Betty Wales decides

It was a breathless August afternoon. Betty Wales, very crisp and cool in white linen, sat in a big wicker chair on the broad piazza of the family cottage at Lakeside. On the wicker table beside her were a big basket of family mending, a new novel, and an uncut magazine. In her lap was a fuzzy gray kitten. Betty Wales was deliberately ignoring the mending; she had been “perfectly crazy” to begin the new novel, but now she ignored that likewise; she had entirely forgotten the fuzzy gray kitten. She was busily engaged in the altogether delectable occupation, for a hot August afternoon, of doing nothing at all.

Jim Watson,—Eleanor’s brother, you remember, and the architect in charge of Morton Hall, also a warm admirer of Morton Hall’s pretty little manager,—had been in Cleveland for a week “on business.” The business was connected with two big houses that his firm were building there. It had left all his evenings and most of his afternoons wholly at the disposal of the Wales’s family cook, alias the pretty little manager of Morton Hall. The cook had rushed through her work in a scandalous fashion that caused the Wales family to indulge in many loud complaints of too-early breakfasts, “snippy” lunches, and wildly extravagant dinners—Jim always got out to Lakeside in plenty of time for the dinners. He had left for New York the night before, after the very most elaborate and delicious dinner of them all, and the Wales’s family cook was tired, though she did not know it, and happy, in spite of a queer lonely sensation that was hopelessly mixed with relief at having a long, lazy afternoon all to herself, to spend with a kitten for company, a book for diversion, and plenty of mending in case the unwonted joys of idleness should pall.

At four, when the postman came by on his afternoon round, Betty was still staring absently off at the blue lake, thinking vague, happy thoughts. She was so absorbed that she never even saw the postman, who obligingly walked across the piazza to her corner and dropped the afternoon mail in her lap, right on top of the gray kitten, who was too sleepy to care.

Just one letter, and it was for Miss B. Wales, the address typewritten, the name of Jasper J. Morton’s world-famous banking house in a corner of the envelope. It was from one of Mr. Morton’s secretaries,—not the Harding graduate that Betty had sent him, but an energetic young man who had been with the firm for several years. It was he to whom Mr. Morton had delegated the task of marketing ploshkins in New York and elsewhere, and he and Betty had become quite friendly over the checks and reorders and other business arrangements.

Betty laughed heartily, all by herself, over Mr. Morton’s characteristic remarks. It was fortunate, she reflected, that when he was cross he was always comical. Otherwise she would never have made friends with him in Europe, and then he would never have built Morton Hall at Harding to please her, nor helped the Tally-ho Tea-Shop out of its very worst trouble,—nor sold the ploshkins. She smiled all to herself at Mr. Samuel Stone’s “anxious hopes,” and frowned as she contemplated the utter impossibility of making the ingenious young lady (named Madeline Ayres) invent a new “specialty” except by some such happy accident as had produced the ploshkin, that comically sad little creature, with an “ingrowing face” that smiled, a prickly, slippery tail, and one wing to hide behind, plaster images of which had been circulated, by the energy and enterprise of Jasper J. Morton and Samuel Stone, from New York to San Francisco, if not further.

And having laughed and smiled and frowned, Betty read the letter all through again, sat up straight in her big easy chair, and, choosing one of Will’s stockings, began to darn the very biggest hole in it. She wanted to think hard, and she could always think harder when her fingers were busy.

A slump in the ploshkin market meant no more ploshkin income. When she considered staying at home for the winter, Betty had counted on that hitherto prolific source of revenue to keep Dorothy on at Miss Dick’s, as well as to provide herself with necessary pin-money. Father wanted her to stay at home, but Betty wondered sadly if he realized how much she would cost! A girl doesn’t know about that until she has tried living on her earnings. Betty Wales understood just how fast little things will count up, try as you may to be careful. Father wasn’t yet back on Easy Street; Will had made a bad joke to the effect that Easy Street was certainly Hard Street when it came to getting a place on it again after you had carelessly slipped off.

