on the zoology
bulletin board last week. Perhaps it was there a week or two before she
saw it. Is it really important, Frances? Laurie supposed from the
direction that it was just a bill or an advertisement. She'll be very
sorry."

"Oh, I don't know what it is," declared Frances, in bewilderment. "Read
it," and she held out the letter to Dorothy.

"Read it aloud," suggested Beatrice.

"Yes, do," added Frances. "I haven't any idea what it means."

   "'The Quiver' Offices,
   "--Fulton St., New York,
   "Feb. 2, 19--.

   "MISS FRANCES WEST,
   "Editor-in-Chief of Harding
   "College 'Argus':

"DEAR MADAME:--It always gives me great pleasure to see the merits of
'The Quiver' recognized, particularly in haunts of high culture, like
your alma mater. Nevertheless, you will readily understand that the
little tribute to the genius of one of our contributors, contained in
your December number, which, owing to my prolonged absence from the city,
has just now come under my observation, is, to speak bluntly, deserving
of some return from me. I have no doubt that you will be glad to offer
the proper explanation. If, however, you insist upon leaving the matter
in my hands, I assure you that I shall not mince matters. College honor
is a point about which I am very sensitive. We go to press on the
twentieth inst. Until that time I am

"Yours confidentially,
"RICHARD BLAKE."

"Well," said Dorothy, folding the letter carefully and putting it back in
its envelope, "what do you make of that, Bess?"

"Nothing," said Beatrice, "nothing at all. Who in the world is Richard
Blake?"

"I don't know. Don't you, Frances?"

Frances shook her head. "But 'The Quiver' is a magazine. I've seen a copy
once or twice."

"Then," said Dorothy, promptly, "Richard Blake must be the editor, or one
of them."

"Well, did we say anything about him in the December number?" pursued
Beatrice. "Or anything about his magazine?"

"No," declared Dorothy, "of course not. 'The Quiver' isn't a college
magazine, is it, Frances? It couldn't be on the list of exchanges?"

"Oh, no," said Frances, wearily. "'The Quiver' is a real magazine,
Dorothy. It's new, I think, but I know Miss Raymond considers it very
clever. I saw a copy once in her room."

"Clever or not clever," said Beatrice, calmly, "I'm sure this editor must
be insane. There is absolutely no sense to his letter."

Dorothy unfolded Mr. Richard Blake's missive, read it through once more,
and passed it without comment to Beatrice. Meanwhile Frances was
rummaging through the files of the "Argus."

"Here it is," she said at last. "Didn't he say the January number?"

"No, December," corrected Beatrice, joining-Frances in her search for the
missing magazine.

"There," said Frances, at last, reading down the table of contents. "'The
Self-government System at Harding'--he wouldn't be mentioned in that. My
poem is next--he certainly isn't in that. Then that story of Eleanor
Watson's, and an essay on 'Sweetness and Light.'"

"Perhaps he's in that," suggested Dorothy, hopefully. "It sounds as if it
might mean almost anything."

Beatrice Egerton giggled. "You didn't take the course in nineteenth
century essayists, I guess, Dottie. He's not in 'Sweetness and Light,'
unless Richard Blake is an alibi of Matthew Arnold's."

"And he couldn't possibly be in any of these sketches," went on Frances,
anxiously, "nor in the editorials, nor in the alumnae notes."

"Of course not," agreed Beatrice, scornfully. "See here, girls," she
added, referring again to the note, "he doesn't tell us the name of his
contributor--the simpleton! That's what we ought to look for. He says we
printed a tribute to the genius of one of his contributors."

"I have it!" declared Dorothy, pulling the December "Argus" out of
Frances' hands. "The contributor is a member of the faculty, and the
article is spoken of in the faculty notes. That's it, of course."

But diligent search of the faculty notes failed to unearth any item about
an article in "The Quiver."

"Besides," added Beatrice, who had returned to the note once more, "that
wouldn't explain what he says about college honor. And what is this about
'offering the proper explanation'? Are people supposed to explain
compliments?"

"I don't know," said Frances. "I suppose I've made some dreadful blunder,
and he noticed it. And to-day is the twentieth; he evidently wanted an
answer by that time. Do you think I ought to telegraph?"

"No," said Dorothy, after a moment's thought "It wouldn't be any use. If
he went to press--or 'The Quiver' went to press--to-day, it's gone hours
ago. You'd better write him to-night. He'll get your letter in the
morning, and then he'll understand."

"But what am I to write?" asked Frances, helplessly.

"Tell him to study Genung on clearness," suggested Beatrice, flippantly.

