Betty Wales, Freshman Part 21

Miss Davis smiled happily down at her small companion. "I was proud,"

she said simply. "I only hope I can do as well week after next. But Miss Wales, that was the jam of college life. There's the bread and b.u.t.ter too, you know, and sometimes that's a lot harder to earn than the jam."

"Do you mean----" began Betty and stopped, not wanting to risk hurting Miss Davis's feelings.

"Yes, I mean that I'm working my way through. I have a scholars.h.i.+p, but there's still my board and clothes and books."

"And you do it all?"

Miss Davis nodded. "My cousin sends me some clothes."

"How do you do it, please?"

"Tutor, sort papers and make typewritten copies of things for the faculty, put on dress braids (that's how I met the B's), mend stockings, and wait on table off and on when some one's maid leaves suddenly. We thought it would be cheaper and pleasanter to board ourselves and earn our money in different ways than to take our board in exchange for regular table-waiting; but I don't know. The other way is surer."

"You mean you don't find work enough?"

Miss Davis nodded. "It takes a good deal," she said apologetically, "and there isn't much tutoring that freshmen can do. After this year it will be easier."

"Dear me," gasped Betty. "Don't you get any--any help from home?"

"Well, they haven't been able to send any yet, but they hope to later,"

said Miss Davis brightly.

"And does it pay when you have to work so hard for it?"

"Oh, yes," answered Miss Davis promptly. "All three of us are sure that it pays."

"Three of you live together?"

"Yes. Of course there are ever so many others in the college, and I'm sure all of them would say the same thing."

"And--I hope I'm not being rude--but do girls--do you advertise things down on that bulletin board? I don't know much about it. I never was there but once till I went to-day on--on an errand for a friend," Betty concluded awkwardly. Perhaps she had been an interloper. Perhaps that bulletin board had not been meant for girls like her.

Miss Davis evidently a.s.sumed that she had been to leave an order. "You ought to buy more," she said laughingly. "But you want to know what I was there for, don't you? Why yes, we do make a good deal off that bulletin board. One of the girls paints a little and she advertises picture frames--Yale and Harvard and Pennsylvania ones, you know. I sell blue-prints. A senior lends me her films. She has a lot of the faculty and the campus, and they go pretty well. We use the money we make from those things for little extras--ribbons and note-books and desserts for Sunday. We hoped to make quite a bit on valentines----"

"Valentines?" repeated Betty sharply.

"Yes, but a good many others thought of it too, and we didn't get any orders--not one. Ours weren't so extra pretty and it was foolish of me to be so disappointed, but we'd worked hard getting ready and we did want a little more money so much."

They had reached Betty's door by this time, and Miss Davis hurried on, saying it was her turn to get supper and begging Betty to come and see them. "For we're very cozy, I a.s.sure you. You mustn't think we have a horrid time just because--you know why."

Betty went straight to Mary's room, which, since she had no roommate to object to disorder, had been the chief seat of the valentine industry.

"You're a nice one," cried Katherine, "staying off like this when to-day is the eleventh."

"Many orders?" inquired Mary.

Betty sat down on Mary's couch, ruthlessly sweeping aside a ma.s.s of half finished valentines to make room. "Girls, this has got to stop," she announced abruptly.

Mary dropped her scissors and Katherine shut the rhyming dictionary with a bang.

"What is the trouble?" they asked in chorus.

Then Betty told her story, suppressing only Emily's name and mentioning all the details that had made up the point and pathos of it. "And just think!" she said at last. "She's a girl you'd both be proud to know, and she works like that. And we stepped in and took away a chance of--of ribbons and note-books and dessert for Sunday."

"May be not; perhaps hers were so homely they wouldn't have sold anyway," suggested Katherine with an attempt at jocoseness.

"Don't, please," said Betty wearily.

Mary came and sat down beside her on the couch. "Well, what's to be done about it now?" she asked soberly.

"I don't know. We can't give them orders because she took her sign down.

I thought perhaps--how much have we made?"

"Fifteen dollars easily. All right; we'll send it to them."

"Of course," chimed in Katherine. "I was only joking. Shall we finish these up?"

"Yes indeed," said Mary, "they're all ordered, and the more money the better, n'est ce pas, Betty? But aren't we to know the person's name?"

Betty hesitated. "Why--no--that is if you don't mind very much. You see she sort of told me about herself because she had to, so I feel as if I oughtn't to repeat it. Do you mind?"

"Not one bit," said Katherine quickly. "And we needn't say anything at all about it, except--don't you think the girls here in the house will have to know that we're going to give away the money?"

"Yes," put in Mary, "and we'll make them all give us extra orders."

"We will save out a dollar for you to live on till March," said Betty.

"Oh no, I shall borrow of you," retorted Mary, and then they all laughed and felt better.

On St. Valentine's morning Betty posted a registered valentine. The verse read:--

"There are three of us and three of you, Though only one knows one, So pray accept this little gift And go and have some fun."

But if the rhyme went haltingly and was not quite true either, as Betty pointed out, since Adelaide and Alice had contributed to the fund, and the whole house had bought absurd quant.i.ties of valentines because it was such a "worthy object" ("just as if I wasn't a worthy object!"

sighed Mary), there was nothing the matter with the "little gift," which consisted of three crisp ten dollar bills.

"Oh, if they should feel hurt!" thought Betty anxiously, and dodged Emily Davis so successfully that until the day of the rally they did not meet.

That week was a tremendously exciting one. To begin with, on the twentieth the members of both the freshman basket-ball teams were announced. Rachel was a "home" on the regular team, and Katherine a guard on the "sub," so the Chapin house fairly bubbled over with pride and pleasure in its double honors. Then on the morning of the twenty-second came the rally with its tumultuous display of cla.s.s and college loyalty, its songs written especially for the occasion, its shrieks of triumph or derision (which no intrusive reporter should make bold to interpret or describe as "cla.s.s yells," since such masculine modes of expression are unknown at Harding), and its mock-heroic debate on the vital issue, "Did or did not George Was.h.i.+ngton cut down that cherry-tree?"

Every speaker was clever and amusing, but Emily Davis easily scored the hit of the morning. For whereas most freshmen are frightened and appear to disadvantage on such an occasion, she was perfectly calm and self-possessed, and made her points with exactly the same irresistible gaucherie and daring infusion of local color that had distinguished her performance at the cla.s.s meeting. Besides, she was a "dark horse"; she did not belong to the leading set in her cla.s.s, nor to any other set, for that matter, and this fact, together with the novel method of her election made her interesting to her essentially democratic audience. So when the judges--five popular members of the faculty--announced their decision in favor of the negative, otherwise the junior-freshman side of the debate, 19--'s enthusiasm knew no bounds, and led by the delighted B's they carried their speaker twice round the gym on their shoulders--which is an honor likely to be remembered by its recipient for more reasons than one.

As the clans were scattering, it suddenly occurred to Betty that, if Emily did not guess anything, it would please her to be congratulated on the excellence of her debate; and if, as was more likely, she had guessed, there was little to be gained by postponing the dreaded interview. She chose a moment when Emily was standing by herself in one corner of the gymnasium. Emily did not wait for her to begin her speech of congratulation.

"Oh, Miss Wales," she cried, "I've been to see you six times, and you are never there. It was lovely of you--lovely--but ought we to take it?"

"Yes, indeed. It belongs to you; honestly it does. Don't ask me how, for it's too long a story. Just take my word for it."