Being President of the Girls’ Athletic Association, or “G. A. A.” would be no light undertaking; but there was not a girl of those particularly interested in some athletic line who would not consider it a great honor to be chosen for the post. At times some girl would be openly “out for it.” Others waited to be suggested by their friends.

This year the election of a president was likely to be accompanied by some “lobbying.” Betty Lee was not the only outstanding girl in the association, and then there were a few who would have been quite willing to accept the honor while not likely to offer their best service. Of these the most noticeable was Mathilde Finn, always desiring first place, of a certain ability, but selfish and unstable.

In her heart Betty Lee knew that she would be happy to have her friends elect her. She had plans for the G. A. A., yet she was modest enough to concede that at least two other girls might do as well for the association. Then it would be a relief not to carry such responsibility, to have only her regular work with what she wanted to “get in” this last senior year.

To Betty the swimming, as usual, was of first importance, and all the more so since her summer with its opportunities at the shore and at camp, where her prowess made quite an impression. She was pleased to think that both Dick and Doris were now excelling in that line, too.

Riding was a comparatively new ambition. At least she could “stick on” a horse as she had on her grandmother’s farm and more recently at camp. But she was meaning to ride properly by the end of this year, and her intention was strengthened, it must be said, by Larry Waite’s having suggested that they must ride together “next summer.” Lucia, also was a fine horsewoman. If she ever did have the opportunity, as Lucia insisted, of a visit to her in Italy, she would want to know how to manage a horse and how to ride with grace.

She could play all the games, but she preferred to do it as she liked and to keep off a regular class team this year. But perhaps she could not refuse altogether. They were after her to lead the team in field hockey. Basketball was taboo as last year, by parental request.

None of the girls’ games ever became as professional as the boys’ football and basketball with their inter-school games. Yet there was great effort and much rivalry between classes as well as a great deal of fun. If Betty should accept the probable opportunity of leading the team in hockey, the senior team should beat, she thought to herself!

To have her own room was going to be a great help in her lessons. With the school study halls and regular hours at home, she could handle her schedule of senior studies, for Betty was quick at her lessons. The new home would be nearer Lyon High, too, as it happened. Not so much time to be wasted on street cars. Could she keep up being in the orchestra, too? Oh, she must do that!

Most of these problems she talked over with Carolyn and Kathryn, for they, too, had their own problems. But they did not take them too seriously. It would all come along some way!

“I expect to be at school till four or five o’clock practicing something or other most days, Mother,” she informed Mrs. Lee. “So don’t worry. If I do get home it’s so much gained. I imagine it’s a good thing Chet’s in the university now. There won’t be anybody to dawdle around with between times.”

Mrs. Lee did not look much impressed with this statement, for it was quite likely that there would be some one yet to take an interest in Betty Lee. “Most of your hikes and picnics will be on Saturday, I suppose,” she suggested and Betty assented.

“We girls, the ‘Happy Hoodlums,’ or something like that,” she said, “are having a hike right away, and the G. A. A. is to have a big picnic again very soon.”

While the G. A. A. election was still to take place and discussions and suggestions and urgent appeals for candidates were rife, the almost greater excitement of the exodus and “in-o-dus,” a word of Dick’s coining, occurred. They all thought it “terrible” that it had to happen in school time, but Mrs. Lee, good manager that she was, told them not to get upset about it. She gave them cartons, in which they could pack the odds and ends and various treasures, and told them to be sure that they had the books they wanted in their lockers at school. “Now goodbye, kiddies mine,” she said on Friday morning. “When you come home this afternoon—come to the new address!”

“Gee, Mom—I bet I forget,” said Dick.

“It was wonderful,” Betty told the girls on the hiking club expedition Saturday afternoon. “We did walk on almost bare floors for several days, because Mother sent the big rugs to the cleaners; but there, we left everything almost as usual, and after a while regular spiffy movers came, and when we went after school to the new place, there were the big rugs all down and all our furniture and things in place and Mother, with a woman to help, arranging the ‘pots and pans!’ It was all newly decorated anyhow, and Mother had had a man and a woman get the new place ready first before the move. Then Father left the car for her and a lot of the best china and ornaments and things went over that way, though they could have gone by truck, of course.

“I’ve worked all morning, getting my books in my own little book-case in my new room, and unpacking my trunk, and hanging my clothes in my own big closet. Oh, I’m crazy about it, and Mother says I may have the first party. You are all invited. I’ll have it after the G. A. A. picnic.”

