If the autumn, with its excitement of football and the starting of school activities, was thrilling to Betty Lee, what should be said of the springtime, with those same activities matured and new interests of the season? It was baseball among the boys now. Seniors were thinking of their graduation. Freshmen had nearly completed their first year of high school and had changed by contact with the older classes and with their own new ambitions.

Betty could not keep up with it all, nor attend all of the entertainments offered by the different organizations. In some of them she had a part, as when the Girl Reserves did something special with a good program, or when the swimming contests took place, for then not alone the best swimmers took part, but those of modest attainments. In this Betty had occasion to take a little pride in winning points.

Her mother accompanied her to attend the great musical affair of the year, when all the musical organizations, orchestra and glee clubs, combined to show their parents what they could do. Mrs. Lee exclaimed over the ability of the orchestra and Betty explained. “In the first place, Mother, they have a wonderful leader. He’s a foreigner and hasn’t much patience with anybody, Ted says, but it isn’t a bad thing for the way things turn out, you see. Then the boys and girls are used to hearing good music.”

“They hear some very terrible jazz, too,” remarked Mrs. Lee.

“I’ll have to admit it,” laughed Betty, “but not in school, except, perhaps, at the minstrel show they had. I wasn’t there, so I can’t state.”

The school grounds were more attractive than in the fall. The garden club worked under the direction of the botany teacher. First came the forsythia, in welcome yellow delicacy all over the city, and here and there about the grounds. Then other flowers came on, with magnolia and Japanese cherry trees in blossom, and in their time gay tulips, and purple iris lining some of the walks. With the windows of class rooms, study halls and library open, the pupils and teachers could hear the songs of birds, more free than they were, to be sure, but with their daily bread and nesting entailing much hunting and work on the part of the little creatures. Betty never failed to visit a part of the grounds devoted to wild flowers, including May-apples and jack-in-the-pulpit.

She was occasionally out at the Gwynne place, when Carolyn carried her off in a car which sometimes came for her, or accompanied her as far as the street car went, to take the rest of the way in a strolling hike, enlivened with much discourse, after the manner of girls. They saw very little of the boys, by the way, for baseball and other active, outdoor affairs engaged their attention; but the girls, with so many of their own, did not notice it. Of these girl activities, Color Day, the annual track meet of the girls was of importance.

This was held on the last of April in the stadium and the competition was between classes. The freshmen girls were quite excited over it, for they had some very athletic girls in their various teams this year, and while they did not expect to win the meet they expected to make a good showing. Both Betty and Carolyn were in this, though Betty was not allowed to do competitive running. But there was the throwing, baseball and hurl-ball, and some other events. Numbers told for your class, it seemed. And when it finally came off it was great fun, Betty reported.

“You ought to have been there, Mother!” she cried when she came home. “You simply must come more next year. We’ll get somebody to stay with Amy Lou, though she would think anything like this just wonderful, wouldn’t you, Amy Lou?”

“Yes, Betty. Why can’t I go?”

“You can next time. You ought to have seen the girls run and jump over the hurdles and everything! We had a tug of war and the freshmen won that. Then one of our freshman girls made a brand-new record in the sixty-yard hurdles. I’ve forgotten just what it was, but it beat last year’s record just a little bit.

“I didn’t do so badly in the throwing, Mother, but I didn’t take first place by any means; and the relay in overhead basketball was great!”

“It seems to me that you make work of your playing, Betty.”

“Yes, I suppose we do. But isn’t it better to have athletics watched over and amounting to something?”

“I suppose it is, unless you push it too far for your health.”

“Well, I suppose it does hurt some of the boys and girls once in a while, when they get reckless and try more than they ought to do; but they are all examined, you know, and they have rules. The seniors beat, by the way, so I suppose they’re satisfied. It would be hard to be beaten when it was your last year. And, Mother, may I go to the G. A. A. banquet with Carolyn? And, won’t you think twice about going yourself? Carolyn says that her mother is going and wants to entertain you and me. I suppose we couldn’t get Father there, could we?”

“Oh, no, Betty. He is too busy to take time now for a girls’ affair. Perhaps I can go another year, but not now.”

