If Eleanor had taken Kate’s advice and indulged in a little calm reflection, she would have realized how absolutely reasonless was her anger against Betty Wales. Betty had been told of the official objections which made it necessary for Eleanor to be withdrawn from the debate. Her action, then, had been wholly proper and perfectly friendly. But Eleanor was in no mood for reflection. A wild burst of passion held her firmly in its grasp. She hated everybody and everything in Harding–the faculty who had made such a commotion about two little low grades–for Eleanor had come surprisingly near to clearing her record at mid-years,–Jean, who had stupidly brought all this extra annoyance upon her; the class, who were glad to get rid of her, Betty, who–yes, Jean had been right about one thing–Betty, who had taken advantage of a friend’s misfortune to curry favor for herself. They were all leagued against She deliberately selected the most becoming of her new evening gowns, and in an incredibly short time swept down to dinner, radiantly beautiful in the creamy lace dress, and–outwardly at least–in her sunniest, most charming mood. She insisted that the table should admire her dress, and the pearl pendant which her aunt had just sent her. “I’m wearing it, you see, to celebrate my return to the freedom of private life,” she rattled on glibly. “I understand you’ve found a genius to take my place. I’m delighted that we have one in the class. It’s so convenient. Who of you are going to the Burton House dance to-night?” So she led the talk from point to point and from hand to hand. She bantered Mary, deferred to Helen and the Riches, appealed in comradely fashion to Katherine and Rachel. Betty alone she utterly, though quite unostentatiously, ignored; and Betty, too much hurt to make any effort, stood aside and tried to solve “I understand that you quite ran the class to-day,” she said with a flashing smile. “The girls tell me that you’re a born orator, as good in your way as the genius in hers.” Betty rallied herself for one last effort. “Don’t make fun of me, Eleanor. Please let me come in and tell you about it. You don’t understand—” “Possibly not,” said Eleanor coldly. “But I’m going out now.” “Just for a moment!” “But I have to start at once. I’m late already.” “Oh, very well,” said Betty, and turned away to join Mary and Roberta. Eleanor’s mind always worked with lightning rapidity, and while she dressed she had gone over the whole situation and decided exactly how she would meet it; and in the weeks that followed she kept rigidly to the course she had marked out for herself, changing only one detail. At first she had “I have a note from my father. So long as I do my work and go to all my classes, they really can’t object to my spending my Sundays as he wishes.” Betty observed all these changes without being in the least able to reconcile them with Eleanor’s new attitude toward herself. Unlike the friendship with Jean, Eleanor’s intercourse with her had been inconspicuous, confined mostly to the Chapin house itself. Even the girls there, because Eleanor had stood so aloof from them, had seen little of it, so Eleanor was free to break it off without thinking of public opinion, and she did so ruthlessly. From the day of the class meeting she spoke to Betty only when she must, or, if no one was by, when some taunting remark occurred to her. But Betty felt that she was having more than her share of trouble; Helen was quite as trying in her way as Eleanor in hers. She had entirely lost her cheerful air and seemed to have grown utterly discouraged with life. “And no wonder, for she studies every minute,” Betty told Rachel and Katherine. “I think she feels hurt because the girls don’t get to like her better, but how can they when she doesn’t give them any chance?” “She’s awfully touchy lately,” added Katherine. “Poor little thing!” said Rachel. Then the three plunged into an animated discussion of basket-ball, and Rachel and Katherine, who were on a sort of provisional team that included most of the best freshman It is one of the fine things about college that no matter who of your friends are temporarily lost to you, there is always somebody else to fall back upon, and some new interest to take the place of one that flags. Betty had noticed this and been amused by it early in her course. Sometimes, as she said to Miss Ferris in one of her many long talks with that lady, things change so fast that you really begin to wonder if you can be the same person you were last week. Besides the inter-class basket-ball game, there was the Hilton House play to talk about and look forward to, and the rally; and, nearer still, St. Valentine’s