Betty Wales decides

Mr. Morton answered Betty’s telegram with another:

“Coach and Six not a bit too big for my notions. Thursday O. K. for me. Young Watson to plan improvements. Depend on you to keep him docile.”

Madeline, being inspired by the evident largeness of Mr. Morton’s notions, retired at once to the Tally-ho loft to meditate on delightful possibilities, and to sketch posters and a hanging sign for the Coach and Six. But presently her eye happened to fall upon Thomas, the door-boy, and in a moment the posters for the Coach and Six were forgotten, and Madeline was off in hot pursuit of green broadcloth.

“Take off your coat so I can use it for a pattern,” she ordered the bewildered Thomas on her return. “No, I suppose you can’t do without a coat very well. Sprint home and get another suit that fits you. Tell your mother I won’t hurt it. Hurry now.”

“The idea!” she told Betty while she waited for Thomas. “We’ve had that boy here for six months and never once thought to dress him up in Lincoln green, like a post-boy. Never mind! We need some new features for commencement. We can’t have 19— think we’re just resting on our laurels. I’ll make new tea menus to match Thomas—little riding-crops painted across the top, with real green ribbon rosettes stuck on the handles. Or why not have real little riding-crops? Thomas can whittle them out in his idle moments.”

In vain Betty suggested that the Tally-ho was well enough as it was, and that the plans for the Coach and Six must be well advanced by Thursday or Mr. Morton would be impatient and annoyed. Madeline calmly branched out on to fairy menus for the Peter Pan annex, and then became completely absorbed in a fairy play suggested to her by the menus. She was persuaded to keep the Thursday appointment in New York only because she wanted to read the play to Agatha Dwight. Betty, who had been busy all the week with plans and estimates, memoranda of “things we ought to have,” “things to speak to Jim about,” “necessary glass and silver,” and so on, was duly grateful that Madeline consented to accompany her on any pretext; for when Madeline was once on the ground, with the actual site of the Coach and Six, Jim’s ideas, and Mr. Morton’s fury of energy to inspire her, Betty knew she would forget even the fairy play and plan a tea-shop that would dazzle “little old New York.”

And she did. Jasper J. Morton followed her delightedly about all day, his eyes twinkling and his dry laugh cackling out at her queer, unsystematic methods of work. He went with her to choose furniture, to interview the famous Mr. Enderby, who, quite overcome by the awe-inspiring combination of the irresistible Madeline Ayres and the great Mr. Morton, promised to design anything from walls to menus; and finally they rode off together to engage the Washington Square cook, who blandly ignored the great Mr. Morton, but promised to come and cook in his tea-shop any time “if you axes me, Miss Madeline, an’ bring a black kitten as usual, if so desired.”

By the time he had watched Madeline order livery for the porters, design costumes for the maids, pick out china, and overturn all Jim’s plans because the fireplace wasn’t quite big enough to please her, Mr. Morton turned to Betty with a sigh of admiration.

“She’s a steam-engine, that girl. She could tire me out, I guess. See here, I guess she keeps you fairly busy, picking up after her, like. She’s the beginning kind—don’t wait to put on any finishing touches. All right. We’ll hire two or three finishers to go round after her. She’d make several fortunes for anybody that could manage her right. See here, Miss Ayres, couldn’t you wind up the day by inventing another of those splasher novelties?”

Madeline shook her head laughingly. “I’m going to dinner now with Agatha Dwight. I want to read her a play I’ve just written.”

So Mr. Morton bore off Betty and Jim for dinner with him. During the dessert he discovered an opportune acquaintance at the next table, who kept him talking so long that Betty had to interrupt them to say good-bye, and Jim had to take Betty to her train. She had wanted to stay over a day for spring shopping, but there was a Student’s Aid trustee-meeting the next morning, and the secretary must be on hand to report.

