The rest of the week went by in pleasant anticipation of the garden party, Betty’s first. To be sure there had been “loads of picnics,” and lawn fetes for the church, usually in the spring or early summer. But a real “garden party” must be different. There was much consultation about clothes between Betty and her mother. One of the girls had said that of course one wouldn’t wear her old clothes, or her Girl Scout or Camp Fire Girl suits, as you would on a picnic to the woods. She was going to play tennis, and her mother had gotten her an “awfully pretty” white sport suit!

Well, what was a sport suit anyhow? Mrs. Lee took Amy Lou down town, one morning when Mr. Lee could drive them down, and spent a rather trying morning trying to shop with a child. She looked at dresses and patterns, with a view of fitting Betty suitably for the occasion. But the new things were expensive. Finally, by letting down a skirt Betty had and arranging a suitable blouse, or upper part, what Betty called a “near-sport” frock was evolved.

Then, after all the effort, Betty came home one afternoon with a new idea. “Mother, it’s turned so awfully hot–Indian summer, I suppose–that Peggy says she isn’t going to play tennis or anything on a court, and she’s going to wear her light green flat crepe that is her second best, or else some real cool summer dress, whatever happens to be ready. Peggy doesn’t care! I believe I’ll just wear my pretty thin blue and let it go at that. I don’t want to play tennis either, especially when I don’t know anybody much and not so very many can play. Carolyn says she’s going to pay all her social debts at once and have a big party, so I’ll be lost in the multitude.”

Like Janet, Mrs. Lee privately thought that Betty would never be “lost in the multitude,” but she did not say so. “So Carolyn is paying all her ‘social debts,’ is she?” asked Betty’s mother, amused at the “social debts” expression. “It is just as well that you have decided on the blue. It will look pretty in the gardens and I’d dress for the flowers instead of the tennis court.”

“Aren’t you poetic, Mother! It’s a shame that you went to all the trouble about the other dress, though.”

“That will be so much clear gain, child. You now have another frock, which will come in for service at some time, no doubt.”

When the day and the hour arrived, Betty’s father arrived home late for lunch, as he could do on Saturday, unless there were some executive meeting. That settled the question of how to get to the party, and Betty called up two of her friends to say that her father was going to take her and that she would stop for them if they liked. Naturally they were glad of the opportunity, for the Gwynne estate was out at some distance, almost a “country estate,” Peggy had said. “Call up,” said Betty’s father, “when you want to come home, or rather, when I should start from home in time to reach you. We’ll take note of the time we spend getting there. Then I’ll bring a machine full of whomever you like.”

“Oh, that is so good of you, Mr. Lee!” exclaimed Dotty Bradshaw, one of the freshman girls whom Betty had invited to ride with them. “But perhaps Betty will want somebody else, though,” added Dotty, happening to think that perhaps she was taking too much, for granted.

“Why, Dotty, of course if we call for you we’ll see you back home. We’re sort of new to the city, though, so perhaps you can tell me who live places that wouldn’t be too far away.”

“Most anybody that attends our high school would be all right,” answered Dotty, “because girls that live in other parts of town would go to other high schools.”

“Of course! I didn’t think!”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Selma Rardon, the other freshman in the car. “There are sometimes people way out, like Carolyn herself.”

Betty was already assured by the very different dresses of the girls with her, and when she arrived at the beautiful place where Carolyn lived she thought how silly she had been to worry about clothes. Still, you wanted to be suitably dressed, and when you knew hardly anybody, there was some excuse. And oh, there were boys, too. She saw a number of lads whose faces she knew by having seen them in the different freshman classes. Then there were others whom she did not know at all. By the time Betty and her friends turned into the drive which led to the house, most of the boys and girls had arrived, it seemed and were dotted in groups all over the closely clipped lawn which still looked like velvet between its flower beds and shrubbery. Oh, wasn’t it beautiful? Betty was so glad that her father could see where the party was.

“I was afraid you weren’t coming at all, Betty,” said Carolyn, squeezing Betty’s hands, “but there are still a few that haven’t gotten here.”

