Betty Wales, Sophomore by Margaret Warde (page 3)

“And you think that would be fair to the one who ought to have had the medal?”

“If he was much of a man he didn’t paint just for the medal,” returned Madeline quickly. “He painted because he couldn’t help it,–because he meant to make the most of himself,–and a medal more or less–what’s that to him?” She turned upon Betty suddenly. “Don’t you see that the great fault with the life here is that we think too little about living and too much about getting? These societies and clubs and teams and committees– they’re not the best things in life; they’re nothing, except what they stand for in character and industry and talent. No, I shouldn’t worry because Eleanor Watson got into Dramatic Club, if that’s what you mean, and may get into other things because she cribbed a story. That very fact will take all the fun out of it, unless she’s beneath caring,–but she isn’t beneath caring,” Madeline corrected herself swiftly. “No one with a face like hers is beyond caring. It’s the most beautiful face I ever saw–and one of the saddest.”

“Thank you very much, Madeline,” said Betty, soberly. “I’m so glad I could talk it over with you.”

Madeline was never serious for long at a time. “I’ve been preaching regular sermons,” she said with a laugh. “The thing I don’t understand is why this editor of ‘The Quiver’ hasn’t jumped on Miss Watson long ago. Editors are always reading college magazines–hoping to discover a genius, I suppose.”

“Are they?” said Betty.

A tap sounded on the door.

“Don’t worry, whatever else you do,–and hide your magazine,” said Madeline, and was off with a cheerful greeting for Helen Adams, who had come back from her afternoon at T. Reed’s crammed full of Napoleonic lore and basket-ball news.

“Theresa had made a table of dates and events,” said Helen eagerly. “I copied it for you–it’s lots of help. And Betty, she says the teams are going to be chosen soon, and she is almost sure you will be on.”

Madeline Ayres wondered idly, as she dressed for dinner, how Betty Wales had come into possession of a four months’ old magazine which was not to be had at any library or book-store in Harding. Then, being a person born, so she herself asserted, entirely without curiosity, she ceased wondering. By the time dinner was over and she had related a budget of her Napoleonic stories to a delighted group of anxious students, she had actually forgotten all about Eleanor’s affairs.

CHAPTER XII

A BRIEF FOR THE DEFENSE

“DEAR DOROTHY–
“I have thought and thought all the afternoon and I can’t do it. I should only–“

“DEAR DOROTHY-
“If you are perfectly sure that there is nobody else to go–“

“DEAR DOROTHY–
“Don’t you think that Mary Brooks or Marion Lawrence would be a lot better? Mary can always talk–“

“Oh, Dorothy, I don’t know what to say–“

Betty had slipped up-stairs to her room the minute dinner was over. The rest of the Belden House girls still lingered in the parlors, talking or dancing,–enjoying the brief after-dinner respite that is a welcome feature of each busy day at Harding. Ida Ludwig was playing for them. She had a way of dashing off waltzes and two-steps that gave them a perfectly irresistible swing. As Betty wrote, her foot beat time to the music that floated up, faint and sweet and alluring, through her half-open door. The floor around her was strewn with sheets of paper which she had torn, one after another, from her pad, and tossed impatiently out of her way.

“Such a goose as I am, trying to write before I’ve made up my mind what to say!” she told the green lizard, as she sent the seventh attempt flying after the others. “And I can’t make it up,” she added despondently, and shut her fountain pen with a vicious little snap. She would go down and have a two-step with Roberta, who had been Mary’s guest at dinner. Roberta could lead beautifully–as well as a man–and the music was too good to lose. Besides, Roberta might feel hurt at her having run off the minute dinner was over.

A shadow suddenly darkened the door and Betty turned to find Eleanor Watson standing there, smiling radiantly down at her.

“Eleanor!” she gasped helplessly. Somehow the sight of the real Eleanor, smiling and lovely, made the deceit she had practiced seem so much more concrete and palpable, the penalty she must pay at best so much more real and dreadful. Betty had puzzled over the rights and wrongs of the matter until it had come to be almost an abstraction–a subject for formal, impersonal debate, like those they used to discuss in the junior English classes, in high school days–“Resolved: that it is right to help plagiarists to try again.” Now the reality of it all was forced upon her. In spite of her surprise at seeing Eleanor, who almost never came to her room now, and her dismay that she should have come on this evening in particular, she found time to be glad that she had not yet refused Dorothy’s request–and time to be a little ashamed of herself for being so glad.

Her perturbation showed so plainly in her face and manner that Eleanor could not fail to notice it. Her smile vanished and a troubled look stole into her gray eyes. “May I come in, Betty?” she asked. “Or are you too busy?”

“No-o,” stammered Betty. “Come in, Eleanor, of course. I–I was just writing a note.”

Eleanor glanced at the floor, littered with all Betty’s futile beginnings, and her smile came flashing back again. “I should think,” she said, “that you must be writing a love letter–if it isn’t a sonnet– judging by the trouble it’s making you. They told me downstairs that you were cramming history, but I was sure it would take more than a mere history cram to keep you away from that music. Isn’t it lovely?”

“Yes,” said Betty. “Would you like–shan’t we go down and dance?” It would surely be easier to talk down there, with plenty of people about who did not know.

Again her embarrassment and constraint were too evident to be ignored, and this time Eleanor went straight to the heart of the matter.

“Betty,” she said, “don’t tell me that you’re not glad to see me back again after all this time. I know I’m queer and horrid and not worth bothering about, but when you find it out,–when you give me up–you and Jim–I shall stop trying to be different.”

For an instant Betty hesitated. Then the full import of Eleanor’s words flashed upon her. There was no mistaking their sincerity. She knew at last that she did “really mean something” to somebody. Ethel Hale had been wrong. Eleanor had not forgotten her old friends–and Betty would go to New York. With a happy little cry she stretched out her arms and caught Eleanor’s hands in hers.

“I’m so glad you feel that way,” she said, “and I shall never stop caring what you do, Eleanor, and neither will Jim. I know he won’t.”

“He gave me up once before, and if you knew something–” She broke off suddenly. “Betty, Jim is coming Friday night. That’s one reason why I’m here. I didn’t want him to miss seeing you just because I’d been disagreeable and was too proud to come and say I’m sorry. I am sorry, Betty,–I’m always sorry when it’s just too late.”

“Oh, that’s all right. I knew you didn’t mean anything,” said Betty, hastily. Apologies always made her nervous, and this particular one was fraught with unpleasant suggestions little guessed at by its maker. “You’ll be awfully glad to see your brother, won’t you?”

Eleanor’s assent was half-hearted. “To tell the truth, I’m too tired to care much what happens.”

“Oh, you won’t feel tired when he gets here,” suggested Betty, cheerfully.

Eleanor shook her head. “I’m tired all through,” she said. “I don’t believe I shall ever be rested again.”

“What are you going to do to entertain him?” asked Betty, wishing to change the current of Eleanor’s thoughts, since she did not dare to sympathize with them.

Eleanor detailed her plans, explained that Judge Watson had suddenly been called home from Cornell and so was not coming with Jim, according to the summer plan that Betty remembered, and rose to go. “I know you’ll like Jim, Betty,” she said, “and he’ll like you. He’s your kind.”

The moment she was left alone, Betty sat down again at her desk and dashed off her note to Dorothy.

“Dear Dorothy:

“I have thought it over and seen Eleanor. I am the one to go, and I’ll do my best.

“Yours ever,

“Betty.

“P.S.–I can’t start till Wednesday.”

She twisted the note into a neat little roll, and slipping out the back way went down to leave it at the florist’s, to be sent to Dorothy– securely hidden in a big bunch of English violets, lest any martinet of a nurse should see fit to suppress it–the very first thing in the morning. On the way back to her room she danced up the stairs in her most joyous fashion, and when Mary Brooks, coming up from escorting Roberta to the door, intercepted her and demanded where she had been all the evening, she chanted, “Curiosity killed a cat,” and fled from Mary’s wrath with a little shriek of delight, exactly as if there were no such things in the world as plagiarism and hard-hearted editors. For had not Eleanor come back to her, and was not the difficult decision made at last?

And yet, when Betty was a senior and took the course in Elizabethan tragedies, she always thought of the visit of Jim Watson as a perfect example in real life of the comic interlude, by which the king of Elizabethan dramatists is wont to lighten, and at the same time to accentuate, his analyses of the bitter consequences of wrong-doing. For close upon her first great relief at finding her decision made, followed a sudden realization that the incident was not yet closed. Madeline had read the November “Quiver”; some less charitable person might have done likewise. If she had been careless in leaving her magazine in sight, so might one of the three editors have been careless, with disastrous results. Mr. Blake might write to the college authorities. Everything, in short, might come out before Jim Watson had finished his week-end visit to Harding. Helping to entertain him seemed therefore a good deal like amusing oneself on the verge of a crackling volcano.

Jim’s personality made it all the harder; he was so boyishly light- hearted, so tremendously proud of Eleanor, so splendid and downright himself, with a flash in his fine eyes–the only feature in which he resembled Eleanor–and a quiver about his sensitive mouth, that suggested how deep would be his grief and how unappeasable his anger, if he ever found out with what coin his sister had bought her college honors.

He “blew in,” to use his own phrase for it, on an earlier train than Eleanor had expected, and marched up to the Hilton House with a jaunty air of perfect ease and assurance. But really, he confided to Eleanor, he was in a “blooming blue funk” all the way.

“And what do you think?” he added ruefully, “somehow I got mixed up with the matron or whatever you call her. I thought, you see, that this was like a boarding-school, and that I’d got to have some gorgon or other vouch for me before I could see you. So I asked for her first, and she’s invited me to dinner. Did you say there were thirty girls in this house? Sixty! I see my finish!” concluded Jim, dolefully.

Nevertheless he rose to the occasion and, ensconced between Eleanor and the matron he entertained the latter, and incidentally the whole table, with tales of mountain-climbing, broncho-busting and bear-hunting, that made him at once a hero in the eyes of the girls. But Jim disclaimed all intention of following up his conquest, just as he had, though ineffectually, disclaimed any part in the thrilling escapades of his stories.

“I can talk to a bunch of girls if I have to, but if you leave me alone with one, I shall do the scared rabbit act straight back to Cornell,” he warned Eleanor. “I came to see you. Dad and I compared notes and we decided that something was up.”

“Nonsense!” laughed Eleanor, but her eyes fell under Jim’s steady gaze, and her cheeks flushed. “Well then, I’m tired,” she admitted. “I suppose I’ve done too much.”

“I should think so,” retorted Jim, savagely. “Quit it, Eleanor. If you break down, what good will it do you to have written a fine story? I say”–his tone was reproachful–“one of those girls at the dinner you gave last night said your story was printed somewhere, and you never sent it to dad and me. You never even told us about it.”

