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“You didn’t put us into it–our letters!” gasped Roberta.
“Indeed I did,” said Mary. “I put them all in, as nearly as I could remember them, and Miss Raymond read it in class, and made all sorts of clever comments about college customs and ideals and so on. I felt guilty, because I never had anything read before, and of course I didn’t exactly write this because the letters were the main part of it. So after class I waited for Miss Raymond and explained how it was. She laughed and said that she was glad I had an eye for good material and that she supposed all authors made more or less use of their acquaintance, and when I went off she actually asked me to come and see her. My junior friends are hoping it will pull me into a society and I’m hoping it will avert a condition.”
“Where is the theme?” asked Eleanor. “Won’t you read it to us?”
“It’s–why, I forgot the very best part of the whole story. Sallie Hill has it for the ‘Argus.’ She’s the literary editor, you know, and she wants it for the next number. So you see you are famous.
“Why don’t some of you elect this work?” asked Mary, when the excitement had somewhat subsided. “It’s open to freshmen, and it’s really great fun.”
“I thought you said that you spent eight hours and were in despair – ” began Eleanor.
“So I was,” said Mary. “I declare I’d forgotten that. Well, anyhow I’m sure I shan’t have any trouble now. I think I’ve learned how to go at it. Why, do you know, girls, I have an idea already. Not for a theme–something else. It concerns all of you–or most of you anyway.”
“I should think you’d made enough use of us for the present,” said Betty. “Why don’t you try to make a few sophomores famous?”
“Oh it doesn’t concern you that way. You are to – Oh wait till I get it started,” said Mary vaguely; and absolutely refused to be more explicit.
CHAPTER VII
A DRAMATIC CHAPTER
The Chapin house girls decided not to spend the proceeds of the dancing class for an elaborate supper, as they had first intended, but to turn their “spread” into the common college type, where “plowed field” and chocolate made with condensed milk and boiling water are the chief refreshments, and light-hearted sociability ensures a good time for everybody.
“But do let’s have tea too,” Betty had proposed. “I hate the chocolate that the girls make, and I don’t believe tea keeps many of us awake. Did I tell you that mother sent a big box of cheese crackers?”
The spread was to be in Betty’s room, partly because she owned the only chafing-dish in the house, and partly because eighteen girls–the nine hostesses and the one guest asked by each–could get into it without uncomfortable crowding. Eleanor had lent her pile of floor cushions and her beloved candlesticks for the occasion, everybody had contributed cups and saucers. Betty and Helen had spent the afternoon “fixing up,” and the room wore a very festive air when the girls dropped in after dinner to see if the preparations were complete.
“I think we ought to start the fudge before they come,” said Betty, remembering the procedure at Miss King’s party.
“Oh, no,” protested Eleanor. “Half-past eight is early enough. Why, most of the fun of a spread is mixing the things together and taking turns tasting and stirring.”
“It would be awkward to finish eating too early, when that’s the only entertainment,” suggested Rachel.
“Or the candy might give out before ten,” added Mary Rich.
The majority ruled, and as some of the girls were late, and one had some very amusing blue-prints to exhibit, it was considerably after half-past eight before the fudge was started. At first it furnished plenty of excitement. Betty, who had been appointed chief fudge-maker, left it for a moment, and it took the opportunity to boil over. When it had settled down after this exploit, it refused to do anything but simmer. No amount of alcohol or of vigorous and persistent stirring had any effect upon it, and Betty was in despair. But Eleanor, who happened to be in a gracious mood, came gallantly to the rescue. She quietly disappeared and returned in a moment, transformed into a gypsy street singer. She had pulled down her black hair and twisted a gay scarf around it. Over her shirt-waist she wore a little velvet jacket; and a short black skirt, a big red sash, an armful of bangles and bracelets, and the guitar hung over her shoulder, completed her disguise.
“Sing a lil’?” she asked, smiling persuasively and kissing her hand to the party.
Then she sat down on the pile of cushions and played and sang, first a quaint little folk-song suited to her part, and then one or two dashing popular airs, until the unaccommodating fudge was quite forgotten, except by Betty, who stirred and frowned, and examined the flame and tested the thickness of the rich brown liquid, quite unnoticed. Eleanor had just shrugged her shoulders and announced, “I no more sing, now,” when somebody else knocked on the door, or rather pushed it open, and a grotesque figure slouched in.
