Betty Wales, Freshman Part 20

If Eleanor had taken Kate's advice and indulged in a little calm reflection, she would have realized how absolutely reasonless was her anger against Betty Wales. Betty had been told of the official objections which made it necessary for Eleanor to be withdrawn from the debate. Her action, then, had been wholly proper and perfectly friendly.

But Eleanor was in no mood for reflection. A wild burst of pa.s.sion held her firmly in its grasp. She hated everybody and everything in Harding--the faculty who had made such a commotion about two little low grades--for Eleanor had come surprisingly near to clearing her record at mid-years,--Jean, who had stupidly brought all this extra annoyance upon her; the cla.s.s, who were glad to get rid of her, Betty, who--yes, Jean had been right about one thing--Betty, who had taken advantage of a friend's misfortune to curry favor for herself. They were all leagued against her. But--here the Watson pride suddenly a.s.serted itself--they should never know that she cared, never guess that they had hurt her.

She deliberately selected the most becoming of her new evening gowns, and in an incredibly short time swept down to dinner, radiantly beautiful in the creamy lace dress, and--outwardly at least--in her sunniest, most charming mood. She insisted that the table should admire her dress, and the pearl pendant which her aunt had just sent her.

"I'm wearing it, you see, to celebrate my return to the freedom of private life," she rattled on glibly. "I understand you've found a genius to take my place. I'm delighted that we have one in the cla.s.s.

It's so convenient. Who of you are going to the Burton House dance to-night?"

So she led the talk from point to point and from hand to hand. She bantered Mary, deferred to Helen and the Riches, appealed in comradely fas.h.i.+on to Katherine and Rachel. Betty alone she utterly, though quite unostentatiously, ignored; and Betty, too much hurt to make any effort, stood aside and tried to solve the riddle of Eleanor's latest caprice.

On the way up-stairs Eleanor spoke to her for the first time. She went up just ahead of her and at the top of the flight she turned and waited.

"I understand that you quite ran the cla.s.s to-day," she said with a flas.h.i.+ng smile. "The girls tell me that you're a born orator, as good in your way as the genius in hers."

Betty rallied herself for one last effort. "Don't make fun of me, Eleanor. Please let me come in and tell you about it. You don't understand----"

"Possibly not," said Eleanor coldly. "But I'm going out now."

"Just for a moment!"

"But I have to start at once. I'm late already."

"Oh, very well," said Betty, and turned away to join Mary and Roberta.

Eleanor's mind always worked with lightning rapidity, and while she dressed she had gone over the whole situation and decided exactly how she would meet it; and in the weeks that followed she kept rigidly to the course she had marked out for herself, changing only one detail. At first she had intended to have nothing more to do with Jean, but she saw that a sudden breaking off of their friends.h.i.+p would be remarked upon and wondered at. So she compromised by treating Jean exactly as usual, but seeing her as little as possible. This made it necessary to refuse many of her invitations to college affairs, for wherever she went Jean was likely to go. So she spent much of her leisure time away from Harding; she went to Winsted a great deal, and often ran down to Boston or New York for Sunday, declaring that the trips meant nothing to a Westerner used to the "magnificent distances" of the plains. Naturally she grew more and more out of touch with the college life, more and more scornful of the girls who could be content with the narrow, humdrum routine at Harding. But she concealed her scorn perfectly. And she no longer neglected her work; she attended her cla.s.ses regularly and managed with a modic.u.m of preparation to recite far better than the average student. Furthermore her work was now scrupulously honest, and she was sensitively alert to the slightest imputation of untruthfulness.

She offered no specious explanations for her withdrawal from the debate, and when Mary Brooks innocently inquired "what little yarn" she told the registrar, that she could get away so often, Eleanor fixed her with an unpleasantly penetrative stare and answered with all her old-time hauteur that she did not tell "yarns."

"I have a note from my father. So long as I do my work and go to all my cla.s.ses, they really can't object to my spending my Sundays as he wishes."