Lucia, swinging the same alpenstock which had so interested Mathilde in times past, was an interested listener. “Betty,” she said, “you can make the most uninteresting things sound funny! Now I should think moving would be the last thing on earth!”

“Oh, but it is such fun to fix things,” cried Betty. “Mother and Father had the responsibility, of course, but Mother had plenty of help, so it could get done quickly, and I think she is just as excited as I am over it all. You see, Lucia, we may buy this place and have it for our very own.”

“Well, that is different, I suppose,” said Lucia, thinking of the old palaszo in Milan, that had belonged to the Coletti’s for ages. But here in America they moved as casually as anything, first to this apartment, then to that, or some of their friends did!

It was due to Betty’s morning at home that the hike had been put off till afternoon. In consequence they did not go far. On the banks of a little stream not far from a bus line which could take them home, they found a lovely spot for their little picnic supper. There they sat and told each other all about summer days, not forgetting great plans for their senior year. Kathryn was already the president of Lyon “Y” and made all the girls promise to do anything on a program they were asked to do.

“Just not too often, Gypsy,” suggested Betty, “but I’ll be at the meetings. We almost never have orchestra practice on that day and other things can be put off.”

“I’ll excuse you any time, Betty, for you’re going to be president of something else,” promptly returned Kathryn. “See if you aren’t!”

Betty knew what Kathryn meant and would not pretend that she did not, but she smiled and shook her head. “It is a great uncertainty, Kathryn, and anyhow I’m not sure that I can do it.”

“What do you mean, Betty?” hastily asked Mary Emma Howland. “You’ll run, won’t you if you are put up for G. A. A. president?”

“Yes, Mary Emma, and I think it is a compliment to have you girls want me to be it. But I hate it a little and I think that the result is very uncertain.”

“Oh, as far as that is concerned, you never can tell,” said Mary Emma. “We know that being Betty, you won’t work for yourself, but as for spreading ‘propaganda’——”

Mary Emma left her sentence unfinished to make a comical gesture, toward herself first, then including the entire group.

Lucia’s dark eyes sparkled. “Betty is the reliable head of anything,” said she, “besides being the prettiest swimmer in the school and having all sorts of honors to her credit. Where can I do the most good, Mary Emma?”

Mary Emma, delighted, clapped her hands. “Everywhere, Lucia, and particularly, I should say, with any new members among the freshmen. After that jolly speech of yours at the A-D party, Lucia, those nice little girls will lend an ear to anything you say.”

“Oh, girls, this sounds like—politics!” exclaimed Betty.

“Betty Lee, every one of us thinks that you will make the best G. A. A. president the school could possibly have. Why not show a little sense, then, and try to get you in?”

Betty was silenced more effectively by a large chocolate held to her lips by Mary Jane Andrews, and Gwen Penrose remarked, “I haven’t joined the G. A. A. yet. How do you do it? I forgot?”

“Mercy on me, Gwen,” cried Kathryn. “I forgot that you hadn’t seen to that. You can’t vote if you’re not a member! That will certainly have to be fixed at once. See me Monday, Gwen.”

Names like Happy Hoodlums, or Horrible H-Examples (suggested by Dotty Bradshaw) did not seem quite suitable for dignified seniors and were dismissed from their consideration. “We’ll be just a little G. A. A. hiking club, why not?” suggested Carolyn, to the satisfaction of everybody concerned.

Over this week-end Betty and Doris gloated over their respective rooms and arranged them to a least temporary satisfaction. It did seem so funny to take a different street car home, at times when some one did not give them a lift in a “real car.”

“I need pictures,” said Betty, looking at her walls; and as if in answer to her wish, there was a ring at the bell Sunday afternoon, late, and Mrs. Lee came to the foot of the stairs to call Betty.

“Lucia is here, Betty. Shall I tell her to come up?”

“Oh, please, Mother,” but Betty came halfway down the stairs to meet her friend.

Lucia was carrying a rectangular package and straightway handed it to Betty. “This is a contribution to your new room, Betty,” said she with a smile. “I thought about it this morning in church. It is only a print, Betty, in color, such as they sell at the galleries in Milan, but I had it framed for myself, to make me think of home, last year, and never put it up. It is Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper, you know, from the fresco on the refectory wall in Milan. If you would like it, I have a pretty Madonna that I can have framed for you, too.”

“Oh, Lucia! Why it isn’t an hour ago that I was wishing I had just the right pictures! Thank you! I shall love it! But I can’t let you have anything more framed for me.”

“Why not? You will let me do something once in a while for my very dearest friend, won’t you?”

“Am I that, Lucia?” Betty asked, surprised and not a little touched. As they talked they were unwrapping the picture, but paused a moment.

