Betty Wales, Freshman Part 17

"You are the luckiest thing, Betty Wales," sighed Rachel, who wors.h.i.+ped Miss Ferris from afar.

"Now if I'd knocked the august Miss Ferris down," declared Katherine, "I should probably have been expelled forthwith. Whereas you----" She finished the sentence with an expressive little gesture.

"Who gave you the rest of this conservatory, Betty?" asked Mary Brooks.

"Clara Madison brought the carnations, and Nita Reese, a girl in my geometry division, sent the white roses, and Eleanor the pink ones, and the freshman I was sliding with these lilies-of-the-valley. It's almost worth a sprained wrist to find out how kind people are to you," said Betty gratefully.

"Too bad you'll miss to-night," said Mary, "but maybe it will snow."

"I don't mind that. The worst thing is my not being able to get my conditions off the bulletin," said Betty, making a wry face.

"Goodness! That is a calamity!" said Katherine with mock seriousness.

"Nonsense! You've studied," from Rachel.

"If you should have any conditions, I'll bring them to you," volunteered Eleanor quietly. Then she looked straight at Rachel and Katherine and smiled pleasantly. "I'm sorry to say that I haven't studied," she said.

Betty thanked her, feeling more pleased at the apparent harmony of the household than she had been with all her flowers. It was so difficult to like Eleanor and Rachel and Katherine and Helen, all four, so well, when Rachel and Katherine had good reason for disliking Eleanor, and Helen wouldn't hitch with any of the rest.

"Do you know that Prexy had forbidden sliding on dust-pans?" asked Mary Rich in the awkward pause that followed.

"Oh, yes," added Mary Brooks, "I forgot to tell you. So it's just as well that I lost mine in the shuffle."

"But I'm sorry to have been the one to stop the fun," said Betty sadly.

"Oh, it wasn't wholly that. Two other girls banged into each other after we left."

"But you're the famous one," added Rachel, "because you knocked over Miss Ferris. She looked so funny and knowing when Prexy announced it in chapel."

"I wish I could do something for you too," said Helen timidly, after the rest had drifted out of the room.

"Why you have," Betty a.s.sured her. "You helped a lot both times the doctor came, and you've stayed out of the room whenever I wanted to sleep, and brought up all my meals, and written home for me."

Helen flushed. "That's nothing. I meant something pretty like those,"

and she pointed to the tableful of flowers, and then going over to it buried her face in the bowl of English violets.

Betty watched her for a moment with a vague feeling of pity. "I don't suppose she has ten cents a month to spend on such things," she thought, "and as for having them sent to her----" Then she said aloud, "We certainly don't need any more of those at present. Were you going to the basket-ball game?"

"I thought I would, if you didn't want me."

"Not a bit, and you're to wear some violets--a nice big bunch. Hand me the bowl, please, and I'll tie them up."

Helen gave a little gasp of pleasure. Then her face clouded. "But I couldn't take your violets," she added quickly.

Betty laughed and went on tying up the bunch, only making it bigger than she had at first intended. After Helen had gone she cried just a little.

"I don't believe she ever had any violets before," she said to the green lizard. "Why, her eyes were like stars--she was positively pretty."

More than one person noticed the happy little girl who sat quite alone in the running track, dividing her eager attention between the game and the violets which she wore pinned to her shabby, old-fas.h.i.+oned brown jacket.

Meanwhile Betty, propped up among her pillows, was trying to answer Nan's last letter.

"You seem to be interested in so many other people's affairs," Nan had written, "that you haven't any time for your own. Don't make the mistake of being a hanger-on."

"You see, Nan," wrote Betty, "I am at last a heroine, an interesting invalid, with scars, and five bouquets of flowers on my table. I am sorry that I don't amount to more usually. The trouble is that the other people here are so clever or so something-or-other that I can't help being more interested in them. I'm afraid I am only an average girl, but I do seem to have a lot of friends and Miss Ferris, whom you are always admiring, has asked me to five o'clock tea. Perhaps, some day----"

Writing with one's left hand was too laborious, so Betty put the letter in a pigeon-hole of her desk to be finished later. As she slipped the sheets in, Miss Ferris's note dropped out. "I wonder if I shall ever want to ask her anything," thought Betty, as she put it carefully away in the small drawer of her desk that held her dearest treasures.