day. It was a long time, to be sure, since Betty had been much excited over the last named festival; in her experience only children exchanged valentines. But at Harding it seemed to be “All the campus houses give them,” Mary explained, “and the big ones outside, just as they do for Hallowe’en. They have valentine boxes, you know, and sometimes fancy dress balls.” And there the matter would have dropped if Mary had not spent all her monthly allowance three full weeks before she was supposed to have any more. Poverty was Mary’s chronic state. Not that Dr. Brooks’s checks were small, but his daughter’s spending capacity was infinite. “You wait till you’re a prominent sophomore,” she said when Katherine laughed at her, “and all your friends are making societies, and you just have to provide violets and suppers, in hopes that they’ll do as much for you later on. The whole trouble is that father wants me to be on an allowance, instead of writing home for money when I’m out. And no matter how much I say I need, it never lasts out the month.” “Tutor!” repeated Mary with a reminiscent chuckle. “I tried to tutor my cousin this fall in algebra, and the poor thing flunked much worse than before. But anyway the faculty wouldn’t give me regular tutoring. I look too well-to-do. Ah! how deceitful are appearances!” sighed Mary, opening her pocketbook, where five copper pennies rattled about forlornly. But the very next day she dashed into Betty’s room proclaiming loudly, “I have an idea, and I want you to help me, Betty Wales. You can draw and I’ll cut them out and drum up customers, and I guess I can write the verses. We ought to make our ad. to-night.” “Our what?” inquired Betty in an absolutely mystified tone. Then Mary explained that she proposed to sell valentines. “Lots of the girls who can’t draw buy theirs, not down-town, you know–we don’t give that kind here,–but cunning little hand-made ones with pen-and-ink drawings Betty had not even seen that bulletin board since she and Helen had hunted second-hand screens early in the fall, but the plan sounded very attractive; it would fill up her spare hours, and keep her from worrying over Eleanor, and getting cross at Helen, so she was very willing to help if Mary honestly thought she could draw well enough. “Goodness, yes!” said Mary, rushing off to borrow Roberta’s water-color paper and Katherine’s rhyming dictionary. So the partnership was formed, a huge red heart covered with hastily decorated samples was stuck up on the “For Sale” bulletin in the gymnasium basement, and, as Betty’s cupids were really very charming and her Christy heads quite as good as the average copy, names began to appear in profusion on the order-sheet. Mary had written two sample verses with comparative ease, and in the first flush of confidence she had boldly printed on the sign: “Rhymed grinds for special persons “I can’t–I just can’t do them,” wailed Mary finally. “Jokes simply will not go into rhyme. What shall we do?” “Get Roberta–she writes beautifully–and Katherine–she told me that she’d like to help,” suggested Betty, without looking up from the chubby cupid she was fashioning. So Katherine and Roberta were duly approached and Katherine was added to the firm. Roberta at first said she couldn’t, but finally, after exacting strict pledges of secrecy, she produced half a dozen dainty little lyrics, bidding Mary use them if she wished–they were nothing. But no amount of persuasion would induce her to do any more. However, Katherine’s genius was nothing if not profuse, and she preferred to do “grinds,” so Mary could devote herself to sentimental effusions,–which, so she declared, did not have to have any special point and so were within her powers,–and to the business “I tell you, I never appreciated how easy it is to make money if you only set about it in the right way,” she announced proudly one day at luncheon. “By the way, Betty, would you run down after gym to get our old order sheet and put up a new one? I have a special topic in psychology to-morrow, and if Professor Hinsdale really thinks I’m clever I don’t want to undeceive him too suddenly.” Betty promised, but after gym Rachel asked her to stay and play basket-ball with “The Stars” in the place of an absent member. Naturally she forgot everything else and it was nearly six o’clock when, sauntering home from an impromptu tea-drinking at the Belden House, she remembered the order “Goodness! did I hurt you?” she said, a trifle exasperated that any one should want to sit alone in the damp darkness of the basement. There was no answer, and Betty, whose eyes were growing accustomed to the dim light, observed with consternation that her companion