Kitabı oku: «Betty Wales, Freshman», sayfa 7
CHAPTER XI
MID-YEARS AND A DUST-PAN
Viewed in retrospect the tragic experiences of one’s freshman year seem often the most insignificant of trifles; but that does not prevent their being at the time momentous as the fate of empires. There are mid-year examinations, for instance; after one has survived them a few times she knows that being “flunked out” is not so common an experience as report represents it to be, and as for “low grades” and “conditions,” if one has “cut” or been too often unprepared she deserves and expects them, and if she has done her best and still finds an unwelcome note or two on the official bulletin board, why, she must remember that accidents will happen, and are generally quite endurable when viewed philosophically. But in freshman year one is inexperienced and easily the dupe of mischievous sophomores. Then how is one to prepare for the dreadful ordeal? The distinction is not at all clear between the intelligent review that the faculty recommend and the cramming that they abhor. There is a disconcerting little rhyme on this subject that has been handed down from generation to generation for so long that it has lost most of its form and comeliness; but the point is still sharp. It is about a girl who followed the faculty’s advice on the subject of cramming, took her exercise as usual, and went to bed each night at ten o’clock, as all good children should. The last stanza still rhymes, thus:
“And so she did not hurry,
Nor sit up late to cram,
Nor have the blues and worry,
But–she failed in her exam.”
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 assembled 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 brass 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 substituting 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, wishing she were not such a “muff” 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, sophomore 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 scraped 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 sophomore 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 embarrassment 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 “butter-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.
Saturday 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 assistance.’ And Mary, she said for us not to forget that Friday is her day at home.”
“You are the luckiest thing, Betty Wales,” sighed Rachel, who worshiped 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 assured 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-fashioned 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 classes, 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 class-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 sunshine. “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 class.”
“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 class 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 sophomore had dubbed it, had elected its candidates for three class officers and the freshman representative on the Students’ Commission, while the various class 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 ship of state will run into a snag of faculty prejudices some fine day.”
Betty belonged to the indifferent faction of the class. 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 class 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 class 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 assemblies. 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 class representative for the Washington’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 sophomore 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.
“Madame president, I move that the freshman representative aforesaid be chosen by the chair. Of course,” she went on less formally, turning to the girls, “that is by far the quickest way, and Jean knows the girls as a whole so well–much better than any of us, I’m sure. I think that a lot depends on choosing just the right person for our debater, and we ought not to trust to a haphazard election.”
“Haphazard is good,” muttered the loquacious freshman, in tones plainly audible at the front of the room.
“Of course that means a great responsibility for me,” murmured the president modestly.
“Put it to vote,” commanded a voice from the front row, which was always occupied by the ruling faction. “And remember, all of you, that if we ballot for representative we don’t get out of here till four o’clock.”
The motion was summarily put to vote, and the ayes had it at once, as the ayes are likely to do unless a matter has been thoroughly discussed.
“I name Eleanor Watson, then,” said Miss Eastman with suspicious promptness. “Will somebody move to adjourn?”
“Well, of all ridiculous appointments!” exclaimed the loquacious girl under cover of the applause and the noise of moving chairs.
“Right you are!” responded Katherine, laughing at Adelaide Rich’s disgusted expression.
But Betty was smiling happily with her eyes on the merry group around Eleanor. “Aren’t you glad, girls?” she said. “Won’t she do well, and won’t the house be proud of her?”
“I for one never noticed that she was a single bit humorous,” began Mary indignantly.
Katherine pinched her arm vigorously. “Don’t! What’s the use?” she whispered.
“Nor I, but I suppose Miss Eastman knows that she can be funny,” answered Betty confidently, as she hurried off to congratulate Eleanor.
She was invited to the supper to be given at Cuyler’s that night in Eleanor’s honor, and went home blissfully unconscious that half the class was talking itself hoarse over Jean Eastman’s bad taste in appointing a notorious “cutter” and “flunker” to represent them on so important an occasion, just because she happened to be the best dressed and prettiest girl in the Hill crowd.
