Betty had not violated a promise in telling Alice Waite and Tom Alison about Georgia. The joke was really getting too good to keep, and Madeline had suggested that, as Georgia had not much longer to live, her friends and promoters should let the cat out of the bag by inches, being careful, however, to keep Dr. Eaton in the dark until the very last minute. So probably half the ten o’clock class in English Essayists had heard about Georgia, and nudged their neighbors excitedly when, one morning in late December, Dr. Eaton announced that he wished to see Miss Ames for a moment at the close of the hour.
“The Merry Hearts,” most of whom were in the ten o’clock division, exchanged swift glances, and then tried to conceal their amusement or embarrassment in various characteristic fashions. Madeline and Roberta, each wearing an expression of lamb-like innocence, stared inquiringly at Dr. Eaton. Bob stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. Helen studied her note-book with an air of intense absorption. Babe, Babbie and Betty played with their fountain pens and tried vainly not to look ill at ease. The rest of the class, however, made no particular effort not to look interested, and Dr. Eaton, in spite of his impersonal attitude toward his young charges, must have detected something unusual in the air.
Nobody knew how he had settled the question of Georgia’s identity since the day of the Belden House tea. Either he had lost interest in her, and had not taken the trouble to pick her out of the class; or else he had failed to do so and was too proud to ask any more questions. All “The Merry Hearts” knew was the fact of his having finally given Georgia’s handkerchief to the janitor, who had in turn surrendered it to Babe, after a long argument in which he flatly declared that there was “somethin’ crooked somewhar and he’d hold her responsible if that there Miss Ames ever turned up to bother him.”
And now Dr. Eaton had requested Georgia to wait after class! While “The Merry Hearts” were still frantically racking their brains for a way of turning the situation to account, he launched another question.
“Is Miss Ames present this morning?”
“No, she isn’t,” answered Madeline Ayres promptly. “She’s ill, I presume. Shall I take the message to her?”
“Thank you, I will write a note,” answered Dr. Eaton in his most icy manner.
“Oh, very well,” returned Madeline cheerfully. “It will amount to the same thing. I mean I will see that she gets the note.”
Dr. Eaton’s lecture was even more brilliant than usual, but it is doubtful if the initiated half of the ten o’clock division in English Essayists knew any more about the genius of Thomas Carlyle at its close than they had at its commencement. The question before the house was: What did Dr. Eaton want of Georgia Ames, and would her sponsors be able to save her life until after midyears, as they had planned?
At the close of the hour “The Merry Hearts” hunted up their president and gathered in an excited group outside the library door.
“I shall be late to astronomy and Jane Ellis will get the only decent telescope to see sun-spots with,” announced Katherine Kittredge, “but I don’t care. What in the world do you suppose he wants of Georgia?”
“Never mind that now,” interposed Mary hastily. “The point is to get the note before some of the girls who know the secret grab it for their memory books. Which hour can you watch the bulletin board, K.?”
“Twelve to one,” answered Katherine briskly, starting after her favorite telescope.
“And Betty is going to take half of this hour. Can you take the rest, Roberta?”
Roberta nodded.
“And I will cut lunch, because I am going down-town for breakfast now, and I shan’t really need any more food at one. That covers the time till two, and the rest of you can arrange about the afternoon later. Now run for your classes.”
Whether intentionally or otherwise, Dr. Eaton led “The Merry Hearts” a tedious chase. Twelve and one came and went, and still no note appeared on the faculty bulletin board, though Dr. Eaton was in his office, liable to emerge at any unguarded moment. At one he went off to lunch, but Mary kept her tryst all the same, because he might come back unexpectedly early. From two to three Babbie sat disconsolately on the stairs, where Dr. Eaton would not notice her—and where it was too dark to read or study. At three Nita came on duty. At three-thirty Rachel took her place and kept it until five, because Babe and Babbie forgot their hours and appeared then, together with Helen Adams. Helen had just sent the two B’s away, because they were so noisy that they would certainly attract attention, when Dr. Eaton swung down the hall straight past his office door, posted a note on the faculty bulletin, and strode off, whistling jovially.
“How much nicer he seems when he thinks nobody is around,” Helen reflected, as, barely waiting until he was out of sight, she seized the note and hurried over to twenty-seven, Belden.
Betty, Madeline and Mary were already there, drinking tea and talking over Georgia’s predicament. Madeline demanded the privilege of reading the note first.
“Just what I was afraid of,” she said, glancing rapidly through it and passing it to Mary. “But I couldn’t help it. The rest of you were ready enough to make the frills for Georgia, but you left all the plain sewing to me, and of course I couldn’t manage it.”
“What’s the trouble?” demanded Betty.