At least half of it was head, black and awful, with gruesome green features. Short, unjointed arms came out of its waist, with green claws dangling where the hands should have been; and below its short skirt flapped the tails of a swallow-tail coat. The girls were too much astonished to speak, as the creature advanced silently into the room, and without a word began dancing something that, as Katherine expressed it afterward, was a cross between a double-shuffle and a skirt-dance. When it had succeeded in reducing its audience to a state of abject and tearful mirth, the creature stopped suddenly, announced, “You’ve seen the Jabberwock,” in sepulchral tones, and flopped on to the end of a couch, saying breathlessly, “Mary Brooks, please help me out of this. I’m suffocating.”
“How did you do it, Miss Lewis?” inquired the stately senior, who was Mary’s guest, wiping her eyes and gasping for breath as she spoke.
“It’s perfectly simple,” drawled Roberta indifferently. “The head is my black silk petticoat. I painted on the features, because the children like to have me do it at home, and it’s convenient to be ready. The arms are a broom-handle, stuck through the sleeves of this old coat, which is buttoned around my waist.”
“And now you’re going to do the Bandersnatch, aren’t you?” inquired the senior craftily, perceiving that the other side of the petticoat was decorated with curious red spots.
“I–how did you–oh, no,” said Roberta, blushing furiously, and stuffing the telltale petticoat under a convenient pillow. “I don’t know why I brought the things for this. I never meant to do it up here. I–I hope you weren’t bored. I just happened to think of it, and Eleanor couldn’t sing forever, and that fudge – ”
“That fudge won’t cook,” broke in Betty in tragic tones. “It doesn’t thicken at all, and it’s half-past nine this minute. What shall I do?”
Everybody crowded around the chafing-dish, giving advice and suggesting unfailing remedies. But none of them worked.
“And there’s nothing else but tea and chocolate,” wailed Adelaide.
“But you can all have both,” said Betty bravely, “and you’ve forgotten the crackers, Adelaide. I’ll pass them while you and Katherine go for more cups.”
“And you can send the fudge round to-morrow,” suggested Mary Brooks consolingly. “It’s quite the thing, you know. Don’t imagine that your chafing-dish is the only one that’s too slow for the ten-o’clock rule.”
Betty insisted upon sitting up to finish the fudge, but she ended by getting up before breakfast the next morning to cook it on Mrs. Chapin’s stove.
“Nobody seemed to care much about its being so slow, except me,” she said to Helen, as they did it up in neat little bundles to be handed to the guests of the evening at chapel. “Weren’t Eleanor and Roberta fine?”
“Yes,” agreed Helen enthusiastically. “But isn’t it queer that Roberta won’t let us praise her? She seems to be ashamed of being able to be so funny.”
Betty laughed. “That’s Roberta,” she said. “It will be months before she’ll do it again, I’m afraid. I suppose she felt last night as if she had to do what she could for the honor of the house, so she came out of her shell.”
“She told Rachel that she did it on your account. She said you looked as if you wanted to cry.”
Betty flushed prettily. “How nice of her! I did want to cry. I felt as if I was to blame about the fudge. I wish I had a nice stunt like that of Eleanor’s to come to people’s rescue with.”
“Were those what you call stunts?” inquired Helen earnestly. “I didn’t know what they were, but they were fine.”
“Why, Helen Chase Adams, do you mean that you’ve been in college two months and don’t know what a stunt is – ” began Betty, and stopped, blushing furiously and fearing that she had hurt Helen’s feelings. For the reason why she did not know about stunts was obvious.
Helen took it very simply. “You know I’m not asked to things outside,” she said, “and I don’t seem to be around when the girls do things here. So why should I know?”
“No reason at all,” said Betty decidedly. “They are just silly little parlor tricks anyway–most of them–not worth wasting time over. Do you know Miss Willis told us in English class that a great deal of slang originated in college, and she gave ‘stunt’ as an example. She said it had been used here ever so long and only a few years outside, in quite a different meaning. Isn’t that queer?”
“Yes,” said Helen indifferently. “She told my division too, but she didn’t say what it meant here. I suppose she thought we’d all know.”
Betty, stealing a glance at her, saw her wink back the tears. “She does care about the fun,” thought Betty. “She cares as much as Rachel or I, or Eleanor even. And she is left out. It isn’t a bit fair, but what’s to be done about it?”