"Don't, Beatrice," broke in Dorothy. "This is evidently a serious matter.
I should tell him that you didn't know what he meant by his letter,
Frances, and of course explain why you haven't written before."

"Will you two stay while I write it?" asked Frances. "I should never dare
to take the responsibility alone."

Dorothy sat down on the window-seat in silence, and Beatrice followed her
example. There was no sound in the sanctum but the scratching of Frances'
pen, moving swiftly over the paper. When the brief note was finished, the
editor-in-chief handed it to her colleagues.

"That's all right," said Dorothy, reading it through.

"Infinitely better than his," added Beatrice. "His reminds me of that
verse of Marion Lustig's that was more obscure than Browning--the one we
persuaded you not to print."

"Don't you think," began Dorothy hesitatingly, "that, until we know
exactly what Mr. Richard Blake means, it would be better not to mention
his letter?"

"Not even to the rest of the 'Argus' board?" asked Beatrice, who had been
anticipating the sensation that the story of the mysterious letter would
create. "Dottie," she went on, looking keenly at Dorothy, "I believe you
have another idea about what that note means."

"I know just as little about it as you do," said Dorothy quietly, "but I
think eight girls are too many to keep a secret and--it's Frances'
letter. She must decide."

"I think Dorothy is right," agreed Frances. "I believe that we would
better wait before telling the others. If it's some dreadful blunder that
I have made, perhaps I could correct it if only we three knew of it.
Though I don't know whether that would be quite honest," she added sadly.

Beatrice put her arm around Frances' waist and led her to the door.

"You old dear," she said, "you're so proud of your beloved 'Argus.' I
believe you worry over every word that goes into it."

"And over every s that is upside-down and isn't detected by my eagle
eye," laughed Dorothy, locking the door and carefully hiding the key in
the place where half the college knew it was kept.

It was seven o'clock--no use going home to dinner. Dorothy decided to get
an early start with Ward's "Poets," and to dine later in the evening on
ship's biscuit and a glass of milk. The library was very quiet. She read
busily, concentrating her attention upon the pages before her, oblivious
of her surroundings, forgetful even of the mysterious letter and the
theory, which, despite her declaration to Beatrice Egerton, she had
formed concerning it.

Presently some one tiptoed up behind her and clasped two hands tightly
across her eyes.

"Who is it?" whispered a laughing voice.

"I don't know," answered Dorothy a trifle irritably.

"Did you give it to her?" demanded the voice imperturbably.

"Give what to whom?"

"The letter to Frances West."

"It's Mary Brooks," said Dorothy, pulling away the hands and turning to
find Mary and Marion Lawrence standing behind her chair.

"Aren't you nearly through with that book?" asked Marion.

Dorothy nodded. "Leave me in peace for ten minutes and you may have it."

"Well, tell us first about the letter," demanded Mary. "Was it a hair-
raiser?"

"Oh, no," answered Dorothy calmly. "It was--oh, a note of thanks, or
something of the sort from some magazine that the 'Argus' had spoken of."

"Bother!" said Marion. "That's no good for an ending to my theme."

"No good at all," agreed Dorothy. "I shouldn't use it if I were you."

"I certainly shan't," said Marion. "I can invent a nicer ending than
that. Come, Mary, leave her alone, so that I can have Ward. Oh, dear! I'm
dreadfully disappointed about my theme."

The reply to Mr. Richard Blake, presumably editor of "The Quiver," had
been dispatched on the evening of the twentieth. Two days later Frances,
looking as if she had seen a ghost, stopped Dorothy on her way from
morning chapel to her first recitation.

"Can you come to the sanctum right after lunch?" she asked. "Beatrice can
come then."

"Yes," returned Dorothy. "You've got his answer?"

Frances nodded. "And oh, Dorothy, it's just dreadful!"

When Dorothy reached the sanctum that afternoon she found Beatrice and
Frances there before her. Without a word Frances handed her the letter.

"MY DEAR MISS WEST--" it ran:

"Your note is received and the delay in sending it fully explained. I am
sorry you could make nothing of my first letter. I intended to be vague,
for I wanted to test your knowledge of the episode in question; but it
seems I overshot the mark. So let me say, please, since you and your
colleagues evidently do not read 'The Quiver' that a story in your
December number by a Miss Eleanor Watson is practically a copy of one
that appeared in our November issue, which I am sending you under
separate cover. All I ask is that some public acknowledgment of the fact
shall be made, either by you or by me. I have delayed the notice I
intended to insert in our next number, until I hear from you.

"Let me say that I blame neither you nor your associates in the matter.
'The Quiver' is young, and plagiarists will happen.