It was nearly half-past ten when Betty drove up to the campus. She dismissed her carriage at the little gate close to Morton Hall, which, to her amazement, was still ablaze with lights. In a minute she remembered why; it was the evening of the Belden-Morton play. Betty hurried up the walk, anxious to hear how it had gone off. She thought the door might still be open, and she tried it before she went down to the end of the piazza to tap, as she had arranged to do, on Mrs. Post’s sitting-room window. There was a light in the room, but the shade was up, and between the hanging curtains Betty could see that the room was empty, and the bedroom beyond dark. Evidently Mrs. Post was talking over the play with her girls, utterly forgetful of her promise to let Betty in. So Betty went back to the door and rang, and, as it was rather a shivery spring night, she tramped down the piazza again while she waited for somebody to come and open the door. As she turned the corner she heard voices, and saw a man leading two saddle-horses and a girl in a black dress and white cap and apron—evidently one of the Morton Hall maids—come up a path that led through the shrubberies between Morton Hall and the Students’ Building, where the play had been given.

“I think we should try it over,” the man was saying as they stopped in a patch of light by the back door.

“No indeed! How absurd you are, dear,” tittered the girl. “The idea of rehearsing a thing like——”

“Oh, Miss Wales! Come right in out of the cold, you poor child.” Mrs. Post’s kindly voice broke into the tête-à-tête by the back door. “I’m so sorry I forgot you. Come and have some supper and hear about the wonderful play. I’m giving the girls a little treat to make them sleep better after all the excitement.”

The Belden-Morton production of “The Purple Ribbon” had been a grand success. Georgia Ames, Fluffy Dutton, and the Mystery had collaborated in writing it, and the program announced that it was a subtle combination of Shaw, Shakespeare, and Sherlock Holmes. The Morton Hall half of the cast, still in make-up and costumes, lined up for Betty’s appreciative inspection. The Thorn was the villain of the piece, in very elegant evening clothes and curling black moustaches. The twin Digs figured respectively as the villain’s innocent young accomplice (white flannels and very pink cheeks), and the heroine’s mother-in-law (Mrs. Post’s second best black silk, a bonnet with strings, and white mitts). The Mystery had fairly insisted that the freckle-faced girl who roomed next to her should have a part, “because she wants it so awfully much.” So she had been cast for the Enigma, who had nothing particular to do but wear a blank and unintelligent expression and say, “Is it so?” at intervals. This she had done so effectively that she had made the hit of the evening. Mrs. Post and the none-acting members of Morton Hall explained all this eagerly to Betty, and then Connie was called into the line because she had been the Bell and the Noise Without.

“And I was the only one of the cast that had to be prompted,” Connie confessed sadly. “I was thinking how awfully pretty my roommate looked in black, and if Georgia hadn’t poked me hard——”

“Why, where’s Amanda O’Toole?” cut in the Thorn suddenly. “She was Amanda the maid, Miss Wales, and she did look too cute—— Oh, there you are, Marie. Come and let Miss Wales see how you look in the raiment of servitude.”

Marie had borrowed her costume complete from the obliging Belden House Annie, adding nothing but a dashing moline bow under her chin.

“Ain’t she the prettiest Amanda that ever came down the pike?” quoted the Thorn from her part, with a genial twirl of her huge moustaches.

“I sure am, but it’s no concern of yours, Monsieur,” retorted Marie, from her part, flirting her black skirt coquettishly as she made for a plate of sandwiches. “Isn’t Mrs. Post the nice lady? I’m as hungry as a bear—I couldn’t eat any dinner because I was so excited about the play.”

“If you were so hungry, why didn’t you come in here sooner?” demanded the Thorn incisively. “The rest of us are all through eating.”

“Oh, I was fussing around. This is the first time I was ever on the stage, you see, and I’m that rattled.” Montana Marie took a huge bite out of one of Mrs. Post’s ginger-cookies by way of closing the discussion.

Betty went to bed humming a gay little tune. She was thinking of the house-play that Roberta Lewis had starred in so splendidly years ago, of the Coach and Six, of the Student’s Aid meeting in the morning,—she must get up early to write her report,—and finally of Jim Watson’s comical struggle between strong personal annoyance at her having added another to her too-numerous interests and responsibilities and his equally strong artistic approval of Madeline’s ideas for the Coach and Six and of Mr. Morton’s lavishness in carrying them out.