“It wasn’t worth while.”

“You might let us decide about that. The girl at the dinner said it was a corker, and got you into some swell club or other. That’s another thing you didn’t write us about.”

“No,” said Eleanor, wearily. “You can’t expect me to write every little thing that happens, Jim.”

Jim, who remembered exactly what his fair informant had said regarding the importance of a Dramatic Club “first election,” knit his brows and wondered which of them was right. Finally he gave up the perplexing question and went off to order a farewell box of roses for his sister.

It was at about this time that Betty Wales, going sorrowfully to pay a book bill that was twice as large as she had anticipated, heard swift, determined steps behind her, and turned to find Jim Watson swinging after her down Main Street.

“I say, Miss Wales,” he began, blushing hotly at his own temerity, “Eleanor is off at a class this hour. I’m such a duffer with girls–is it all right for me to ask you to go for a walk?”

“Of course,” said Betty, laughing. “And if you ask me, I’ll go.”

“Then,” said Jim, “I do ask you. You’ll have to pick out a trail, for I don’t know the country.”

“Let’s walk out to the river,” suggested Betty. “It’s not so very pretty at this season of the year, but it’s our prize walk, so you ought to see it anyhow.”

Silently Jim fell into step beside her.

“Have you had a good time?” inquired Betty, who had decided by this time that Jim really enjoyed talking, only he couldn’t manage it without a good deal of help. She had seen more of him in the three days of his visit than any one else but Eleanor, but this was their first tete-a- tete. Hitherto, when Eleanor was busy Jim had gone on solitary tramps or sought the friendly shelter of his hotel.

“Great,” replied Jim, enthusiastically. “Harding College is all right. I’m mighty glad Eleanor wanted to stay on here.”

“You’re very fond of Eleanor, aren’t you?” asked Betty, sure that this topic would draw him out.

“You bet.” Jim’s eyes shone with pleasure. “Eleanor’s a trump when she gets started. She was splendid at home this summer. Of course you know”– Jim flushed again under his tan-“my mother–I’m awfully fond of her too, but of course her being so young makes it queer for Eleanor. But Eleanor fixed everything all right. She made dad and me, and mother too, just fall dead in love with her. You know the way she can.”

Betty nodded. “I know.”

“And I guess she’s made good here, too,” said Jim, proudly, “though you’d never find it out from her. Do you know, Miss Wales, she never wrote us a word about her story that came out in the college magazine.”

“Didn’t she?” said Betty, faintly.

“Nor about getting into some club,” continued Jim, earnestly. “I forget the name, but you’ll know. Isn’t it considered quite an honor?”

“Why, yes,” said Betty, in despair, “that is, some people consider it– Oh, Mr. Watson, here’s the bridge!”

Poor Jim, unhesitatingly attributing Betty’s embarrassment to some blunder on his part, was covered with mortification. “It’s evidently a secret society,” he decided, “and that other fool girl didn’t know it, and got me into this mess.”

So he listened with deferential attention while Betty tried to tell him how lovely the snowy meadows and the bleak, ice-bound river looked on a bright June day, and carefully followed her lead as she turned the conversation from river scenery to skating and canoeing; so that they reached home without a second approach to the dangerous topics.

Jim was going back to his work that evening. As he said good-bye, he crushed Betty’s hand in a bear-like grip that fairly brought tears to her eyes.

“I’m awfully glad to have met you,” he said, “though I don’t suppose you’d ever guess it–I’m such a duffer with girls. Eleanor told me how you stuck by her last year and helped her get her start. I tell you we appreciate anything that’s done for Eleanor, dad and I do.”

As Betty watched him stride off to the Hilton House, she remembered Madeline’s advice. “I guess she isn’t enjoying her honors very much,” she thought. “Imagine getting into Dramatic Club and not writing home about it! Why, I should telegraph! And if I had a thing in the ‘Argus'”–Betty smiled at the absurdity of the idea–“half the fun would be to see Nan’s face. And if I was ashamed to see her face!”

Betty gave a sigh of relief that the comic interlude was over. Under ordinary circumstances the entertaining of Jim would have been the height of bliss. Just now all she wanted was to go to New York and get back again, with her errand done and one source of danger to Eleanor, if possible, eliminated.

Jim left Harding on Tuesday evening. Wednesday morning bright and early, Betty started for New York. She went by the early train for two reasons. It was easier to slip away unquestioned during chapel-time, and furthermore she meant to reach New York in time to see Mr. Blake that same afternoon and take the sleeper back to Harding. She thought that spending the night with any of her New York cousins would involve too much explanation, and besides she could sleep beautifully on the train, and she wanted to be back in time for the Thursday basket-ball practice. The girls played every day now, and very often Miss Andrews dropped in to watch them and take the measure of the various aspirants for a place on the official teams, which it would soon be her duty to appoint.

CHAPTER XIII

VICTORY OR DEFEAT

During the first part of her journey Betty busied herself with reading over Mr. Blake’s two letters and the lengthy replies that the editors had composed. These last were as totally unlike as their writers, and Betty thought that none of them hit the point so well as Madeline’s suggestions, and none was so cogent as the plea that Eleanor and Jim between them had unconsciously made; but they might all help. From Mr. Blake’s two letters she decided that he must be a very queer sort of person, and she devoutly hoped that his conversational style would be less obscure than that of his first letter to Frances West; for it would be dreadful, she thought, if she had to keep asking him what he meant.

“Well, I guess I shall just have to trust to luck and do the best I can when the time comes,” she decided, putting the letters back into her suit-case with a little sigh. She admired Helen Adams’s way of deliberately preparing for a crisis, but in her own case it somehow never seemed to work. For example, how could she plan what to say to Mr. Blake until she knew what Mr. Blake would say to her? It would be bad enough to try to answer him when the time came, without worrying about it now.

After a brief survey of the flying landscape, which looked uniformly cold and uninviting under a leaden sky, and of her fellow-travelers, none of whom promised any possibilities of amusement, Betty remembered that she had intended to study all the way to New York, and accordingly extracted Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” from her bag. For half an hour she read the Knight’s tale busily. But the adventures of Palamon and Arcite, deciphered by means of assiduous reference to the glossary, were not exciting; at the end of the half hour Betty’s head drooped back against the plush cushions, her eyes closed, and her book slid unheeded to the floor. Regardless of all the elegant leisure that she had meant to secure by a diligent five-hour attack upon “The Canterbury Tales,” Betty had fallen fast asleep.

Some time later the jolt of the halting train woke her. She glanced at her watch–it was twelve o’clock–and looked out for the station sign. But there was no station sign and no station; only snowy fields stretching off to meet wooded hills on one side and the gorge of a frozen river on the other. It had been a gray, sunless morning; now the air was thick with snow, falling in big, lazily-moving flakes which seemed undecided whether or not the journey they were making was worth their while. All this Betty saw through small bare spots on the heavily frosted car windows. She picked up “The Canterbury Tales” from the floor where they had fallen, found her place and sat with her finger in the book, anxiously waiting for the train to go on. But it did not start. The other passengers also grew restless, and asked one another what could be the trouble. There were plenty of guesses, but nobody knew until Betty managed to stop a passing brakeman and asked him if they were going to be late into New York.

“Oh, my, yes, ma’am,” he assured her affably. “We’re about an hour late now, and there’s no tellin’ how long we’ll stand here. There’s been a big blizzard and an awful freeze-up in the west–” he waved his hand at the frosty window. “We do be gettin’ a bit of it now ourselves, you see–and the connections is all out of whack.”

This was a cheerful prospect. The train was due in New York at half past one. Allow half an hour for the present delay and it would be fully half past three before Betty could reach Mr. Blake’s office. Besides, she had brought nothing to eat except some sweet chocolate, for she had planned to get lunch in New York. It was most provoking. She settled herself once more, a cake of chocolate to nibble in one hand and her book in the other, resolved to endure the rest of the journey with what stoicism she might.

Finally, after having exhausted the entire half hour that she had allowed it, the train started with a puff and a wheeze, and ambled on toward its destination, with frequent brief pauses to get its breath or to accommodate the connections that were “all out of whack,” and a final long and agonizing wait in the yards. That was the last straw–to be so near the goal and yet helplessly stranded just out of reach. Wishing to verify her own calculations, Betty leaned forward and asked a friendly-looking, gray-haired woman in the seat ahead if she knew just how long it would take to go from the Forty-second Street station to Fulton Street.

The woman considered. “Not less than three-quarters of an hour, I should say, unless you took a Subway express to the bridge, and changed there. Then perhaps you might do it in half an hour.”

Betty thanked her and sat back, watch in hand, counting the minutes and wondering what she would better do if she had to stay in New York all night. In spite of some disadvantages, it would be much the best plan, she decided, to go to her cousins. But never thinking of any such contingency as the one that had arisen, she had left her address book at Harding, and she had a very poor memory for numbers. She remembered vaguely one hundred twenty-one, and was sure that cousin Will Banning lived on East Seventy-second Street. But was his number one twenty-one, or was it three hundred forty-something, and Cousin Alice’s one twenty- one on One Hundred and Second Street? Was that east or west, and was it Cousin Alice’s address before or after she moved last? The more Betty thought, and the more certain it seemed that she could not reach Mr. Blake’s office by any route before five o’clock, the more confused she became. She had never been about in New York alone, and she had a horror of going in the rapidly falling dusk from one number to another in a strange city, and then perhaps not finding her cousins in the end. Then there was nothing to do but stay at a hotel. Luckily Betty did remember very distinctly the name of the one that Nan often stopped at alone. She leaned forward again and asked the lady in front to direct her to it.

“Yes, I can do that,” said the lady brightly, “or if you like I can take you to it. I’m going there myself. Aren’t you a Harding girl?”

Betty assented.

“And I’m the matron at the Davidson,” said the gray-haired lady.

“You are!” Betty’s tone expressed infinite relief. “And I may really come with you? I’m so glad. I never went to a hotel alone.” And she explained briefly why she was obliged to do so now.

The snow was still failing softly when they finally reached New York and boarded a crowded car to ride the few blocks to their hotel. It seemed that Betty’s new friend had come down to visit her son, who was ill at a hospital. She helped Betty through the trying ordeal of registering and getting a room, and they went to the cafe together for a little supper. Then she hurried off to her son, and Betty was left to her own devices. She despatched a special-delivery letter to Helen, explaining why she could not take the sleeper–Helen had the impression that Betty had gone to New York to have her hair waved and was ashamed to confess to such frivolity. Then she yawned for a while over “The Canterbury Tales,” and went to bed early, so as to be in perfect trim for the next day’s interview. She intended to see Mr. Blake as early as possible in the morning and take a noon train for Harding.