"Yours very truly,
"RICHARD BLAKE."

"Has the magazine come?" asked Dorothy, without exhibiting the least
surprise at Mr. Blake's startling announcement.

"Yes," said Frances. "There must be some dreadful mistake."

"Can't you find the story he means?"

"Yes, but of course Eleanor Watson didn't copy it. No Harding girl would
do such a thing."

"Eleanor Watson is different," said Dorothy.

"You mean you think she did it?" asked Beatrice Egerton. "You don't think
it was a coincidence? Frances knew of something like it happening once,
entirely by chance."

"This wasn't chance," said Dorothy slowly. "Oh, Beatrice--you know
Eleanor Watson better than I--I don't want to be uncharitable. That was
why I didn't tell you girls the other day, when it occurred to me that
this was what Mr. Blake meant. Can't you see that it explains everything?
Don't you remember I told you how queer she was about giving me the
story; and before that, just after she handed it in, she went over to get
it back."

"Yes," said Frances eagerly. "I remember. We thought it such a good joke.
Oh, let us go and ask her how it was. She will surely be able to
explain."

"But Frances," began Dorothy and stopped, glancing uncertainly at
Beatrice.

"Oh, you needn't mind me," said Beatrice calmly. "If this is true, I wash
my hands of Eleanor Watson." She turned to Frances, and her face
softened. "You dear old idealist," she said, pulling Frances down on the
seat beside her. "Can't you see that appealing to Eleanor Watson wouldn't
do at all? Can't you see that if she is mean enough to plagiarize 'The
Quiver's' story, she is probably capable of lying out of it? And how
should we know whether or not she told the truth?"

"Or suppose that she did convince us," said Dorothy gently, "you see
there is still Mr. Blake. I don't believe Eleanor's denial would satisfy
him."

"Well," said Beatrice resignedly, "next to Eleanor Watson herself, I
suppose I am the person who would profit most by having this whole affair
hushed up. It's going to be mighty unpleasant for me, what with my having
put her up for Dramatic Club and all that. But frankly, I don't see what
there is to do but let Mr. Richard Blake go ahead and say what he
pleases. Eleanor Watson will probably leave college. Some people will
believe the story and some won't. Some won't even hear it--'The Quiver'
seems to be a very obscure magazine. And in nine days every one will
forget all about it."

"But Eleanor Watson will never forget," added Frances softly. To her art
was sacred and the idea of stealing it horrible.

There was a silence broken at last by Dorothy.

"Frances," she said, "you're right, you always are. You divine things
that the rest of us have to reason out. This affair is unpleasant for
everybody concerned, but it isn't a vital matter to us or to Mr. Blake.
The only person to be considered is Eleanor Watson. If the matter is made
public--"

"It would serve her right, and it might be the best thing in the world
for her," broke in Beatrice, who was growing more angry with Eleanor the
longer she thought of the intimacy between them.

"That," said Dorothy, "is the question we have to decide. I for one am
not at all sure what to think. Being publicly humiliated might be a good
thing for her, or it might ruin her whole life."

"Oh, I can't bear to have people know about it," said Frances, her face
white with horror. "Let us go home now and think it over, and let us be
oh! so careful not even to hint at what has happened. We may have to
confide in some others, but let us not give up the chance of keeping our
secret by telling the wrong people now. And let us meet again tomorrow
afternoon."

"In your room," suggested Beatrice. "This place is too conspicuous."

The three editors crept down the stairs like so many conspirators,
separated with soft good-byes in the lower hall, and went their several
ways, each feeling that the weight of the world rested on her shoulders.
To Beatrice the affair was a personal one, involving her judgment and her
status in the college world; Frances mingled pity for Eleanor with
jealousy for the fair name of the "Argus"; Dorothy was going over the
career of Eleanor Watson since she entered Harding, wondering whether it
would be possible, by any method of treatment, to make her over into a
trustworthy member of the student body, and whether she would ever be
worth to the world what her evil influence had cost her college. All at
once a bitter thought flashed upon Dorothy. She herself was partly
responsible for Eleanor's downfall; for had she not persuaded her,
against her will, to give the story to the "Argus"?




CHAPTER XI

A PROBLEM IN ETHICS

Betty Wales sat in Dorothy King's big wicker easy chair, an expression of
mingled distress and perplexity on her usually merry face. Dorothy had
sent word that she was ill and wanted to see her little friend, and Betty
had hurried over in her first free period, never guessing at the strange
story that Dorothy had summoned her to hear. The story was told now. It
remained only for Betty to decide what she should do about it.