“That’s true as well as funny,” Betty reflected sadly, “and the reason is that people who have been rich don’t know how to be poor. We’re still an extravagant family, no matter how hard we try to save. So I almost think—oh dear! I wonder if they do miss me much at home when I’m away! Because President Wallace is sure that Morton Hall will miss me if I don’t go back to it. I wonder if he’s right. I almost think—— Goodness, I should hate to seem conceited about it, because I know as well as anything that it’s perfect nonsense the way they all think I can do things that other people can’t. Anybody could do anything that I’ve ever done,—if they’d only try,” ended Betty Wales, with a fine disregard for antecedents and a serene lack of appreciation of the rarity of people who try—and who keep on trying to the bitter end.

If Dorothy didn’t go back to Miss Dick’s there would be two extra ones at home; that would put boarding, with five in the family, out of the question, and rents in town were frightfully expensive. It did seem as if a person who had a good salary waiting for her in Harding would better “go back on the job,” as Will would have put it.

A big, snorting motor-car slewed round a corner, with a silvery peal of its “gabriel,” glided swiftly down the street, and drew up with a lurch in front of the Wales cottage. Betty, her eyes on Will’s stocking, her thoughts working hard on the perplexing Harding-or-no-Harding problem, gave a little start at discovering that she was going to have callers. By the time she had dropped the stocking and carefully arranged the kitten in a comfortable little furry ball on a hammock cushion, the two ladies in the tonneau of the car had shed their protecting goggles, hoods, veils, and ulsters, and started up the path to the door.

“Nobody I know,” reflected Betty, going forward hospitably to meet them. They were both young-more likely to be Nan’s friends than Mother’s, and Nan was off spending a week with Ethel Hale Eaton. Looking more closely Betty decided that they must have mistaken the house; the pretty, overdressed girl with the huge plumed hat, and the more subdued young woman in a wonderful silk gown and a close-fitting toque, both in the very latest style, did not look quite like friends of Nan or indeed of any of the Wales family.

The girl was ahead as they came up the steps. “Is Miss Wales at home?” she asked in a sweet, assured voice, smiling a dazzling smile from beneath the big drooping plumes.

“Do you mean the real Miss Wales-my sister Nan?” Betty asked. “She’s away paying some visits. I’m Betty, the next youngest. Won’t you sit down a moment?”

“Thanks, yes,” the older woman, with the sweet, subdued face and manner answered. “And it ain’t your sister we want. It’s you. I’m Mrs. James O’Toole, of Paris, France, and that’s my girl Marie.”

“I’m very glad to meet you both,” Betty stammered. “That is,—I haven’t met you before, have I? I have such a bad memory.”

“No, you haven’t met us,” Miss Marie O’Toole told her with an amused giggle. “If you had, you’d remember. Even people with bad memories don’t forget Ma and me.”

“No?” Betty laughed back at her in friendly fashion. In spite of the plumes, too much jewelry, and an absurdly hobbled skirt, there was something very winning about Miss Marie O’Toole, with her pretty doll face and her sweet, thrilling voice. But Mrs. O’Toole was a curiosity. Betty had had to try hard not to jump when the demure little lady, dressed with such exquisite elegance, had opened her mouth and been suddenly transformed into a very ordinary person with a dreadful twang in her voice and a shocking lack of grammar in her conversation. She listened in blank silence to her daughter’s comment, and then handed Betty a card.

“That’s to interduce us. Has the letter followed?”

Betty stared in bewilderment. The card was President Wallace’s, introducing Mrs. and Miss O’Toole. “Letter will follow” was written after the names.

“Oh,” exclaimed Betty comprehendingly, “you are friends of President Wallace’s, and he is going to write me about—something. I’m very glad to meet any friends of his. Isn’t he splendid?”