“And I do hope there isn’t going to be a blizzard here,” she thought, as she fell asleep to the angry howling of the wind, which dashed the snow, now frozen, into tiny, icy globules, against her window panes.

But her hope was not destined to be realized. When she woke later than usual the next morning, with a queer feeling of not knowing where she was nor what had happened, the storm was still raging furiously. The street beneath her windows was piled high with impassable drifts, which were getting higher every minute, while on the opposite side a narrow strip of roadway was as clean as if it had been swept with the proverbial new broom. It was snowing so hard that Betty could not see to the corner of the street, and the wind was blowing a gale.

“I don’t care,” said Betty philosophically. “Here goes for seeing New York in a blizzard. I’ve always wanted to know what it was like.” And she began making energetic preparations for breakfast.

When she got down-stairs she found a hasty note from her friend of the day before, explaining that her son was worse and she had gone as early as possible to the hospital. So Betty breakfasted in solitary state on rolls and coffee,–for her exchequer was beginning to suffer from the unexpected demands that she had made upon it,–paid her bill, and bag in hand sallied forth to meet the storm. Before she had plowed her way to the nearest corner, she decided that a blizzard in New York was no joke. While she waited there in the teeth of the wind, bracing herself against it as it blew her hair in her eyes, whipped her skirt about her ankles, and swept the snow, sharp and cutting as needle-points, pitilessly against her cheeks, she was more than half minded to give up seeing Mr. Blake altogether and go straight to the station. But it was not Betty’s way to give up. She brushed back her flying hair, held up her muff as protection against the wind, and when her car finally arrived, tumbled on with a sigh of relief and then a laugh all to herself at the absurdity of the whole situation.

“Mr. Blake will want to laugh too when he sees me,” she thought, “and perhaps that will be a good beginning.”

In this cheerful mood Betty presently arrived at the door of “The Quiver” office. She made a wry face as she shook the snow out of her furs, straightened her hat and smoothed her hair. It was too bad to have to go in looking like a fright, after all the pains she had taken to wear her most becoming clothes, so as to look, and to feel, as impressive as possible. As a matter of fact, she had never looked prettier than when, having done her best to repair the ravages of the wind, she stood waiting a moment longer to get her breath and decide how she should ask for Mr. Blake and what she should say when she was summoned into his awful presence. Her cheeks were glowing with the cold, her eyes bright with excitement, and her hair blown into damp little curls that were far more becoming than any more studied arrangement would have been. Mr. Richard Blake would indeed be difficult to please if he failed to find her charming.

She gave a final pat to her hair, loosened her furs, and knocked boldly on the office door. There was no answer. Betty had reached out her hand to knock again when it occurred to her that people who came to her father’s office walked right in. So she carefully opened the door and stepping just inside, closed it again after her. She found herself in a big, bare room, with three or four desks near the long windows and a table by the door. Only one desk was occupied–the one in the farthest corner of the room. The young man sitting behind it–he was very young indeed, smooth-shaven, with expressionless, heavy-lidded eyes, and a mouth that drooped cynically at the corners,–barely glanced at his visitor, and then dropped his eyes once more to the papers on his desk. Betty waited a moment, while he wrote rapidly on the margin of one sheet with a blue pencil, and then, seeing that he apparently intended to go on reading and writing indefinitely, she gave a deprecating little cough.

“Is Mr. Richard Blake in?” she asked.

“Yes,” answered the young man behind the desk, without so much as glancing in her direction.

“Can–may I see him, please?”

“You can,” returned the young man, emphasizing the word can in what Betty thought an extremely disagreeable way.

He made no move to go and get Mr. Blake, and Betty, knowing nothing else to do, awaited his pleasure in silence.

“Is it so very important as all this?” asked the young man at last, tossing aside his papers and coming toward Betty with disconcerting suddenness. “You know,” he went on, “I can’t possibly read it to-day. I’m desperately busy. I shall put it in a pigeon-hole and I shan’t look at it for weeks perhaps. So I can’t see that it was worth your while to come out in a storm like this to bring it to me.”

“Are you Mr. Richard Blake?” demanded Betty, wishing to get at least one thing definitely settled.

The young man nodded. “I am,” he said, “but pray how did you arrive at your conclusion–so late?”

“Because,” said Betty promptly, “you talk exactly as your letters sound.” “That’s interesting,” said the young man. “How do they sound?”

“I mean,” said Betty, blushing at her own temerity, “that they are hard to understand.”

The young man appeared to be considering this remark with great seriousness. “That implies,” he began at last very slowly, “that you must have had either a letter of acceptance or a personal note of refusal from ‘The Quiver’ So perhaps your story is worth coming out in a blizzard to bring after all. Anyway, since you have brought it out in a blizzard, I’ll just glance over it, if you care to wait.”

Betty stared at Mr. Richard Blake in growing bewilderment. “I think you must have mistaken me for some one else,” she said at last. “You don’t know me at all, Mr. Blake, and you never wrote to me. The letter that I saw was written to some one else.”

“Indeed! And am I also mistaken in supposing that you have brought me a story for ‘The Quiver’?”

“I brought you a story for ‘The Quiver’!” gasped Betty. Then all at once she took in the situation and laughed so merrily that even the blase, young editor of “The Quiver” was forced to smile a little in sympathy. “I see now,” she said, when she could speak. “You thought I was a writer–an authoress. I suppose that most of the people who come to see an editor are authors, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” said the young man gravely. “The only possible reason that has ever brought a pretty young woman to ‘The Quiver’ office is the vain hope that because I have seen that she is pretty, I shall like her story better than I otherwise would.”

“Well,” said Betty, too intent upon coming to the point to be either annoyed or amused by Mr. Blake’s frank implication, “I haven’t come about a story. Or–that is, I have too. I came to see you about Eleanor Watson’s story–the one that is so like ‘The Lost Hope’ in the November ‘Quiver.'”

“Indeed!” The young man’s face grew suddenly sombre again. “Won’t you have a seat?” He led the way back to his desk, placing a chair for Betty beside his own. “Let us make a fair start,” he said, as he took his seat. “You mean the story that was copied from ‘The Quiver,’ I suppose.”

“Yes.” Betty hesitated, wondering if she was being led into some damaging confession. But she had not come to palter with the truth. “I’m afraid there is no doubt that it was copied from ‘The Quiver,’ Mr. Blake.”

“Did you know that it was a better story than the one in ‘The Quiver’?”

[Illustration: “LET US MAKE A FAIR START,” HE SAID]

Betty’s eyes sparkled with pleasure. “Do you really think so?” she asked eagerly. “I’m so glad, because I did, too, only I was afraid I might be prejudiced. But you wouldn’t be.” Betty stopped in confusion, for Mr. Blake had abruptly turned his back upon her, and was staring out the nearest window at the mist of flying snow.

There was a long pause, or at least it seemed oppressively long to Betty, who had no idea what it meant. Then “To whom have I the honor of speaking?” asked Mr. Blake in the queer, sarcastic tone that had annoyed Betty earlier in the interview.

As briefly as possible Betty explained who she was, and why she had come as special envoy from the editors. She was relieved when Mr. Blake turned back from his survey of the landscape with another faint suggestion of a smile flickering about his grim mouth.

“You relieve me immensely, Miss Wales,” he said. “I was quite sure you were not an editor of the ‘Argus,’ because you seemed so totally unfamiliar with the machinery of literary ventures; and so I supposed, or at least I feared, that Miss Watson had come to speak for herself.”

Betty flushed angrily. “Why, Mr. Blake, do I look–“

“No, you don’t in the least,” Mr. Blake interrupted her hastily. “But unfortunately, you must admit, appearances are sometimes deceitful. Now suppose that your friend Miss Watson had come herself. Does she look or act like the sort of person that she has shown herself to be?”

Betty smiled brightly. “Of course not,” she said. “She doesn’t at all. But then she isn’t that sort of person. I mean she never will be again. If she was, I can tell you that I shouldn’t be here. It’s just because she’s so splendid when she thinks in time and tries to be nice, and because she hasn’t any mother and never had half a chance that I’m sorry for her now. And besides, it’s certainly punishment enough to see that story in the ‘Argus,’ and know she didn’t write it, and to get into Dramatic Club partly because of it, and so have that spoiled for her too, and not to be able to let her family be one bit proud of her. Don’t you see that an open disgrace wouldn’t mean any more punishment? It would only make it harder for her to be fair and square again. It isn’t as if she didn’t care. She hates herself for it, Mr. Blake, I know she does.”

Betty paused for breath and Mr. Richard Blake took the opportunity to speak. “What, may I ask, is the Dramatic Club?”

“Oh, a splendid literary club that some of the nicest girls in college belong to,” explained Betty impatiently, feeling that the question was not much to the point.

“Do you belong to it?” demanded Mr. Blake.

“Oh, no,” said Betty, with a laugh. “I’m not bright enough. I hate to stick to things long enough to learn them.”

“That’s unfortunate, because I was hoping you were a member,” said Mr. Blake, inconsequently. “But to return to the story, do you think that Miss Watson was so very much to blame for copying it?”

“Of course I do,” said Betty, indignantly, wondering what Mr. Richard Blake could possibly be driving at now.

“But consider,” he pursued. “Miss Watson is a very clever girl, isn’t she?”

“Yes, indeed” assented Betty, eagerly.

“She finds this story–an unusual story, rather badly written, with a very weak ending. It strikes her as having possibilities. She puts on the needed touches,–the finish, the phrasing and an ending that is almost a stroke of genius. Isn’t the story hers?”

Betty waited a moment. “No, Mr. Blake,” she said decidedly, “it isn’t. Those little changes don’t make any difference. She took it from ‘The Quiver.'”

“But how about Shakespeare’s plays? Every one of them has a borrowed plot. Shakespeare improved it, added incidents and characters, fused the whole situation in the divine fire of his genius. But some characters and the general outline of the plot he borrowed. We don’t say he stole them. We don’t call him a plagiarist, Miss Wales.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Betty, doubtfully. “I never understood about Shakespeare’s plots; but I suppose it was different in those days. Lots of things were. And besides he was a regular genius, and I know that what he did hasn’t anything to do with Eleanor. She oughtn’t to have copied a story. I don’t see how she could do it; but I wish you could feel that it was right to overlook it.”

“Miss Wales,” said Mr. Blake, abruptly, “I’m going to tell you something. I don’t care a snap of my finger for Miss Watson. I don’t really believe she’s worth much consideration, though her having a friend who will go around New York for her on a day like this seems to indicate the contrary. But what I’m particularly interested in is the moral tone of Harding College. That’s a big thing, a thing worth thought and effort and personal sacrifice to maintain. Now tell me frankly, Miss Wales, how would the Harding girls as a whole look at this matter?”