Betty observed all these changes without being in the least able to reconcile them with Eleanor's new att.i.tude toward herself. Unlike the friends.h.i.+p with Jean, Eleanor's intercourse with her had been inconspicuous, confined mostly to the Chapin house itself. Even the girls there, because Eleanor had stood so aloof from them, had seen little of it, so Eleanor was free to break it off without thinking of public opinion, and she did so ruthlessly. From the day of the cla.s.s meeting she spoke to Betty only when she must, or, if no one was by, when some taunting remark occurred to her.

At first Betty tried her best to think how she could have offended, but she could not discuss the subject with any one else and endless consideration and rejection of hypotheses was fruitless, so after Eleanor had twice refused her an interview that would have settled the matter, she sensibly gave it up. Eleanor would perhaps "come round" in time. Meanwhile it was best to let her alone.

But Betty felt that she was having more than her share of trouble; Helen was quite as trying in her way as Eleanor in hers. She had entirely lost her cheerful air and seemed to have grown utterly discouraged with life.

"And no wonder, for she studies every minute," Betty told Rachel and Katherine. "I think she feels hurt because the girls don't get to like her better, but how can they when she doesn't give them any chance?"

"She's awfully touchy lately," added Katherine.

"Poor little thing!" said Rachel.

Then the three plunged into an animated discussion of basket-ball, and Rachel and Katherine, who were on a sort of provisional team that included most of the best freshman players and arrogated to itself the name of "The Stars," showed Betty in strictest confidence the new cross-play that "T. Reed" had invented. "T. Reed" seemed to be the basket-ball genius of the freshman cla.s.s. She was the only girl who was perfectly sure to be on the regular team.

It is one of the fine things about college that no matter who of your friends are temporarily lost to you, there is always somebody else to fall back upon, and some new interest to take the place of one that flags. Betty had noticed this and been amused by it early in her course.

Sometimes, as she said to Miss Ferris in one of her many long talks with that lady, things change so fast that you really begin to wonder if you can be the same person you were last week.

Besides the inter-cla.s.s basket-ball game, there was the Hilton House play to talk about and look forward to, and the rally; and, nearer still, St. Valentine's day. It was a long time, to be sure, since Betty had been much excited over the last named festival; in her experience only children exchanged valentines. But at Harding it seemed to be different. While the day was still several weeks off she had received three invitations to valentine parties. She consulted Mary Brooks and found that this was not at all unusual.

"All the campus houses give them," Mary explained, "and the big ones outside, just as they do for Hallowe'en. They have valentine boxes, you know, and sometimes fancy dress b.a.l.l.s."

And there the matter would have dropped if Mary had not spent all her monthly allowance three full weeks before she was supposed to have any more. Poverty was Mary's chronic state. Not that Dr. Brooks's checks were small, but his daughter's spending capacity was infinite.

"You wait till you're a prominent soph.o.m.ore," she said when Katherine laughed at her, "and all your friends are making societies, and you just have to provide violets and suppers, in hopes that they'll do as much for you later on. The whole trouble is that father wants me to be on an allowance, instead of writing home for money when I'm out. And no matter how much I say I need, it never lasts out the month."

"Why don't you tutor?" suggested Rachel, who got along easily on a third of what Mary spent. "I hope to next year."

"Tutor!" repeated Mary with a reminiscent chuckle. "I tried to tutor my cousin this fall in algebra, and the poor thing flunked much worse than before. But anyway the faculty wouldn't give me regular tutoring. I look too well-to-do. Ah! how deceitful are appearances!" sighed Mary, opening her pocketbook, where five copper pennies rattled about forlornly.

But the very next day she dashed into Betty's room proclaiming loudly, "I have an idea, and I want you to help me, Betty Wales. You can draw and I'll cut them out and drum up customers, and I guess I can write the verses. We ought to make our ad. to-night."

"Our what?" inquired Betty in an absolutely mystified tone.

Then Mary explained that she proposed to sell valentines. "Lots of the girls who can't draw buy theirs, not down-town, you know--we don't give that kind here,--but cunning little hand-made ones with pen-and-ink drawings and original verses. Haven't you noticed the signs on the 'For Sale' bulletin?"