"It's the most annoying thing," Dorothy was saying from the bed where she
lay, pale and listless, among the pillows. "I've heard of girls being ill
from overwork, and I always thought they were good-for-nothings, glad of
an excuse to stay in bed for awhile. But I can't get up, Betty. I tried
hard this morning before the doctor came, and it made me so sick and
faint--you can't imagine. So there was nothing to do but submit when she
insisted upon my going to the infirmary for two weeks."

"I'm so sorry," murmured Betty sympathetically.

"She tried to make me promise not to see any one except the matron before
I was moved," went on Dorothy, "but I told her I must talk to you for
half an hour. I promised on my honor not to keep you longer than that,
and we haven't but ten minutes left. Now won't you decide to go and see
Mr. Blake?"

"Oh, I don't know what to decide!" cried Betty in despairing tones. "It's
so dreadful that Eleanor should have done it. That's all I can think of."

"But listen to me, Betty," began Dorothy patiently. "Let me show you just
how matters stand. Frances can't go down to New York alone--you can see
that. She doesn't know the city, and she'd get lost or run over, and ten
to one come home without even remembering to see Mr. Blake. You can't
believe how absent-minded she is, till you've worked with her as I have.
Besides, she is too dreamy and imaginative to convince a man of Mr.
Blake's type.

"And Bess Egerton mustn't go; Frances and I are agreed about that. She's
too flighty. She'd be angry if Mr. Blake didn't yield his point
immediately, and say something outrageous to him. Then she'd go off
shopping and come back here in the best of spirits, declaring that there
was nothing to be done because Mr. Blake was 'such a silly.' And I can't
go."

"If you only could!" broke in Betty. "Then it would be all right. Isn't
there any chance that you might be able to by the end of next week?"

Dorothy shook her head. "I couldn't get leave, on top of this two weeks'
illness, without telling Miss Stuart exactly why I needed to go, and I
don't want to do that. Miss Raymond knows all about it and approves, and
we don't want to confide in any one else. Besides, I doubt if Mr. Blake
will wait so long."

"Well then, Dorothy, why not write to him?"

Dorothy shook her head again. "We tried that. We wrote one letter, and
when his answer came we tried again, but eight pages was the least we
could get our arguments into. No, it's a case where talking it out is the
only thing to do. You could take him unawares and I'm sure you'd bring
him round."

"That's just it," broke in Betty eagerly. "I know you're mistaken,
Dorothy. I couldn't think of a thing to say to him--I never can. It would
be just a waste of time for me to try."

Dorothy took a bulky envelope from under her pillows and held it out to
Betty. "Here," she said. "These are the letters we wrote. We all three
tried. Here are arguments in plenty."

"But I should forget them all when I got there."

"You mustn't."

"Besides, it would look so queer for me to go, when I'm not on the
'Argus' board, and have nothing to do with the trouble."

"Didn't I tell you why we chose you?" exclaimed Dorothy. "No? I am so
stupid to-day; I put everything the wrong way around. Why, there were two
reasons. One is because you are so fond of Eleanor and understand her so
well. Nobody on the 'Argus' staff, except Beatrice and myself, has more
than a bowing acquaintance with her, whereas you can tell Mr. Blake
exactly what sort of girl she is, and why we want to save her from this
disgrace. The other reason is that, while Christy is away, you are one of
the two sophomores on the Students' Commission; Eleanor is a sophomore
and either you or Lucy Merrifield is the proper person to act in her
interests in a case of this kind. Because you know Eleanor best, we chose
you--and for some other reasons," added Dorothy, truthfully, remembering
the confidence they had all felt in Betty's peculiar combination of
engaging manner and indomitable pluck and perseverance, where a promise
or a friend was concerned.

"Oh, Dorothy!" sighed Betty, feeling herself hopelessly entangled in the
web of Dorothy's logic.

"There is a third reason," went on Dorothy, inexorably, "just between you
and me. Of course you understand that I feel personally to blame about
this trouble. If I hadn't lost my horrid temper and said something
disagreeable to force her hand, Eleanor Watson might never have allowed
the story to be printed and the worst complications would have been
avoided. Now I personally ask you, as the person I can best trust, to go
to Mr. Blake for me. You know Eleanor. You agree with us that it is very
likely to spoil her whole life if this is made public--"

"But, Dorothy, I'm not sure it's right to keep it a secret," broke in
Betty.

"I believe you will feel sure when you have had a chance to think over
all sides of the question," resumed Dorothy, "and to see how much to
blame I am. Then you are a typical Harding girl, the right sort to
represent the college to Mr. Blake, who seems to be very much interested
in knowing what sort of girl Harding turns out."

