The A-D party was probably the first “official” senior duty, or pleasure, said Betty. It was the entertainment of the D class, or freshmen, by the A class, or seniors. By long custom it was celebrated at the beginning of the year and constituted a sort of initiation or adoption of the freshman class into Lyon High. There was nothing difficult about it and much that was sheer fun, including the refreshments. Oh, yes, it might be mentioned that it was confined entirely to the senior and freshman girls. No masculine member of the freshman class was ever asked to dress in more or less infantile fashion and so appear, at a party and even in some fashion that marked them, at least, during the day at school which preceded the party.

One morning, as Betty was getting her locker open, a shy, attractive little freshman girl came up to her. “Please, Miss—Betty Lee, are you too busy to tell me something?”

“Always ready to impart knowledge,” jokingly Betty replied, putting a book on the shelf of her locker and taking another out. “What can I do for you, Eileen? Did you get my invitation to the A-D party?”

“Yes—that’s it. Thank you so much for asking me to be your ‘little sister.’ I’ve felt better ever since to have a girl like you ask me.” The slight girl looked at Betty and continued.

“I thought I’d better ask you about it because I’ve heard so many things about what the freshman girls have to do, dressing up like babies and going around all day at school that way. And must we look crazy?”

“No,” laughed Betty, “just ‘cute,’ and while you are supposed to have some badge of childhood all day, you needn’t be dressed that way at classes. Bring whatever you are going to dress up in to school and put it in your locker. You have such nice hair—why don’t you have long curls and tie them with a ribbon. You would look darling!”

The rather worried face brightened. “Why, I used to have curls! I’ll just do it, Betty Lee. Thanks awfully.”

“You’ll make a hit in classes,” said Betty. “Excuse me, I’ll have to run. See me again if you have any doubts about anything.”

“That is Betty Lee,” explained Eileen to the freshman girl she joined on leaving the vicinity of Betty’s locker. “I just adore her! She’s going to take me to the A-D party.”

“Oh, I’ve seen her. She’s a very prominent senior and wins swimming matches and everything.”

It was a pity that Betty could not hear this sincere freshman tribute, but as it was she was likely to be spoiled enough, if Betty could be spoiled, before her senior year was over.

“Girls,” Betty, chairman of the A-D entertainment committee, said that day after school, to an assembled few whom she had asked to stay, “there absolutely isn’t time to get up a real play or anything we have to learn. How are we going to entertain the freshmen? Speak up, ladies, or else ‘forever after,’ and so forth.”

“Are we supposed to be the ‘cast?’” asked Mary Jane Andrews.

“You are.”

“Then I speak for a pantomime.”

This statement met with a general giggle from the seniors as well as some applause.

“What pantomime do you know, Mary Jane?” severely asked Betty, rapping for order and pretending to glare at Mary Jane.

“Well—I don’t just think of one right now!”

“Why not give the Tragedy of the Lighthouse Keeper?” Selma Rardon suggested.

“Has that been given lately?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Who does know?”

“I know positively,” said Dotty Bradshaw, “what the seniors have done since we were freshmen ourselves. It’s always written up in the Lyon Roar, you know. What they did back in the ages doesn’t concern us, you know.”

“Is it as old as that?” asked Carolyn.

“I’m sure I don’t know how old it is, but the freshmen could stand it if they’ve heard it before—I mean, seen it. It’s all in the funny costumes and acting anyhow and with the present cast anything could be done.”

“Yes,” laughed Betty, “I’m afraid of that!”

At that the girls all claimed to be desperately offended and Kathryn said she was sure she could not act after such an implication.

“I take it all back. It was too good an opportunity to lose, Dotty. You are always getting things off on us. Well, now, shall we decide to take Selma’s suggestion? I’m just swamped with work and with Mary Jane and Mary Emma saying that they will see to ordering the refreshments and getting somebody to bring the ice-cream over to the gym, that is one load off. Now if we decide on this, one practice will be enough, just to know when to do what. Dotty, will you be director?”

“You don’t need a director, Betty. I’d rather be the villain. I have a lovely pirate costume of my brother’s.”

“Good. You’ll make a beautiful villain, then. Be sure your knife is made of pasteboard.”

“What else?” laughed Dotty.

