It was a Saturday night in late October, and Madeline Ayres was giving “The Merry Hearts” their long promised and much anticipated mushroom party. Madeline’s room was really no larger than Betty’s, but much experience of living in trunks and tiny apartments had given her a really marvelous skill in the art of making the small appear the larger space. Her wash-stand was hidden in the closet. There also was the steamer-trunk, which, with a bed box that slid neatly under the couch, took the place of a bulky chiffonier. The litter of small bric-a-brac,—of dance and dinner cards and other miscellaneous souvenirs of good times or journeys,—that fill the room of the average college girl to overflowing, had no place at all in Madeline’s scheme of life. There were a few pictures—several small water color landscapes, gifts of her father’s artist friends, a black and white reproduction of a famous painter’s conception of the college girl, with a dainty pen-and-ink sketch done by the great man himself on the wide gold mat, and a little Japanese print of Fuji-yama in a curiously carved sandal-wood frame. The couch cover she had brought from Bagdad herself, and the one tall green vase bore the imprint of a famous French potter. As Betty Wales said once with a sigh, it was easy enough for Madeline to leave out the “footless little things,” when she had such lovely big ones.
So there was plenty of space in Madeline’s room for giving an elaborate spread, and most elaborate was the mushroom party that she had provided for “The Merry Hearts.” Babbie Hildreth’s stunning chafing-dish, with the four copper rabbits standing on their hind legs and looking inquiringly over the edge of the pan, occupied the place of honor on the tea-table. Babbie’s chafing-dish was the envy of the whole college. She had bought it with the money that her mother had sent for the term’s wages of the maid that Babbie was still supposed to be keeping. It represented much self-denial in the matter of riding-horses and suppers at Cuyler’s, which were Babbie’s favorite methods of disposing of the maid’s stipend; but, as Bob said, it was worth a few rides and a good deal of starvation on campus fare to be known as the owner of the swellest chafing-dish in Harding.
Babbie’s chafing-dish was cooking the cream sauce for the “inky drippers,” so Madeline explained to her ignorant guests. “They’re called that because they all turn to ink when they’re old.”
“Not at all pretty of them, I should say,” announced Katherine, surveying the plateful of dainty, gray-brown morsels doubtfully. “I don’t think I shall eat any ‘inky drippers.’”
“Then you’ll miss the very best course,” warned Madeline. “Wait till you see them done in cream, on the toast that Mary-in-the-kitchen is going to bring up for us. They’re much better than creamed oysters. They’re going to be your meat course.”
Madeline’s own chafing-dish, placed on one corner of her desk, was also lighted.
“And is this the first course?” asked Rachel, peeping inquisitively under the cover. “Why, it looks like oyster soup!”
“It is,—oyster-mushroom soup,” said Madeline, “and it’s the first course. Next come the ‘inky drippers’—excuse me, K., we can call them coprinus, if you like that name better—and then two entrées, giant puff-balls fried in batter, and meadow mushrooms broiled in butter and their own juice.”
“Um!” sighed Mary joyously. “Doesn’t it sound inviting? Think of eating an all-mushroom, four-course supper! Isn’t this elegance for you?”
“Think of the indigestion we’ll get,” put in Babbie, who was curled up on the window-seat, industriously slicing puff-balls into the pan of another borrowed chafing-dish.
“Indigestion!” repeated Babe. “I don’t mind that, but suppose Madeline’s made a mistake about her dippers of ink—is that their name, Madeline?—and we all die of poisoning. Does any one know of a grudge Madeline has against me?”
“No. Why?” asked Rachel.
“Because,” announced Babe proudly, “she might be poisoning us off the way Nero did his friends. He used to give banquets, and of course everybody had to eat whatever came along, including mushrooms; and when they got home they died.”
“Hear the prodigy of learning!” declaimed Bob. “I’m proud of you, Baby. Did you read up mushrooms in the encyclopædia?”
“Not much,” said Babe. “I never read for fun. I studied up Nero for a nine o’clock history class Monday morning.”
“Well, you haven’t any of Nero’s kind of mushroom, have you, Madeline?” asked Katherine.
“You’ll know about that to-morrow,” cut in Babe. “It takes twenty-four hours to make sure.”
“And meanwhile,” laughed Madeline, “you can live in hope. The soup is ready. Betty, will you bring the bouillon cups? They’re tea-cups at present, and you’d better dust them off.”
The soup was delicious; so were the “inky drippers.” Katherine’s prejudices went down after the first taste. When the last morsel of meadow-mushroom had been disposed of, she heaved a deep sigh and voiced the sentiments of the whole party.