“Georgia is held up for cutting too much,” explained Madeline. “In other words she hasn’t handed in her ten-minute tests very regularly. You see I omitted a few when I thought the rest of you were doing them, and last week and the week before I hadn’t studied at all, and I simply couldn’t bluff for two. So I did my best for Madeline Ayres and let Georgia Ames shift for herself, poor thing!”
“Listen, girls. Isn’t this lovely?” cried Mary, who had finished the note. “‘I deeply regret the necessity of asking you to explain your many absences from English Essayists. I need not say that your work has been unusually satisfactory; but you know the Harding rule about cuts, doubtless better than I. Miss Stuart assures me that it is ironclad, and therefore I am left no choice but to hope that your absences have some good excuse—and that you have not lost interest in the course.
“‘Most respectfully,
“‘John Elliot Eaton.’”
“Fishing for a compliment, isn’t he?” said Madeline scornfully. “Well, we can give him one, I suppose; but if Georgia is to go on one of you must shoulder her ten-minute tests from now to midyears. I am really too busy to read the topics, and if I invented for two I should certainly be caught.”
“Oh, Madeline,” said Roberta sadly, “you know perfectly well that the rest of us can’t do papers for two.”
There was a discouraged silence. “How about Rachel?” asked Mary at last. “She is awfully clever.”
“She doesn’t take Essayists though,” said Bob, who had come in with the other B’s in the course of the letter-reading.
“Then,” said Roberta sadly, “Georgia must die.”
“Oh, no,” cried Betty, “she mustn’t die just now, when she’s going on so splendidly at Yale—and before her pictures have come, too. Could we—oh, dear!” Then, with sudden inspiration, “Couldn’t we have her leave college instead?”
“Of course,” cried Babbie excitedly. “She leaves for her health. That would explain her cutting. She can stay out over midyears and come back some time in the spring, when we have more time to play with her.”
“Oh, I’m so glad she hasn’t got to miss spring term,” said Helen, with a little sigh. Helen still took her pleasures very seriously.
“Shall I write the note?” asked Madeline, appropriating Betty’s desk. “And shall I have her say what is the matter with her, or where she is going?”
“We’d better have her go off a good long way,” suggested Bob, “or Dr. Eaton might think of following her—if he’s really as interested as Betty thought he was.”
“Oh, I know just what to do,” cried Babe. “Have her catch pneumonia from that window that he’s always opening right on to me in English Essayists. Then she could go out west somewhere to strengthen her lungs. Where do people go to strengthen their lungs?”
“Arizona, don’t they?” answered Mary doubtfully. “Anyhow say Arizona, Madeline. It sounds so nice and stunty and far off.”
While Betty made fresh tea for the late comers, Madeline wrote her note. “Dear Dr. Eaton”—it began:
“I was rather surprised to get a complaint from you about my cuts. I do not think my name can be in the right place on your roll, for I have listened carefully and I never hear it called. Some one said to-day that she thought it was down at the very end of the list. If so, I never noticed it and that probably explains most of the cuts.”
Madeline paused. “Isn’t that rather lovely? You know he hasn’t called the roll but once since he came.”
“It’s beautiful,” said Mary breathlessly. “Go on.”
“As for the very recent absences,” Madeline continued, “I am sure you must have heard how ill I have been. You remember the cold Wednesday we had two weeks ago? I sat right beside the open window in English Essayists, and that night I came down with pneumonia. I am much better now—quite out of danger, the doctor says,—but he insists on my trying a warmer climate this winter. So I am off for Arizona to-morrow. I shall be very sorry to leave Harding, particularly your classes. I find the lectures anything but dull.
“Hoping to return to my work soon, I am
“Sincerely yours,“
“Georgia Ames.”
“That is great,” declared Katherine, when Madeline had finished.
Madeline laughed. “If you think so, you might be the one to give it to him.”
“Very well,” agreed Katherine. “I’ll hand it to him before class to-morrow. Then after class you can inquire whether he got it all right.”
“Yes,” said Madeline, “and Roberta can inquire too. Then next day Betty can linger on the way out and ask if he doesn’t think it is a pity about Georgia.”
“And I shall sit near the window that day,” put in Babbie eagerly, “and ask him to have it opened, if he doesn’t open it of his own accord. And Babe can shiver and cough, and then we’ll watch him slam it down hard in memory of his dear Georgia.”
Dr. Eaton rose to the bait with almost annoying readiness. Apparently he found nothing strange in the remarkable solicitude of Georgia’s friends. He lectured patiently in a stuffy room, or opened the window a crack and cautioned the whole class to let him know the instant they felt a draught. Furthermore he rearranged his roll in exact alphabetical order, and called it scrupulously at the beginning of each recitation. “The Merry Hearts” found these developments so amusing that they regretted having packed Georgia off in such desperate haste.