Being young and very happy herself, she speedily forgot all about the knotty problem of the unequal distribution of this world’s goods, whether they be potatoes or fudge parties. Occasionally she remembered again, and gave Helen a helping hand, as she had done several times already. But college is much like the bigger world outside. The fittest survive on their own merits, and these must be obvious and well advertised, or they are in great danger of being overlooked. And it is safer in the long run to do one’s own advertising and to begin early. Eleanor understood this, but she forgot or ignored the other rules of the game. Betty practiced it unconsciously, which is the proper method. Helen never mastered its application and succeeded in spite of it.
Several evenings after that one on which the fudge had refused to cook, Alice Waite was trying to learn her history lesson, and her “queer” roommate, who loved to get into her bed as well as she hated to make it, was trying to go to sleep–an operation rendered difficult by the fact that the girl next door was cracking butternuts with a marble paper-weight–when there was a soft tap on the door.
“Don’t answer,” begged the sleepy roommate.
“May be important,” objected Alice, “but I won’t let her stay. Come in!”
The door opened and a young gentleman in correct evening dress, with an ulster folded neatly over his arm, entered the room and gazed, smiling and silent, about him. He was under average height, slightly built, and had a boyish, pleasant face that fitted ill with his apparent occupation as house-breaker and disturber of damsels.
The roommate, who had sat up in bed with the intention of repelling whatever intruder threatened her rest, gave a shriek of mingled terror and indignation and disappeared under the bedclothes. Alice rose, with as much dignity as the three heavy volumes which she held in her lap, and which had to be untangled from her kimono, would permit. She moved the screen around her now hysterical roommate and turned fiercely upon the young gentleman.
“How dare you!” she demanded sternly. “Go!” And she stamped her foot somewhat ineffectively, since she had on her worsted bedroom slippers.
At this the young gentleman’s smile broke into an unmistakably feminine giggle.
“Oh, you are so lovely!” he gurgled. “Don’t cry, Miss Madison. It’s not a real man. It’s only I–Betty Wales.”
“Betty!” gasped Alice. “Betty Wales, what are you doing? Is it really you?”
“Of course,” said Betty calmly, pulling off her wig by way of further evidence, and sitting down with careful regard for her coattails in the nearest chair. “I hope,” she added, “that I haven’t really worried Miss Madison. Take the screen away, Alice, and see what she’s doing.”
“Oh, I’m all right now, thank you,” said Miss Madison, pushing back the screen herself. “But you gave me an awful fright. What are you doing?”
“Why, we’re going to give a play at our house Saturday,” explained Betty, “and to-night was a dress rehearsal. I wanted to bring Alice a ticket, and I thought it would be fun to come in these clothes and frighten her; so I put on a skirt and a rain-coat and came along. I left my skirt in your entrance-way. Get it for me please, Alice, and I’ll put it on before I send any one else into hysterics.”
“Oh, not yet,” begged Miss Madison. “I want to look at you. Please stand up and turn around, so I can have a back view.”
Betty readjusted her wig and stood up for inspection.
“What’s the play?” asked Alice.
Betty considered. “It’s a secret, but I’ll tell you to pay for giving you both such a scare. It’s ‘Sherlock Holmes.’ Mary Brooks saw the real play in New York, and she wrote this, something like the real one, but different so we could do it. She could think up the plot beautifully but she wasn’t good at conversation, so Katherine helped her, and it’s fine.”
“Is there a robbery?” inquired Alice.
“Oh, yes, diamonds.”
“And a murder?”
“Well, a supposed murder. The audience thinks it is, but it isn’t really. And there’s a pretend fire too, just as there is in the real play.”
“And who are you?”
“I’m the villain,” said Betty. “I’m to have curling black mustaches and a fierce frown, and then you’d know without asking.”
“I should think they’d have wanted you for the heroine,” said Alice, who admired Betty immensely.
“Oh, no,” demurred the villain. “Eleanor is leading lady, of course. She has three different costumes, and she looks like a queen in every one of them. Katherine is going to be Sherlock Holmes, and Adelaide Rich is Dr. Watson and–oh, I mustn’t tell you any more, or Alice won’t enjoy it Saturday.”
“We had a little play here,” said Miss Madison, “but it was tame beside this. Where did you get all the men’s costumes?”
“Rented them, and the wigs and mustaches and pistols,” and Betty explained about the dancing-school money which the house had voted to Roberta’s project instead of to the spread.
“I wish I could act,” said Alice. “I should love to be a man. But my mother wouldn’t let me, so it’s just as well that I’m a perfect stick at it.”
“Roberta’s father wouldn’t let her either,” said Betty, “but mother didn’t mind, as long as it’s only before a few girls. I presume she wouldn’t like my coming over here and frightening you. But I honestly didn’t think you’d be deceived.”