"Oh, no!" demurred Betty. "I'm not the right kind at all."

"Besides, you have a way of getting around people and persuading them to
do what you want," concluded Dorothy.

"Never," declared Betty.

Dorothy smiled faintly. "You have the reputation," she said. "Of course I
don't know how you got it; but now that you have it you're bound to live
up to it, you know. And if you don't go, we shall have to risk writing
and I am perfectly certain that no letter will keep Mr. Blake from
publishing his notice next month, whereas I think that if he were to talk
over the matter with you, he might very easily be persuaded to give it
up."

Dorothy lay back on her pillows and closed her eyes. "It does certainly
seem like shirking to be ill just now," she said.

Betty rose hastily and came over to the bed. "Dorothy," she began, "I
must go this minute. You are all tired out. I wish I could promise now,
but I must think it over--whether I can do what you want of me and
whether I ought. I'll tell you what," she went on eagerly, "I can't see
you again, but I'll send you a bunch of violets the first thing in the
morning, and I'll tuck in a note among the flowers, saying what I can do.
And it will be the very best I can do, Dorothy."

"I know it will," said Dorothy. "Don't think that I don't realize how
much we're asking of you."

"I like to be trusted," said Betty, ruefully, "but it seems to me there
are hundreds of girls in college who could do this better than I. Good-
bye--and look out for the violets, Dorothy."

A moment later she opened the door again. "Of course Eleanor doesn't know
that you've found out?"

"No," said Dorothy. "We've told no one but you and Miss Raymond. We
thought it would only complicate matters and hurt her needlessly to tell
her now. I suppose she will have to know eventually, to guard against a
repetition of the trouble, if for no other reason; but we haven't looked
so far ahead as that yet."

It was fortunate that Betty was not called upon to recite in her next
class. Refusing the seat that Bob Parker had saved for her between
herself and Alice Waite, she found a place in the back row where a pillar
protected her from Bob's demonstrations, and leaning her head on her hand
she set herself to work out the problem that Dorothy had given her. But
the shame of Eleanor's act overcame her, as it had in Dorothy's room; she
could not think of anything else. She woke with a start at the end of the
hour to find the girls pushing back their chairs and making their noisy
exit from the room, and to realize that she might as well have learned
something about Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, since she had decided
nothing about her trip to New York.

"I say," said Bob, joining her outside the door, "why are you so
unsociable?"

"Headache," returned Betty, laconically, and with some truth.

"Too bad." Owing to the fact that she had never had a headache in her
life, Bob's sympathy was somewhat perfunctory.

"When you have the written lesson to study for, too," mourned Alice.

"Written lesson?" questioned Betty, in dismay.

"Yes. Didn't you hear Professor White giving it out for to-morrow? All of
Napoleon--that's five hundred pages."

Betty gasped. "I suppose he made a lot of new points to-day. I didn't
hear a word."

"Next time," said Bob, severely, "perhaps you'll be willing to sit down
among people who can see that you keep awake."

"Don't tease her," begged Alice. "She must have an awful headache, not to
have heard about the written lesson. What did you think we were all
groaning so about, Betty?"

"I didn't hear that, either," said Betty, meekly. "Will one of you lend
me a notebook?"

Betty could have hugged Helen Adams when immediately after luncheon she
announced that she was going down to study history with T. Reed and
should stay till dinner time. Betty hung a "Busy" sign on her door--the
girls would think that she too was studying history madly--and set
herself to read over the original of Eleanor's story in "The Quiver" that
Dorothy had lent her. It was the same and yet not the same. Plot and
characters had been taken directly from the original, but the phrasing--
Betty knew Eleanor's story almost by heart--was quite different, and a
striking little episode at the end that Miss Raymond had particularly
admired was Eleanor's own.

"I like hers best," thought Betty, stoutly. "I wonder if the resemblance
couldn't have happened by chance. Perhaps she read this story a long
while before and forgot that she had not thought it up herself."

Betty looked at the date of the magazine and then consulted her calendar.
The November "Quiver" had come out just two days before the afternoon of
the barge ride, which had also been "theme afternoon." Betty remembered
because her monthly allowance always came on the third. She had borrowed
her quarter for the ride of Helen and paid her out of the instalment that
arrived the very next morning. That settled it,--and as Dorothy had
pointed out, all Eleanor's seemingly inexplicable queerness about the
story was now explained.