“We might just as well have let her come to class once more, to hear one last lecture,” said Rachel sadly. “It would have been risky, but everything Georgia does is that.”
“Couldn’t we do it still?” asked Mary.
“No,” said Bob decidedly, “we can’t. I told Dr. Eaton only this morning that Georgia had got to Arizona. He asked me where she was going to stay, and I said that she was going to try Tombstone for a while anyway.”
“He’ll see through that,” said Babbie scornfully. “That’s too silly even for Georgia.”
“See through what?” inquired Babe loftily. “I suppose you think there isn’t any such place as Tombstone, do you? But I looked it up on a map, and there is, and furthermore I’ve got several other beautiful names ready in case Georgia doesn’t care for Tombstone.”
“Well, as soon as we get back after Christmas, you’d better give us her itinerary,” advised Mary. “We don’t want to slip up on a little thing like the geography of Arizona, when we’ve got her safely through everything else.”
“I wish I was safely through my packing,” grumbled Katherine.
“And I wish I was safely home,” added Betty. “Just think! If it wasn’t for that one class of Dr. Eaton’s to-morrow I could start to-night.”
“As long as you’ve got to stay,” suggested Madeline, “be sure and talk to him a little about Georgia. We don’t want him to forget her during the Christmas vacation.”
“All right, I will,” Betty promised. “I’ll tell him that her mother has gone out to spend Christmas with her. He’ll be so nice and sympathetic and he’ll say, ‘Now I’m glad of that. Fancy spending your Christmas alone in a place called Tombstone!’ I love to hear him say ‘fancy.’”
The next morning Betty arrived at the station hot and breathless, barely in time for the eleven-thirty train to the junction.
“Save me a seat, Madeline,” she panted, “with you and Mary and Roberta. I’ve got something to tell you; but first I’ve got to check my trunk.
“Well, what do you think Dr. Eaton did?” she began indignantly when she was finally seated beside her three friends, with the B’s and Nita just across the aisle. “I told him that Mrs. Erasmus J.—of course I didn’t call her that—had gone out to Tombstone, and he was positively frigid. He just said, ‘Indeed!’ and went on looking out the window. I was bound to make him take an interest, so I told him that she was dreadfully worried about Georgia, and he only said ‘Indeed!’ again. Then I happened to remember that I had her picture with me. Tom sent them to-day, and I was carrying Mary’s to her. So I said, ‘Dr. Eaton, you asked me once how Georgia looked. I’ve just got her picture. Should you like to see it?’ And he said, ‘Oh, don’t trouble, Miss Wales. I hope you will have a delightful vacation.’ Now what do you make of that?”
“Plain as day,” said Mary calmly. “Some disagreeable person has told him that Georgia is a fake, and he’s naturally huffy.”
“Oh, nobody would do that,” protested Roberta. “Every one who knows about Georgia knows that Dr. Eaton is the particular victim who isn’t to be told.”
“Perhaps some stupid let it out by mistake,” suggested Madeline, “or may be some of the faculty got hold of it and didn’t approve.”
“But I should think he’d be a little amused,” said Betty sadly, “and he didn’t show the least little speck of amusement. Of course I suppose he has a right to be annoyed at our freshness. We have been awfully fresh, you know.”
“But if it was that,” objected Nita, who had come to sit on the arm of Betty’s seat, “I should think he’d have shown his feelings long ago. He’s been so amiable about Georgia—so much more amiable than he has about anything else—that I thought he’d suspected all along that she was a fake, and that he liked the joke as well as we did.”
Betty stared disconsolately out the window. “It’s such a pity that Georgia should be spoiled just at the end,” she said. “I wish I had asked him right out what the matter was.”
“You might go back and do it now,” suggested Mary. “He is probably still sitting there thinking about Georgia, and it may spoil his whole vacation.”
Betty shrugged her shoulders and turned back from the dismal prospect with a sigh.
“Well,” she said, “you may laugh all you like, but I am sorry. I like Dr. Eaton, if Madeline doesn’t, and I hate to have a misunderstanding about Georgia.” But Betty was never disconsolate for long. “Bob,” she called across the aisle a few moments later, “is Georgia liking Tombstone so far?”
Bob nodded. “And isn’t Georgia’s photographer a perfect wonder? I got her picture this morning. Want to see it?” she asked, turning to the round-eyed freshman in the next seat. “You know we all think that Georgia Ames is about the most interesting girl in your class.”
The freshman stared at Georgia’s picture in awe-struck silence, privately resolving to look up Miss Ames the minute she got back. For if she was admired like that by “The Merry Hearts,” she must indeed be a marvel.