The next afternoon most of the girls were at gym or the library, and Betty, who was still necessarily excused from her daily exercise, was working away on her Latin, when some one knocked imperatively on her door. It was Jean Eastman.
“Good-afternoon, Miss Wales,” she said hurriedly. “Will you lend me a pencil and paper? Eleanor has such a habit of keeping her desk locked, and I want to leave her a note.”
She scribbled rapidly for a moment, frowned as she read through what she had written, and looked doubtfully from it to Betty. Then she rose to go. “Will you call her attention to this, please?” she said. “It’s very important. And, Miss Wales,–if she should consult you, do advise her to resign quietly and leave it to me to smooth things over.”
“Resign?” repeated Betty vaguely.
“Yes,” said Jean. “You see–well, I might as well tell you now, that I’ve said so much. The faculty object to her taking the debate. Perhaps you know that she’s very much in their black books but I didn’t. And I never dreamed that they would think it any of their business who was our debater, but I assure you they do. At least half a dozen of them have spoken to me about her poor work and her cutting. They say that she is just as much ineligible for this as she would be for the musical clubs or the basket-ball team. Now what I want is for Eleanor to write a sweet little note of resignation to-night, so that I can appoint some one else bright and early in the morning.”
Betty’s eyes grew big with anxiety. “But won’t the girls guess the reason?” she cried. “Think how proud Eleanor is, Miss Eastman. It would hurt her terribly if any one found out that she had been conditioned. You shouldn’t have told me–indeed you shouldn’t!”
Jean laughed carelessly. “Well, you know now, and there’s no use crying over spilt milk. I used that argument about the publicity of the affair to the faculty, but it was no go. So the only thing for you to do is to help Eleanor write a nice, convincing note of resignation that I can read at the next meeting, when I announce my second appointment.”
“But Eleanor won’t ask my help,” said Betty decidedly, “and, besides, what can she say, after accepting all the congratulations, and having the supper?”
Jean laughed again. “I’m afraid you’re not a bit ingenious, Miss Wales,” she said rising to go, “but fortunately Eleanor is. Good-bye.”
When Betty handed Eleanor the note she read it through unconcernedly, unconcernedly tore it into bits as she talked, and spent the entire evening, apparently, in perfect contentment and utter idleness, strumming softly on her guitar.
The next morning Betty met Jean on the campus. “Did she tell you?” asked Jean.
Betty shook her head.
“I thought likely she hadn’t. Well, what do you suppose? She won’t resign. She says that there’s no real reason she can give, and that she’s now making it a rule to tell the truth; that I’m in a box, not she, and I may climb out of it as best as I can.”
“Did she really say that?” demanded Betty, a note of pleasure in her voice.
“Yes,” snapped Jean, “and since you’re so extremely cheerful over it, perhaps you can tell me what to do next.”
Betty stared at her blankly. “I forgot,” she said. “The girls mustn’t know. We must cover it up somehow.”
“Exactly,” agreed Jean crossly, “but what I want to know is–how.”
“Why not ask the class to choose its speaker? All the other classes did.”
Jean looked doubtful. “I know they did. That would make it very awkward for me, but I suppose I might say there had been dissatisfaction–that’s true enough,–and we could have it all arranged – Well, when I call a meeting, be sure to come and help us out.”
The meeting was posted for Saturday, and all the Chapin house girls, except Helen, who never had time for such things, and Eleanor, attended it. Eleanor was expecting a caller, she said. Besides, as she hadn’t been to classes in the morning there was no sense in emphasizing the fact by parading through the campus in the afternoon.
At the last minute she called Betty back. “Paul may not get over to-day,” she said. “Won’t you come home right off to tell me about it? I–well, you’ll see later why I want to know–if you haven’t guessed already.”
The class of 19– had an inkling that something unusual was in the wind and had turned out in full force. There was no need of waiting for a quorum this time. After the usual preliminaries Jean Eastman rose and began a halting, nervous little speech.
