“I wish I could do it, Betty, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be the least use for me to try. I thought I had a little hold on her for a while, but I’m afraid I was too sure of her. She avoids me now–goes around corners and into recitation rooms when she sees me coming. You see–I wonder if she told you about our trip to New York?” Betty nodded, wishing she dared explain the full extent of her information. “I thought so from your coming up here to-night. Well, as you’ve just said, she’s very reserved, strangely so for a young girl; when she lets out anything about herself she wishes that she hadn’t the next minute.” “Yes, I’ve noticed that,” admitted Betty grudgingly. “And so, having once let me get a glimpse of her better self, and then having decided as usual that she wished she hadn’t, she needed “Oh, dear!” said Betty forlornly. “But isn’t it so? Don’t you agree with me?” “I’m afraid I do.” “Then go back and speak to her yourself, dear. She’s very fond of you, and I’m sure a little friendly hint from you is all that she needs.” “No, I can’t speak to her either, Ethel. You wouldn’t suggest it if you knew how things are between us. But I see that you can’t. Thank you just as much. No, I mustn’t stop to-night.” Betty walked down the elm-shaded street lost in thought. Eleanor had declaimed upon the foolishness of coming back on time after vacations through most of the dinner hour, and Betty understood as she had not that afternoon what Dorothy meant. But now her one hope had failed her; Ethel had shown good cause why she should not act as “Hello, Betty Wales! Christy and I thought we saw you up at the golf club this afternoon.” Nita Reese’s room overlooked the street and she was hanging out her front window. “I was up there,” said Betty soberly, “but I had to come right back. I didn’t play at all.” “Then I should say it was a waste of good time to go up,” declared Nita amiably. “You’d better be on hand to-morrow. The juniors are going to be awfully hard to beat.” “I’ll try,” said Betty unsmilingly, and Nita withdrew her head from the window, wondering what could be the matter with her usually cheerful friend. At the corner of Meriden Place Betty hesitated. Then, noticing that Mrs. Chapin’s piazza was full of girls, she crossed Main Street and turned into the campus, following the winding path that led away from the dwelling-houses through the apple orchard. There were seats along this path. Betty chose one on the crest of the hill, screened As she got up from her seat she glanced at the hill that sloped off below her. It was the dust-pan coasting ground. How different it looked now in its spring greenery! Betty smiled at the memory of her mishap. How nice Eleanor had been to her then. And Miss Ferris! If only Miss Ferris would speak to Without giving herself time to reconsider, Betty sped toward the Hilton house. All sorts of direful suppositions occurred to her while she waited for a maid to answer her ring. What if Miss Ferris had forgotten about writing the note, or had meant it for what Nan called “a polite nothing”? Perhaps it would be childish to speak of it anyway. Perhaps Miss Ferris would have other callers. If not, how should she tell her story? “I ought to have taken time to think,” reflected Betty, as she followed the maid down the hall to Miss Ferris’s rooms. Miss Ferris was alone; nevertheless Betty “Miss Ferris, I want to ask you something, but I hated to do it, so I came right along as soon as I decided that I’d better, and now I don’t know how to begin.” “Just begin,” advised Miss Ferris, laughing. “That is what they say to you in theme classes,” said Betty, “but it never helped me so very much, somehow. Well, I might begin by telling you why I thought I could come to you.” “Unless you really want to tell that you might skip it,” said Miss Ferris, “because I don’t need to be reminded that I shall always be glad to do anything I can for my good friend Betty Wales.” “Oh, thank you! That helps a lot,” said Betty gratefully, and went on with her story. Miss Ferris listened attentively. “Miss Watson is the girl with the wonderful gray “Oh, you would succeed,” said Betty eagerly. “Mary Brooks says you can argue a person into anything.” Miss Ferris laughed again. “I’m glad Miss Brooks approves of my argumentative ability, but are you sure that Miss Watson is the sort of person with whom argument is likely to count for anything? Did you ever know her to change her mind on a subject of this sort, because her friends disapproved of her?” Betty hesitated. “Yes–yes, I have. Excuse me for not going into particulars, Miss Ferris, but there was a thing she did when she came here that she never does now, because she found how others felt about it. Indeed, I think there are several things.” Miss Ferris nodded silently. “Then why It was the question that Betty had been dreading, but she met it unflinchingly. “One of them thinks she has lost her influence, Miss Ferris, and another one who helped a little bit before, can’t, because–I’m that one, Miss Ferris. I unintentionally did something last term that made Eleanor angry with me. It made her more dissatisfied and unhappy here too; so when I heard