was doing her best to stop crying. As has already been remarked, Betty hated tears as a kitten hates rain. Personally she never cried without first locking her door, and she could imagine nothing so humiliating as to be caught, unmistakably weeping, by a stranger. So she turned aside swiftly, peered about in the shadows for the big red heart, changed the order sheet, and was wondering whether she would better hurry out past the girl or wait for her to recover her composure and depart, when the girl took the situation out of her hands by rising and saying “I–why it’s Emily–I mean Miss–Davis,” cried Betty. “Yes, it’s Emily Davis, in the blues, the more shame to her, when she ought to be at home getting supper this minute. Wait just a second, please.” Miss Davis went over to the signs, jerked down one, and picking up her books from the bottom step announced without the faintest trace of embarrassment, “Now I’m ready.” “But are you sure you want me?” inquired Betty timidly. “Bless you, yes,” said Miss Davis. “I’ve wanted to know you for ever so long. I’m sorry you caught me being a goose, though.” “And I’m sorry you felt like crying,” said Betty shyly. “Why, Miss Davis, I should want to laugh all the time if I’d done what you did the other day. I should be so proud.” Miss Davis smiled happily down at her small companion. “I was proud,” she said simply. “I only hope I can do as well week after next. But Miss Wales, that was the jam “Do you mean—” began Betty and stopped, not wanting to risk hurting Miss Davis’s feelings. “Yes, I mean that I’m working my way through. I have a scholarship, but there’s still my board and clothes and books.” “And you do it all?” Miss Davis nodded. “My cousin sends me some clothes.” “How do you do it, please?” “Tutor, sort papers and make typewritten copies of things for the faculty, put on dress braids (that’s how I met the B’s), mend stockings, and wait on table off and on when some one’s maid leaves suddenly. We thought it would be cheaper and pleasanter to board ourselves and earn our money in different ways than to take our board in exchange for regular table-waiting; but I don’t know. The other way is surer.” “You mean you don’t find work enough?” Miss Davis nodded. “It takes a good deal,” she said apologetically, “and there isn’t “Dear me,” gasped Betty. “Don’t you get any–any help from home?” “Well, they haven’t been able to send any yet, but they hope to later,” said Miss Davis brightly. “And does it pay when you have to work so hard for it?” “Oh, yes,” answered Miss Davis promptly. “All three of us are sure that it pays.” “Three of you live together?” “Yes. Of course there are ever so many others in the college, and I’m sure all of them would say the same thing.” “And–I hope I’m not being rude–but do girls–do you advertise things down on that bulletin board? I don’t know much about it. I never was there but once till I went to-day on–on an errand for a friend,” Betty concluded awkwardly. Perhaps she had been an interloper. Perhaps that bulletin board had not been meant for girls like her. Miss Davis evidently assumed that she had been to leave an order. “You ought to buy more,” she said laughingly. “But you want “Valentines?” repeated Betty sharply. “Yes, but a good many others thought of it too, and we didn’t get any orders–not one. Ours weren’t so extra pretty and it was foolish of me to be so disappointed, but we’d worked hard getting ready and we did want a little more money so much.” They had reached Betty’s door by this time, and Miss Davis hurried on, saying it was her turn to get supper and begging Betty to come and see them. “For we’re very cozy, I assure you. You mustn’t think we have a horrid time just because–you know why.” Betty went straight to Mary’s room, which, “You’re a nice one,” cried Katherine, “staying off like this when to-day is the eleventh.” “Many orders?” inquired Mary. Betty sat down on Mary’s couch, ruthlessly sweeping aside a mass of half finished valentines to make room. “Girls, this has got to stop,” she announced abruptly. Mary dropped her scissors and Katherine shut the rhyming dictionary with a bang. “What is the trouble?” they asked in chorus. Then Betty told her story, suppressing only Emily’s name and mentioning all the details that had made up the point and pathos of it. “And just think!” she said at last. “She’s a girl you’d both be proud to know, and she works like that. And we stepped in and took away a chance of–of ribbons and note-books and dessert for Sunday.” “May be not; perhaps hers were so homely they wouldn’t have sold anyway,” suggested Katherine with an attempt at jocoseness. “Don’t, please,” said Betty wearily. “I don’t know. We