“Do you think, Betty, that our freshman children ought to see such a pantomime?”

“We might change it, Carolyn, and have the lighthouse keeper only slightly injured and the villain caught. Carolyn, you be director!”

“All right. I’d rather do that than act in that dizzy thing.”

Plans were at last all made, parts assigned, the time for the one practice in the gym set. Betty knew that she could count on these girls and went off to the next thing on hand as school girls do, dismissing all immediate responsibility.

The freshmen naturally took the event more seriously than their senior entertainers, for they were the ones who had to make themselves conspicuous all day at school. They blossomed forth in childish arrangement of hair as far as possible, if it were nothing more than wearing a hair ribbon, and that whether the children of the period wore hair ribbons or not. Bibs or wide collars were the order of the day. Sashes decorated otherwise ordinary dresses, though lockers were full of childish outfits.

As the freshmen girls much outnumbered the seniors, it was necessary for a senior girl to escort more than one freshman. And to the relief of the freshmen, they remained in the home room until called for, each senior doing her best to make her freshmen girls feel at ease and happy over the fun.

“We might call it a ‘tea dance,’” said Betty, as she escorted her two freshmen over to the girls’ gymnasium. “First we’ll have a bit of a program, a sort of welcome to the freshmen. Then there will be a silly little play; and then we’ll dance, and have refreshments. It’s easy gym dancing, you know. You look just lovely, girls! How in the world did I happen to pick two long-haired freshmen?”

Betty’s “baby sisters” did happen to have a taking arrangement of their hair. Eileen had long black curls, caught back at the proper places by ribbons, and the other, known as Ann, wore her hair in two tight brown braids. Although her hair was drawn straight back from her face, oddly enough the effect was becoming.

The first event was announced as the “Freshman Initiation” and little “ohs,” and “oh dear, how awful!” ran through the assembled freshmen. But the initiation turned out to be only a “Baby Parade” in which the freshmen marched in time to music and rather enjoyed showing off themselves and their funny costumes. There was also a ridiculous pledge read by one of the senior girls with great sobriety, hard to maintain amid the giggles and occasional shrieks of laughter from the freshmen who listened. All the ridiculous things that Dotty Bradshaw could think of were included in this freshman pledge, such as sweeping curtseys to the senior girls whenever they met them in the halls or on the street. But by some “oversight,” as Betty announced later, Dotty forgot to have the pledge passed to be signed.

Whether or not any of the freshmen had seen or taken part in a “Tragedy of the Lighthouse Keeper” did not appear to matter, for they laughed as heartily as could be desired. First appeared Selma as the lighthouse keeper, wearing a long coat and an ancient vest over her own dress. True, her pretty silk hose and low shoes looked a bit incongruous, but Betty had announced that imagination had a good deal to do with this pantomime.

The lighthouse keeper picked up his lantern and began to go around before the audience in large circles, gradually narrowing. His steps began to grow slower as he was supposed to ascend the circular stair to the light. And now, what was that figure that stealthily entered the outer circles, crept round and round and within the narrower circles gradually approaching the lighthouse keeper? Dotty, in full pirate costume, velvet knee breeches, sash and large pasteboard knife, painted red, was received with shrieks of delight, though Eileen said to Ann that it almost made her nervous to see them going round and round.

But every one’s imagination could picture the ascending circular stairs to the top of the lighthouse. Presently the dramatic moment came; the pirate pounced, and the lighthouse keeper lay stretched in the middle of the inner circles. Round and round, down the imaginary stairs, ran the pirate, with comical and shifty glances here and there and glaring eyes turned upon the audience—such expression as only Dotty could give. The pirate disappeared, presumably having satisfied a revenge “or something.”

Next came three happy children, hand in hand at first. These were the two Marys, Mary Emma Howland and Mary Jane Andrews, with Kathryn Allen, all dressed in extreme childish costume. They danced and cavorted before the audience and finally started upon the circles. Naturally, after climbing, with the usual change of gait as they rose higher and higher, they came upon the tragic figure of their father. With silent grief and much expressive action, the children performed their part, rapidly going “down” the circles once more.