“Well, of course I hope these aren’t the Nero brand, but if I am ever poisoned I want the stuff that does it to taste as good as this.”
“And now,” said Mary briskly, “while we are waiting to find out about that, I think we’d better have a business meeting of ‘The Merry Hearts.’ I don’t know of any business myself, and I don’t see how we can transact any, with our peculiar rules and regulations; but Madeline and Roberta have been casting base insinuations on my fitness for the exalted office I hold, and I am going to show them how beautifully I could have presided over the Congress of these United States, if I’d only been a man.”
“We’re waiting to see you do it,” said Madeline placidly. “I haven’t written a report, and nobody can make a motion, but if you’ll please recognize me, Madame President——”
“Is it against the rules to give me a chance to call the meeting to order first?” inquired Mary with great dignity. “Now, Miss Ayres, if ‘The Merry Hearts’ will please come to order, you may have the floor.”
“All right,” said Madeline. “I’m in no hurry at all, only I wanted to ask the girls how they feel about taking in some new members,—or one new member at least.”
There was a dead silence. Each of “The Merry Hearts” thought instantly of Eleanor Watson, the only one of the Chapin House crowd who was not a member of the club. Though few of them knew the whole story of her sophomore year, they all understood the opposition of the B’s and Nita, and wondered why Madeline should care to defy it. Katherine Kittredge went a step further than the rest in her conjectures. Remembering how Betty had stood by Eleanor and how eager she was for the rest of the clan to know and like her too, she decided instantly that Betty, having won Madeline to her view, had persuaded her to suggest Eleanor for membership. She looked at Betty and utterly misinterpreted her distressed expression. For Betty, like the rest, thought that Madeline meant to propose Eleanor and was sure that her doing so just then was mistaken kindness. Katherine’s championship of Eleanor hitherto had been on Betty’s account, and now it was for Betty’s sake that she broke the hostile silence.
“Is there a rule against discussions, Mary?” she began, with an attempt at ease and hilarity. “I suppose we are all waiting because we are afraid you will call us down with one of your grand regulations. But seriously, Madeline, I’m sure this silence doesn’t mean opposition to your idea. It merely indicates deep thought. You see we are so fond of one another, and we feel so complete and nicely fixed just as we are, that we can’t grasp your point. Tell as why you think we need a new member.”
“Well,” said Madeline, smiling reassuringly at Betty, who still looked greatly troubled, “I don’t know that we exactly need any more members than we have. It’s quite obvious that, if we’re to meet here and in Betty’s room, we can’t enlarge our boundaries very much. But of course there are some awfully jolly girls at Harding who aren’t in this crowd. There was, for example, me,—before you took me in.”
“Well,” broke in Babe impatiently, “can’t you hurry up and tell us whom you want.”
“You told me it wasn’t——” began Bob, and stopped short, blushing violently and hoping no one had understood. But fortunately several people had, and the atmosphere grew suddenly less tense.
“Don’t you think, Babe,” asked Madeline, “that it’s rather hard on my friend,—for of course she is a friend of mine,—to make me tell her name before we’ve decided whether or not we want any one else in ‘The Merry Hearts’? If she’s sure to be turned down, why, there’s no use in dragging her name in at all.”
“Very good point,” said Katherine, wondering if she could possibly have been mistaken and in a great hurry to find out the truth; “but I’m sure we can settle it quickly enough. If we could find any one that we liked as much as we do Madeline Ayres,—the same jolly good sort——”
“My second self, for instance, if she ever enters Harding,” interpolated Madeline smilingly.
“You peacock!” laughed Rachel, glad to see that Madeline felt no embarrassment over the strained situation. “Well, then, it’s decided, without being moved and seconded, that we may sometime make additions to our society. Isn’t that right, girls?”
“The Merry Hearts” agreed rather half-heartedly.
“All right, Madeline,” said Babe. “Now fire away. What’s her name?”
“I presume you won’t want her,” said Madeline calmly, “but if there’s any hope—it’s Georgia Ames, a freshman friend of mine.”
There was another dead silence, but this one was less oppressive. As long as Madeline had not proposed Eleanor Watson, they all felt less embarrassed. As for Georgia Ames, nobody but Roberta and Mary remembered anything about her, and Mary’s recollection was only a vague feeling that she had heard the name before. As soon as she had found out that “Georgia Ames” was Roberta, she had lost all interest in the name; and the rest had not noticed it at all, supposing naturally that it had no significance except as Roberta’s nom de plume. Roberta and Madeline had observed this indifference to Georgia’s personality, and had agreed between themselves to keep silent until the right time came for Georgia’s introduction to “The Merry Hearts.”