Betty threw the magazine on the table and going to the window gazed
drearily out at the snow-covered campus. The next thing to settle was
whether it were right to help Eleanor to cover up her deceit? Dorothy
felt, from the little she knew of Eleanor, that open disgrace would take
away her last chance of being honest and upright. "She is terribly
sensitive," Dorothy argued, "and if she feels that nice people don't
trust her, she will go as far as she dares to show them that they are
right. Perhaps she can be led, but she certainly can't be driven. She
isn't strong enough to meet disgrace and down it." That might be true,
but there was the mathematics examination of the year before. Miss Hale
had argued as Dorothy did. In the hope of ultimately winning Eleanor by
kindness, she had not let Miss Meredith know that Eleanor had told her an
untruth. For a while afterward Eleanor had been scrupulously honorable,
but now she had done something infinitely more dishonest than the
deception of Miss Meredith. No doubt Dorothy regarded the affair of the
story as a first offense, and Betty could not tell her that it wasn't.
She had been glad enough to help save Eleanor from the consequences of
her foolish bragging, the year before; but saving her from the
consequences of deliberate dishonesty was a different matter. Betty had
been taught to despise cheating in any form, and to avoid the least
suspicion of it with scrupulous care. And now Dorothy wanted her to aid
and abet a--a thief. Betty flushed hotly as she applied the hard name.

All at once the memory of her last interview with Eleanor flashed upon
her. "I was an idiot last fall. Now I have come to my senses--" that was
what she had said. When her voice broke, it must have been because she
was sorry for the change--sorry that the old, shifty, unreliable self had
come back to take the place of the strange new one whose ideals had
proved too hard and too high to live by. The sad, hunted look that
Madeline had spoken of was explained too. Eleanor was sorry. But was she
sorry, as she had been in the case of the mathematics examination, only
because she was afraid of being found out, or did she honestly regret
having taken what was not her own, and used it to gain honors that she
had not earned?

There was another point that Dorothy had not spoken of--perhaps had not
thought of. What about the Dramatic Club election and the other college
honors that had come or would come to Eleanor, one after another, all
because, at the beginning of her sophomore year, she had made a
reputation for brilliant literary work? Eleanor had been right, when she
was a freshman, in insisting that it was the start which counted. Then,
despite her first abject failure, she had compassed the difficult
achievement of a second start. How proud Betty had been of her! And now
all her fair hopes and high ambitions had crumbled to dust and ashes. Was
it right to help her cover up the ruin? Was it fair to girls like Helen
Adams, who worked hard and got no recognition, that Eleanor should get
recognition for work which was not her own?

Anyway, she was not going to New York. Those three editors could choose
some one else. And yet if she refused--oh, it was all dreadful! Betty
flung herself on the couch and buried her face in the pillows. A moment
later the door opened stealthily, and Madeline Ayres stuck her head in.
In spite of her caution, Betty heard her and sat up with a nervous start.

"I hope you weren't asleep," said Madeline, settling herself comfortably
at the other end of the couch. "I didn't mean to wake you; that was why I
came in without knocking."

"I wasn't asleep," returned Betty faintly. "I was just resting."

"You look as if you needed to," said Madeline cheerfully. "Does your head
ache now?"

"Not--not very much," stammered Betty.

"Have you read over all this?" Madeline reached out a long arm for the
life of Napoleon that lay on the table.

"No, hardly any of it," confessed Betty, reddening as she remembered the
"Busy" sign.

But Madeline remarked briskly, "That's good. Neither have I. I don't feel
a bit like cramming, so I shall bluff. When father was studying art in
Paris, he knew a man who had been one of Napoleon's guards at St. Helena.
He was old and lame and half blind and stunningly homely then, and an
artist's model. He used to tell merry tales about what a tiger of a man--"
Madeline stopped short in the act of replacing the life of Napoleon on
the table and stared at Betty in unfeigned admiration.

"Betty Wales," she said at last, "you are certainly a splendid actress. I
never dreamed that you knew."

Betty's eyes followed Madeline's to the table, and then to "The Quiver,"
lying in full view where she had dropped it an hour before. There was one
chance in a thousand that Madeline meant something besides Eleanor's
story, and Betty resolved to make sure.

"Knew what, Madeline?" she asked steadily, trying not to blush but
feeling the tell-tale red spread over her cheeks in spite of all she
could do.

It was no use. Madeline picked up the magazine and flipped over the pages
carelessly till she came to Eleanor's story. "That," she said, holding it
out for Betty to see. Their eyes met, and at sight of Betty's frightened,
pleading face, Madeline's hand dropped to her side.

"I beg your pardon," she said quickly. "I didn't mean to hurt you, Betty.
I see now how it is. You didn't know before; you've just found out, and
when I came in you were mourning for your fallen idol. Shall I go?"

Betty stretched out a detaining hand. "No," she said, "tell me,--quick
before Helen comes,--how did you know?"

