Betty Wales, Senior Read online

  BETTY WALES, SENIOR

  CHAPTER I

  "BACK TO THE COLLEGE AGAIN"

  "Oh, Rachel Morrison, am I too late for the four-ten train?"

  Betty Wales, pink-cheeked and breathless, her yellow curls flying underher dainty lingerie hat, and her crisp white skirts held high to escapethe dust of the station platform, sank down beside Rachel on a steamertrunk that the Harding baggage-men had been too busy or tooaccommodating to move away, and began to fan herself vigorously with avery small and filmy handkerchief.

  "No, you're not late, dearie," laughed Rachel, pulling Betty's hatstraight, "or rather the train is late, too. Where have you been?"

  Betty smiled reminiscently. "Everywhere, pretty nearly. You know thatcunning little freshman that had lost her trunks----"

  "All those that I've interviewed have lost their trunks," interpolatedRachel.

  Betty waved a deprecating hand toward the mountain of baggage that waspiled up further down the platform.

  "Oh, of course, in that lovely mess. Who wouldn't? But this girl losthers before she got here--in Chicago or Albany, or maybe it was Omaha.She lives in Los Angeles, so she might have lost them almost anywhere,you see."

  "And of course she expected Prexy or the registrar to go back and lookfor them," added Rachel.

  Betty laughed. "Not she. Besides she doesn't seem to care a bit. Sheseems to think it's a splendid chance to go to New York next week andbuy new clothes. But what she wanted of me was to tell her where shecould get some shirt waists--just enough to last until she's perfectlysure that the trunks are gone for good. I didn't want to stick aroundhere from three to four, so I said I'd go and show her Evans's and thatlittle new shirt waist place. Of course I pointed out all the objects ofinterest along the way, and when I mentioned Cuyler's, she insistedupon going in to have ices."

  "And how many does that make for you to-day?" demanded Rachel severely.

  "Well," Betty defended herself, "I treated you once, and you treated meonce, and then we met Christy Mason, and as you couldn't go back withher I had to. But I only had lemonade that time. And this child was socomical, and it was such a good idea."

  "What was such a good idea?" inquired Rachel.

  "Oh, didn't I tell you? Why, after we'd finished at Cuyler's, she askedme if there weren't any other places something like it, and she said shethought if we tried them all in a row we could tell which was best. Butwe couldn't," sighed Betty regretfully, "because of course things tastebetter when you're hungriest. But anyhow she wanted to keep on, becausenow she can give pointers to other freshmen, and make them think she isa sophomore."

  "How about the shirt waists?"

  "Oh, she had just got to that when I had to leave her." Betty rose,sighing, as a train whistled somewhere down the track. "Do you supposeGeorgia Ames will be on this one?"

  "Who can tell?" said Rachel. "There'll be somebody that we know anyway.Wasn't that first day queer and creepy?"

  "Yes," agreed Betty, "when nobody got off but freshmen frightened topieces about their exams. And that was only two days ago! It seems twoweeks. I've always rather envied the Students' Aid Society seniors,because they have such a good chance to pick out the interestingfreshmen, but I shan't any more."

  "Not even after to-day?"

  Betty frowned reflectively. "Well, of course to-day has been prettygrand--with all those ices, and Christy, and the freshmen all socheerful and amusing. And then there's the eight-fifteen. Won't it befun--to see the Clan get off that? Yes, I think I do envy myself. Can aperson envy herself, Rachel?" She gave Rachel's arm a sudden squeeze."Rachel," she went on very solemnly, "do you realize that we can't everagain in all our lives be Students' Aid Seniors, meeting poor littleHarding freshmen?"

  Rachel hugged Betty sympathetically. "Yes, I do," she said. "Why at thistime next year I shall be earning my own living 'out in the wide, wideworld,' as the song says, miles from any of the Clan."

  Betty looked across the net-work of tracks, to the hills that make acircle about Harding. "And miles from this dear old town," she added."But we can write to each other, and make visits, and we can come backto class reunions. But that won't be the same."

  Rachel looked at the pretty, yellow-haired child, and wondered if sherealized how different her "wide, wide world" was likely to be fromKatherine's or Helen Chase Adams's--or Rachel Morrison's. To some of theClan Harding meant everything they had ever known in the way of cultureand scholarly refinement, of happy leisure and congenial friendship. Itwas comforting somehow to find that girls like Betty and the B's, whohad everything else, were just as fond of Harding and were going to bejust as sorry to leave it. Rachel never envied anybody, but she liked tothink that this life that was so precious to her meant much to all herfriends. It made one feel surer that pretty clothes and plenty ofspending-money and delightful summers at the seashore or in themountains did not matter much, so long as the one big, beautiful fact ofbeing a Harding girl was assured. All this flashed through Rachel's mindmuch more quickly than it can be written down. Aloud she saidcheerfully, "Well, we have one whole year more of it."