“You are indeed, Betty,” earnestly said Lucia. “I can’t tell you how much you mean to me, though it didn’t look like it, did it? the way I didn’t write to you this summer!”

Lucia laughed and the sentimental moment passed, rather to the relief of both, though Lucia had intended to say that to Betty.

“I wish I knew all that you do, Lucia, about the wonderful old paintings and sculpture and everything,” sighed Betty, looking with pleasure on the appropriately framed reproduction of the famous work of art.

“Come home with me for our Sunday supper, Betty, and we’ll look through such things as I have with me and have a good talk. You can pick out your own Madonna!”

After selecting the proper spot upon which Betty would hang her gift, where the light would properly fall upon it, the two girls went down stairs to visit with the rest of the family a few moments and arrange for Betty’s carrying off.

“I had to see your new place, Mrs. Lee,” said Lucia, “and find my way to it. Doris, the next time Betty comes to dinner with me you must come, too. I haven’t realized that Betty’s sister was so grown up! My new auntie is very pleasant about telling me that I may have my friends, so I must begin.”

Betty had not had a glimpse of the Murchison home since she came back to the city after the summer’s trips. She would not have thought of it, of course, till after Lucia’s arrival. Now she met the very charming lady who was Mr. Murchison’s second wife and had a quiet visit with Lucia in her own room. They looked at pictures and Betty took the opportunity to tell Lucia all about Ramon’s recent experience.

“I thought you’d better know all about it, Lucia,” said she. “Imagine being an assistant ‘unbeknownst’ to that sort of men! But he found out what they were really doing, of course, and planned to run away. Then that man got him! Maybe he would have been killed if the boys hadn’t found him! I hope it isn’t going to be hard for you not to tell Mrs. Sevilla and Rose. Anyhow, I thought I’d better tell you.”

“I’m used to keeping secrets, Betty,” returned Lucia. “It is just as well not to stir up poor old Mrs. Sevilla, though it’s odd—she does not seem so old now that she is comfortable. She is learning English, too. Could I tell Rose, do you think, if it seemed best?”

“Really, Lucia, I should think so. But that was Ramon’s request, that they should not hear about all this and get all worried about where he was and what they were doing to him.”

“I see,” thoughtfully said Lucia.

-----

The day of the G. A. A. “presidential election” arrived. Mathilde knew that she was out of the running, but she concentrated her efforts on one of Betty Lee’s two opponents, fine girls, both of them. Much pressure had been brought to bear by different groups and the meeting was a full one with old and new members present. The new members were particularly open to influence, but Betty’s friends had not been idle.

“I don’t believe I’ll come at all,” declared Betty, “and I simply won’t vote for myself!”

“All right, stay away, then,” laughed Mary Emma. “I’ve just got three new members of the freshmen and they’re all going to vote for you!”

“Maybe I’ll not be even nominated.”

“Maybe you will. I’m on the nominating committee myself and I know who’s going to be presented. There may be even more candidates than we have simply had to put up because of the requests; but there certainly won’t be less. We make our report and then I understand that opportunity will be given for more names to be presented if anybody wants them.”

“H’m,” said Betty. “Well, it isn’t the only thing on earth. I’ll come and not vote at all. To tell the truth, girls, I hate to beat anybody that wants it, and I hate to think that anybody has had to be asked to vote for me!”

“Elizabeth Virginia Lee, all that your friends have done is to call attention to your superior qualities as a leader and also performer in athletics. If you go in as our president it will be a mere tribute to your worth.” Mary Emma was laughing but she meant what she said.

Possibly the fact that Betty had recently been selected to be captain of the hockey team had something to do with it, but when the vote was taken Betty was elected. Her majority was not so much over the vote given to the other girls by their friends that it made her any enemies; and both of the other candidates came straight to her to tell her that they thought she was the one to have the office. Betty begged them to help her and said that she felt “aghast” at the prospect, which was true. But perhaps the incident that made her happiest among the congratulations was when one of the athletic directors came up to her in the hall.

“I am glad that the G. A. A. has chosen you, Betty Lee, for you are not only good in every sort of athletics you undertake but you have a sense of responsibility and carry out what you undertake. If you want any help, or suggestions, let me know. We shall have to call you into consultation about some features, you know. The election should have been last spring, you know.”

It was pleasant to have the faculty with her, Betty thought. She wondered if it were really true that she carried responsibility well. To tell the truth she had been planning to—or thinking that she must—neglect some things in order to carry out what she liked best. She would try to live up to what they thought of her, anyhow, and do the best she could.