about this I felt as if I was a little to blame for it, and then I wanted to make up for the other time too. But of course it is a good deal to ask of you.” Betty slid forward on to the edge of her chair ready to accept a hasty dismissal. Miss Ferris waited a moment. “I shall be very glad to do it,” she said at last. “I wanted to be sure that I understood the situation and that I could run a chance of helping Miss Watson. I think I can, but you must forgive me if I make a bad matter worse. I’ll ask her to have tea with me to-morrow. May I send a note by you?” “Of course you won’t tell her that I spoke to you?” asked Betty anxiously, when Miss “What’s the joke?” said a girl suddenly appearing around the corner of the Main Building. “It was on me,” laughed Betty, “so you can’t expect me to tell you what it was.” It had just occurred to her that, as there was no possibility of Eleanor’s finding out her part in Miss Ferris’s intervention, a reconciliation was as far away as ever. “She wouldn’t like it if she should find out,” thought Betty, “and perhaps it was just another tactless interference. Well, I’m glad I didn’t think of all these things sooner, for I believe it was the right thing to do, and it was a lot easier doing it while I hoped it might bring us together, as Nan said. I wonder what kind of things Nan meant.” She dropped the note on the hall table and slipped softly up-stairs. As she sat down at her desk she looked at the clock and hesitated. It was not so late as she had thought, only quarter of nine. There was still time to go When Eleanor came in to dinner the next evening Betty could hardly conceal her excitement. Would she say anything? If she said nothing what would it mean? The interview had apparently not been a stormy one. Eleanor looked tired, but not in the least disturbed or defiant. She ate her dinner almost in silence, answering questions politely but briefly and making none of her usual effort to control and direct the conversation. But just as the girls were ready to leave the table she broke her silence. “Wait a minute,” she said. “I want to ask you please to forget all the foolish things I said last night at dinner. I’ve said them a good many times, and I can’t contradict them to every one, but I can here–and A profound silence greeted Eleanor’s argument. Mary Rich, who had been loud in her championship of Eleanor’s sentiments the night before, looked angry at this sudden desertion; and Mary Brooks tried rather unsuccessfully not to smile. The rest were merely astonished at so sudden a change of mind. “Of some subjects,” said Eleanor pointedly. It was exactly what Betty should have expected, but she couldn’t help being a little disappointed. Eleanor had just shown herself so fine and downright, so willing to make all the reparation in her power for a course whose inconsistency had been proved to her. It was very disheartening to find that she cherished the old, reasonless grudge as warmly as ever. But if Betty had accomplished nothing for herself, she had done all that she hoped for Eleanor, and she tried to feel perfectly satisfied. “I think too much about myself, anyway,” she told the green lizard, who was the recipient of many confidences about this time. The rest of the month sped by like the wind. As Betty thought it over afterward, it seemed to have been mostly golf practice and bird club. Roberta organized the bird club. Its object, according to her, was to assist “But what you’ve seen, you’ve seen,” she said. “I’ve got to see fifty birds before June 1st; that doesn’t necessarily mean see them so you’ll know them again. Now I shouldn’t know the nestle or the shelcuff, but I can put them down, can’t I?” “Of course,” assented Katherine, “a few rare birds like those will make your list look like something.” The pink-headed euthuma, which came to light on the very last day of May, interested Mary so much that she told Roberta about it immediately and Roberta questioned the discoverers. “Way out on Paradise path, almost to the end, we met a man dashing around as if he were crazy,” explained Betty. “We should have thought he was an escaped lunatic if we hadn’t seen others like him.” “Yes,” continued Katherine. “But he acted too much like you to take us in. So we said we were interested in birds too, and he danced around some more and said we had come upon a rare specimen. Then he pointed to the top of an enormous pine-tree—” “Those rare birds are always in the very tops of trees,” put in Mary eagerly. “Of course; that’s one reason they’re rare,” went on Betty. “But that minute it flew into the top of a poplar, and we three pursued it. It was a beauty.” “And then you came back after me, and it was still there. Tell her how it was marked,” suggested Mary. “Perhaps she knows it under some other name.” “It had a pink head, of course,” said Katherine, “and blue wings.” “Don’t you mean black wings, Katherine?” asked Betty hastily. “Did I say blue? I meant black of course. Mary thought they looked blue and that confused me. And its breast was white with brown marks on it.” “What size was it?” asked Roberta. Katherine looked doubtful. “What should you say, Mary?” “Well, it was quite small–about