“If you knew any,” returned Betty, swiftly, “you wouldn’t ask. Of course they’d feel just the way I do.”

“Perhaps even the way I do?”

“Y-yes,” admitted Betty, grudgingly. “But I believe I could bring them round,” she added with a mischievous smile.

“Then how did Miss Watson happen to do such a thing?”

“Because,” explained Betty, earnestly, “she doesn’t feel the way the rest of the girls do about such things. I’m awfully fond of her, but I noticed the difference almost the first time I met her. Last year she–oh, there was nothing like this,” added Betty, quickly, “and after she saw how the other girls felt, she changed. But I suppose she couldn’t change all at once, and so she did this. But she isn’t a typical Harding girl, indeed she isn’t, Mr. Blake.”

“And yet she is a member of the Dramatic Club,” said Mr. Blake, taking up a telegram from his desk.

“Don’t you suppose she wishes she wasn’t?” inquired Betty.

Mr. Blake made no answer. “Well, Miss Wales,” he said, at last, “I fancy we’ve talked as much about this as is profitable. I’m very glad to have seen you, but I’m sorry that you found us in such disorder. The office boy is stuck in the drifts over in Brooklyn, and my assistant and the stenographer are snowed up in Harlem. I only hope you won’t get snowed in anywhere between here and Harding. You’re going back to-day, you said?”

Betty nodded. “And I should like–“

“To be sure,” Mr. Blake took her up. “You would like to know my answer. Well, Miss Wales, I really think you deserve it, too; but as it happens, I find I’m going up to Harding next week, and I want to look over the ground for myself,–see what I think about the moral tone of things, you know.”

“You’re coming up to Harding!” said Betty, ruefully. “Then I needn’t have come down here at all.”

“Oh, but I didn’t know it till to-day,” explained Mr. Blake, soothingly. “I got the telegram while I was breakfasting this morning. I can’t telegraph my answer, because the wires are all down, so you might tell them I’ve written, or you might post my answer for me in Harding. I have the greatest confidence in your ability to get through the drifts, Miss Wales.”

“Are you”–Betty hesitated–“are you coming up about this, Mr. Blake?”

For answer he passed her the telegram. It was an invitation from the newly-elected president of the Dramatic Club–Beatrice Egerton had gone out of office at midyears–to lecture before an open meeting of the society a week from the following Saturday.

“Goodness!” said Betty, returning the telegram. “I didn’t know you were a lecturer too, Mr. Blake.”

“Oh, I’m not much of one,” returned Mr. Blake, easily. “I suspect that the man they had engaged couldn’t come, and Miss Stuart–you know her, I presume–who’s an old friend of mine, suggested me as a forlorn hope. You see,” he added, “‘The Quiver’ is a new thing and doesn’t go everywhere yet, as your friend Miss Watson was clever enough to know; but before I began to edit it, I used to write dramatic criticisms for the newspapers. Some people didn’t like my theories about the stage and the right kind of plays and the right way of acting them; so it amuses them now to hear me lecture and to think to themselves ‘How foolish!’ ‘How absurd!’ as I talk.”

“I see,” laughed Betty. “I’m afraid I don’t know much about dramatic criticism.”

“Well, it doesn’t amount to very much,” returned Mr. Blake, genially. “That’s why I stopped doing it. Shall you come to hear me lecture, Miss Wales?”

Betty laughed again. “I shall if I can get an invitation,” she said. “I suppose it’s an invitation affair.”

“And Miss Watson will be there?”

Betty nodded. “Unless, of course, she knows that you are the editor of ‘The Quiver.'”

“She won’t,” said Mr. Blake, “unless you or the editors of the ‘Argus’ tell her. Miss Stuart doesn’t know, and she is probably the only other person up there who’s ever heard of me. Good-bye, Miss Wales, until next week, Saturday.”

Betty got her bag from the elevator boy, into whose keeping she had trustfully confided it, and went out into the snow. She was very much afraid that she had not done her full duty. Dorothy had told her to be sure to pin Mr. Blake down to something definite. Well, she had tried to, but she had not succeeded. As she thought over the interview, she could not remember that she had said anything very much to the point. It seemed, indeed, as if they had talked mostly about other things; and yet toward the last Mr. Blake’s manner had been much more cordial, if that meant anything. Anyway it was all over and done with now, and quite useless. Dorothy and Beatrice and Frances could do their own talking next week. And–she had stood on the corner for ten minutes and still there was no car in sight. A few had crawled past on their way to the Battery, but none had come back. It was frightfully cold. Betty stamped her feet, slapped her arms, warmed first one aching ear and then the other. Still no car. A diminutive newsboy had stopped by her side, and in despair she appealed to him.

“Isn’t there some other way to get up town?” she asked. “These cars must have stopped running, and I’ve got to get to the Central station.”

“Take de L to de bridge and den de Subway. Dat ain’t snowed in,” suggested the little newsboy. “C’n I carry your bag, lady?”

It was only a few blocks, but it seemed at least a mile to Betty, too cold and tired to enjoy the tussle with the wind any longer. When she had stumbled up the long flight of stairs and dropped herself and her bag in the nearest corner of the waiting train, she could scarcely have taken another step.

The Central station, like the whole city, wore a dejected, deserted appearance. Yes, there would be a train for Harding some time, a guard assured Betty. He could not say when it would start. Oh, it had been due to start at ten-thirty, and it was now exactly twelve-five. There was nothing to do but wait. So Betty waited, dividing her time between “The Canterbury Tales”–she had not money enough to dare to waste any on a magazine–and a woman, who was also waiting for the belated ten-thirty. Her baby was ill, she told Betty; she feared it would die before she could get to it. Betty’s own weariness and discouragement sank into insignificance beside her companion’s trouble, and in trying to reassure her she became quite cheerful herself.

At half past eleven that night Madeline Ayres heard something bang against her window and looked out to find Betty Wales standing in the drifts, snowballing the front windows of the Belden House with an impartiality born of despair.

“I thought I should never wake any one up,” she said, when Madeline had unlocked the door and let her into the grateful warmth of the hall. “The bell wouldn’t ring and I was so afraid out there, and I’ve been ten hours coming from New York, and I’m starved, Madeline.”

When, after having enjoyed a delicious, if not particularly digestible supper of coffee and Welsh rarebit in Madeline’s room, Betty crept softly to her own, and turned up the gas just far enough to undress by, Helen woke and sat straight up in bed.

“Why, Betty!” she said, “I’m awfully glad you’ve come. We all worried so about you. But–why, Betty, your hair isn’t waved a bit. Didn’t you have it waved?”

“Helen, were you ever in New York in a blizzard?” enquired Betty, busily unlacing her shoe-strings.

“No,” said Helen. “Did it take out the curl?”

“Would it take out the curl!” repeated Betty scornfully. “It would take out the curliest curl that ever was in thirty seconds. It was perfectly awful. But, Helen, don’t say anything about it, but I didn’t go to New York for that.”

“Oh!” said Helen.

The next day Betty woke up with a splitting headache and a sore throat. The day after the doctor came and called it a mild case of grippe. It was a week before she felt like playing basket-ball, and that very day the teams were chosen and Babbie had the position as sub-centre that Betty had coveted. One thing she gained by being ill. By the time she was able to be up and out even Mary Brooks, with her “satiable curiosity,” had forgotten to ask why she went to New York.

CHAPTER XIV

A DISTINGUISHED GUEST

“It’s going to be lots of fun. They can’t any of them act at all, of course, and their plays are the wildest things, Babe says. She and Bob went once last winter. This one is called ‘The Hand of Fate’–doesn’t that sound thrilling? I say, Betty, I think you might be a true sport and come along. You know you don’t care a straw about ‘The Tendencies of the Modern Drama.'”

Katherine Kittredge sat cross-legged on Betty’s couch, with Betty’s entire collection of pillows piled comfortably behind her back, while she held forth with eloquent enthusiasm upon the charms of the “ten-twenty- thirty” cent show which was giving its final performance that evening at the Harding opera house.

“I don’t know anything about them, so how can I tell whether I care or not?” retorted Betty, who was sitting before her desk engaged in a desperate effort to bring some semblance of order out of the chaos that littered its shelf and pigeon-holes.

“Well, even if you do care, you can probably read it all up in some book,” continued Katherine. “And, besides,” she added briskly. “you would get a lot of points to-night. Isn’t ‘The Hand of Fate’ a modern drama, I should like to know?”

Betty gave a sudden joyous exclamation. “Why, I’m finding all the things I’ve lost, Katherine. Here’s my pearl pin that I thought the sneak thieves must have stolen. I remember now that I put it into an envelope to take down to be cleaned. And,”–joy changing abruptly to despair,– “here’s my last week’s French exercise, that I hunted and hunted for, and finally thought I must have given to some one to hand in for me. Do you suppose mademoiselle will ever believe me?”

Katherine chuckled. “She would if she knew your habits better. Now listen, Betty. Nita’s coming to-night, and Babe and Babbie–Bob would, only she doesn’t dare cut the lecture when she’s just gone into Dramatic Club–and Rachel and Roberta, and I’ve about half persuaded Mary Brooks. We’re going to sit in the bald-headed row and clap all the hero’s tenor solos and sob when the heroine breaks his heart, and hiss the villain. How’s that for a nice little stunt?”

“I just love ten-cent plays,” admitted Betty, obviously weakening.

“Then come on,” urged Katherine.
Betty shook her head. “No, I don’t believe I will this time. You see Emily asked me to the lecture, and I accepted.”

“Well, so did most of us accept,” argued Katherine. “You needn’t think we weren’t asked. Emily won’t care. Just give your ticket away, so there won’t be too many vacant seats, and come along.”

“But you see,” explained Betty, “I really do want to hear the lecture, and I can go off on a lark with you girls almost any time.”

“I never knew you to be so keen about a lecture before,” said Katherine indignantly. “I believe Helen Adams is turning you into a regular dig.”

“Don’t worry,” laughed Betty. “You see one reason why I–“

There was a tap on the door, and without waiting for an answer to her knock Eleanor Watson entered. She was apparently in the best of spirits; there was no hint in face or manner of the weariness and nervous depression that had been so evident at the time of Jim’s visit.

“Have you both tickets for Mr. Blake’s lecture?” she asked with a careless little nod for Katherine. “I have one left and Beatrice has one, and she sent me out hunting for victims. I’ve asked you once already, haven’t I, Betty?”

“Yes, you did,” said Betty, “but Emily asked me before that.”

