Betty Wales decides

“Sh!” Betty warned her hastily, because of the chauffeur, and leaning forward she ordered him to stop. “I want to speak to those people,” she explained briefly.

Just then Montana Marie, who had the sun in her eyes, recognized Betty, and triumphantly announced the discovery to her companion in her shrillest tones. “It’s Miss Wales come after us. What did I tell you?”

Then she slipped off her horse, and with the reins thrown over her arm came to meet Betty, while the man from Montana, looking very glum and very foolish, prepared to stay where he was.

But, “Come on, Fred, and meet Miss Wales,” Montana Marie commanded imperiously, and he dismounted in turn and followed Marie.

“You needn’t have come after us,” Marie began smilingly. “We were just going back of ourselves. I happened to think that you wouldn’t like it.”

“Then you haven’t——” began Betty eagerly.

“Haven’t eloped?” finished Marie easily. “Oh, no, not yet. We weren’t half-way to Gay’s Mills when I happened to think how you’d feel. And ever since we’ve been standing in the road, up there at the top of the hill, arguing about it, haven’t we, Fred?”

The boy—he looked younger than Marie—nodded sullenly. “Not arguing exactly,” he amended. “You just kept saying over and over that you wouldn’t go on.”

“Until I’d seen Miss Wales,” amended Marie calmly. Then she looked at the car, and, apparently noticing Connie for the first time, called out cheerfully, “Hello, roomie! Too bad I waked you out of your early-morning nap with that squeaky door.”

“Good-morning,” Connie quavered back in a frightened voice.

“We ought to get rid of her and of that chauffeur,” declared Marie competently. “Why not all go home now, and then I can come to see you this morning, Miss Wales, whenever you say.”

This was such an amazing proposition from the chief eloper, that Betty stared at it for a moment.

“You can trust us to follow right along, Miss Wales,” said the man from Montana quietly. “Or better still, Marie can go back with you, and I’ll lead her horse home. I guess that’s the best way, Marie.”

Betty took a sudden liking to the man from Montana. There was something very straightforward and businesslike about him, and his sulks were only natural under the circumstances.

“All right,” agreed Marie, having considered the proposal for a moment. “Only give me my saddle-pack. It might jog loose without your noticing, and it has my silver toilette things in it, and all my pictures of you, Fred.”

So Montana Marie O’Toole, bearing the precious possessions which, for reasons known only to herself, she had chosen to bring with her on her elopement, placidly took her seat in the tonneau, between Connie and Betty; and all the way home she chatted composedly, instructing Connie in the lore of automobiling—quite as if an early-morning elopement (that did not come off) was a part of her daily routine.

“Don’t you tell anybody about Fred and me,” she ordered Connie, when they were back at the Morton. “And say, take my rain-coat and empty it out, before the girls get a chance to see it and wonder what it means. I’m going to talk to Miss Wales.”

But once alone with Betty, she broke down and cried, dabbling at the tears with her magenta handkerchief.

“Maybe you think I don’t want to marry Fred,” she wailed. “Maybe you think I didn’t get Ma interested in American colleges on purpose so Fred and I could be nearer together. It takes two weeks for letters from the Bar 4 ranch to get to Paris. Think of the things that can happen on a ranch in two weeks. From Bar 4 to Harding is only four days. Of course a college in Montana would have been still better, but Ma would have seen through that. Oh, dear, what shall I do, Miss Wales?”

“Send your friend about his business, go home in June, tell your mother about your engagement,—if you are engaged,—and have a pretty wedding in your own home, when you and your family decide that it is best for you to be married.” Betty was trying hard to act the part of sensible, middle-aged adviser to heedless youth, though she felt extremely unequal to the rôle.

“That sounds lovely,” wailed Montana Marie, “but the trouble is, you don’t know Ma.”

“I know she’s very fond of you,” began Betty.

“But she’s a lot fonder of a ridiculous idea she’s got into her head of having me marry a duke, or a prince, or some other horrid little foreigner. That’s what she’s designed me for, ever since I was born and Pa struck it rich on the same day. She’s always thought it was a sort of providence. And my being in love with Fred doesn’t make the least particle of difference to her.” Marie sobbed again forlornly. “I ’most wish we had gone right on and got married this morning.”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Betty assured her earnestly. “Think how ashamed I should have felt, and how all the college would have been talked about and laughed at on your account.”

Marie brightened visibly. “I thought of that myself. That’s exactly why I wouldn’t go on. Out in Montana lots of girls just ride off and get married on the spur of the minute. But it’s different here, isn’t it? I felt that it was, after we’d started. And it’s different with me. After you’ve been to school in Paris, and to college for nearly a year, and have traveled a lot, you can’t do the way you could if you’ve lived your whole life in a mining camp. I thought when I put on my Western togs that I’d get into the spirit of the occasion, but I didn’t. I felt silly.”

“Was it your idea?” asked Betty curiously.

“Oh, yes,” acknowledged Montana Marie, “it was every bit my idea. Don’t you blame it on Fred. His only reason for coming East was to make sure that nobody had cut him out. You see he didn’t understand about the businesslike nature of the Prom. Man Supply Company. Miss Wales——”

“Yes.”

“Do you suppose you could possibly persuade Ma to let us be married?”

“If you’ll send Fred home and finish your year’s work here properly, I’ll try.”

Montana Marie considered. “All right. I can promise that much without any trouble. I told Fred that I’d rather elope out West than here, if we had to do it at all. Ma wants to take me to Europe again for the summer, but I shall just put my foot down that I’ve got to see my father first. Then if you haven’t persuaded her by that time—— Oh, Miss Wales——”

“Yes,” encouraged Betty smilingly.

“If Georgia Ames sent Ma an invitation to commencement, I think she’d come. That would give you a chance to talk to her, and talking is better than writing any day.”

