Betty Wales decides

“You can get a thing off your mind easily enough by telling it to somebody,” said little Binks Ames very soberly. “But it isn’t so easy to get it off your heart. I don’t know how to begin, and I hate to bother you and Miss Wales any more, Georgia, but something has simply got to be done for that poor freshman Jones.”

“Didn’t your mother know of any free sanitorium?” demanded Georgia.

Binks shook her head. “It costs seven dollars a week at the one she ought to go to, and she’d probably have to stay a year. Seven times two is fourteen and seven times five is—— Oh, dear, I can’t do it in my head!”

“Three sixty-four,” computed Georgia rapidly. “More than it would probably cost her to stay on here for a year. And that was more than she’s got. Can’t she get well at home?”

“Maybe,” said Binks absently, “but she’s a lot surer to at the sanitorium. Georgia, you remember the day you asked me for tea at the Tally-ho? It was full, and everybody seemed to be having a good deal to eat. Your bill for six—I couldn’t help seeing it—was two dollars and ten cents.”

“It was,” said Georgia, “and I had to borrow the ten cents of Fluffy Dutton. Why will you unkindly recall that embarrassing incident, Binks?”

Binks smiled politely at Georgia’s little joke. “I was just thinking—if that tea-shop is full every afternoon, and each girl spends thirty or forty cents for tea and cakes, why, in a week they must pay out nearly three hundred dollars.”

“Easily,” agreed Georgia. “And incidentally they ruin their digestions and their appetites for campus dinners, and we have to eat warmed-up left-overs for next day’s lunch. But Betty Wales and her tea-shop flourish, and everybody is happy.”

“I was wondering,” went on Binks soberly, “if the girls wouldn’t be glad to give away more than they do, if they could see that it was really needed. Forty cents for tea doesn’t mean anything to most of them. Now wouldn’t they give forty cents each to help Miss Jones get well?”

Georgia shook her head slowly. “No, because it’s not amusing. Tea and cakes, ordered off stunty menus, served among the extra-special features of the Tally-ho, with your little pals beside you, and a senior you’re crazy about at the next table—that’s forty cents’ worth of fun, or four hundred cents’ worth, if you happen to have it. But when you’re asked to give away forty cents, it looks as big and as precious as forty dollars. It seems as if it would buy all the things you want, and as if, when it was gone, you’d never see another forty cents as good as that one.”

Georgia paused triumphantly, and Binks sighed acquiescence. “All right. You know how things are here, Georgia, and I don’t. They won’t give the money to Miss Jones, but they’d spend it fast enough at an amusing benefit performance for her. Is that what you mean, Georgia?”

Georgia smiled pleasantly. “No, I didn’t mean that, but it’s true, now that you mention it. You’re too rapid for me, Binks. I didn’t know you were such a rusher. But you go right ahead with your show—that’s the Harding term for an amusing benefit performance—and I will stay behind and attend to such practical details as time, place, and the kind permission of the faculty, also the valued approval and assistance of Miss B. Wales. Blood will tell, Binks. You’re going into this thing with all Aunt Caroline’s fine enthusiasm for good works.”

“That freshman Jones is so pathetic,” said Binks simply. “If she was my sister I presume I should steal, if necessary, to get her what she needed.”

“Gracious, Binks!” protested Georgia. “You sound like a dangerous anarchist.”

“Well, fortunately she’s not my sister,” Binks reassured her cousin, “so I can just help get up a show for her. What kind of a show would it better be, Georgia?”

Georgia laughed. “You speak as if shows grew on bushes, Binks, and we could pick off any kind we liked the looks of. Whereas the sad fact is that we shall have to snatch joyously at any kind we can think of—if we’re lucky enough to think of a kind.”

“A suffrage bazaar would be rather nice, wouldn’t it?” Binks suggested casually. “It would be comical all right, if it was anything like the real ones. Suffragettes are certainly funny, and antis are even funnier.”

“Sort of a take-off on the strenuous female, you mean?” inquired Georgia.

Binks nodded. “We could have speeches and a play, if anybody could write one, or maybe a mock trial, and then everybody could vote on the suffrage question. Women’s colleges are always voting on suffrage nowadays. They seem to like it.”

“That’s good, so far,” Georgia agreed approvingly. “Why not satirize a few other feminine fads while you’re in the business? I can think of a lovely parody on æsthetic dancing. My mother and sisters are going crazy about that.”

“We could have a fresh-air children’s chorus,” Binks added promptly. “I mean children brought up to go barefoot and sleep outdoors in winter and all that sort of foolishness.”

“With a special number about women that get up early and walk barefoot in the dewy grass,” put in Georgia eagerly.

“And we could have a home-beautiful monologue.”

“Never mind going any further, Binks,” Georgia told her firmly. “There is evidently no lack of material for an extra-special show entitled Jists and Suffragists.”

“Jists?” repeated Binks blankly.

