Betty Wales, Freshman Part 16

Mary Brooks took pains that all her "young friends," as she called them, should hear of this instructive little poem.

"I really thought," said Betty on the first evening of the examination week, "when that hateful rumor was contradicted, that I should never be scared again, but I am."

"There's unfortunately nothing rumorous about these exams.," muttered Katherine wrathfully. "The one I had to-day was the real article, all right."

"And I have my three worst to-morrow and next day," mourned Betty, "so I've got permission to sit up after ten to-night. Don't all the rest of you want to come in here and work? Then some one else can ask Mrs.

Chapin for the other nights."

"But we must all attend strictly to business," said Mary Rich, whereat Helen Adams looked relieved.

And business was the order of the week. An unwonted stillness reigned over the Chapin house, broken occasionally by wild outbursts of hilarity, which meant that some examination or other was over and had not been so bad after all. Every evening at ten the girls who felt it necessary to sit up later a.s.sembled in one room, comfortably attired in kimonos--all except Roberta, who had never been seen without her collar--and armed with formidable piles of books; and presently work began in earnest. There was really no reason, as Rachel observed, why they should not stay in their own rooms, if they were going to sit up at all. This wasn't the campus, where there was a night-watchman to report lights, and Mrs. Chapin was very accommodating about giving permission.

"This method benefits her gas bill though," said Katherine, "and therefore keeps her accommodating. Besides, it's much easier to stick to it in a crowd."

Eleanor never went through the formality of asking Mrs. Chapin's permission to do anything, and she did not care for the moral support of numbers. She was never sleepy, she said, pointing significantly to her bra.s.s samovar, and she could work best alone in her own room. She held aloof, too, from the discussions about the examinations which were the burden of the week's table-talk, only once in a while volunteering a suggestion about the possible answer to an obscure or ambiguous question. Her ideas invariably astonished the other freshmen by their depth and originality, but when any one exclaimed, Eleanor would say, sharply, "Why, it's all in the text-book!" and then relapse into gloomy silence.

"I suppose she talks more to her friends outside," suggested Rachel, after an encounter of this sort.

"Not on your life," retorted Katherine. "She's one of the kind that keeps herself to herself. She hates us because we have to know as much about her as we do, living here in the house with her. I hope she gets through all right."

"She's awfully clever," said Mary Rich admiringly. "She'd never have said that a leviathan was some kind of a church creed, as I did in English."

"Yes, she's a clever--blunderer, but she's also a sadly mistaken young person," amended Katherine.

It was convenient to have one's examinations scattered evenly through the week with time for study between them, but pleasanter on the whole to be through by Thursday or Friday, with several days of delicious idleness before the new semester began. And as a certain faction of the college always manages to suit its own convenience in such matters, the campus, which is the unfailing index of college sentiment, began to wear a leisurely, holiday air some time before the dreaded week was over.

The ground was covered deeply with snow which a sudden thaw and as sudden a freeze had coated with a thick, hard crust. This put a stop to snow-shoeing and delayed the work of clearing the ice off Paradise pond, where there was to be a moonlight carnival on the evening of the holiday that follows mid-year week. But it made splendid coasting. Toboggans, "bobs" and hand sleds appeared mysteriously in various quarters, and the pasture hills north of the town swarmed with Harding girls out for fresh air, exercise and fun.

On Friday afternoon an ingenious damsel who had no sled conceived the idea of subst.i.tuting a dust-pan. So she borrowed one of an obliging chambermaid and went out to the little slope which divides the front from the back campus to try her experiment. In twenty minutes the hill was alive with girls, all the available dust-pans had been pressed into service, and large tin pans were found to do nearly as well. Envious groups of girls who could get neither the one nor the other watched the absurd spectacle from the windows of the nearest campus houses or hurried down-town to buy tinware. Sleds were neglected, toboggans despised; the dust-pan fad had taken possession of the college.

Betty, who had the happy faculty of being on hand at interesting moments, was crossing the campus on her way home from the Hilton House.

She had taken her last examination, had helped Alice Waite finish up a box of candy, and now had nothing to do until dinner time, so she stopped to watch the novel coasting, and even had one delicious ride herself on Dorothy King's dust-pan.

Near the gate she met Mary Brooks and Roberta and asked them if they had been through the campus.

"No," said Mary, "we've been having chocolate at Cuyler's." And she dragged her companions back to within sight of the hill. Then she abruptly turned them about and hurried them off in the other direction.

"Let's go straight down and buy some dust-pans," she began enthusiastically. "We have just time before dinner, and we can slide all to-morrow afternoon."

"Oh, no," demurred Roberta. "I couldn't."

Betty laughed at her expression of alarm, and Mary demanded, "Why not?"

"Oh, I couldn't," repeated Roberta. "It looks dangerous, and, besides, I have to dress for dinner."

"Dangerous nothing!" jeered Mary. "Don't be so everlastingly neat and lady-like, child. What's the use? Well," as Roberta still hung back, "carry my fountain pen home, then, and don't spill it. Come on, Betty,"

and the two raced off down the hill.

Roberta looked after them admiringly, wis.h.i.+ng she were not such a "m.u.f.f"

at outdoor sports.

The next afternoon Betty and Mary hurried over to the campus directly after luncheon to try their new toys. The crust was still firm and the new sport popular as ever.

"You see it's much more exciting than a 'bob,'" a tall senior was explaining to a group of on-lookers. "You can't steer, so you're just as likely to go down backward as frontward; and being so near the ground gives you a lovely creepy sensation."

"The point is, it's such a splendid antidote for overstudying. It just satisfies that absolutely idiotic feeling that every one has after mid-years," added an athletic young woman in a gray sweater, as she joined the group with her dust-pan tucked scientifically under her arm.