“And I’m going to ‘The Hand of Fate,'” said Katherine stiffly, picking up a book from the table and turning over its pages with an air of studied indifference. She had no intention of being patronized by Eleanor Watson.

“But she’s given away her ticket, Eleanor,” said Betty pacifically, “so you needn’t worry about empty seats.”

“Oh, we’re not worrying,” returned Eleanor loftily. “The subject is so attractive”–Katherine winked at Betty from behind the shelter of her book. “And then Miss Stuart knows Mr. Blake, and she says that he’s a splendid speaker. Miss Stuart is ill to-day, so Miss Ferris is going to have Mr. Blake up to dinner. Of course we Hilton House girls are dreadfully excited about that.”

“Of course,” said Betty, with a little gasp of dismay which neither of her friends seemed to notice.

“Miss Ferris has asked the Dramatic Club girls to sit at her table,” went on Eleanor impressively, “and she wants me to be on her other side, right opposite Mr. Blake. Just think of that!”

“Splendid!” said Betty, feeling like a traitor. And yet what else could she say, and what difference would it make, since Eleanor did not know that Mr. Blake was the editor of “The Quiver,” and Mr. Blake, in the general confusion of introductions, would probably not catch Eleanor’s name.

“I hope you know a good deal more about the tendencies of the modern drama than I do,” said Katherine drily, “if you’re in as deep as all that.” She slid off the couch with a jerk. “Good-bye, Betty. Are you sure you won’t change your mind?”

“I guess not this time, Katherine,” said Betty, following her guest to the door.

Eleanor went off too, after a moment, and Betty was left free to bestow her undivided attention upon the rearrangement of her desk. But even several “finds” quite as important and surprising as the pearl pin and the French theme did not serve to concentrate her thoughts upon her own affairs. The absorbing question was, what did Mr. Blake mean to do, and how would a dinner with Eleanor in the seat opposite affect his intentions? He had said that he wasn’t interested in Eleanor, but he couldn’t help being influenced by what she said and did, if he knew who she was. For the hundredth time Betty questioned, did Eleanor deserve the consideration that was being asked for her? Was it fair to set aside the gay, self-absorbed Eleanor of to-day in favor of the clinging, repentant Eleanor of the week before? Why, yes, she thought, it must be fair to judge a person at her best, if you wanted her to be her best. She sighed over the perplexities of life, and then she sighed again, because of her tiresome desk and the Saturday afternoon that was slipping away so fast. It was half-past four already, and at five she had promised to meet Madeline Ayres in the college library for a walk before dinner.

She put the papers that she had sorted into their proper pigeon-holes, swept the rest of the litter into a pile for future consideration, and made a hasty toilette, reflecting that she should have to dress again anyway for the lecture. As she put on her hat, she noticed the ruffled plume and smoothed it as best she could. “That blizzard!” she thought ruefully. Reminded again of Mr. Blake, she wondered if he had taken an early train from New York. If so he must have reached Harding long ago. Perhaps he was closeted with the editors–Frances hadn’t heard from him about an interview when Betty saw her last. Or perhaps he was investigating the moral tone of the college. Betty wondered smilingly how he would go about it, and looked up to find Mr. Richard Blake himself strolling slowly toward her from the direction of the front gateway. At the same instant he saw her and came quickly forward, his hat in one hand, the other stretched out for Betty to take.

“So you didn’t get stuck in the snow,” he said, gravely.

“Not so deep that I had to stay stuck for a week,” laughed Betty. “Haven’t the office-boy and the stenographer got out yet?”

“Yes, but they didn’t have so far to go,” returned Mr. Blake, calmly. “May I walk on with you?”

“Of course,” agreed Betty, “but you weren’t going my way, were you?”

Mr. Blake smiled his slight, cynical smile. “To tell the truth, Miss Wales, I haven’t the least idea which way I am going–or which way I ought to be. I’m supposed to turn up for five o’clock tea with one Miss Raymond, who lives at a place called the Davidson House. My friend Miss Stuart is ill, and I escaped the escort of a committee by wickedly hinting that I knew my way about.”

“Well,” said Betty, “you were going the right way when I met you. The Davidson is straight down at the other end of that row of brick houses.”

“Thank you,” said Mr. Blake, making no move to follow Betty’s directions. “I detest teas, and I’m going to be as late as I dare. But perhaps I shall be in your way.”

Betty explained that she was bound for the college library to meet a friend.

“Ah,” said Mr. Blake, “I think I should like to see that library. You know I have theories about libraries as well as about plays. Is this a nice one?”

“Of course,” said Betty. “Everything at Harding is nice. Don’t you think so?”

Mr. Blake shook his head uncertainly.

“I hardly feel competent to speak of everything yet, Miss Wales.”

“Well, how about the moral tone?” inquired Betty demurely. She had a feeling that more direct questions would not help Eleanor’s cause.

Mr. Blake shook his head again. “I haven’t gone very far with that yet, Miss Wales. I mean to make them talk about it at the tea.”

They had climbed the stairs to the library and Betty pushed back the swinging doors and stepped inside, wondering vaguely whether she should call the librarian or take Mr. Blake from alcove to alcove herself, when Madeline Ayres looked up from her book, and catching sight of them started forward with a haste and enthusiasm which the occasion, Betty thought, hardly warranted.

“I’m afraid I don’t know enough about the books to take you around,” she was saying to Mr. Blake, when Madeline descended precipitately upon them and, paying not the slightest attention to Betty, said in a loud whisper to Mr. Blake, “Dick, come outside this minute, where we can shake hands.”

“Come on, Miss Wales,” whispered Mr. Blake. “It will be worth seeing,” and Betty, not knowing what else to do, followed him into the hall.

“Why, Dick Blake,” Madeline went on enthusiastically, “you don’t know how good it seems to see one of the old Paris crowd again. Have you forgotten how we used to hunt chocolate shops together, and do the Latin Quarter at night, and teach my cousins American manners?”

“Hardly,” laughed Mr. Blake. “We were a pair of young wretches in those days, Madeline. But I thought you were all for art and Bohemia. What on earth are you doing up here?”

“Completing my education,” returned Madeline calmly. “The family suddenly discovered that I was dreadfully ignorant. What are you doing up here yourself, Dick?”

“Helping to complete your education,” returned Mr. Blake serenely. “Is it possible that the fame of my to-night’s lecture hasn’t reached you, Madeline?”

Madeline laughed merrily. “To think that we’ve come to this, Dick. Why, I never dreamed that was you. I’ve been refusing tickets to that lecture all day–I abhor lectures–but of course I shall go now.” She turned to Betty. “Why didn’t you tell us that you knew Mr. Blake, Betty?”

Betty blushed guiltily. “Why, I–because I don’t know him much,” she stammered.

“To be exact, Madeline,” interposed Mr. Blake, “this is only our second meeting, and of course Miss Wales didn’t want to stand for me in the critical eyes of the Harding public.”

“Well, but–” Madeline looked from one to the other sharply. “Dick, whom are you writing for now?” she demanded.

“For myself. I’m running a magazine.”

“‘The Quiver’?”

Mr. Blake nodded. “Yes, have you seen it? I’ve sent one or two numbers to your father on the chance of their finding him in some far corner of the earth.”

“So that’s it,” said Madeline enigmatically, ignoring the question. “Now I understand. I–well, the point is, Dick, do whatever Betty Wales wants you to. You may depend upon it that she knows what she’s about. Everything she tells you will be on the straight.”

Mr. Richard Blake threw back his head and laughed a hearty, boyish laugh. “You haven’t changed a bit, Madeline,” he said. “You expect me to be your humble chessman and no questions asked, exactly as you did in the old days. I can’t promise what you want now,” he added soberly, “but I heartily subscribe to what you say about Miss Wales. See here”–he reached hastily for his watch–“I was going to a tea, wasn’t I? Do I dare to cut it out?”

Betty hesitated and looked at Madeline, who shook her head decidedly. “Never. This isn’t Bohemia, you know. Run along, Dick. I’ll see you to- night if I can get a chance, and if not you’ll surely be round at Easter?”

“Rather,” said Mr. Richard Blake, striding hurriedly down the hall.

Madeline watched him go with a smile. “Nice boy,” she said laconically. “We used to have jolly times together, when he was Paris correspondent for the something or other in New York. Have we time to take our walk, Betty?”

“Madeline,” said Betty solemnly, “you are a jewel–a perfect jewel. Do you think he’ll do it?”

“Of course,” said Madeline coolly. “He’ll keep you on tenter-hooks as long as he can, but his bark is always worse than his bite, and he’ll come round in the end.”

“Oh, I hope so,” said Betty anxiously.

Madeline smiled lazily down at her. “It’s no good worrying, anyhow,” she said, “You can’t pursue him to his tea. Besides, ten minutes before you met him you’d almost decided that it would be better to let the whole thing out, and be done with it.”

“Madeline,” demanded Betty in amazement, “how do you guess things?”

“Never mind how,” laughed Madeline. “Come and dress for the lecture.”

Betty answered Helen’s eager questions about the discovery of the pearl pin in absent-minded monosyllables. After all, things were turning out better than she had hoped. Indirectly at least the trip to New York had counted in Eleanor’s favor. She need not reproach herself any longer with carelessness in letting Madeline into the secret, and she could feel that it was not for nothing that she had lost her chances of being on the “sub” team.

As she entered the lecture hall that evening with Helen and Alice Waite, Dorothy King, who was standing by the ticket taker, accosted her.

“I wanted to tell you that Christy is coming back before long,” she said.

Having drawn her aside on that flimsy excuse, Dorothy grew suddenly earnest.

“What’s he going to do, Betty?” she demanded.

“Why, I don’t know,” said Betty, blushing at thought of Madeline, “any more than you do. Haven’t you seen him?”

“No,” explained Dorothy. “He wrote to say that it would be wasting time to argue any more–that he was sure he understood our point of view from you, and now he meant to see for himself and decide.”

“Then I suppose he’ll tell Miss West tonight.”

“We hoped he’d told you this afternoon.”

“How did you know I’d seen him?” inquired Betty evasively.

“Eleanor Watson told me that she saw you together in the library.”

Betty gave a little cry of dismay, then checked it. “But she doesn’t know who he is,” she said.

“Yes, she does know now,” said Dorothy quickly.

“How?”

“He told her himself. He was at dinner this evening with Miss Ferris, you know. Eleanor sat up at his end of the table looking like a perfect queen, and she talked awfully well too–she is certainly a very brilliant girl. He talked to her a good deal during dinner and as we were leaving the table he asked Miss Ferris again who she was.”

“What did he say when she told him?”