“I’m so glad you came,” said Miss Madison lying back luxuriously among her pillows. “Does the story of the play take place in the evening?”
“Yes, all of it. I’m dressed for the theatre, but I’m detained by the robbery.”
“Then I have something I want to lend you. Alice, open the washstand drawer, please–no, the middle one–in that flat green box. Thank you. Your hat, sir villain,” she went on, snapping open an opera hat and handing it to Betty with a flourish.
“How perfectly lovely!” exclaimed Betty. “But how in the world did you happen to have it?”
“Why, I stayed with my cousins for two weeks just before I came up here, and I found it in their guest-chamber bureau. It wasn’t Cousin Tom’s nor Uncle Dick’s, and they didn’t know whose it was; so they gave it to me, because I liked to play with it. Should you really like to use it?”
“Like it!” repeated Betty, shutting the hat and opening it again with a low bow. “Why it will be the cream of the whole performance. It would make the play go just of itself,” and she put it on and studied the effect attentively in the mirror.
“It’s rather large,” said Alice. “If I were you, I’d just carry it.”
“It is big,” admitted Betty regretfully, “or at least it makes me look very small. But I can snap it a lot, and then put it on as I exit. Miss Madison, you’ll come to the play of course. I hadn’t but one ticket left, but after lending us this you’re a privileged person.”
“I hoped you’d ask me,” said Miss Madison gratefully. “The play does sound so exciting. But that wasn’t why I offered you the hat.”
“Of course not, and it’s only one reason why you are coming,” said Betty tactfully. “Now Alice, you must bring in my skirt. I have to walk so slowly in all these things, and it must be almost ten.”
When Sir Archibald Ames, villain, had been transformed into a demure little maiden with rumpled hair and a high, stiff collar showing above her rain-coat, Betty took her departure. A wave of literary and dramatic enthusiasm had inundated the Chapin house. The girls were constantly suggesting theme topics to one another–which unfortunately no one but Mary Brooks could use, at least until the next semester; for in the regular freshman English classes, subjects were always assigned. And they were planning theatre parties galore, to see Jefferson, Maude Adams, and half a dozen others if they came to Harding. Betty, who had a happy faculty of keeping her head just above such passing waves, smiled to herself as she hurried across the dark campus.
“Next week, when our play is over it will be something else,” she thought. Rachel was already interested in basket-ball and had prospects of being chosen for the freshman class team. Eleanor had been practicing hard on her guitar, hoping to “make” the mandolin club; and was dreadfully disappointed at finding that according to a new rule freshmen were ineligible and that her entrance conditions would have excluded her in any case.
“So many things to do,” sighed Betty, who had given up a hockey game that afternoon to study history. “I suppose we’ve got to choose,” she added philosophically. “But I choose to be an all-around girl, like Dorothy King. I can’t sing though. I wonder what my one talent is.
“Helen,” she said, as she opened her door, “have you noticed that all college girls have one particular talent? I wonder what ours will turn out to be. See what I have for the play.”
Helen, who looked tired and heavy-eyed, inspected the opera hat listlessly. “I think your talent is getting the things you want,” she said, “and I guess I haven’t any. It’s quarter of ten.”
CHAPTER VIII
AFTER THE PLAY
“Sherlock Holmes” was quite as exciting as Miss Madison had anticipated. Most college plays, except the elaborate ones given in the gymnasium, which are carefully learned, costumed and rehearsed, and supervised by a committee from the faculty–are amusing little farces in one or two short scenes. “Sherlock Holmes,” on the other hand, was a four act, blood-curdling melodrama, with three different stage settings, an abundance of pistol shots, a flash-light fire, shrieks and a fainting fit on the part of the heroine, the raiding of a robbers’ den in the dénouement, and “a lot more excitement all through than there is in Mr. Gillette’s play,” as Mary modestly informed her caste. It was necessarily cruder, as it was far more ambitious, than the commoner sort of amateur play; but the audience, whether little freshmen who had seen few similar performances, or upper class girls who had seen a great many and so fully appreciated the novelty of this one, were wildly enthusiastic. Every actress, down to Helen, who made a very stiff and stilted “Buttons,” and Rachel and Mary Rich who appeared in the robbers’ den scene as Betty’s female accomplices, and in the heroine’s drawing-room as her wicked mother and her stupid maid respectively, was rapturously received; and Dr. Holmes and Sir Archibald, whose hat was decidedly the hit of the evening, were forced to come before the curtain. Finally, in response to repeated shouts for “author,” Mary Brooks appeared, flushed and panting from her vigorous exertions as prompter, stage manager, and assistant dresser, and informed the audience that owing to the kindness of Mrs. Chapin there was lemon-ice in the dining-room, and would every one please go out there, so that this awful mess,–with a comprehensive wave of her hand toward the ruins of the robbers’ den piled on top of the heroine’s drawing-room furniture, which in turn had been a rearrangment of Dr. Holmes’s study,–could be cleared up, and they could dance there later?