“Jists—jests, jokes. Didn’t you ever hear of a merry jist, my peculiar young cousin from Boston?”

“Well, I have now,” said Binks imperturbably. “And it will be no merry jist at all if I’m not on hand at four to go walking with the Poetess. So I must rush home. You think the faculty and Miss Wales will be sure to approve, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes, I’m sure they will, but you’d better not assign the jist and suffragist parts to your little friends until you hear from me,” advised Georgia. “It’s considered good form not to be too sure in advance of faculty permits.”

When Binks had gone, Georgia lay back on her broad window-seat and chuckled. “She’s all right, is my peculiar cousin,” Georgia reflected. “Jists and Suffragists will drag her into Dramatic Club without any help from me. And she doesn’t know it. She wouldn’t care if she did know it. And I almost let Clio Club get her, just because she was in the family and so I never appreciated her! Well, I appreciate her now. I guess I’ll go and find Betty and get her to come with me to see Miss Ferris about the extra-special show.”

Never in the whole history of Harding College had there been a more successful affair than Binks’s altogether impromptu, go-as-you-please Benefit Performance. Binks’s method of arranging the various stunts was quite simple.

“Is your mother a club-woman?” she demanded of each prospective head of a committee. “Well, is she a fresh-air fiend? Or a Suffragette? Or does she go in hard for exercise? She does? Then won’t you please be Georgia’s right-hand man on her committee? Georgia is getting up some killing kind of a dance, to make fun of the exercise business.

“Now, Susanna, you were brought up on fresh air, and you can write songs. Write one for a chorus of fresh-air-brought-up children, won’t you? You can choose your own chorus to sing the song, and consult with them about costumes and all that sort of thing.”

It worked like a charm, Binks’s method.

“You see,” Fluffy explained it, “a clever girl is sure to have a clever mother, and nowadays all clever mothers have fads. Ours has the no-breakfast fad. Straight is trying to write a one-act tragedy entitled, ‘Before Breakfast, Never After.’ It will be tragic all right if it goes the way I felt the summer that I obligingly tried to join the anti-breakfast crusade.” Fluffy, who was engaged at the moment in eating a particularly hearty breakfast at the Tally-ho, returned happily to her second order of waffles.

Of course the B. C. A.’s heard about the extra-special show, and Madeline, who was still in Harding celebrating the acceptance of her novel, could not resist the lure of a project so congenial. She wrote Binks a modest little note offering to write a one-act farce entitled, “Waiting Dinner for Mother; or, The Meal-Hour and the Artistic Temperament.”

“It will be founded on my personal observations,” Madeline wrote, “and maybe it will be amusing, because living in Bohemia New York used to be very amusing indeed, in spite of too much artistic temperament getting into the cooking. I think our post-graduate crowd would act it out for me, and then I shouldn’t be making you any bother.”

“Bother!” repeated Binks, reading the note, which she had just picked off the bulletin-board, aloud to a circle of friends. “Bother! She’s written a play for Agatha Dwight—a really-truly play that you sit in two dollar seats to see. And she hopes it won’t be a bother if she writes one for this show!” Binks, who was not yet a recognized celebrity, nevertheless leaned against the sacred note-room table, quite overcome by the splendor of Madeline’s offer.

“Just the same,” she told a crowd of committee chairmen later, “we’ve got to begin refusing things. We’ve got all we can make room for now, and every one is just splendid.”

“‘Ten Numbers. All Top-Liners and One Above the Line. A Play by the Celebrated Miss Ayres. Entertainment Stimulating, Refreshing, Satisfying. Cuisine the Same.’ How’s that for a scare-head poster?” inquired Susanna Hart blandly.

“Great!” Georgia told her. “But Madeline’s play won’t be the only real sensation. Wait till you see Eugenia Ford in our Rag Doll Dance. She’s a wonder.”

“Wait till you see the willowy Mariana Ellison shivering around in the light and airy costume of a Fresh-Air Child.”

“Wait till you see Fluffy starring as the Hungriest Daughter in Straight’s tragic drama, entitled ‘Before Breakfast, Never After.’”

“Wait till you see the whole extra-special show.” Thus Binks tactfully suppressed too-ardent rivalries. “Isn’t it just too glorious for anything the way everybody takes hold?”

“It would be too glorious for anywhere but Harding College,” Georgia told her eager little cousin. “You’re getting on to Harding ways pretty fast these days, Binks Ames.”

Binks smiled absently. “Am I?” she asked. “I’m having a lovely time, and not studying any too much, and Miss Ellison thinks I’m neglecting her and her poems. But I think the freshman Jones is worth it. It’s too bad that she can’t have the fun of the show too; but I thought it would make her feel queer afterward, when we tell her about the money’s being for her, if she’d taken part in her own show.” Binks smiled again, her sweet, inquiring smile. “Another queer thing about Harding is that nobody thinks what a show is for.”