“He just said ‘Indeed!’ in that queer, drawling voice of his. Afterward Miss Ferris made coffee for us, and what do you suppose he did? He began to ask everybody in the room about the code of honor at the college.”

“Well?”

“After one or two of the girls had said what they thought, he turned straight to Eleanor Watson. ‘And you, Miss Watson,’ he said, ‘what do you think? Is this fine moral feeling strong enough to stand a strain? Would you be willing to risk one thoroughly dishonest student not to overthrow it?’ She got awfully white, and I could see her cup shake in her hand, but she said very quietly, ‘I quite agree with what has already been said, Mr. Blake.'”

“And then?”

“Then he said ‘Indeed!’ again. But when the girls got up to go and he bid them each good-bye, he managed to keep Eleanor on some pretext about wanting to finish an argument that they’d begun at dinner, Miss Ferris kept me to know about a Hilton House girl who was down at the infirmary when I was and finally had to be sent home; and as we stood talking at the other side of the room, I distinctly heard Mr. Blake say, ‘The editor of “The Quiver,” Miss Watson.'”

“Did Miss Ferris hear it too?”

“Probably not. Anyway it wouldn’t mean anything to her. The next minute Eleanor Watson was gone, and then I went too. Betty, we must run back this minute. He’s going to begin.”

As far as her information about “The Tendencies of the Modern Drama” was concerned, Betty Wales might quite as well have been enjoying herself at “The Hand of Fate.” She sat very still, between two girls she had never seen before, and apparently listened intently to the speaker. As a matter of fact, she heard scarcely a word that he said. Her thoughts and her eyes were fixed on Eleanor, who was sitting with Beatrice Egerton, well up on the middle aisle. Like Betty, she seemed to be absorbed in following the thread of Mr. Blake’s argument. She laughed at his jokes, applauded his clever stories. But there was a hot flush on her cheeks and a queer light in her eyes that bore unmistakable evidence to the struggle going on beneath her forced attention.

After the lecture Betty was waiting near the door for Helen and Alice, when Eleanor brushed past her.

“Are you going home, Eleanor?” she asked timidly, merely for the sake of saying something friendly.

Eleanor turned back impatiently. “You’re the tenth person who’s asked me that,” she said. “Why shouldn’t I be?”

“Why, no reason at all–” began Betty. But Eleanor had vanished.

Once in her own room she locked the door and gave free rein to the fury of passion and remorse that held her in its thrall. Jim’s visit had brought out all her nobler impulses. She had caught a glimpse of herself as she would have looked in his eyes, and the scorn of her act that she had felt at intervals all through the fall and winter–that had prevented any real enjoyment of her stolen honors and kept her from writing home about them,–had deepened into bitter self-abnegation. But Jim had come and gone. He still believed in her, for he did not know what she had done. Nobody knew. Nobody would ever know now. It was absurd to fear discovery after all these months. So Eleanor had argued, throwing care and remorse to the winds, and resolving to forget the past and enjoy life to the full.

Then, just at the moment of greatest triumph, had come Mr. Blake’s startling announcement. He had not told her what he had done or meant to do, nor how he had found out about the story, nor who shared his secret; and Eleanor had been too amazed and frightened to ask. Now, in the solitude of her room, she drew her own swift conclusions. It was a plot against her peace of mind, his coming up to lecture. Who had arranged it? Who indeed but Betty Wales? She knew Mr. Blake intimately, it seemed, and she had such horribly strict ideas of honesty. She would never forgive her own sister for cheating. “She must have seen ‘The Quiver’ on my table,” thought Eleanor, “and then to use it against me like this!” No doubt she or Mr. Blake had told that hateful Madeline Ayres, who knew him too. No doubt all the editors had been told. It was to be hoped that Dorothy King, with her superior airs, realized that it was mostly her fault. A dull flush spread over Eleanor’s pale face, as it suddenly flashed upon her that Beatrice Egerton was an editor.

Well, if Beatrice was in the secret, there was no telling how many she had confided in. Eleanor’s devotion to Miss Egerton had been utterly without sentiment from the first. She realized perfectly that Beatrice was flippant and unprincipled, swayed only by selfish considerations and by a passion for making a sensation. If she did not mind being associated with the story, she would tell it; only regard for her own reputation as Eleanor’s “backer” might deter her.

Swiftly Eleanor laid her plan. After all, what did it matter who knew? Mr. Blake, Betty and Dorothy, Beatrice–the whole college–what could they prove? Nothing–absolutely nothing, unless she betrayed herself. No doubt they thought they had brought her to bay, and expected her to make some sort of confession. They would find there was no getting around her that way. There was no danger of discovery, so long as she kept her head, and she would never show the white feather. She would write another story–she could do it and she would, too, that very night. But first she would go back to the Students’ Building. The Dramatic Club was giving a reception to Mr. Blake and the members of the faculty. She had been unpardonably stupid to think of missing it.

As she crossed the shadowed space in front of the big building, she caught sight of three dimly outlined figures clustered about one of the pillars of the portico, and heard Frances West’s voice, so sweet and penetrating as to be quite unmistakable.

“Yes, he leaves it entirely to us,” she was saying. “He said he thought we could be trusted to know what was best.”

“I wish he hadn’t made the condition that no one should say anything to her,” objected a second speaker. “It doesn’t seem to me quite wise to let things just drift along the same as ever.”

“Nonsense,” broke in a third voice, sharp with irritation. “You know perfectly well–“

Eleanor had walked as slowly as she dared. Now there was nothing for it but to open the door without waiting to find out the identity of the last two speakers, or risk being caught eaves-dropping.

She hurried on up the stairs to the society rooms on the second floor, and devoted herself for the rest of the evening to the dullest and most unpopular members of the faculty with an ardor that won her the heart- felt gratitude of the president of the club.

“I can be agreeable,” she thought, as she sat down at her desk an hour later. “I can do whatever I make up my mind to. I’ll show them that I’m not going to ‘drift along!'”

It was six o’clock in the morning when, stiff and heavy-eyed, she turned off her light and crept into bed.

“I’ve driven a coach and four through their precious ten o’clock rule,” she thought, “but I don’t care. I’ve finished the story.”

The story was a little sketch of western life, with characters and incidents drawn from an experience of Jim’s. Eleanor was an excellent critic of her own work, and she knew that this was good; not so unusual, perhaps, as the other one had been, but vivid, swinging, full of life and color, far above the average of student work. It should go to Miss Raymond the first thing in the morning. She would like it, and the “Argus” perhaps would want it–Eleanor closed her tired eyes, and in a moment was fast asleep.

CHAPTER XV

DISAPPOINTMENTS

It was the day of the great basket-ball game. In half an hour more the gymnasium would be opened to the crowd that waited in two long, sinuous lines, gay with scarfs, banners and class emblems, outside the doors. Now and then a pretty girl, dressed all in white, with a paper hat, green or yellow as the case might be, and an usher’s wand to match, darted out of one of the campus houses and fluttered over to the back door of the gymnasium. The crowd watched these triumphal progresses languidly. Its interest was reserved for the other girls, pig tailed and in limp-hanging rain-coats, who also sought the back door, but with that absence of ostentation and self-consciousness which invariably marks the truly great. The crowd singled out its “heroes in homespun,” and one line or the other applauded, according to the color that was known to be sewed on the blue sleeve beneath the rain-coat.

The green line was just shouting itself hoarse over T. Reed, who had been observed slinking across the apple orchard, hoping to effect her entrance unnoticed, when Eleanor Watson hurried down the steps of the Hilton House, carrying a sheet of paper in one hand. Hearing the shouting, she shrugged her shoulders disdainfully and chose the route to the Westcott House that did not lead past the gymnasium doors. As she went up the steps of the Westcott, she met Jean Eastman coming down, her white skirts rustling in the wind.

Jean looked at her in surprise. “Why, Eleanor, you’re an usher too. Aren’t you going to dress? It’s half past two this minute.”

“Yes,” said Eleanor curtly, “I know. I’m not going to usher. I have a headache. Jean, where is my basket-ball song?”

“How should I know?” said Jean, smoothing the petals of the green chrysanthemums that were festooned about her wand. “On the paper with the rest, isn’t it?”

[Illustration: THE GREEN LINE WAS SHOUTING ITSELF HOARSE]

“No,” said Eleanor, “it’s not. I didn’t go to the class ‘sing’ last night, but this noon somebody left a song sheet in my room. You said they chose mine, Jean.”

“I said,” corrected Jean, “that I thought they chose it. I was on the song committee, but I didn’t go to the meeting. From your description I thought it must be one of those that Kate said was taken.”

Eleanor held out the paper to Jean. “Whose are these?”

Jean glanced hastily down the page. “Why, I don’t know,” she said, “any more than you do–except that first one to the tune of ‘St. Louis.'” She hummed a lilting measure or two. “That’s our prize song all right, and who do you think wrote it?”

“Who?” demanded Eleanor fiercely.

“That little Adams girl–the one who rooms with Betty Wales. T. Reed told me she’d been working on it for weeks.”

Eleanor’s eyes flashed scornfully. “I should think it ought to be fairly decent then,” she said.

“Well, it’s considerably more than fairly decent,” said Jean cheerfully. “I’m freezing here, Eleanor, and it’s late too. Don’t bother about your song. Come over to the gym. with me and you can go in the back way.”

“No, thank you,” said Eleanor in frigid tones, and went back as she had come.

To be beaten, and by Helen Chase Adams, of all people! It was too humiliating. Six basket-ball songs had been printed and hers rejected. No doubt the other five had been written by special friends of the committee. She had depended on Jean to look after hers–although she had not doubted for a moment that it would be among the very best submitted– and Jean had failed her.

Worse yet, the story on which she had staked her hopes had come back from Miss Raymond, with a few words of perfunctory, non-committal criticism. Miss Raymond had not read it to her class, much less sent the “Argus” editors after it.

“Does she know, too?” questioned Eleanor. “Does she think that because I’ve cheated once I can’t ever be trusted again, or is it just my luck to have them all notice the one thing I didn’t write and let alone the things I do?”

It was two weeks since Mr. Blake’s lecture, and in that time she had accomplished nothing of all that she had intended. Her idea had been to begin over–to blot out the fact that once she had not played fair, and starting on a clean sheet, repeat her triumph and prove to herself and other people that her position in college affairs was no higher than she deserved. But so far she had proved nothing, and every day the difficulties of her position increased. It was almost more than she could manage, to treat the girls whom she suspected of knowing her secret with exactly her accustomed manner. She had not been able to verify her suspicions except in the case of Beatrice Egerton. There was no doubt about her. When the two were alone together she scarcely took pains to conceal her knowledge, and her covert hints had driven Eleanor into more than one outburst of resentment which she bitterly regretted when it was too late. It was absolutely impossible to tell about Betty. “She treats me exactly as she did when Jim was here,” reflected Eleanor, “and just as she did last year, for that matter. If she doesn’t know it’s no particular credit to her, and if she does–” Eleanor could not bear the idea of receiving kindness from people who must despise her.