“I think he’s a cross old bear,” returned Miss Marie O’Toole sweetly, “and Ma thinks he hasn’t ordinary common sense, don’t you, Ma?”

“Never mind about that,” said Mrs. O’Toole sharply. “But we ain’t any friends of his. The letter to follow is about Marie entering the college. I told you we had ought to have waited a while, Marie, for that there letter.”

Marie smiled blandly. “Oh, I don’t know. I guess we’re capable of explaining ourselves to Miss Wales.”

“I’m sure you are,” agreed Betty hastily. She was bursting with suppressed curiosity.

“Well,” began Mrs. O’Toole, “it’s like this. Marie wants to go to college. I can’t think why, but she does. She met some swell New York girls in Paris last winter, and they told her that it was all the rage. Of course,” added Mrs. O’Toole magnificently, “we know all the elect of the American colony.”

“She means élite,” explained Miss Marie with a giggle. “Hurry up, Ma, and get to the point of your story.”

Mrs. O’Toole sighed a patient, long-suffering sigh and continued. “So when we came across in June, Marie went right up to Harding and took the exams, and she failed in most of ’em. So then she was more sot than ever on her idee, and she hired a teacher to travel with us all summer—a girl that this President Wallace recommended. And last week she tried again and done better, but not good enough to suit.”

“The tutor was so tiresome,” explained Miss Marie with asperity. “She told me that I couldn’t possibly pass, so of course I couldn’t. Go on, Ma.”

“So then she was still more sot to go,” went on Mrs. O’Toole, “and she sent her Pa a tellergram and he——”

“You can’t tell that part,” broke in her daughter hastily. “Don’t you remember that he said not to—President Wallace, I mean?”

“Well, anyhow, nothing come of it,” said Mrs. O’Toole wearily. “But he finally sent us here, to say that if you’d undertake Marie she could come, otherwise not. She’ll be terrible disappointed if you won’t,” ended Mrs. O’Toole, “and if you will she’s willing to pay quite regardless.”

Marie giggled nervously. “That sounds as if I was buying a hat, Ma, or an invitation to an exclusive ball. President Wallace said that money was no object to Miss Wales.”

Mrs. O’Toole glanced sharply at the little cottage and then at the perfectly plain white dress that Betty was wearing, with its marked contrast to Marie’s furbelows. “Money is something of an object to any sensible person—except some college presidents,” she added pointedly.

Miss Marie O’Toole turned to Betty with a pleading smile on her pretty face. “I guess you understand what I mean,” she said, “and please do say that you’ll ‘undertake’ me.”

Betty looked perplexedly from one to the other. “But what am I to do?” she asked. “I don’t understand what you mean by that word.”

“There!” exclaimed Mrs. O’Toole triumphantly. “I told you we had ought to have waited for the letter.”

Miss Marie shrugged her shoulders impatiently, and turned to Betty. “President Wallace said that he was willing, under the circumstances——” Marie hesitated. “I suppose he meant my being educated mostly in a convent, where they don’t prepare girls for college, and being so ‘sot’ on coming, and so on. Anyway he said that under the circumstances he was willing for me to enter with one more condition than is strictly according to rules, if you would promise to tutor me as you did another girl once, and to look after me generally, and explain things that I don’t know about. He said he thought I would find a lot of things at college that I didn’t know about.”

There was a long pause. Of all the embarrassing situations, Betty thought, this was the worst. President Wallace was—it would be very disrespectful to say what. Besides, Betty realized in spite of her annoyance that President Wallace undoubtedly had had a good reason for sending the O’Tooles out to spoil her lazy afternoon. Part of the reason was probably because he had had to send them somewhere, or he would have them still pleading with him to reconsider his decision. Betty foresaw that Marie, being “sot,” would not give up easily; while Mrs. O’Toole, wanting Marie to have what she wanted, would be equally persistent. Betty decided that she needed a breathing space.