"Read it in 'The Quiver,' away back last fall, before Miss Watson's story
came out in the 'Argus.' It's been--oh, amusing, you know, to hear people
rave over her wonderful theme."

"Does any one else know?"

"I doubt it. 'The Quiver' isn't on sale up here. Father thinks it's
clever and he sends it to me. I suppose he knows the editor. He's always
knowing the editors of little, no-account magazines and having to sit up
nights to do them cover-designs or something; and then they send him
their magazines."

"But--I mean--you haven't told any one?" stammered Betty.

Madeline shook her head. "It wouldn't make a pretty story, do you think?"

"Madeline"--Betty's voice thrilled with earnestness--"did you ever think
you ought to tell?"

Madeline stared at Betty for a moment in silence. Then her gray eyes
twinkled. "You absurd little Puritan," she said, "is that what you're
bothering your head about? I know you don't want to tell. Why aren't you
satisfied to let matters take their course?"

"Because," Betty hesitated, "because if they take their course,--suppose,
Madeline, that somebody else knows and wants to tell? Ought I to
interfere with that?"

Madeline spread out her hands with a gesture that suggested helpless
resignation. "My dear, how should I know? You see in Bohemia we're all
honest--poor, but honest. We never have anything like this to settle
because we're all too busy enjoying life to have time to envy our
neighbors. But I think"--Madeline paused a minute--"I think if a man
stole a design and got, say a medal at the water-color exhibit, or a
prize at the Salon, I'd let him have it and I'd try to see that he kept
it in a conspicuous place, where he'd be sure to see it every day. I
think the sight of his medal would be his best medicine. If he was
anything of a man, he'd never want another of the same sort, and if he
was all cheat, he'd be found out soon enough without my help. So I'd give
him the benefit of the doubt."

"And you think that would be fair to the one who ought to have had the
medal?"

"If he was much of a man he didn't paint just for the medal," returned
Madeline quickly. "He painted because he couldn't help it,--because he
meant to make the most of himself,--and a medal more or less--what's that
to him?" She turned upon Betty suddenly. "Don't you see that the great
fault with the life here is that we think too little about living and too
much about getting? These societies and clubs and teams and committees--
they're not the best things in life; they're nothing, except what they
stand for in character and industry and talent. No, I shouldn't worry
because Eleanor Watson got into Dramatic Club, if that's what you mean,
and may get into other things because she cribbed a story. That very fact
will take all the fun out of it, unless she's beneath caring,--but she
isn't beneath caring," Madeline corrected herself swiftly. "No one with a
face like hers is beyond caring. It's the most beautiful face I ever
saw--and one of the saddest."

"Thank you very much, Madeline," said Betty, soberly. "I'm so glad I
could talk it over with you."

Madeline was never serious for long at a time. "I've been preaching
regular sermons," she said with a laugh. "The thing I don't understand is
why this editor of 'The Quiver' hasn't jumped on Miss Watson long ago.
Editors are always reading college magazines--hoping to discover a
genius, I suppose."

"Are they?" said Betty.

A tap sounded on the door.

"Don't worry, whatever else you do,--and hide your magazine," said
Madeline, and was off with a cheerful greeting for Helen Adams, who had
come back from her afternoon at T. Reed's crammed full of Napoleonic lore
and basket-ball news.

"Theresa had made a table of dates and events," said Helen eagerly. "I
copied it for you--it's lots of help. And Betty, she says the teams are
going to be chosen soon, and she is almost sure you will be on."

Madeline Ayres wondered idly, as she dressed for dinner, how Betty Wales
had come into possession of a four months' old magazine which was not to
be had at any library or book-store in Harding. Then, being a person
born, so she herself asserted, entirely without curiosity, she ceased
wondering. By the time dinner was over and she had related a budget of
her Napoleonic stories to a delighted group of anxious students, she had
actually forgotten all about Eleanor's affairs.




CHAPTER XII

A BRIEF FOR THE DEFENSE


"DEAR DOROTHY--
  "I have thought and thought all the afternoon and I can't do it. I should
only--"

"DEAR DOROTHY--
  "If you are perfectly sure that there is nobody else to go--"

"DEAR DOROTHY--
  "Don't you think that Mary Brooks or Marion Lawrence would be a lot
better? Mary can always talk--"

"Oh, Dorothy, I don't know what to say--"

Betty had slipped up-stairs to her room the minute dinner was over. The
rest of the Belden House girls still lingered in the parlors, talking or
dancing,--enjoying the brief after-dinner respite that is a welcome
feature of each busy day at Harding. Ida Ludwig was playing for them. She
had a way of dashing off waltzes and two-steps that gave them a perfectly
irresistible swing. As Betty wrote, her foot beat time to the music that
floated up, faint and sweet and alluring, through her half-open door. The
floor around her was strewn with sheets of paper which she had torn, one
after another, from her pad, and tossed impatiently out of her way.