“Mrs. Gwynne was going to call you up, or come to see you if she could.”

“That will be very kind,” said Mrs. Lee. “You may go, Betty, but I think that you’d better pay for your own ticket. We shall see what seems polite to do.”

“You see, Mother, honors are distributed that night and we find out who the honor girl is and get whatever we do get for our points.”

This was one of the last events before the “finals” and Commencement. Betty, in her “partiest frock,” came home full of enthusiasm to report that the mystery was a mystery no longer and that Louise Madison “got the honor ring.” That was the crowning honor and the last thing given.

For the “first time in history” the freshmen received the baseball chevrons. Betty declared that she wasn’t ashamed of being a freshman, but oh, to think that her first year was nearly over! The banquet was simply great, everything so good; and then after it came the speeches and the presenting of awards, while the girls that had done things were “all excited inside,” and the seniors, of course, all wondering which of them would get the great honor.

“I’ve decided that I’m going to ride in order to get one of those ducky pins, a silver pin with a tiny black horse and rider, a girl, too, jumping over a bar!”

“Now, isn’t that just like a girl!” exclaimed Dick, who was listening while some of this was being told at the breakfast table.

“It ought to take a very strong motive, Dicky,” mischievously replied his sister, “to induce one to make an art of riding! Still, I can stick on a horse out at Grandma’s, can’t I?”

“Yes–and how?” asked Dick scornfully.

Examination week to some seemed long, indeed, with the longer time allowed for the real tests that had so much to do with passing for those who were obliged to take them. Fortunately, Betty had none to take, but it seemed odd, indeed, to wait for grades during examination time and the time given the teachers to correct the important papers. The weather was hot, but it was a good opportunity for last visits or picnics.

Peggy Pollard had one of these at her home, a pretty place in the same suburb which boasted the Gwynne place, but Peggy’s home was closer in toward town and not so large as that of the Gwynnes. The house was a simple building, modern, set back among a few handsome trees in a large lot. There was a pool on whose circular cement wall, Betty, Peggy and their friends sat like so many mermaids one hot afternoon. Bathing suits were the appropriate costume for this picnic, Peggy had said. In consequence, the girls came in simple frocks, as cool as they could muster, and brought their bathing suits, caps, slippers and all.

The pool was retired, among the trees and thick bushes where it was cool with shadows, and it was well known and favored among Peggy’s friends. Betty’s eyes opened wide when she saw it. Good friends as they had been, this was the first time that Peggy had entertained her.

“How did you happen to have such a big one, Peggy?” one of the girls asked, voicing Betty’s thought.

“Why, there were so many boys and they wanted it big enough for real diving and swimming a bit; so, as they made it themselves, they had it that way. This is fresh water, girls, just put in it. Betty, you haven’t been here before, though I’ve tried to find a good chance to have folks before this. Mother’s been in the hospital, as I guess I told you.

“Why, Betty, I’m the last chick of a big family, or almost the last chick. Jack is in the University still, my big brother, but the rest are all married or away, six brothers–what do you think of that?”

“How nice! Any sisters? but you practically told me you hadn’t any. And here I’ve known you all year and never knew a word about your family.”

“Life is like that, Betty,” laughed Peggy. “I guess we never told each other our life history. I know your family because I’ve been at your house and I saw them.”

“I’ve known Peggy all my life,” said Mary Emma, “and I never knew she had six brothers. Are you sure, Peggy?” Mary Emma was grinning as she touched the water with her toes. Then she slipped into it and lay back, floating a little.

It was the signal for a general descent into the pool whose waters, cooler than the air, were so refreshing. Nobody seemed to care about diving, but they swam a little, had mild races which, no one cared much about beating, and sat on the steps that led down into the water or perched again on the upper rim of cement. “What makes us so doleful?” lazily asked Carolyn.

“Oh, it’s the weather, and school’s being ’most out,” returned Kathryn Allen, who looked like a little red gypsy in her scarlet bathing suit and cap. “I feel just like splashing around and doing nothing unless to keep from being drowned.”

“I have enough energy for that,” said Betty, swimming off.

“What do you suppose we’ll be doing this time next year?” asked Carolyn.