“I don’t know what to say,” she told them. “To begin with, I haven’t fully decided to go back to Harding this winter. If I do go, I shall be very, very busy with my regular work. I don’t really see how I can do more than I have already arranged for. But before I decide, I must wait for President Wallace’s letter. It may be about you, or it may be partly about Morton Hall—the dormitory that I shall have charge of if I go back. May I have a little time to consider? I really couldn’t say anything but no, if I had to decide to-day.”

Mrs. O’Toole sighed and looked reproachfully at Marie. “I told you so,” she complained. “You’re always in too much of a hurry. We might just as well have taken things easy and enjoyed the ride. We came all the way in our car, Miss Wales.”

“But I like to ride fast,” announced her daughter calmly. “Do you, Miss Wales? Because, if we’re going to wait around here for that letter, I’ll take you for a ride. Do many Harding girls have their own cars?”

Just then Tom Benson appeared on the piazza. Betty presented him, and Marie promptly dazzled him with her smile and bore him off to a distant corner of the piazza.

As soon as she was out of ear-shot, Mrs. O’Toole leaned forward in her chair and addressed Betty earnestly. “Do it if you possibly can,” she begged. “It’s a foolish notion she’s got that she wants to go to college, but there ain’t anything bad about it. It ain’t as if she wanted to go on the stage, or ride bareback in a circus, or marry some good-for-nothing fellow that wants her for her money. So I’m awful anxious for her to have her way. You see, Miss Wales, I know I stand in her light some. I know I ain’t a lady, though I do dress perfect,” she added proudly, “and look so young that people are always asking Marie about her pretty older sister. But looks and money ain’t everything, Miss Wales. And Marie is always so awful nice to me and her Pa, that we aim to suit her as well as we can.”

“Did Mr. O’Toole come to America too?” asked Betty, for want of anything better to say. She couldn’t help being touched by Mrs. O’Toole’s plea, but she didn’t want Mrs. O’Toole to know it yet.

“Oh, he’s always in America,” explained Mrs. O’Toole, “out at the mine, you know. But that’s no place for Marie, and her Pa knows it. He wants her to have all the benefits fits of education and foreign travel. We ought to be going, Miss Wales. Day after to-morrow, did you say? All right. You’ve been awful kind, Miss Wales. Come, Marie, we must be going.”

Marie came, slowly and reluctantly, with a backward smile for Tom Benson, and a murmured, “To-morrow afternoon then, and we’re staying in town at that big hotel with the queer German name.”

Betty watched them go as she might have watched the curtain dropping on the last scene of a tragi-comical play. Tom Benson broke into her revery with a laughing comment.

“Your friend Miss O’Toole is an accomplished little flirt, all right,” he announced.

“She isn’t my friend,” Betty told him severely, “and it takes two to flirt, Tom Benson. So, as a favor to me, you’re not to call on her in town. You can come over here and see her day after to-morrow if you want to. It looks to me as if I had been tumbled into the job of chaperoning her through the first half of her freshman year at Harding, so I propose to start her out right.”

“Why the first half of the freshman year only?” demanded Tom curiously.

“Because,” explained Betty, “mid-years come then—at Harding. Seems to me I have heard that they come about the same time at Yale, but I suppose they don’t worry a distinguished scholar like you.”

“The fair Marie doesn’t act particularly studious,” admitted Tom. “But you can’t ever tell about these pretty college girls.” Tom smiled meaningly at Betty, for whose brains he professed a vast admiration.

“Well, I wasn’t flunked out at freshman mid-years,” Betty told him, “but if I didn’t think Miss Marie O’Toole would find half a year of Harding all she wants, for one reason or another, I certainly shouldn’t be contemplating acting as her special tutor.”

“Are you considering it?” demanded Tom in amazement.

Betty nodded calmly.

Tom whistled. “Then I bet you have your hands full.”

“Well, I certainly hate having them empty,” returned Betty, beginning again on the stockings.