"Such a goose as I am, trying to write before I've made up my mind what
to say!" she told the green lizard, as she sent the seventh attempt
flying after the others. "And I can't make it up," she added
despondently, and shut her fountain pen with a vicious little snap. She
would go down and have a two-step with Roberta, who had been Mary's guest
at dinner. Roberta could lead beautifully--as well as a man--and the
music was too good to lose. Besides, Roberta might feel hurt at her
having run off the minute dinner was over.

A shadow suddenly darkened the door and Betty turned to find Eleanor
Watson standing there, smiling radiantly down at her.

"Eleanor!" she gasped helplessly. Somehow the sight of the real Eleanor,
smiling and lovely, made the deceit she had practiced seem so much more
concrete and palpable, the penalty she must pay at best so much more real
and dreadful. Betty had puzzled over the rights and wrongs of the matter
until it had come to be almost an abstraction--a subject for formal,
impersonal debate, like those they used to discuss in the junior English
classes, in high school days--"Resolved: that it is right to help
plagiarists to try again." Now the reality of it all was forced upon her.
In spite of her surprise at seeing Eleanor, who almost never came to her
room now, and her dismay that she should have come on this evening in
particular, she found time to be glad that she had not yet refused
Dorothy's request--and time to be a little ashamed of herself for being
so glad.

Her perturbation showed so plainly in her face and manner that Eleanor
could not fail to notice it. Her smile vanished and a troubled look stole
into her gray eyes. "May I come in, Betty?" she asked. "Or are you too
busy?"

"No-o," stammered Betty. "Come in, Eleanor, of course. I--I was just
writing a note."

Eleanor glanced at the floor, littered with all Betty's futile
beginnings, and her smile came flashing back again. "I should think," she
said, "that you must be writing a love letter--if it isn't a sonnet--
judging by the trouble it's making you. They told me downstairs that you
were cramming history, but I was sure it would take more than a mere
history cram to keep you away from that music. Isn't it lovely?"

"Yes," said Betty. "Would you like--shan't we go down and dance?" It
would surely be easier to talk down there, with plenty of people about
who did not know.

Again her embarrassment and constraint were too evident to be ignored,
and this time Eleanor went straight to the heart of the matter.

"Betty," she said, "don't tell me that you're not glad to see me back
again after all this time. I know I'm queer and horrid and not worth
bothering about, but when you find it out,--when you give me up--you and
Jim--I shall stop trying to be different."

For an instant Betty hesitated. Then the full import of Eleanor's words
flashed upon her. There was no mistaking their sincerity. She knew at
last that she did "really mean something" to somebody. Ethel Hale had
been wrong. Eleanor had not forgotten her old friends--and Betty would go
to New York. With a happy little cry she stretched out her arms and
caught Eleanor's hands in hers.

"I'm so glad you feel that way," she said, "and I shall never stop caring
what you do, Eleanor, and neither will Jim. I know he won't."

"He gave me up once before, and if you knew something--" She broke off
suddenly. "Betty, Jim is coming Friday night. That's one reason why I'm
here. I didn't want him to miss seeing you just because I'd been
disagreeable and was too proud to come and say I'm sorry. I am sorry,
Betty,--I'm always sorry when it's just too late."

"Oh, that's all right. I knew you didn't mean anything," said Betty,
hastily. Apologies always made her nervous, and this particular one was
fraught with unpleasant suggestions little guessed at by its maker.
"You'll be awfully glad to see your brother, won't you?"

Eleanor's assent was half-hearted. "To tell the truth, I'm too tired to
care much what happens."

"Oh, you won't feel tired when he gets here," suggested Betty,
cheerfully.

Eleanor shook her head. "I'm tired all through," she said. "I don't
believe I shall ever be rested again."

"What are you going to do to entertain him?" asked Betty, wishing to
change the current of Eleanor's thoughts, since she did not dare to
sympathize with them.

Eleanor detailed her plans, explained that Judge Watson had suddenly been
called home from Cornell and so was not coming with Jim, according to the
summer plan that Betty remembered, and rose to go. "I know you'll like
Jim, Betty," she said, "and he'll like you. He's your kind."

The moment she was left alone, Betty sat down again at her desk and
dashed off her note to Dorothy.

"Dear Dorothy:

"I have thought it over and seen Ele

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