Betty Wales, Freshman Part 22

"Well, but----" began Emily doubtfully.

At that moment some one called, "Hurrah for 19--!" Betty caught up the cry and seizing Emily's hand rushed her down the hall, toward a group of freshmen.

"Make a line and march," cried somebody else, and presently a long line of 19-- girls was winding in noisy lock-step down the hall, threading in and out between groups of upper-cla.s.s girls and cheering and gaining recruits as it went.

"Hurrah for 19--!" cried Betty hoa.r.s.ely.

"Take it for 19--," she whispered to Emily, as the line stopped with a jerk that knocked their heads together.

"If you are sure---- Thank you for 19--," Emily whispered back.

"Here's to 19--, drink her down!

Here's to 19--, drink her down!"

As the chorus rose and swelled Betty felt, as she never had before, what it meant to be a college girl at Harding.

As Betty was leaving the gymnasium she met Eleanor face to face in the hallway.

"Wasn't it fun?" said Betty, shyly. Perhaps, now that the debate was over, Eleanor would be ready to make friends again.

"Patronizing the genius, do you mean?" asked Eleanor slowly. "I hope she didn't buy that hideous salmon-pink waist with your money."

"Oh, Eleanor, how did you ever find out?" cried Betty, deeply distressed. Only a few of the Chapin house girls knew anything about the disposition of the valentine money, and not even the rest of the firm had been told who had received it. So Betty had thought the secret perfectly safe.

"No one told me about your private affairs," returned Eleanor significantly. "I guessed and I congratulate you. The genius will be a useful ally. She will get all the freaks' votes for you, when----"

"Eleanor Watson, come on if you're coming," called a voice from the foot of the stairs, and Eleanor marched blithely off, without finis.h.i.+ng her sentence.

Betty stared after her with unseeing eyes. So that was it! She was to blame because Jean had told her of Eleanor's predicament--told her against her wish. And now she was supposed to be trying to get votes.

"Votes for what, I wonder? How perfectly absurd!" said Betty to the brick wall she was facing. But the appropriate smile would not come, for the absurdity had cost her a friend whom she had loved dearly in spite of her faults.

CHAPTER XIV

A BEGINNING AND A SEQUEL

"I shan't be here to dinner Sunday," announced Helen Chase Adams with an odd little thrill of importance in her voice.

"Shan't you?" responded her roommate absently. She was trying to decide which dress to wear to the Hilton House play. Her pink organdie was prettiest, but she really ought to save that for the Glee Club concert.

And should she ask her cousin Jack Burgess up from Harvard for the concert, or would it be better to invite Mr. Parsons? These absorbing questions left her small attention to bestow on so comparatively commonplace a matter as an invitation out to Sunday dinner.

"I thought you might like to have some one in my place," continued Helen, moving the pink organdie waist on to the same chair with the batiste skirt.

Betty came to herself with a start. "I beg your pardon. I didn't see that I had taken up all the chairs. I was trying to decide what to wear to the dramatics."

"And I was thinking what I'd wear Sunday," said Helen.

It was so seldom nowadays that she obtruded her affairs upon any one's notice that Betty glanced at her wonderingly. Her eyes had their starry look, and a smile that she was futilely endeavoring to keep in the background played around the corners of her mouth.

"I'm glad she's got over the blues," thought Betty. "Why, where are you going?" she asked aloud.

"Oh, only to the Westcott House," answered Helen with an a.s.sumption of unconcern. "Would you wear the blue silk waist or the brown dress?"

"Well, the Westcott is the swellest house on the campus, you know. When I go there I always put on my very best."

"Yes, but which is my best?"

Betty considered a moment. "Why, of course they're both pretty," she began with kindly diplomacy, "but dresses are more the thing than waists. Still, the blue is very becoming. But I think--yes, I'm sure I'd wear the brown."

"All right. If you change your mind before Sunday you can let me know."

"Yes," said Betty briefly. She was examining the batiste skirt to see if it would need pressing for the dramatics. After all, Jack was more fun, and probably Mr. Parsons was invited by this time anyhow--he knew lots of Harding girls. What was the name of Jack's dormitory house? She would ask the Riches; they had a brother in the same one. So she strolled off to find the Riches, and incidentally to get the latest basket-ball news from Rachel and Katherine. At nine o'clock they turned her out; they were in training and supposed to be fast asleep by nine-thirty. When she opened her own door, Helen was still sitting idly in the wicker rocker, looking as if she would be perfectly content to stay there indefinitely with her pleasant thoughts for company.

Betty had quite lost interest in Helen lately; she had small patience with people who moped, and besides, between Eleanor and the valentine enterprise, her thoughts had been fully engrossed. But this new mood made her curious. "She acts as if she'd got a crush," she decided.

"She's just the kind to have one, and probably her divinity has asked her to dinner, and she can't put her mind on anything else. But who on earth could it be--in the Westcott House?"

She was on the point of inquiring, when Helen diverted her attention to something else. "I made a wonderful discovery to-day," she said.

"Theresa Reed and T. Reed are the same person."

Betty laughed. "They might easily be," she said. "I don't see that it was so wonderful."

"Why, I've known Theresa all this year--she was the one that asked me to go off with her house for Mountain Day. She's the best friend I have here, but she never told me that she was specially interested in basket-ball and I never thought--well, I guess I never imagined that a dear friend of mine could be the celebrated T. Reed," laughed Helen happily. "But all sorts of nice things are happening to me lately."

"That's good," said Betty. "It seems to be just the opposite with me,"

and she plunged into her note to Jack, which must be ready for the next morning's post.

All that week Helen went about fairly wreathed in smiles. Her shyness seemed to have vanished suddenly. She joined gaily in the basket-ball gossip at the table, came out into the hall to frolic with the rest of the house at ten o'clock, and in general acted as a happy, well-conducted freshman should.

The Chapin house brought its amazement over the "dig's" frivolity to Betty, but she had very little to tell them. "All I know is that she's awfully pleased about being a friend of T. Reed's. And oh yes--she's invited out to dinner next Sunday. But of course there must be something else."

"Perhaps she's going to have a man up for the concert," suggested Katherine flippantly.

"Are you?" inquired Mary Rich, and with that the regeneration of Helen was forgotten in the far more absorbing topic of the Glee Club concert.

Sunday came at last. "I'm not going to church, Betty," said Helen shyly.

"I want to have plenty of time to get dressed for dinner."

"Yes, indeed," said Betty carelessly. She had just received an absurd letter from Jack. He was coming "certain-sure"; he wanted to see her about a very serious matter, he said. "Incidentally" he should be delighted to go to the concert. There was a mysterious postscript too:--"How long since you got so fond of Bob Winchester?"

"I never heard of any such person. What do you suppose he means?" Betty asked Mary Brooks as they walked home from church together. Mary had also invited a Harvard man to the concert and Dorothy King had found them both seats, so they were feeling unusually friendly and sympathetic.

"I can't imagine. Do let me see his letter," begged Mary. "He must be no end of fun."

"He's a worse tease than you," said Betty, knocking on her door.