“My, you’re looking ahead, Carolyn! By that time we’ll be through being sophomores, or almost.”

Betty curved around and drew herself up on the steps where Carolyn and Kathryn were. “I’ve decided, to do something different every year,” she said. “I can’t do it all all the time, you see. I’ll keep up swimming, and some music, and then one year I’ll take riding, and another year something else–I think I will, anyhow.”

“What are you going to do this summer, Betty?” Carolyn asked. “We’re going away for July and August, I think I told you.”

“Yes. I heard you speak of it. It will be wonderful to be on the ocean beach, Carolyn. But we’re going to have Mother go to my grandmother’s on a big farm, where they have tenants to do the work, mostly. It will be good for Amy Lou, whose been ‘peaked’ lately, since it grew so warm. Dick and Doris are to take turns going, I think, and I’m to keep house for Father. But that will mean lots of picnics and little trips out places for our dinner and then something is to happen for me, he said, when Mother comes back. But they won’t tell me what it is. So I have a nice mystery to look forward to, or try to discover.”

“Do you mean that either your brother or sister will stay with you?”

“I think they’re going to try that, though they are twins and like to be at least in the same town. But no telling. In our family we try experiments and if they don’t work we do something else. Nobody carries out anything just for meanness, or because they said they were going to.”

“I’ll tell that to Chauncey,” said Kathryn. “Chauncey hates to acknowledge that anything’s wrong he starts, and blazes ahead no matter what happens. You must have a nice family. I imagine you have a good time with your father and mother.”

“Oh, we do,” laughed Betty. “But we children do what they say–only we’re ‘reasoned with’,” and Betty pursed up her mouth.

“Probably they think you have some brains,” said Kathryn. “I’m not sure that my Dad thinks I have any. I’d better make a few more prominent, don’t you think so, Carolyn?”

“It wouldn’t hurt any.”

The afternoon was going on wings, Peggy said, as some one from the house looked out and Peggy called to ask the time. “That was only to know about refreshments,” she explained. “Will the mermaids now turn themselves into summer girls again and get their frocks on? We’ll go up the back way to the bath room and take turns at the shower. Then we’ll dress where we undressed, and have lunch in the arbor.”

That was a pleasing outlook. The mermaids followed directions and presently a cool arbor back of the pool was the scene of light refreshments being served to the group of Peggy Pollard’s friends. Peggy herself ladled out the iced lemonade from the punch bowl. “Please drink all that you want, girls; I can’t seem to get enough myself.”

A wood thrush sang from the thicket near them, and they heard a meadow lark from out toward Carolyn’s. “Can you realize, girls, that tomorrow we get our grade cards and won’t be freshmen any longer?” Kathryn waved her pretty glass of lemonade as she spoke.

“That is so,” said Betty. “I’ll not be Betty Lee, freshman, but Betty Lee, SOPHOMORE! I presume that I will receive a card since I escaped examinations!”

“It must be so,” dramatically cried Mary Emma in an exaggerated style, reminiscent of a ridiculous skit made up by the Girl Reserves, almost impromptu, when necessity called for a longer program. “Hail to the Sophomores! I will meet you at the witching hour of school time, tomorrow morning!”

“Come down from the high horse, Mary Emma, dear,” said Peggy, “and accept this plate of fudge.”

“Thank you,” said Mary Emma, putting the plate down beside her as if she thought it all for her. But she selected a piece and passed on the plate. They must really start pretty soon, yet it was such fun to be together.

“Peggy, I’ve had a glorious time and I’m sorry that it’s over. See you tomorrow morning at school. ’Bye, Peggy.”

“’Bye, Betty.”

“’Bye little Betty, don’t you cry,

You’ll be a Soph’more by and by!”

So sang Kathryn, who followed Betty in farewells, and made room for several others not quite so intimate with Peggy. “There is your car, Betty,” she said a little later. “I’m going to be home a good deal this summer. Let’s try to see each other.”

“Let’s,” warmly returned Betty, as she prepared to catch the car. “We can manage it, I’m sure. Goodbye, Kathryn, till I see you in the morning.”

THE END

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