the size of a sparrow or a robin, I thought.” “They’re quite different sizes,” said Roberta wearily. “Your old man must have been color-blind. It couldn’t have had a pink head. Who ever heard of a pink-headed bird?” “We three are not color-blind,” Katherine reminded her. “And then there’s the name.” Roberta sighed deeply. The new members of the Mary-bird club were very unmanageable. Meanwhile Mary was industriously counting the names on her list, which must be handed in the next day. “I think I’d better “Oh, yes,” said Roberta. “If only the library hadn’t wanted its copy back quite so soon!” “It was disagreeable of them, wasn’t it?” said Mary cheerfully, copying away on her list. “You were going to look up the nestle too. Girls, did we hear the nestle sing?” “It whistled like a blue jay,” said Katherine promptly. “It couldn’t,” protested Roberta. “You said it was only six inches long.” “On the plan of a blue jay’s call, but smaller, Roberta,” explained Betty pacifically. “Well, it’s funny that you can never find any of these birds when I’m with you,” said Roberta. Katherine looked scornful. “We were Next day Mary came home from zoology 1a, which to add to its other unpleasant features met in the afternoon, wearing the air of a martyr to circumstance. Roberta, Katherine and Betty happened to be sitting on the piazza translating Livy together. “Girls,” she demanded, as she came up the steps, “if I get you the box of Huyler’s that Mr. Burgess sent me will you tell me the truth about those birds?” “She had the lists read in class!” shouted Katherine. “I knew it!” said Roberta in tragic tones. “Did you tell her about the shelcuff’s neck?” inquired Betty. Mary sat down on the piazza railing with her feet cushioned on a lexicon. “I told her all about the shelcuff,” she said, “likewise the euthuma and the nestle. What is more, the head of the zoology department was visiting the class, so I also told him, and when I stayed to explain he stayed too, and–oh, you little wretches!” Roberta was gazing sadly at Mary. “Why did you try all those queer ones?” she asked. “You knew I wasn’t sure of them.” “I had to, my dear. She asked us for the rare names on our lists. I was the third one she came to, and the others had floundered around and told about birds I’d never heard of. I didn’t really know which of mine were rare, because I’d never seen any of them but once, you know, and I was afraid I should strike something that was a good deal commoner than a robin, and then it would be all up with me. So I boldly read off these three, because I was sure they were rare. You should have seen her face when I got to the pink-headed one,” said Mary, beginning suddenly to appreciate the humor of the situation. “Did you invent them?” “Only the names,” said Betty, “and the stories about finding them. I thought of nestle, and Katherine made up the others. Aren’t they lovely names, Roberta?” Mary smiled serenely. “Don’t worry, Roberta,” she said. “The names were so lovely and the shelcuff’s neck and the note of the nestle and all, and I am honestly so near-sighted, that I don’t think Miss Carter will have the heart to condition me. But girls, where did you get the descriptions? Professor Lawrence particularly wanted to know.” Betty looked at Katherine and the two burst into peals of laughter. “Mary Brooks, you invented most of those yourself,” explained Katherine, when she could speak. “We just showed you the first bird we happened to see and told you its new name and you’d say, ‘Why it has a green crest and yellow wings!’ or ‘How funny its neck is! It must have a pouch.’ All we had to do was to encourage you a little.” “And suppress you a little when you put colors like pink and blue into the same bird,” continued Betty, “so Roberta wouldn’t get too suspicious.” “Then those birds were just common, ordinary ones that I’d seen before?” “‘The primrose by a river’s brim, quoted Mary blithely. “You can never put that on my tombstone.” “Better tell your friend Dr. Hinsdale about your vivid ornithological imagination,” suggested Katherine. “It might interest him.” “Oh, I shall,” said Mary easily. “But to-night, young ladies, you will be pleased to learn that I am invited up to Professor Lawrence’s to dinner, so that I can see his bird skins. Incidentally I shall meet his fascinating brother. In about ten minutes I shall want to be hooked up, Roberta.” “She’s one too many for us, isn’t she?” said Katherine, as Mary went gaily off, followed by the devoted Roberta, declaring in loud tones that the Mary-bird club was dissolved. “I wish things that go wrong didn’t bother “Cheer up,” urged Katherine, giving her a bearish hug. “You’ll win in the golf again to-morrow, and everything will come out all right in the end.” “Everything? What do you mean?” inquired Betty sharply. “Why, singles and doubles–twosomes and foursomes you call them, don’t you? They’ll all come out right.” A moment later Katherine burst in upon her long-suffering roommate with a vehemence that made every cup on the tea-table rattle. “I almost let her know what we thought,” she said, “but I guess I smoothed it over. Do you suppose Eleanor Watson isn’t going to make up with her at all?” |