can’t give them orders because she took her sign down. I thought perhaps–how much have we made?” “Fifteen dollars easily. All right; we’ll send it to them.” “Of course,” chimed in Katherine. “I was only joking. Shall we finish these up?” “Yes indeed,” said Mary, “they’re all ordered, and the more money the better, n’est ce pas, Betty? But aren’t we to know the person’s name?” Betty hesitated. “Why–no–that is if you don’t mind very much. You see she sort of told me about herself because she had to, so I feel as if I oughtn’t to repeat it. Do you mind?” “Not one bit,” said Katherine quickly. “And we needn’t say anything at all about it, except–don’t you think the girls here in the house will have to know that we’re going to give away the money?” “Yes,” put in Mary, “and we’ll make them all give us extra orders.” “Oh no, I shall borrow of you,” retorted Mary, and then they all laughed and felt better. On St. Valentine’s morning Betty posted a registered valentine. The verse read:– “There are three of us and three of you, But if the rhyme went haltingly and was not quite true either, as Betty pointed out, since Adelaide and Alice had contributed to the fund, and the whole house had bought absurd quantities of valentines because it was such a “worthy object” (“just as if I wasn’t a worthy object!” sighed Mary), there was nothing the matter with the “little gift,” which consisted of three crisp ten dollar bills. “Oh, if they should feel hurt!” thought Betty anxiously, and dodged Emily Davis so successfully that until the day of the rally they did not meet. That week was a tremendously exciting Every speaker was clever and amusing, but Emily Davis easily scored the hit of the morning. For whereas most freshmen are frightened and appear to disadvantage on such an occasion, she was perfectly calm and self-possessed, and made her points with exactly the same irresistible gaucherie and daring infusion of local color that had distinguished her performance at the class meeting. As the clans were scattering, it suddenly occurred to Betty that, if Emily did not guess anything, it would please her to be congratulated on the excellence of her debate; and if, as was more likely, she had guessed, there was little to be gained by postponing the dreaded interview. She chose a moment when Emily was standing by herself in one corner of the gymnasium. Emily did not wait for her to begin her speech of congratulation. “Oh, Miss Wales,” she cried, “I’ve been to see you six times, and you are never there. “Yes, indeed. It belongs to you; honestly it does. Don’t ask me how, for it’s too long a story. Just take my word for it.” “Well, but—” began Emily doubtfully. At that moment some one called, “Hurrah for 19–!” Betty caught up the cry and seizing Emily’s hand rushed her down the hall, toward a group of freshmen. “Make a line and march,” cried somebody else, and presently a long line of 19– girls was winding in noisy lock-step down the hall, threading in and out between groups of upper-class girls and cheering and gaining recruits as it went. “Hurrah for 19–!” cried Betty hoarsely. “Take it for 19–,” she whispered to Emily, as the line stopped with a jerk that knocked their heads together. “If you are sure— Thank you for 19–,” Emily whispered back. “Here’s to 19–, drink her down! As the chorus rose and swelled Betty felt, As Betty was leaving the gymnasium she met Eleanor face to face in the hallway. “Wasn’t it fun?” said Betty, shyly. Perhaps, now that the debate was over, Eleanor would be ready to make friends again. “Patronizing the genius, do you mean?” asked Eleanor slowly. “I hope she didn’t buy that hideous salmon-pink waist with your money.” “Oh, Eleanor, how did you ever find out?” cried Betty, deeply distressed. Only a few of the Chapin house girls knew anything about the disposition of the valentine money, and not even the rest of the firm had been told who had received it. So Betty had thought the secret perfectly safe. “No one told me about your private affairs,” returned Eleanor significantly. “I guessed and I congratulate you. The genius will be a useful ally. She will get all the freaks’ votes for you, when—” “Eleanor Watson, come on if you’re coming,” called a voice from the foot of the stairs, Betty stared after her with unseeing eyes. So that was it! She was to blame because Jean had told her of Eleanor’s predicament–told her against her wish. And now she was supposed to be trying to get votes. “Votes for what, I wonder? How perfectly absurd!” said Betty to the brick wall she was facing. But the appropriate smile would not come, for the absurdity had cost her a friend whom she had loved dearly in spite of her faults. |