It was Betty who finally ended the second long pause.
“What a nice name!” she said, with a glad little sigh of relief. “I don’t know her even by sight, Madeline. Tell us all about her.”
“Haven’t any of you heard of her?” asked Madeline, with an effective stare of surprise.
“I have,” answered Roberta solemnly. “She is a very remarkable freshman, Betty, and I don’t see why you shouldn’t have met her, for she takes a good deal of upper-class work,—‘English Essayists’ for one thing. Dr. Eaton says that her written work is fine. I saw one of her ten-minute tests, and the comment——”
There was a shout of laughter from Mary, in which the rest of “The Merry Hearts” joined, one after another, as each saw the joke, or thought she saw it. Roberta stared at them in what seemed to be wondering, reproachful silence.
“Roberta,” said Mary, when she could speak for laughing, “how many mysterious freshmen do you and Madeline know, who take ‘English Essayists’ and get fulsome compliments from Dr. Eaton? This is the second one we’ve heard of lately. Is this one a joke too?”
“Why, Mary Brooks,” cried Helen all at once, “this isn’t the second one we’ve heard of. It’s the first. That is, I mean they are both the same. Don’t you remember that Roberta signed ‘Georgia Ames’ to those things she sent to the ‘Argus’?”
There was a hubbub of exclamations and questions, and it was some time before Madeline could tell the story of how Georgia began in Dr. Eaton’s class, and of her subsequent career there and as contributor to the “Argus.”
“You see,” she concluded, “I’ve proved my point, that a second self is sure to be interesting. But I’ve also proved Betty’s, that it’s a great deal of trouble to keep one up. I really haven’t time between now and midyears to develop Georgia’s full possibilities, and so I thought ‘The Merry Hearts’ might like to use her.”
“Madame President,” said Rachel, “I move—I mean, will you please instruct the secretary to cast a unanimous ballot for Georgia Ames as a member in good and regular standing of ‘The Merry Hearts.’”
“Madame President,” added Katherine, “will you please instruct the secretary to indite a formal note of thanks to Miss Madeline Ayres for giving us such a fine mushroom party——”
“Better wait till to-morrow, so you can be sure they were all fine,” murmured Babe.
“And also for hunting up such a valuable new member,” went on Katherine.
When the president had carried out these instructions, Betty Wales, being a strictly unimaginative person, ventured a question. “I don’t exactly understand what we’re to do with Georgia Ames,” she said. “Are we just to have the honor of belonging to the same club with her, or are we to use her as Roberta did, or what?”
“Oh, use her by all means,” said Madeline generously. “She is spoiling to be used.”
“But we must be careful not to tell any one else about her,” cautioned Rachel. “If too many people know who she is, she will be spoiled.”
“What kind of girl is she supposed to be?” asked Helen.
“Literary,” explained Roberta, “and clever and—what else, Madeline?”
“Oh, that remains to be discovered,” said Madeline with a shrug. “See what you can make of her. But whatever you make of her,” she added, “be sure that you keep Dr. Eaton interested. The cream of the joke, you know, will be seeing what he says when Miss Stuart confides to him how he’s been fooled.”
“Maybe you’ll never know what he said,” suggested Bob.
“Oh, yes, we shall,” declared Mary. “Betty can ask her. Betty and she have been great friends ever since that time when she didn’t meet Betty at the station. By the way, Betty Wales, how is it that you always manage to get the things you want?”
“I don’t,” laughed Betty.
“Oh, yes, you do,” insisted Mary. “You said the word and ‘The Merry Hearts’ turned philanthropic. There was Bob and the Hilton House toads, and this morning I caught Babe being nice to that queer Miss Ray on the way out of chapel.”
“As if I wasn’t always nice to everybody,” muttered Babe shamefacedly.
“What I want to know”—Mary went on—“is how you do it. It would be very useful to me in my business if I could wind people around my little finger the way you can.”
“Please don’t be silly,” protested Betty, blushing happily. She would have liked to think that she had an influence over her friends, but she couldn’t believe it. She was only “little Betty Wales,” who was not noted for anything in particular, and was always being taken for a freshman.
“Let’s call her the ‘Power Behind the Throne,’” said Madeline. “That’s what she is, and she gets the things she wants because she never teases for them the way you do, President Brooks.”
“Many thanks for the hint, Secretary Ayres,” said Mary affably. “I am now requested by our hostess to announce that she would like her dishes washed before ten o’clock. I must go this minute, but the rest of you——”
“Bar the door!” shouted Bob, “and hold her tight! She’s got to help this time, for once.”
Whereupon the business meeting of “The Merry Hearts” adjourned suddenly and in some disorder.