More action. Another senior girl appeared, dressed in a disreputable old house dress. She hears the news, rather sees it in pantomime and starts up the stairs. Tragic action again. Down from the dizzy height in dizzy circles, whirling in her haste. The telephone, the doctor with his case, the ascent. Gwen Penrose made a good doctor and had great difficulty, puffing and panting, in making the “ascent.” Between them the wife and the doctor had to carry down the lighthouse keeper, the most difficult feat of all, and one which, shocking to relate, aroused neither sympathy nor sorrow in their audience. It was too ridiculous. And with this the pantomime suddenly ended, as it is supposed to end, though one freshman in front said, “Well, what next? How does it turn out?”

But Gwen, whisking off her cotton wrapper because it was too hot, overheard and laughingly replied, “It doesn’t turn out at all. That’s the end and the rest is left to the imagination.”

They were just serving the sandwiches when some one came, to stand in the door of the gym and look in. There was a rustle among those near the door and Betty Lee almost dropped the plate she was passing when she looked to see an easily poised, well-dressed figure in the door and recognized the black eyes and smiling face of—Lucia Coletti!

“Lucia!” cried several of the girls and in a moment Lucia was surrounded.

“I heard that you seniors were up to something, so we drove around and I came over here,” Lucia explained, to answer the “who, where and what” expressed and unexpressed by her friends. Then Betty insisted that she must meet all of the freshmen and clapped her hands for order. “I want you all to know one of our finest senior girls, Lucia Coletti, from Milan, Italy. Don’t forget how to pronounce her name, Loo-shee-a! And that you may appreciate your school all the more, let me tell you that her father and mother, Count and Countess Coletti, are letting her come to finish her high school course here because she wants a Lyon High diploma! Let’s give her a Lyon High cheer!”

Even the experienced Lucia was almost overcome at this, as in feminine treble seniors, and freshmen cheered. “Lucia, rah! Lucia, rah! Rah-rah—Lucia!”

“Oh, you Betty!” said Lucia, her face flushed; but she smiled at everybody and carried it off as best she could.

“Speech!” cried Dotty, her face full of mischief. “Speech! Speech!”

“All right,” said Lucia. “I might as well say something first as last, I suppose, Dotty. I am ever so glad to meet you freshmen and I am sorry that I could not get here in time for the whole entertainment. I almost wish I were a freshman, too, to have all the good times over again. Yes, I do want a Lyon High diploma, and besides that I have made friends here that I can never give up in my whole life. I am pretty well torn to pieces between loving my own country and this one, too, but I believe that one can have—opportunities and friends everywhere!”

This was quite a long speech for Lucia. “If I had thought I’d have to say anything, I probably wouldn’t have come; but I just stepped right into Lyon High atmosphere, didn’t I? and it seemed natural.” So she told Betty presently. Lucia’s bit of Italian accent was a little more pronounced since having talked in her own tongue all summer, and it made quite an impression. She was new for most of the freshmen, but Eileen explained to Ann that she was Mr. Murchison’s niece and that she had been in America with her mother “for some reason or other” at the Murchison place and had attended Lyon High till the Count came for them.

“I imagine that Betty Lee knows her terribly well, or she wouldn’t have introduced her like that.”

Meanwhile Lucia’s special friends were making a fuss over her with which her father’s title had nothing to do. Mathilde, to be sure, was assiduous in her attentions.

“You’re here in time for ice-cream, Lucia,” said Dotty. “Mary Emma, hurry a plate of it around. Lucia is almost melted, but I hope the ice-cream isn’t.”

“The ice-cream is just right, Dotty,” firmly said Mary Emma and Lucia added, “Like every other senior attempt.”

“Good for you, Lucia. You are always loyal. How does it seem to be a senior?”

“Glorious! It may seem better after I get my work made up, though. What do you think, Betty? Mother and Father came over, too, deciding at the last minute and they are going to take an ‘all-American’ tour this fall, be here for Christmas, go to Florida, sail for South America, come back to see me graduate and take me home. That is, all that is planned.”

The Murchison chauffeur, who came back to the school for Lucia, took a full load of girls to their different homes. Betty was the last to be delivered and Lucia had whispered to her, in the retirement of the back seat, “It’s just like one continuous honeymoon with them now, Betty, and I am the very happiest girl you ever knew. A lot of it is due to your good advice, Betty.”

“Nonsense!” said Betty. “You would have seen what to do anyway.”

“I’m not so sure.”