“I waited for Father to bring us,” replied Betty, “and we didn’t quite know how long it would take to drive out.”

“Well, you’re here now and I’m going to ask Peggy to see that you meet everybody. I’ll have to be darting here and there and everywhere to see that they all have something to do.”

Carolyn looked so pretty, Betty thought, and she wore the simplest of summer dresses, to all appearances, though the material was fine and sheer, a sort of chiffon, Betty thought; for Betty was just becoming aware of styles and materials, matters which she had left to her mother, and most wisely.

There was the usual tendency of the girls and boys to separate into groups of boys and groups of girls, but Carolyn had announced that first they would stroll to see the flowers and go to the pool and the greenhouse and that each boy must join some girls, not necessarily one girl. In consequence the groups were mixed by the time Betty and her friends began their stroll around the grounds and Peggy took Betty into the midst of one. Dotty Bradshaw accompanied them, though Selma had been drawn away by one of her special friends. Dotty was “cute,” Peggy said.

Here were Mary Emma Howland and Mary Jane Andrews, the two Marys of Betty’s algebra class. Then Chet Dorrance, whom Betty afterward found to be Ted’s brother, was feeding the goldfishes in the lovely pool from a box of something held by Kathryn Allen. Budd LeRoy perched on the stone arm of a seat that curved artistically in grey lines, back a little from the pool, and talked spasmodically to Chauncey Allen, Kathryn’s brother, and Brad Warren. Budd, Chauncey and Bradford were not freshmen, Betty thought, but she wasn’t sure. Who could be sure about all the freshmen there were? Chet Dorrance looked a good deal like his brother, though his hair was lighter and Betty decided that he didn’t look quite so smart, but not many of the boys could touch Ted for looks.

The boys all wore coats, though she knew that some of them, at least, would have felt more comfortable without them, as she had seen them Friday at school. Later on, however, when games and sports began, many a coat was to be found hung on the back of a garden bench or over the slats of a trellis. Carolyn may have given the word. Betty did not know. She usually kept her eye out for what boys did, on account of Dick, whose social etiquette she helped superintend, little as she knew herself. Between three and four o’clock it was very warm indeed. Later it began to cool off and seem like early October.

“Isn’t this the loveliest place?” she said to Chauncey Allen, by way of making conversation. After introducing Chauncey to Betty, Peggy had darted off to start Budd and Bradford in tennis, about which they had inquired. Chet Dorrance and Kathryn Allen had finished feeding the goldfish and sauntered to the big stone seat, where Chauncey suggested that he and Betty also sit. Kathryn was a pretty, slight little girl with an olive complexion, very black hair and dark eyes. Chauncey was as dark in his coloring but was of a much larger build.

“Pretty nice,” replied Chauncey. “They’ve got fine gardens and a good tennis court, that much is certain; but their house is pretty old.”

“But it looks so–distinguished,” said Betty. “Those big pillars and the wide porch and the drive with that sort of porch built over it–I never can remember the name for it.”

“You can’t prove it by me,” grinned Chauncey. “I don’t know either, although we have one. Yes, the Gwynne place is considered a fine old estate, so my dad says. Mother says she wouldn’t have it for it isn’t modern enough to suit her. She doesn’t like high ceilings and great rooms that are hard to heat in winter.”

“Oh, I love them,” cried Betty, “though maybe it’s because I never have to bother about furnaces and things like that. I’d just love to have a great house and big grounds like this.”

“Where do you live?” asked Chauncey.

“In an apartment. My father’s just come to the city this fall and we took the best place Mother could find. We still have a home in my home town, but I don’t suppose we’ll ever go back there to stay.”

“Would you like to?”

Betty shook her head negatively. “I’m thrilled to death to be in our big high school!”

Chauncey grinned pleasantly. “It is pretty good,” he acknowledged, “but I hate to study sometimes. I hope football will go all right for our team this year. There’s one of the big high schools that is our greatest rival, and O, boy–if we don’t beat them this year!”