At this the audience again applauded, sighed to think that the play was over, and then joyfully adjourned to the dining-room to eat Mrs. Chapin’s ice and examine the actors at close range. All these speedily appeared, except Helen, who had crept up-stairs quite unnoticed the moment her part was finished, and Eleanor, who, hunting up Betty, explained that she had a dreadful headache and begged Betty to look after her guests and not for anything to let them come up-stairs to find her. Betty, who was busily washing off her “fierce frown” at the time, sputtered a promise through the mixture of soap, water and vaseline she was using, delivered the message, assured herself that the guests were enjoying themselves, and forgot all about Eleanor until half-past nine when every one had gone and she came up to her room to find Helen in bed and apparently fast asleep, with her face hidden in the pillows.
“How queer,” she thought. “She’s had the blues for a week, but I thought she was all right this evening.” Then, as her conjectures about Helen suggested Eleanor’s headache, she tiptoed out to see if she could do anything for the prostrate heroine.
Eleanor’s transom was dark and her door evidently locked, for it would not yield when Betty, anxious at getting no answer to her knocks, tried to open it. But when she called softly, “Eleanor, are you there? Can I do anything?” Eleanor answered crossly, “Please go away. I’m better, but I want to be let alone.”
So, murmuring an apology, Betty went back to her own room, and as Helen seemed to be sound asleep, she saw no reason for making a nuisance of herself a second time, but considerately undressed in the dark and crept into bed as softly as possible.
If she had turned on her light, she would have discovered two telltale bits of evidence, for Helen had left a very moist handkerchief on her desk and another rolled into a damp, vindictive little wad on the chiffonier. It was not because she knew she had done her part badly that she had gone sobbing to bed, while the others ate lemon-ice and danced merrily down-stairs. Billy was a hard part; Mary Brooks had said so herself, and she had only taken it because when Roberta positively refused to act, there was no one else. Helen couldn’t act, knew she couldn’t, and didn’t much care. But not to have any friends in all this big, beautiful college–that was a thing to make any one cry. It was bad enough not to be asked anywhere, but not to have any friends to invite oneself, that was worse–it was dreadful! If she went right off up-stairs perhaps no one would notice; they would think at first that somebody else was looking after her guests while she dressed, and then they would forget all about her and never know the dreadful truth that nobody she had asked to the play would come.
When it had first been decided to present “Sherlock Holmes” and the girls had begun giving out their invitations, Helen, who felt more and more keenly her isolation in the college, resolved to see just how the others managed and then do as they did. She heard Rachel say, “I think Christy Mason is a dear. I don’t know her much if any, but I’m going to ask her all the same, and perhaps we shall get better acquainted after awhile.”
That made Helen, who took the speech more literally than it was meant, think of Caroline Barnes. One afternoon she and Betty had been down-town together, and on the way back Miss Barnes overtook them, and came up with them to see Eleanor, who was an old friend of hers. Betty introduced her to Helen and she walked between them up the hill and necessarily included both of them in her conversation. She was a homely girl, with dull, inexpressive features; but she was tall and well-proportioned and strikingly well dressed. Betty had taken an instant dislike to her at the time of their first meeting and greatly to Eleanor’s disgust had resisted all her advances. Eleanor had accused her frankly of not liking Caroline.
“No,” returned Betty with equal frankness, “I don’t. I think all your other friends are lovely, but Miss Barnes rubs me the wrong way.”
Helen knew nothing of all this, and Miss Barnes’s lively, slangy conversation and stylish, showy clothes appealed to her unsophisticated taste.
When the three parted at the head of the stairs, Miss Barnes turned back to say, “Aren’t you coming to see me? You owe me a call, you know.”
Helen and Betty were standing close together, and though part of the remark applied only to Betty, she looked at them both.
Betty said formally, “Thank you, I should like to,” and Helen, pleased and eager, chorused, “So should I.”