“If they like it,” added Georgia promptly. “Remember that, Binks, after you’re out in the wide, wide world, and you can be a wonderful help to Aunt Caroline. Aunt Caroline can supply the Worthy Causes, and you can match them with Likable Shows.”

“Likable” was a mild word for Binks’s first effort, whose “Top-Liner” features filled the big gym. to overflowing all through the afternoon and evening appointed for it by the faculty committee. It would easily have filled the gym. for another afternoon and evening; nobody who went had time to see everything properly, and those who were crowded out of Madeline’s farce or Georgia’s Rag Doll and Ploshkin Dance fairly wept with rage and disappointment. But the faculty set their faces sternly against repetition.

“And I don’t wonder,” said honest little Binks, “if everybody’s work has slumped the way mine has.”

But even the faculty enjoyed the show; possibly they enjoyed it a little more than any one else. The Suffrage Bazaar occupied the big stage at the end of the gym. Once in twenty minutes the bazaar “woke up,” as the program picturesquely phrased it; and everybody who was not in one of the small side-rooms or curtained alcoves enjoying a side-show, curled up on the floor in a sociable company to see the Suffragettes militantly compel the Antis to buy the useful or beautiful articles they had for sale, such as manacles for tyrannous males, automatic baby-tenders, cookless cookers, and other devices likely to come handy in a home whose head spent her days in Woman’s-Club-land. The Suffragettes’ persuasive arguments frequently developed into harangues in behalf of the cause. The Antis, who were all timid, pretty creatures, tried to reply, but were speedily heckled down by the pointed questions and comments of their more eloquent opponents. But when a Mere Man appeared, it was the Antis who got possession of him, without any argument at all; and who bore him off to buy violets and chocolate sundaes, pink pin-cushions, purple sofa cushions, and all the other bits of useless frippery that clutter the traditional bazaars gotten up by old-fashioned women. Just before the last Suffragist had lapsed into discouraged silence, a small but determined army of pretty freshmen in Swiss peasant costume swarmed out upon the gym. floor with trays of alluring French cakes and Tally-ho candies, also alluring. And if you stopped to buy those, there was a “House Sold Out” sign in front of Madeline’s play; and if you hurried to the play, why, you were likely to go to your grave regretting a certain little cake, with chocolate-covered sides, a pyramid of marshmallow on top spread over with jam, and nobody knew what inside it, that you hadn’t stopped to buy.

It sent you into hysterics to see Mariana Ellison, clad in a scant white dress, white stockings, and black ties, throwing cotton snowballs at other tall, scantily attired children, while they all sang a lusty chorus about being cold and well and happy to the tune of “A Hot Time.” But if you waited to see them do it again, you missed that mirth-provoking parody on æsthetic dancing, in which twelve Rag Dolls and twelve Ploshkins flopped through a bewitching ballet, the “jist” of which was that the Ploshkins courted the Rag Dolls ardently until the Rag Dolls, remembering that they were new women, turned from pursued to pursuers—and pricked themselves painfully on the Ploshkins’ prickly, slippery tails.

“Well,” said Binks when it was all over, “I guess they all had a good time.”

“Too good for the money,” Georgia told her, “but that’s a general failing of Harding shows, so don’t take it to heart. And as for profits,—I guess the freshman Jones can pass the rest of her life in a sanitorium if she wants to.”

“Miss Wales is going to arrange about that,” explained Binks. “She went to see her to-night and told her about the plan, and Miss Jones is delighted—of course, because Miss Wales put it so nicely. Oh, I almost forgot! Miss Wales brought me a note from her freshman—Miss O’Toole. I stuck it into my shirt-waist.” Binks felt for the note and tore it open, whereupon five yellow bills fell out at her feet.

“A hundred dollars! Whew!”

“Fifteen weeks more paid for at that sanitarium!”

“Hurrah for Montana Marie!”

“Didn’t you ask her to take part, Binks?”

“What does she say about the money, Binks? Hurry up and tell us, can’t you?”

“I can if you’ll give me a chance,” Binks retorted. “She says that she couldn’t be a Rag Doll as Georgia asked her to, because it would have taken her mind from her work. But she came to-night, and had a ‘swell’ time; and she sends her contribution to the expenses, and hopes other girls who were too busy to help as much as they wanted to will think to do the same. Isn’t she the best ever?” Binks’s brown eyes shone softly. “Can’t we print her letter in the ‘Argus’ or stick it up on the bulletin-board or something? Lots of girls in this college have stray hundred dollars or stray five dollars that they simply don’t think to give to Miss Wales. If more people would think, more girls could get loans—even some freshmen—and then these dreadful things——” Binks paused in consternation at the narrow escape she had had from betraying the confidence of the junior Jones.

“If more people would think straight,” Georgia came swiftly to her rescue, “why, fewer people would act crooked. Well, I know at least one matron who will think daggers if Fluffy and Straight and I don’t dash for home. So keep the rest of your theories for to-morrow, Binks, and come along.”

And they went, singing:

in a fashion at once mocking and admiring.