CHAPTER XII

A TRIUMPH FOR DEMOCRACY

By Wednesday Betty was well enough to go to cla.s.ses, though she felt very conspicuous with her scratched face and her wrist in a sling. And so when early Wednesday afternoon Eleanor pounced on her and Katherine and demanded why they were not starting to cla.s.s-meeting, she replied that she at least was not going.

"Nor I," said Katherine decidedly. "It's sure to be stupid."

"I'm sorry," said Eleanor. "We may need you badly; every one is so busy this week. Perhaps you'll change your minds before two-thirty, and if you do, please bring all the other girls that you can along. You know the notice was marked important."

"Evidently all arranged beforehand," sniffed Katherine, as Eleanor departed, explaining that she had promised to be on hand early, ready to drum up a quorum if necessary.

Betty looked out at the clear winter suns.h.i.+ne. "I wanted a little walk,"

she said. "Let's go. If it's long and stupid we can leave; and we ought to be loyal to our cla.s.s."

"All right," agreed Katherine. "I'll go if you will. I should rather like to see what they have on hand this time."

"They" meant the Hill-School contingent, who from the initial meeting had continued to run the affairs of the cla.s.s of 19--. Some of the girls were indignant, and a few openly rebellious, but the majority were either indifferent or satisfied that the Hill clique was as good as any other that might get control in its stead. So the active opposition had been able to accomplish nothing, and Hill's machine, as a cynical soph.o.m.ore had dubbed it, had elected its candidates for three cla.s.s officers and the freshman representative on the Students' Commission, while the various cla.s.s committees were largely made up of Jean Eastman's intimate friends.

"I hope that some of the crowd have nicer manners than our dear Eleanor and are better students," Mary Brooks had said to Betty. "Otherwise I'm afraid your s.h.i.+p of state will run into a snag of faculty prejudices some fine day."

Betty belonged to the indifferent faction of the cla.s.s. She was greatly interested in all its activities, and prepared to be proud of its achievements, but she possessed none of the instincts of a wire-puller.

So long as the cla.s.s offices were creditably filled she cared not who held them, and comparing her ignorance of parliamentary procedure with the glib self-confidence of Jean, Eleanor and their friends, she even felt grateful to them for rescuing the cla.s.s from the pitfalls that beset inexperience.

Katherine, on the other hand, was a bitter opponent of what she called "ring rule," and Adelaide Rich, who was the only recruit that they could succeed in adding to their party, had never forgotten the depths of iniquity which her pessimistic acquaintance had revealed in the seemingly innocent and well conducted first meeting, and was prepared to distrust everything, down to the reading of the minutes.

The three were vigorously applauded when they appeared in the door of No. 19, the biggest recitation room in the main building and so the one invariably appropriated to freshman a.s.semblies. Katherine whispered to Mary that she had not known Betty was quite so popular as all that; but a girl on the row behind the one in which they found seats explained matters by whispering that three had been the exact number needed to make up a quorum.

The secretary's report was hastily read and accepted, and then Miss Eastman stated that the business of the meeting was to elect a cla.s.s representative for the Was.h.i.+ngton's Birthday debate.

"Some of you know," she continued, "that the Students' Commission has decided to make a humorous debate the main feature of the morning rally.

We and the juniors are to take one side, and the senior and soph.o.m.ore representatives the other. Now I suppose the first thing to decide is how our representative shall be chosen."

A buzz of talk spread over the room. "Why didn't they let us know beforehand--give us time to think who we'd have?" inquired the talkative girl on the row behind.

The president rapped for order as Kate Denise, her roommate, rose to make a motion.