Later, in their own room, Betty said with apparent carelessness but with the covert intention of dropping Helen a useful hint, “You aren’t going to see Miss Barnes, are you? I’m not.”
And Helen had flushed again, gave some stammering reply and then had had for the first time an unkind thought about her roommate. Betty wanted to keep all her nice friends to herself. It must be that. Why shouldn’t she go to see Miss Barnes? She wasn’t asked so often that she could afford to ignore the invitations she did get. And later she added, Why shouldn’t she ask Miss Barnes to the play, since Eleanor wasn’t going to?
So one afternoon Helen, arrayed in her best clothes, went down to call and deliver her invitation. Miss Barnes was out, but her door was open and Helen slipped in, and writing a little note on her card, laid it conspicuously on the shining mahogany desk.
That was one invitation. She had given the other to a quiet, brown-eyed girl who sat next her in geometry, not from preference, but because her name came next on the class roll. This girl declined politely, on the plea of another engagement.
Next day Miss Barnes brushed unseeingly past her in the hall of the Science Building. The day after that they met at gym. Finally, when almost a week had gone by without a sign from her, Helen inquired timidly if she had found the note.
“Oh, are you Miss Adams?” inquired Miss Barnes, staring past her with a weary air. “Thank you very much I’m sure, but I can’t come,” and she walked off.
Any one but Helen Adams would have known that Caroline Barnes and Eleanor Watson had the reputation of being the worst “snobs” in their class, and that Miss Ashby, her neighbor in geometry, boarded with her mother and never went anywhere without her. But Helen knew no college gossip. She offered her invitation to two girls who had been in the dancing-class, read hypocrisy into their hearty regrets that they were going out of town for Sunday, and asked no one else to the play. If she had been less shy and reserved she would have told Rachel or Betty all about her ill-luck, have been laughed at and sympathized with, and then have forgotten all about it. But being Helen Chase Adams, she brooded over her trouble in secret, asked nobody’s advice, and grew shyer and more sensitive in consequence, but not a whit less determined to make a place for herself in the college world.
She would have attached less significance to Caroline Barnes’s rudeness, had she known a little about the causes of Eleanor’s headache. Eleanor had gone down to Caroline’s on the afternoon of the play, knocked boldly, in spite of a “Don’t disturb” sign posted on the door, and found the pretty rooms in great confusion and Caroline wearily overseeing the packing of her books and pictures.
Eleanor waited patiently until the men had gone off with three huge boxes, and then insisted upon knowing what Caroline was doing.
“Going home,” said Caroline sullenly.
“Why?” demanded Eleanor.
“Public reason–trouble with my eyes; real reason–haven’t touched my conditions yet and now I have been warned and told to tutor in three classes. I can’t possibly do it all.”
“Why Caroline Barnes, do you mean you are sent home?”
Caroline nodded. “It amounts to that. I was advised to go home now, and work off the entrance conditions and come again next fall. I thought maybe you’d be taking the same train,” she added with a nervous laugh.
Eleanor turned white. “Nonsense!” she said sharply. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you said you hadn’t done anything about your conditions, and you’ve cut and flunked and scraped along much as I have, I fancy.”
“I’m sorry, Caroline,” said Eleanor, ignoring the digression. “I don’t know that you care, though. You’ve said you were bored to death up here.”
“I–I say a great deal that I don’t mean,” gulped Caroline. “Good-bye, Eleanor. Shall I see you in New York at Christmas? And don’t forget–trouble with my eyes. Oh, the family won’t mind. They didn’t like my coming up in the first place. I shall go abroad in the spring. Good-bye.”
Eleanor walked swiftly back through the campus. In the main building she consulted the official bulletin-board with anxious eyes, and fairly tore off a note addressed to “Miss Eleanor Watson, First Class.” It had come–a “warning” in Latin. Once back in her own room, Eleanor sat down to consider the situation calmly. But the more she thought about it, the more frightened and ashamed she grew. Thanksgiving was next week, and she had been given only until Christmas to work off her entrance conditions. She had meant to leave them till the last moment, rush through the work with a tutor, and if she needed it get an extension of time by some specious excuse. Had the last minute passed? The Latin warning meant more extra work. There were other things too. She had “cut” classes recklessly–three on the day of the sophomore reception, and four on a Monday morning when she had promised to be back from Boston in time for chapel. Also, she had borrowed Lil Day’s last year’s literature paper and copied most of it verbatim. She could make a sophistical defence of her morals to Betty Wales, but she understood perfectly what the faculty would think about them. The only question was, how much did they know?