Betty had not even seen that bulletin board since she and Helen had hunted second-hand screens early in the fall, but the plan sounded very attractive; it would fill up her spare hours, and keep her from worrying over Eleanor, and getting cross at Helen, so she was very willing to help if Mary honestly thought she could draw well enough.

"Goodness, yes!" said Mary, rus.h.i.+ng off to borrow Roberta's water-color paper and Katherine's rhyming dictionary.

So the partners.h.i.+p was formed, a huge red heart covered with hastily decorated samples was stuck up on the "For Sale" bulletin in the gymnasium bas.e.m.e.nt, and, as Betty's cupids were really very charming and her Christy heads quite as good as the average copy, names began to appear in profusion on the order-sheet.

Mary had written two sample verses with comparative ease, and in the first flush of confidence she had boldly printed on the sign: "Rhymed grinds for special persons furnished at reasonable rates." But later, when everybody seemed to want that kind, even the valuable aid of the rhyming dictionary did not disprove the adage that poets are born, not made.

"I can't--I just can't do them," wailed Mary finally. "Jokes simply will not go into rhyme. What shall we do?"

"Get Roberta--she writes beautifully--and Katherine--she told me that she'd like to help," suggested Betty, without looking up from the chubby cupid she was fas.h.i.+oning.

So Katherine and Roberta were duly approached and Katherine was added to the firm. Roberta at first said she couldn't, but finally, after exacting strict pledges of secrecy, she produced half a dozen dainty little lyrics, bidding Mary use them if she wished--they were nothing.

But no amount of persuasion would induce her to do any more.

However, Katherine's genius was nothing if not profuse, and she preferred to do "grinds," so Mary could devote herself to sentimental effusions,--which, so she declared, did not have to have any special point and so were within her powers,--and to the business end of the project. This, in her view, consisted in perching on a centrally located window-seat in the main building, in the intervals between cla.s.ses, and soliciting orders from all pa.s.sers-by, to the consequent crowding of the narrow halls and the great annoyance of the serious-minded, who wished to reach their recitations promptly. But from her point of view she was strikingly successful.

"I tell you, I never appreciated how easy it is to make money if you only set about it in the right way," she announced proudly one day at luncheon. "By the way, Betty, would you run down after gym to get our old order sheet and put up a new one? I have a special topic in psychology to-morrow, and if Professor Hinsdale really thinks I'm clever I don't want to undeceive him too suddenly."

Betty promised, but after gym Rachel asked her to stay and play basket-ball with "The Stars" in the place of an absent member. Naturally she forgot everything else and it was nearly six o'clock when, sauntering home from an impromptu tea-drinking at the Belden House, she remembered the order sheet. It was very dusky in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Betty, plunging down the steps that led directly into the small room where the bulletin board was, almost knocked down a girl who was curled up on the bottom step of the flight.

"Goodness! did I hurt you?" she said, a trifle exasperated that any one should want to sit alone in the damp darkness of the bas.e.m.e.nt.

There was no answer, and Betty, whose eyes were growing accustomed to the dim light, observed with consternation that her companion was doing her best to stop crying.

As has already been remarked, Betty hated tears as a kitten hates rain.

Personally she never cried without first locking her door, and she could imagine nothing so humiliating as to be caught, unmistakably weeping, by a stranger. So she turned aside swiftly, peered about in the shadows for the big red heart, changed the order sheet, and was wondering whether she would better hurry out past the girl or wait for her to recover her composure and depart, when the girl took the situation out of her hands by rising and saying in cheery tones, "Good-evening, Miss Wales. Are you going my way?"

"I--why it's Emily--I mean Miss--Davis," cried Betty.

"Yes, it's Emily Davis, in the blues, the more shame to her, when she ought to be at home getting supper this minute. Wait just a second, please." Miss Davis went over to the signs, jerked down one, and picking up her books from the bottom step announced without the faintest trace of embarra.s.sment, "Now I'm ready."

"But are you sure you want me?" inquired Betty timidly.

"Bless you, yes," said Miss Davis. "I've wanted to know you for ever so long. I'm sorry you caught me being a goose, though."

"And I'm sorry you felt like crying," said Betty shyly. "Why, Miss Davis, I should want to laugh all the time if I'd done what you did the other day. I should be so proud."