Betty agreed that it was.

“And you must talk to Fred before he goes, so you can see what a nice boy he is. Ma ought to see that what we need in our family isn’t a silly title nor more money, but brains and good sense and nice manners. Fred has all those.”

Betty promised to talk to Fred later in the morning, and Marie prepared to depart. After she had opened the door she came back to ask a final question.

“Miss Wales, when you promised to undertake me last summer, you didn’t guess why I wanted to come to Harding College so badly, now did you?”

“Why, no,” said Betty. “I thought you were coming for what you could get out of it,—the fun and the experience and the education.”

“Whereas,” Marie took her up, “I was coming to be nearer to Fred, and to have a chance to marry him. But I did get the fun and the experience and the education too. So you haven’t wasted your time, Miss Wales.” Montana Marie held up her flower-like face for a kiss.

Up in her own room Montana Marie changed into a linen dress, discoursing meanwhile to Connie on the merits of a college education. “Concentration is all right. That is going to come in handy whatever we do later. But the best thing about a college education is the way you have to live up to it. So many people are nice to you and help you along. You can’t make them sorry they did it. All my life people are going to find out that I was at Harding for a year—well, at least a year,” put in Marie hastily. “And after the royal way I’ve been treated here, I’ve got to live up to Harding. I wish I’d thought of that sooner, but I was certainly lucky to think of it when I did.”

Later she expatiated upon the same thesis to Betty and the man from Montana, whom she had conducted to Betty’s office for the promised interview.

“Maybe,” said the boy with a whimsical smile, “maybe I’m not up to Harding standards, Marie. This year at college has changed you—I can see that. Maybe I’m not——”

“Nonsense!” cut in Marie, and slammed the door after herself. The next minute she stuck her head in to say, “If you’re not up to them, you’ll have to improve, that’s all. Because you and I——” she backed out and shut the door—softly this time.

That night Straight Dutton trilled outside Betty’s window. “Come out for a speck of a stroll,” she begged. “It’s lovely lilac-scented moonlight out here, and I’ve got a jist to tell you. It’s about your freshman.”

Wondering anxiously if Montana Marie’s attempt at an elopement could have been discovered, Betty hurried out to meet Straight.

“I’ve discovered why she came to Harding,” Straight began with gratifying promptness. “And it’s just as queer and ridiculous as you’d expect her reason for doing a good sensible thing to be.”

“Yes?” queried Betty, her heart sinking lower with Straight’s every word. If Straight knew, all the college knew. Even if the newspapers didn’t get hold of it, it was bad enough; and if they did——

“How did you find out, Straight?” she asked desperately.

“She told me.” Straight was too much amused by the absurdity of the reason to notice Betty’s perturbation. “She didn’t mean to tell, but I got it out of her.”

Betty met this disclosure in annoyed silence.

“Want to guess?” asked Straight gaily. “But you never could. She came to learn American slang, so she can fascinate the French nobility with it. She says they all adore American slang. She says I have taught her more than any other one person, and so when she’s married to a count or a duke or an earl—what’s a French earl, Betty?—she’s going to ask me to the wedding to show her undying gratitude. Isn’t that absurd? And yet she means every word of it.”

“Oh, Straight, dear!” Betty laughed at her merrily. “What perfect nonsense! Even Montana Marie isn’t so absurd as that. She was paying you up for the weird tales of Harding customs that you told her last fall.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Straight positively. “She’s forgotten all about those weird tales. Well, if this isn’t her real reason, I’ll bet the real one is just as comical. Montana Marie O’Toole never struggled into Harding College just to learn a little Latin and less Greek.”

“Maybe not,” agreed Betty solemnly. “Very likely you’re right, Straight.”

“When I flap my invitation to the duke’s wedding in your face,” declared Straight solemnly, “then you’ll see that I am. Fluff and Georgia and Timmy and I are compiling her a dictionary of slang for our parting present.”

“Be sure you dedicate it ‘To the Champion Bluffer,’” advised Betty, her eyes dancing at the thought of Straight’s probably speedy disillusion. “And now I must really go in, Straight. I have dozens of things to do.”

“Wait a minute,” Straight begged, desperate in her turn. “Betty Wales, twins are twins. If Georgia and Fluff are going to be in a wonderful new tea-shop in New York, what’s to become of me? Can’t there be a place for me too? Fluffy won’t do anything unless I’m there to keep her cheerful and help her decide things. Can’t there be a place for me too? I know I’m not clever like Fluffy, nor pretty. My—hair—doesn’t—curl. But twins are twins, Betty Wales.”

Betty patted her shoulder comfortingly. “I’ll think. If Emily Davis goes back to teaching, perhaps Georgia could be here, and you and Fluff—or you two could be here. Well, I’ll think, Straight. I ought to have thought sooner. I wish I had a twin to keep me cheerful and help me decide things. I need one this minute worse than Fluffy ever did in her life. Now I must go.”

Straight stared after her wonderingly. “She needs a twin! Good gracious! If she was twins, I guess there isn’t anything in the world she couldn’t do. And yet for all she’s such a winner, she knows what it means to be just a plain straight-haired twin like me. She’ll manage about fixing a place for me. And she shan’t ever be sorry she did. Now I can go to the last meeting of the Why-Get-Up-to-Breakfast Club and be the life of the party.”

Meanwhile Betty Wales, quite appalled by the day’s complications, was getting them off her mind by writing to Jim. “Here are a few of the things I have on hand just now,” she wrote. “Stopping elopements, deciding on the eligibility of strange suitors, persuading eccentric mothers to let their daughters marry, fitting two twins into the position that one twin will fill. So of course I can’t come to New York again until after commencement, and you must persuade Mr. Morton that it doesn’t matter a bit. Which is as nice a job as most of mine.”