Betty had not heard about that, but she loyally echoed Chauncey’s wish.

“How about going up to the house for that fruitade Carolyn said would be ready pretty soon?” asked Chauncey, including the group, for two other girls had come up to the pool and were now joining Kathryn and Chet.

The suggestion was promptly acted upon and Betty now found herself walking between tall pampas grass and well trimmed bushes of all sorts along a path to the house and talking to Chet Dorrance, who asked her if she had bought her season ticket for football yet.

“No, I haven’t. Are you selling them?”

“No, but Ted is.”

“I’m awfully sorry, but Carolyn told me that if I hadn’t promised, one of the girls wanted to sell me one, so I promised.”

“Oh, that’s all right. It was probably one of the girls on a pep squad.”

“What’s a pep squad?” laughed Betty. “That must be one of the things that I haven’t heard about yet.”

“You’ll hear a lot about it, then. Why, they have them in the G. A. A., girls that talk it all up and make ‘enthusiasm’ and support the athletics, you know.”

“What is the G. A. A., please? I must be terribly dense, but remember all the things I’ve tried to take in. You’re not a freshman, are you?”

“Why, no–what makes you think that?” Chet was privately thinking that there must be something after all in experience, though as he was no larger than a very dear freshman friend, who had been left a little behind in the race for high school, he had been “insulted” more than once by being considered a freshman.

“Well, I did think that you were one, since your brother is a junior”–Betty had almost said that he looked so much younger than Ted the tall, but she halted in time. “But you seem to know all about everything, and even the freshies who live here don’t always remember everything.”

“I could get all that from hearing Ted talk, you know; but of course, there isn’t much about the school that I haven’t heard about–I wouldn’t say know, of course.”

“It must be nice,” said Betty, thereupon pleasing her escort, who immediately began to enlighten her upon the workings of the athletic association and the girls’ share in it. The G. A. A. was the Girls’ Athletic Association.

“Oh, yes! Of course. I hear them call it a club. I’ve even had it explained to me–but not the pep squads. I only wish I had time for everything!”

“You don’t have to do everything your freshman year, Betty.”

“That is what Father said–so I’m not. But that doesn’t keep you from wanting to do things.”

“You’re right it doesn’t!” Chet was thinking of several things that he had wanted to do and still wanted.

A great glass bowl just inside the screened porch on the side of the house away from the sun, supplied a cool drink of oranges and lemons, whose slices floated about pieces of ice. A maid in cap and apron served them and fished out a whole red cherry to put in Betty’s glass. And didn’t it taste good!

Then, in the shifting of position and accidental meetings of this one and that one, Betty found herself with Mary Emma Howland and another freshman boy whom she recognized as the brightest lad in the algebra class. “Oh, yes,” she said, in answer to Mary Emma’s question whether or not she knew “Sim,” and brightly she smiled at him.

“We never were introduced,” said Betty, “but when you recite every day together you can’t help but know people, and whenever Mr. Matthews calls on ‘James Simmonds’ he looks as if he expected to have a recitation.”

“There, Sim!” laughed Mary Emma. “I told you you were the teacher’s pet!”

“Much I am!” and James Simmonds looked as if he did not appreciate being complimented, even by two merry girls. He was a tall, thin boy, with light, sandy hair, thin face and light eyes, but eyes that were keen with intelligence when they did not twinkle with mischief. “And I’m usually called ‘Simmonds’ by the men teachers.”

“So you are,” acknowledged Betty. “But I didn’t know they called you ‘Sim’–I thought it was ‘Jim.’”

“I’m generally known as Sim,” said the boy, “but sometimes it’s ‘Jim’, or ‘Carrotts.’”

Sim exchanged a look with Mary Emma, who giggled. “Sim’s my fourth or fifth cousin,” Mary Emma explained. “He lives at our house to go to school while his father and mother are away this year.”

As Betty looked inquiringly at Sim, he explained that his father was an engineer and was in South America with his mother for the year. “I’m going there some day,” said he. “Say, they have mosquitoes and snakes and all sorts of queer things, and there are some man-eaters down there, cannibals, you know–oh, it’s a wild country all right!”