  "I should rather think so," declared Betty emphatically, "and we mustn'twaste a single minute of it. I wish it was evening. It seems as if Icouldn't wait to see the other girls."

  "Well, there's plenty to do just now," said Rachel briskly, as thefour-ten halted, and the streams of girls, laden with traveling bags,suit-cases, golf-clubs, tennis-rackets, and queer-shaped bulky parcelsthat had obviously refused to go into any trunk, began to descend fromit.

  Rachel hurried forward at once, eager to find someone who needed help ordirections or a friendly word of welcome. But Betty stood where she was,just out of the crowd, watching the old girls' excited meetings and thenew girls' timid progresses, which were sure to be intercepted beforelong by some white-gowned, competent senior, anxious to miss no possibleopportunity for helpfulness.

  Betty had done her part all day, and in addition had taken Rachel'splace earlier in the afternoon, to give her a free hour for tutoring.She was tired now and hot, and she had undoubtedly eaten too many ices;but she was also trying an experiment. Where she stood she could watchboth platforms from which the girls were descending. Her quick glanceshot from one to the other, scanning each figure as it emerged from theshadowy car and stopped for an instant, hesitating, on the platform. Thetrain was nearly emptied of its Harding contingent when all at onceBetty gave a little cry and darted forward to meet a girl who was makingan unusually careful and prolonged inspection of the crowd below her.She was a slender, pretty girl, with yellow hair, which curled aroundher face. She carried a trim little hand-bag and a well-filled bag ofgolf-clubs.

  "Can I help you in any way?" asked Betty, holding out a hand for thegolf-bag.

  The pretty freshman turned a puzzled face toward her, and surrenderedthe bag. "I don't know," she said doubtfully. "I'm to be a freshman atHarding. Father telegraphed the registrar to meet me. Could you pointher out, please?"

  "I knew it," laughed Betty, gleefully. Then she turned to the girl. "Theregistrar is up at the college answering fifty questions a minute, andI'm here to meet you. Give me your checks, and we'll find an expressman.Oh, yes, and where do you board?"

  The pretty freshman answered her questions with an air of pleasedbewilderment, and later, on the way up the hill, asked questions of herown, laughed shamefacedly over her misunderstanding about the registrar,was comforted when Betty had explained that it was not an originalmistake, and invited her new friend to come and see her with thatparticular sort of eager shyness that is the greatest compliment onegirl can pay to another.

  "Dear old Dorothy," thought Betty, when she had deposited the freshman,considerably enlightened about college etiquette, at one of thepleasantest of the off-campus houses, and was speeding to the Beldenfor tea. "What a little goose she must have thought me! And what a dearshe was! I wonder if this freshman will ever really care about me thatway. I do mean to try to make her. Oh, what a lot of things seniors haveto think abou
t!"

  But the only thing to think about that evening was the arrival of theeight-fifteen train, which would bring Eleanor, the B's, Nita Reese,Katherine Kittredge, Roberta Lewis, and Madeline Ayres, together withtwo-thirds of the rest of the senior class back to Harding. It was suchfun to saunter down to the station in the warm twilight, to wait,relieved of all responsibilities concerning cabs, expressmen, andbelated trunks, while the crowded train pulled in, and then to dashfrantically about from one dear friend to another, stopping to shakehands with a sophomore here, and there to greet a junior, but beinggladdest, of course, to welcome back the members of "the finest class."Betty and Rachel had arranged not to serve on the reception committeefor freshmen that evening, and it was not long before the reunited"Merry Hearts" escaped from the pandemonium at the station toreassemble on the Belden House piazza for what Katherine called a "highold talk."

  How the tongues wagged! Eleanor Watson had come straight from herfather's luxurious camp in the Colorado mountains, where she and Jim hadbeen having a house-party for some of their Denver friends.

  "You girls must all come out next summer," she declaredenthusiastically. "Father sent a special invitation to you, Betty, andhe and--and--mother"--Eleanor struggled with the new name for thejudge's young wife--"are coming on to commencement, and then of courseyou'll all meet them. Mother is so jolly--she knows just what girlslike, and she enters into all the fun, just like one of us. Of courseshe is absurdly young," laughed Eleanor, as if the stepmother's youthhad never been her most intolerable failing in her daughter's eyes.

  Babbie had been abroad, on an automobile trip through France. She lookedmore elegant than ever in a chic little suit from Paris, with a toque tomatch, and heavy gloves that she had bought in London.