“I smell lilacs!” Betty decided suddenly, and turning off her lights she leaned far out into the dark, eagerly drinking in the sweet spring odors. And then, as her eyes fell on the patch of light by the back door, she remembered the anxious groom and the tittering maid, whom she had heard arguing by the back porch, and she wondered idly what kind of thing it was you didn’t rehearse, in the opinion of said tittering maid. Probably she had been telling the groom all about the play, and they were discussing some point in the plot. The maids were always as keen as the girls about the house-plays. Then she wondered, thinking of the two saddle-horses, if the Moonshiners’ riding club had been revived, and she decided to ask Georgia if she might go off on some of their spring trips. Harding was so lovely in the spring—no other place was quite like it. But—those Student’s Aid trustees met at ten o’clock sharp. Betty resolutely dismissed plays and picnics and the disturbing scent of lilacs from her mind, and courted sleep; for her alarm clock was set for six and she must be ready for a hard morning’s work.

It was an exciting day, altogether. One of the Student’s Aid trustees had secured a big gift for the Association. In return she wanted to dictate important policies, and particularly to lay out the secretary’s work. The other trustees resented her assumption of superior authority. Both factions took Betty into their confidence. One insisted on giving her lunch; the other asked her to dinner. Mr. Morton telegraphed for impossible details. Mrs. Post had hit upon this busiest day of the year for cleaning Betty’s room. Feeling very young and inadequate, and very, very sleepy, Betty escaped as soon as possible from the trustees’ dinner, put a “Do not disturb” sign on her door and went to bed.

The pale morning sun was creeping faintly in at her window, though she was sure she hadn’t been asleep ten minutes, when somebody knocked on her door. Somebody had to keep on knocking for an embarrassing interval before Betty woke up enough to realize what was happening, and to open the door. Connie stood outside. She was attired in a scarlet silk kimono, the gift of her generous but thoughtless roommate. For Connie’s washed-out hair had a decided suspicion of red in its dull tints, and her complexion was the sort that went with red hair and should never go with a scarlet kimono. In the dim light of the corridor her sallow, anxious little face looked frightened and quite ghostly.

“Did I wake you up, Miss Wales?” she demanded stupidly. “It’s four o’clock in the morning. I saw your ‘Don’t disturb’ sign, but I suppose it was meant for last night. Besides I—you see, Miss Wales, Marie has disappeared.”

Betty stifled a tremendous yawn and tried to consider Connie’s news with becoming seriousness.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” she said at last. “You mean she isn’t in your room? Are you sure she isn’t in some one’s else?”

Connie nodded. “Yes—she—I’m quite sure, Miss Wales. She’s disappeared.”

“When?” asked Betty, who was wide awake now.

“I don’t know, Miss Wales. About ten was when I really saw her last. She had a chafing-dish party last night. I was studying with Matilda Jones. I kept expecting Marie to come for me, as she usually does just before they disperse, to have some of the refreshments. When the ten-minute bell rang, I went to our room. She was there, but she went right out for something. When she came back it was after ten, so she undressed in the dark. At least I supposed she undressed. When I woke up just now she was gone.”

“Oh, well,” said Betty pleasantly, “she’s somewhere in the house, of course. She ought to be in her room in bed, but——”

“Her saddle and that big felt hat she wears when she rides, and her corduroy suit have disappeared too, Miss Wales.”

Betty started. “They have? Then she’s probably gone on some early-morning riding-party. Oh, dear, those crazy girls! What won’t they think of next?”

“I don’t believe it’s a regular riding-party, Miss Wales. From things Marie has been saying lately, I think it’s an elopement.”

Betty’s eyes grew round, and her voice quivered with anxiety. “Please tell me all that you know about it, Miss Payson, as quickly as you can. There may be no time to lose.” Betty closed the door softly and began hurriedly to put on her clothes, while she listened to Connie’s story.