Jean ran on to the gym., shivering in her thin dress, and muttering savagely over Eleanor’s “beastly temper.”

As she passed the sophomore-senior line, one and another of her friends shouted out gay greetings.

“Hurry up, Jean, or we shall get in before you do.”

“You sophomore ushers look like a St. Patrick’s Day parade.”

“Tell the people in there that their clocks are slow.”

“All right,” said Jean, hanging on to her unmanageable paper hat.

As she passed the end of the line, Beatrice Egerton detached herself from it, and followed her around the corner of the gym. “Oh, Miss Eastman,” she coaxed. “Won’t you let me go in with you? I shall never get a place to see anything from way back there in the line.”

Jean eyed her doubtfully. She wanted to oblige the great Miss Egerton. “I’m afraid all the reserved seats are full by this time,” she objected.

“Oh, I don’t want a seat,” said Beatrice easily. “I’ll stand on the steps of the faculty platform. There’s no harm in that, is there?”

“I guess not,” said Jean. “Come on.”

The doorkeeper had gone up-stairs for a moment, and the meek little freshman who had her place only stared when Jean and Miss Egerton ran past her without exhibiting their credentials.

“Thanks awfully,” said Miss Egerton, sitting down on a pile of rugs and mattresses that had been stacked around the fireplace. Jean went off to get her orders from the head usher. There was really nothing to do but walk around and look pretty, the head usher told her. The rush to the gallery had begun, but the janitors and the night-watchman were managing that. Of course when the faculty began to come–

“Oh, yes,” said Jean, and hurried back to Beatrice.

“Good-looking lot of ushers,” she said.

Beatrice nodded. “You have a lot of pretty girls in 19–.”

“To say nothing of having the college beauty,” added Jean.

“Of course,” said Beatrice. “Nobody in college can touch Eleanor Watson for looks. There she is now, talking to Betty Wales and Kate Denise.”

“No,” chuckled Jean, “that’s Laura Perkins. Their back views are amazingly alike, but wait till you see Laura’s face. No, the lady Eleanor wouldn’t come to the game. She’s in the sulks.”

“Seems to be her chronic state nowadays,” said Beatrice. “Talking to her is like walking on a hornet’s nest. What’s the particular cause of grievance to-day?”

“Oh, the committee didn’t accept her basket-ball song,” said Jean, “and I was on the committee.”

Beatrice lifted her eyebrows. “She actually had the nerve to write–to hand one in?”

“Oh, that wasn’t nervy,” said Jean. “The girls wanted her to–l9–is awfully shy on poets. What I don’t admire is her taste in fussing because it wasn’t used.”

Beatrice smiled significantly. “Did she tell you about her story?”

“What story?”

“Oh, a new one that she handed in for a theme a week or so ago.”

“What about it?”

“Why, Miss Raymond didn’t notice it particularly, and Eleanor was fussed to death–positively furious, you know. I was with her when she got it back.”

“How funny!” said Jean. “But don’t they say that Miss Raymond is pretty apt to like everything a girl does, after she’s once become interested? I suppose Eleanor was taking it easy and depending on that.”

Beatrice’s face wore its most inscrutable expression. “But, my dear,” she said, “if you knew all about that other wonderful story–the famous one–“

There was an unusual commotion at the door opposite them. By flower- bedecked ones and twos the faculty had been arriving, and had been received with shouts and songs from the galleries and escorted by excited ushers across the floor to their seats on the stage. Miss Egerton had stopped in the midst of her sentence to find out whose coming had turned the galleries into pandemonium and brought every usher but the phlegmatic Jean to the door.

“Oh, it’s Prexy and Miss Ferris and Dr. Hinsdale, all in a bunch,” she said at last. “How inconsiderate of them not to scatter the fireworks!” She turned back to Jean. “As I was saying, if you knew all about that wonderful story–“

Betty Wales, hurrying to help escort her dear Miss Ferris to the platform, caught sight of the two on the mattresses, noticed Jean’s look of breathless interest and Beatrice’s knowing air, and jumped to exactly the right conclusion. With a last despairing glance at Miss Ferris she turned aside from the group of crowding ushers, and dropped down beside Jean on the mattings.

“Have you heard the latest news?” she asked, trying to make her tone perfectly easy and natural. “The freshman captain was so rattled that she forgot to wear her gym. suit. She came in her ordinary clothes. They’ve sent an usher back with her to see that she gets dressed right this time. Isn’t that killing?”

“Absurd,” said Beatrice, rising. “Jean, you haven’t done anything yet; you’re too idle for words. I’m going up to jolly Dr. Hinsdale.”

In her heart she was glad of the interruption. She had said just enough to pique curiosity. To tell more would have been bad policy all around. Betty Wales had arrived just in the nick of time.

But Jean was naturally disappointed. “Betty Wales,” she said, “do you know what you interrupted just now? Beatrice Egerton was just going to tell me the inside facts about Eleanor’s story in the ‘Argus.'”

“Was she?” said Betty steadily. “If there are any inside facts, as you call them, don’t you think Eleanor is the one to tell you?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Jean carelessly. “Eleanor’s so tiresome. She wants to be the centre of the stage all the time. Shouldn’t you think she’d be willing to give other people a little show now?”

“Why, she is,” returned Betty vaguely.

“Not much,” asserted Jean with great positiveness. “She’s sulking in her tent this very minute because the girls aren’t singing her basket-ball song. Anybody who wasn’t downright selfish would be glad to have girls like Helen Adams get a little chance.”

“Eleanor’s tired and doesn’t think,” suggested Betty.

“You’d better go down to the door,” said the head usher. “The ‘green’ faculty are coming in swarms.”

The game went on much as last year’s had done. First one gallery shook with forbidden applause, then the other. Sophomores sang paeans to their victories, freshmen pluckily ignored their mistakes. T. Reed appeared as if by magic here, there, and everywhere. Rachel Morrison played her quiet, steady game at the sophomore basket. Katherine Kittredge, talking incessantly to the bewildered freshman “home” whom she guarded, batted balls with ferocious lunges of her big fist back to the centre field, where a dainty little freshman with soft, appealing brown eyes, half hidden under a mist of yellow hair, occasionally managed to foil T. Reed’s pursuit and sent them pounding back into the outstretched arms of a tall, ungainly home who tossed or dropped them–it was hard to tell which–into the freshman basket. It was a shame to let her play, the sophomores grumbled. She was a giantess, not a girl. But as the score piled up in their favor, they grew more amiable and laughed good- humoredly at the ineffectual attempts of their guards to block the giantess’s goals.

Betty watched it all with keen interest and yet with a certain feeling of detachment. It was splendid fun, but what did it matter after all who won or lost? The freshman centres muffed another ball. Up in the “yellow” gallery she saw a tall girl standing behind a pillar unmistakably wink back the tears. How foolish, just for a game!

It was over at last. Miss Andrews announced the score, congratulating victor and vanquished alike on clean, fair play. Betty joined in the mad rush around the gym., helped sing to the team and to the freshman team and finally retired to a quiet corner with Christy Mason, who had come back to see the game and get a start with her neglected work before vacation. Betty gave her the Students’ Commission key with a little sigh of satisfaction.

“It’s a good deal of responsibility, isn’t it?” she said.

Christy nodded. “If you take it seriously. But then isn’t life a responsibility?”

Helen was sitting alone in their room when Betty got back, her eyes shining like stars, her plain, angular little face alight with happiness.

“I say, Helen,” began Betty, hunting for the hat-pins that still fastened a remnant of her once gorgeous paper hat to her hair, “your song was great. Did the girls tell you?”

“Some of them,” said Helen, shyly. “Some of them didn’t know I wrote it. One asked me if I knew.”

Betty laughed. “Did you tell her?”

“No, I didn’t,” said Helen, blushing. “I–I wanted to, awfully; but I thought it would seem queer.”

“Well, plenty of them knew,” said Betty, mounting a chair to fasten her wand over a picture.

“Of course,”–Helen’s tone was apologetic,–it’s a very little thing to care so much about. I suppose you think I’m silly, but you see I worked over it pretty hard, and I don’t have so very many things to care about. Now if I were like you–“

“Nonsense!” said Betty, descending suddenly from her lofty perch. “I couldn’t write a line of poetry if I tried from now till Commencement.”

“Oh, yes, you could,” said Helen, eagerly. “Well, if I were like Eleanor Watson then–“

“Helen,” said Betty, quickly, “you’re not one bit like her.”

Helen waited a minute. “Betty,” she began again shyly.

“Yes,” said Betty, kindly.

“I’m awfully sorry you couldn’t have your wish, too.”

“My wish!” Betty repeated. “Oh, you mean about being on the team. I don’t mind about that, Helen. I guess I was needed more just where I was.”

Helen puzzled over her answer until the supper-bell rang.

Betty’s problem stayed with her all through the bustle of last days and on into the Easter vacation. Even then she found only a doubtful solution. She had thought that Mr. Blake’s decision, of which Dorothy had told her as soon as possible, would close the incident of the story. Now she saw that the affair was not so easily disposed of. Beatrice Egerton was an incalculable source of danger, but the chief trouble was Eleanor herself. Somehow her attitude was wrong, though Betty could not exactly tell how. She was in a false position, one that it would be difficult for any one to maintain; and it was making her say and do things that people like Jean, who did not understand, naturally misinterpreted. Why, even she herself hated to meet Eleanor now. There was so much to hide and to avoid talking about. And yet it would certainly be worse if everybody knew. Betty puckered her smooth forehead into rows and rows of wrinkles and still she saw no way out. She thought of consulting Nan, but she couldn’t bear to, when Nan had always been so pessimistic about Eleanor.

It was not until the vacation was over and Betty’s train was pulling into Harding that she had an idea. She gave a little exclamation. “I’ve got it!”

“Got what?” demanded her seat-mate, who was a mathematical prodigy and had been working out problems in calculus all the way from Buffalo.

“Not one of those examples of yours,” laughed Betty, “only an idea,–or at least about half an idea.”

“I don’t find fractions of ideas very useful,” said the seat-mate.

“I never said they were,” returned Betty irritably.

It had occurred to her that if there was any way to get Eleanor to confide in Miss Ferris, perhaps matters might be straightened out.

The missing half of the idea, to which Betty had not the faintest clew, was–how could it be done?