She was Marion Lawrence, soph.o.m.ore vice-president, and Mary Brooks's best friend. Betty, fearing to be in the way, joined another lone freshman from the Belden House.

"Do you suppose you could sit up to study to-night if you had to?"

inquired the freshman as they stood waiting their turns to go down.

"No, only it seems as if you always could do what you have to," answered Betty, starting off.

She decided presently that dust-pan coasting was not so much fun as it looked. Mary Brooks, coming to find her and ask her to join a racing tournament captained by herself and Marion Lawrence, declared noisily that she was having "the time of her gay young life," but Betty after the first coast or two began to think of going home. Perhaps it was because she was so tired. It seemed so much trouble to walk up on the slippery crust and such a long way round by the path. So she refused to enter the tournament. "I'm not going to stay long enough," she explained. "I shall just have two more slides. Then I'm going home to take a nap. That's my best antidote for overstudy."

The next coast was nicer. Perhaps the dust-pan had been too new. The Belden House freshman said that hers went better since her roommate had used it and sc.r.a.ped off all the paint in a collision.

"I wonder there aren't more collisions," said Betty, preparing for her last slide.

Half-way down she discovered that the other freshman and the rest hadn't started--that the hill was almost clear. Then somebody called shrilly, "Look out, Miss Wales." She turned her head back toward the voice, the dust-pan swirled, and she turned back again to find herself slipping rapidly sidewise straight toward a little lady who was walking serenely along the path that cut the coast at right angles. She was a faculty--Betty hadn't the least idea what her name was, but she had noticed her on the "faculty row" at chapel. In an instant more she was certainly going to run into her. Betty dug her heels frantically into the crust. It would not break.

"Oh, I beg your pardon, but I can't stop!" she called.

At that the little lady, who was walking rapidly with her head bent against the wind, looked up and apparently for the first time noticed the dust-pan coasters. Mirth and confusion overcame her. She stopped an instant to laugh, then started back, then changed her mind and dashed wildly forward, with the inevitable result that she fell in an undignified heap on top of Betty and the dust-pan. The accident took place on the edge of the path where the crust was jagged and icy. Betty, who had gone head-first through it, emerged with a bleeding scratch on one cheek and a stinging, throbbing wrist. Fortunately her companion was not hurt.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" sighed Betty, trying to brush the snow off her victim with one hand. "I do hope you'll forgive me for being so careless." Then she sat down suddenly on the broken crust. "It's only that my wrist hurts a little," she finished abruptly.

The girls had gathered around them by this time, sympathizing and lamenting that they had not warned Betty in time. "But we thought of course you saw Miss Ferris," said the tall senior, "and we supposed she was looking out for you."

So this was Miss Ferris--the great Miss Ferris. Rachel had soph.o.m.ore zoology with her and Mary Brooks had said that she was considered the most brilliant woman on the faculty. She was "house-teacher" at the Hilton, and Alice Waite and Miss Madison were always singing her praises.

She cut Betty's apologies and the girls' inquiries short. "My dear child, it was all my fault, and you're the one who's hurt. Why didn't you girls stop me sooner--call to me to go round the other way? I was in a hurry and didn't see or hear you up there." Then she sat down on the crust beside Betty. "Forgive me for laughing," she said, "but you did look so exactly like a giant crab sidling along on that ridiculous dust-pan. Have you sprained your wrist? Then you must come straight over to my room and wait for a carriage."

Betty's feeble protests were promptly overruled, and supported by Mary Brooks on one side and Miss Ferris on the other she was hurried over to the Hilton House and tucked up in Miss Ferris's Morris chair by her open fire, to await the arrival of the college doctor and a carriage. In spite of her embarra.s.sment at having upset so important a personage, and the sharp pains that went shooting up and down her arm, she was almost sorry when doctor and carriage arrived together. Miss Ferris was even nicer than the girls had said. Somehow she made one feel at home immediately as she bustled about bringing a towel and a lotion for Betty's face, hot water for her wrist, and "b.u.t.ter-thins" spread with delicious strawberry jam to keep her courage up. Before she knew it, Betty was telling her all about her direful experiences during examination week, how frightened she had been, and how sleepy she was now,--"not just now of course"--and how she had been all ready to go home when the spill came. And Miss Ferris nodded knowingly at Mary and laughed her little rippling laugh.

"Just like these foolish little freshmen; isn't it?" she said, exactly as if she had been one last year too. And yet there was a suspicion of gray in her hair, and she was a doctor of philosophy and had written the leading article in the learned German magazine that lay on her table.

"You must come again, both of you, when I can make tea for you properly," she said as she closed the carriage door.

Betty, leaning whitely back on Mary's shoulder, with her arm on Miss Ferris's softest down pillow, smiled happily between the throbs. If she was fated to have sprained her wrist, she was glad that she had met Miss Ferris.

Sat.u.r.day night and Sunday were long and dismal beyond belief. The wrist ached, the cheek smarted, and a bad cold added its quota to Betty's miseries. But she slept late Monday morning, and when she woke felt able to sit up in bed and enjoy her flowers and her notoriety. Just after luncheon the entire Chapin house came in to congratulate and condole with her.

"It's too windy to have any fun outdoors," began Rachel consolingly.

"Who sent you those violets?" demanded Katherine.

"Miss Ferris. Wasn't it dear of her? There was a note with them, too, that said she considered herself still 'deeply in my debt,' because of her carelessness--think of her saying that to me!--and that she hopes I won't hesitate to call on her if she 'can ever be of the slightest a.s.sistance.' And Mary, she said for us not to forget that Friday is her day at home."