“Well,” began Connie eagerly, “she’s been writing letters lately—oh, quantities of them! She always writes a good many, but lately she’s spent most of her time at it. And she’s cut classes a good deal. She’s never done that before. And a few days ago she gave me six of her dresses—two perfectly new ones. She said she shouldn’t want so many clothes much longer. Then day before yesterday a man came to call. I heard the girls say it was the same one she was with the night of the prom. She was very much excited that evening, and it wasn’t about the play, because when I spoke about that to her she didn’t know what I meant at first, and then she said, ‘Oh, the play!’ as if it wasn’t of any consequence to her. Yesterday morning when I came into our room after a class she was rolling a lot of things up in her rain-coat. I asked her what in the world she was doing, and she—she kissed me”—Connie blushed at the intimate confession—“and said she was just seeing how much you could tie on to a saddle, because some one had asked her to find out. And now”—Connie’s lips and voice quivered—“and now she’s gone. That’s all I know, Miss Wales. I think she’s eloped on horseback with that man from her home in Montana.”

“But that would be so perfectly absurd!” Betty was dressed by this time. She twisted her hair into a hasty knot, and put on a droopy hat to hide the snarls. “Have you ever heard Marie speak of riding to any of the little towns around here, Miss Payson? Was she especially fond of any little village near here?”

Connie considered for a minute. “She likes the ride to Gay’s Mills, because it’s all the way through the woods. And she’s been over there twice lately. She went riding day before yesterday,—we all thought it was queer for her to go riding on the day of the play—and I think from something she said that she lost the girl she started out with, and maybe met some one else.”

“What girl did she start with?”

Connie mentioned the name of the sophomore who, being proverbially unlucky with horses, had fallen off on the famous Mountain Day ride.

“I see,” said Betty curtly. She was perfectly sure that, unless Montana Marie had meant to lose her, she would never have gone riding with that particular girl. “Please telephone Grant’s garage,” Betty ordered swiftly. “Tell them to send up a car at once, and a man who knows the country roads. Say it’s for me. If they object to the early start tell them it’s a matter of vital importance. If that’s not enough, hold the wire and call me. I shall be in Mrs. Post’s room. I hate to bother her, but I can’t very well go alone.”

“Couldn’t you take me?” asked Connie eagerly.

Betty considered. “Why—yes—yes, that might be quite as well. Then you go and get ready, while I do the telephoning.”

Twenty minutes later Connie and Betty were flying along the road to Gay’s Mills. It was a slender chance, but in the absence of other clues it must serve. Connie confided to Betty that she had never been in an automobile before.

“It doesn’t matter,” Betty told her absently. “Oh, I beg your pardon. I don’t believe I quite understood what you said.”

Connie lapsed into rather frightened silence, and Betty was left free to consider the situation. “Undertaking” Montana Marie O’Toole looked, this morning, like a pretty serious business. If she really had eloped, what would Mrs. O’Toole say? And what would President Wallace think? Not much use getting her through mid-years for an ending like this. But somehow Betty couldn’t believe that her freshman would be so foolish. She almost ordered the chauffeur to drive back to the campus; she was sure they would find that Georgia was missing too, and the other riding people. Then suddenly she remembered the maid and the groom, as she had thought them, talking by the Morton House door, and Montana Marie’s belated arrival at Mrs. Post’s treat. Was an elopement perhaps the kind of thing that you didn’t rehearse? Betty’s heart sank. Perhaps she ought to have called Mrs. Post and divided responsibilities. Perhaps she ought even to have aroused Prexy. Certainly she ought to have had a better reason than Connie’s vague surmises for choosing the Gay’s Mills road. The Gay’s Mills road turned sharply just then, and Betty saw two horseback riders trotting decorously to meet her—Montana Marie in her Western riding things, including the forbidden magenta handkerchief, and a man whom Connie identified briefly with an excited ungrammatical little squeak.

“It’s him!”