  "I've got a pair for each of you in my trunk," she announced, "andhere's hoping I didn't mix up the sizes."

  "Sixes for me," cried Bob.

  "Five and a-half," shrieked Babe.

  "Six and a-half," announced Katherine, "and you ought to have brought metwo pairs, because I wear mine out more than twice as fast as anybodyelse."

  "What kind of a summer have you had, K?" asked Babe, who never wroteletters, and therefore seldom received any.

  "Same old kind," answered Katherine cheerfully. "Mended twenty dozenstockings, got breakfast for seven hungry mouths every morning, playedtennis with the boys and Polly, tutored all I could, sent out father'sbills,--oh, being the oldest of eight is no snap, I can tell you, but,"Katherine added with a chuckle, "it's lots of fun. Boys do like you soif you're rather decent to them."

  "I just hate being an only child," declared Bob hotly. "What's the useof a place in the country unless there are children to wade in thebrook, and chase the chickens and ride the horses? Next summer I'm goingto have fresh-air children up there all summer, and youtwo"--indicating the other B's--"have got to come and help save themfrom early deaths."

  "All right," said Babe easily, "only I shall wade too."

  "And you've got to wash them up before I can touch them," stipulated thefastidious Babbie. "Where have you been all summer, Rachel?"

  "Right at home, helping in an office during the day and tutoringevenings. And I've saved enough so that I shan't have to worry onesingle bit about money this year," announced Rachel triumphantly.

  "Good for old Rachel!" cried Madeline Ayres, who had spent the summernursing her mother through a severe illness and looked worn and thin inconsequence. "Then you're as glad to get back to the grind as I am.Betty here, with her summer on an island in Lake Michigan, and Eleanor,and these lucky B's with their childless farms, and their Parisianraiment, don't know what it's like to be back in the arms of one'sfriends."

  "Don't we!" cried a protesting chorus.

  "Don't you what?" called a voice out of the darkness, and the realGeorgia Ames, cheerful and sunburned and self-possessed shook hands allaround, and found a seat behind Madeline on the piazza railing.

  "You were all so busy talking that you didn't see me at the train," sheexplained coolly. "A tall girl with glasses asked if there was anythingshe could do for me, and I said oh, no, that I'd been here before. Thenshe asked me my name, and when I said Georgia Ames, I thought she wasgoing to faint."

  "She took you for a ghost, my dear," said Madeline, patting her double'sshoulder affectionately. "You must get used to being treated that way,you know. You're billed to make a sensation in spite of yourself."

  "But we're going to make it up to you all we can," chirped Babbie.

  "And you bet we can," added Bob decisively.

  "Let's begin by escorting her home," suggested Babe. "There's just abouttime before ten."

  "I saw Miss Stuart yesterday about her coming into the Belden,"explained Betty, after they had left Georgia at her temporary off-campusboarding place. "She was awfully nice and amused about it all, and shethinks she can get her in right away, in Natalie Smith's place.Natalie's father has been elected senator, you know, and she's going tocome out this winter in Washington."

  "Fancy that now!" said Madeline resignedly. "There's certainly noaccounting for tastes."

  "I should think not," declared Katherine hotly. "If my father waselected President, I'd stay on and graduate with 19-- just the same."

  "Of course you would," agreed Babbie. "You can come out in Washingtonany time--or if you can't, it doesn't matter much. But there's only one19--."

  "And yet when we go we shan't be missed," said Katherine sadly. "Thecollege will go on just the same."

  "Oh, and I've found out the reason why," cried Betty eagerly. "It'sbecause all college girls are alike. Miss Ferris said so once. She saidif you waited long enough each girl you had known and liked would comeback in the person of some younger one. But I never really believed ituntil to-day." And Betty related the story of her successful hunt forthe freshman who was like herself.

  Everybody laughed.

  "But then," asserted Babbie loyally, "she's not so nice as you, Betty.She couldn't be. And I don't believe there are freshmen like all of us."

  "Not in this one class," said Rachel. "But it's a nice idea, isn't it?When our little sisters or our daughters come to Harding they can havefriends just as dear and jolly as the ones we have had."

  "And they will be just as likely to be locked out if they linger ontheir own or their friends' door-steps after ten," added Madelinepompously, whereat Eleanor, Katherine, Rachel and the B's rushed fortheir respective abiding places, and the Belden House contingent marchedup-stairs singing

  "Back to the college again,"

  a parody of one of Kipling's "Barrack-Room Ballads" which MadelineAyres had written one morning during a philosophy lecture that boredher, and which the whole college was singing a week later.