“That doesn’t sound so very good to me,” smiled Betty. “Do you really want to go where there are snakes and things like that!”

“Certainly! Mary Emma you bring Betty Lee out some time and I’ll show her the things they’ve sent us.”

“We really have some beautiful things from South America, Betty,” said Mary Emma, and Betty was thinking how interesting it would be to see them. My, she was getting acquainted fast! But just as Mary Emma was beginning to tell her about a handsome purse that had come for her mother, Peggy came running out of the house door and stopped before the porch bench upon which the three were seated. Peggy was wearing something funny on her head and carried something, a straight piece of pasteboard, in her hand. Large black letters said something or other.

“Oh, here you are, Betty. I was looking for you. Carolyn wants you to be one of the social engineers. We’re going to have games for everybody on the lawn now and you’ll have to help. Come on! ’Scuse Betty, please, Mary Emma–and Sim.”

Betty rose to follow Peggy inside. There were several girls, all adjusting these pasteboard caps or hats, that looked like short stove-pipes. Carolyn was apologizing, though Betty thought the idea clever. “I didn’t have time, girls, to make caps, anything pretty, you know, and I went to a picnic where they had these. They looked cute and I thought they’d do.”

“Of course they’ll do,” said Peggy, adjusting the cap to Betty’s head, merely by wrapping the two ends about and fastening them, top and bottom, with ordinary clips. So that was what the big black letters on the plain gray pasteboard said, “SOCIAL ENGINEER.”

“But Carolyn,” protested Betty, “I don’t know everybody and how can I be a ‘social engineer’? I suppose you’re going to have games to manage?”

“That’s it, and it doesn’t make a bit of difference whether you know people or not. Your head-gear makes it perfectly proper to speak to anybody. I’m sure you’re good at things like this–from your looks, you know!”

“Thanks for the confidence,” laughed Betty. “All right, I’ll do the best I can.”

For the next hour the lawn looked pretty with the groups that played the old-fashioned games as well as those of a later date. Here were flowers and shrubbery, light dresses, darting figures, much laughter and little shrieks in the midst of excitement, when some one was caught or some one became “It.” Then tables were brought out upon the lawn. Carolyn and Peggy pressed several of the boys into service to help place them, but after they were set, with silver, napkins and flowers, a pretty vase in the center of each table, the “banquet,” as Betty later reported at home, was served them as perfectly “as if they were grown up” by persons whom Betty supposed to be the servants of the house. Mercy, she would never dare invite Carolyn to their apartment! And she did love Carolyn!

Not that Betty was ashamed of simple living–Betty was trying to think why she had such a thought about Carolyn–but that could be puzzled out later on. The present was too pleasant for a single disturbing thought. It was cool now and seemed more like the time of year it really was. Sunset hues were showing. And they were to stay till the Japanese lanterns all about were lit, with some hiding game or treasure hunt that Carolyn had mentioned to the “social engineers” as their last effort and fun. And now, after the pretty ice-cream in the freshman colors and the delicious cake with the double frosting, lovely baskets of grapes and peaches were being passed.

Betty slowly ate the juicy grapes of her bunch, one by one, as she talked to Peggy on one side of her, or Chet Dorrance on the other. One of the junior boys had been “fired,” according to Chet, for “cutting classes, disorderly conduct and disrespectful behaviour.” Oh, no, he couldn’t come back now. His parents had been over to see the principal and they might get the “kid” into some other school–Chet did not know. And Betty was to watch Freddy Fisher carry the ball at the first football game in the stadium. “If you go with Carolyn and Peggy,” said he, “they’ll tell you who everybody is that’s doing things. You’ve seen ’em all, though, haven’t you?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure I’ll know them on the field. I guess I am going with Carolyn and Peggy.”

“Of course you are,” decidedly remarked Peggy, who had turned from her other neighbor in time to hear Betty’s last sentence. “What is it you’re going to?”