CHAPTER XVI

DORA CARLSON’S “SUGARING-OFF”

Dora Carlson pulled back the heavy oak door of the Hilton House and stepped softly into the hall. With bright, darting glances, such as some frightened wild creature might bestow on an unfamiliar environment, she crept past the parlor doors and up the stairs. Dora was not naturally timid, and her life on a lonely farm had made her self-reliant to a degree; but there was something about these big campus houses that awed her–mysterious suggestions of a luxurious and alien existence, of delightful festivities and dainty belongings, that stimulated her imagination and made her feel like a lawless intruder if she met any one in the passages.

Of course it was foolish. Nettie Dwight, who lived next door to her on Market Street, had not a single friend on the campus, and yet she had been into every one of the dwelling houses and explored them all from top to bottom. Where was the harm, she asked. All you had to do was to step up and open the door, and then walk along as if you knew where you were going. When you had seen as much as you wanted to, you could stop in front of some room of which the door stood open so that you could tell from the hall that it was empty, and turn around and go away again. Everybody would think that the person you had come to see was out. It sounded perfectly simple, but Dora had never been anywhere except to Eleanor’s room at the Hilton House and once, at Betty Wales’s invitation, to the Belden.

She hated to hurry through the halls. She would have liked to turn aside and smell the hyacinths that stood in the sunny bay-window of the long parlor; she wanted desperately to read through all the notices on the house bulletin-board at the foot of the stairs; but instead she fled up the two flights and through the corridor, like a criminal seeking sanctuary, and arrived at Eleanor’s room in a flurry of breathless eagerness. The door was open and Eleanor sat by the window, staring listlessly out at the quiet, greening lawns. The light was full on her face and Dora, who had had only a passing glimpse of her divinity since before the spring vacation, noticed sadly how pale and tired she looked.

“May I come in, Miss Watson?” she asked.

“Of course, but you mustn’t call me that,” said Eleanor, turning to her with a charming smile. Beatrice Egerton had said that she should be over in the course of the afternoon, and Eleanor had been dreading her coming. The necessity of keeping up appearances with Beatrice and the rest was wearing Eleanor out. It was a distinct relief to talk to Dora, with whom no artifices were necessary. Whoever else knew her secret, Dora certainly did not; she was as remote from the stream of college gossip as if she had lived in another world.

“I am so glad to see that you’re resting,” said Dora brightly. “I take it as an omen that perhaps you’ll be able to do what I want.”

“I hope I can,” said Eleanor. “What is it?”

“Why, I’m going to have a sugaring-off tonight,” announced Dora impressively, “and I should be very pleased to have you come.”

For a moment Eleanor hesitated, then her better nature triumphed. This was the first thing the child had ever asked of her, and she should have it, even at the cost of some trifling annoyance.

“How nice,” she said cordially. “I shall be delighted to come. Just what is a sugaring-off, Dora?”

Dora laughed gleefully. “It’s amazing to me how few people know what it is. I’m not going to tell you the particulars, but I will excite your interest by saying that it has to do with maple sugar.”

“How did you happen to think of having one?” inquired Eleanor curiously.

“Why, you see,” explained Dora, “we have a sugar orchard on our farm. Ohio is a great maple-sugar state, you know.”

“Oh!” said Eleanor. “No, I didn’t know.”

“Sugaring time used to be the delight of my childish heart,” went on Dora quaintly. “So many people came out to our farm then. It was quite like living in the village and having neighbors. And then I do love maple sugar. My father makes an excellent quality.”

“And he’s sent you some now?”

“Yes,” assented Dora eagerly, “a whole big pailful. I suppose my dear father thought it would console me for not having been home for my spring vacation. It came this morning, and yesterday Mrs. Bryant went to pass a week with her son in Jersey City, and she told me I could use the kitchen for a sugar-party if I wanted to while she was gone–I told her that I was expecting to have a party–and this is the only night for a week that Nettie Dwight can come, because she teaches in a night-school.” Dora paused for breath.

“Who is Nettie Dwight?” asked Eleanor idly.

“Oh, she is a Market Street girl. There will be three Market Street girls and you and Miss Wales, if she can come. Miss Wales asked me to a play at her house last fall and I am so glad to have a chance to return it. I was afraid I never could.”

“Hello, Eleanor. Good-afternoon, Miss Carlson.” Beatrice Egerton threw her books and then herself unceremoniously on to Eleanor’s couch.

Beatrice could hardly have told why she persisted in inflicting her society upon Eleanor Watson. In her shallow way she was fond of her, and she felt vaguely that considering her own careless code of morals it would be inconsistent to drop Eleanor now, just because she had followed similar standards. At the same time she was angry at what she looked upon as a betrayal of her friendship, and considered that any annoyance she might inflict on Eleanor was no more than she deserved. As for Dora Carlson, she amused Beatrice, who, being thoroughly self-seeking herself, could not imagine why the exclusive Eleanor should choose to exhibit a freakish tendency toward philanthropy in this one direction. Beatrice would have liked, for the satisfaction there is in solving a puzzle, to get at the root of the matter. Accordingly she always took pains to draw Dora out.

“I’ve met you before this afternoon, Miss Carlson,” she said, thumping a refractory pillow into place. “What are you doing up on the campus?”

It was the most casual remark, but Dora answered it with the naive frankness that was her peculiar charm.

“I am giving out my invitations for a sugaring-off,” she said.

“A sugaring-off!” repeated Miss Egerton gaily. “Now I haven’t the faintest idea what that is but it sounds very festive.”

Dora looked at her questioningly and then at Eleanor. “Miss Egerton,” she said at last, “I should be very pleased to have you come too, because you are Eleanor’s dear friend.”

Beatrice gave a little shriek of amusement. “Are you really going, Eleanor?”

Eleanor nodded.

“Then I shall certainly come too,” declared Beatrice, merrily, “to see that you don’t eat too much sugar.”

As Dora danced down the Belden House steps a few moments later, her face was wreathed in smiles. Miss Wales was coming too. They were all coming. “I guess my father would be pleased if he could look in on us to-night,” thought the little freshman happily. Then, as the college clock chimed out the hour, her brow wrinkled with anxiety. The kitchen must be swept, –Dora had decided views about Mrs. Bryant’s housekeeping,–and the “surprise,” which was to eke out the entertainment afforded by the sugaring-off proper, had yet to be prepared. The unaccustomed responsibilities of hostess weighed heavily upon Dora Carlson as she traversed the long mile that stretched between the campus and 50 Market Street.

It was an odd little party which gathered that night in Mrs. Bryant’s dingy kitchen. The aggressive Nettie Dwight, two hopelessly commonplace sophomores, cousins, from a little town down the river, and Dora composed the Market Street contingent. They were all very much in awe of Eleanor’s beauty, and of Beatrice’s elaborate gown and more elaborate manner. Betty Wales, enveloped in one of Mrs. Bryant’s “all-over” kitchen aprons, vigorously stirring the big kettleful of bubbling, odorous syrup, tried her best to put the others at their ease and to make things go, as affairs at the college always did. But it was no use. Everything progressed too smoothly. Nothing burned or boiled over or refused to cook,–incidents which always add the spice of adventure to a chafing dish spread. Nobody had come in a kimono. There was no bed to loll back on, no sociable sparcity of plates, no embarrassing interruptions in the way of heads of uninvited guests poked in the door and apologetically withdrawn; and the anxious pucker of hospitality on the face of the little hostess imposed an added restraint and formality upon the oddly assorted company of guests. Beatrice Egerton played with her rings, yawned without dissimulation, and wished she had stayed at home; Eleanor bravely parried Nettie Dwight’s incisive questions about “her set”; and Betty, stirring and talking to the cousins and Dora, had time to admire Eleanor’s self-control and to wonder pityingly if there were many girls in Harding College so completely “out of it” as these four seemed to be. And yet they were not unhappy; they were enjoying Dora Carlson’s sugaring-off as though it had been a delightful college spread instead of a dull and dreadful party.

When the biscuits, that Dora had made herself, were done and the sugar boiled to the right consistency, everybody began to brighten up, and the refreshment feature bade fair to be a real success. It was too late in the spring for snow, so Dora had provided some little cakes of ice on which to wax the sugar. They were not quite so good a substitute as might have been desired, for they had a fashion of slipping dangerously over the plates, and then the hot sugar slipped and spread on the ice and had to be dexterously coaxed to settle down in one place and melt out a cool bed for itself, as it does easily enough in snow. But all this only added to the interest of the occasion. One sophomore cousin lost her cake of ice on the floor, and she showed more animation than she had in all the rest of the evening together, in spite of Betty’s valiant efforts. Then Nettie Dwight suggested that they grain part of the sugar, so, when everybody had eaten as much as possible of the waxed variety, spread on as many crisp little biscuits as Dora could force upon them, Dora brought saucers full of the hot syrup and there was a stirring contest, with results in the shape of creamy maple candy, which Dora put out to cool, ready to be eaten later.

“And now,” she said, with a little quiver of eagerness in her voice, “there is one course more. Look under your plates.”

Search revealed a carefully folded square of white paper at each place. Beatrice got hers open first and muttered, “What perfect nonsense!” before Eleanor could stop her with an imploring glance.

“Such a bright idea!” cried Betty Wales, hurrying to the rescue. “They’re fortunes, aren’t they? Oh, dear, I’m afraid mine doesn’t fit. It’s much too grand.”

Dora laughed gleefully. “That’s the fun, you see,–to notice how they fit.”

“How’d you ever think of it?” giggled one of the cousins. “There’s a man in mine all right.”

“Oh, I didn’t think of it myself,” explained Dora, modestly. “I found it in a magazine. I don’t suppose any of you see the ‘Farmer’s Friendly Counsellor.'”

“No,” said Betty, quickly, “I don’t believe we do.”

“It’s a fine magazine,” continued Dora, “with quantities of good reading matter of all kinds. There’s always one page for farmers’ wives, with recipes and hints for home dressmakers. Last winter I read about giving a luncheon, and it sounded so pretty that I cut it out, though I never expected to use it. Right in the middle of it was one course like these fortunes, only they were to be put into stuffed peppers, instead of stuffing, and when the guests took the covers off their peppers, there they would find their fortunes.”

“But Miss Carlson,” began Beatrice, impatiently, “don’t you see that the whole point–“

“I like this way just as well,” broke in Betty Wales. “What you really care about is the fortune, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s in a pepper or under your plate.”

“Not a bit,” agreed Eleanor, crumpling up her fortune nervously.

“And now,” said Dora, “we’ll all read them out loud and see how they fit. I put them around without looking at them, and I didn’t know where any of you were going to sit.”

“I guess mine fits pretty well,” said the giggling cousin, whose fortune