Betty Wales on the campus

Harding College was almost as excited over Madeline’s play as the B. C. A.’s had been.

“Why, she wrote it in this very town,” wide-eyed freshmen told each other.

“In this very room, maybe,” diners at the Tally-ho added wonderingly.

“And she’s only been out of college a year and a half.”

“I guess our little Catherine will be heard from some day. Miss Ayres was the leading literary light of her class, just like Cath. I can tell you these college reputations mean something!”

“Did you hear how she got Miss Dwight to read her play?”

“What’s it about, anyway?”

“Nobody knows—it’s a dead secret. But college girls come into it, I guess, because Miss Dwight is going to visit Miss Ayres up here—to study the atmosphere, I suppose.”

“I’m going in for elocution this next semester. If I get a good part in the senior play, I shall seriously consider going on the stage. Miss Dwight encourages college girls to do that. She thinks it offers a splendid field for educated women.”

So was Harding College once more stage-struck, and Miss Dick’s school as well. The Smallest Sister carried the great news there, and Frisky Fenton and her crowd bought Miss Dwight’s pictures to adorn their dressers, and bribed the Smallest Sister, by the subtlest arts known to the big girl for beguiling the little one, to arrange a dinner-party for them at the Tally-ho on the night when Miss Dwight was to be there.

“You promised me a spread down there long ago,” the Smallest Sister urged Betty.

“But I shall be so very busy that night,” Betty objected. “Couldn’t you come by yourself then, and have the party later?”

“But the others want to see her just as much as I do,” Dorothy urged. “Frisky said she would about die of joy if she could see her, and so will all of them. And they’ve been awfully nice to me.”

“All right,” said Betty resignedly, “only I can’t sit with you and you’ll probably have a very poor dinner, because the tea-shop will be so crowded.”

After all, one table more or less wouldn’t matter, she reflected, on a night when practically every Harding girl would try to get her dinner at the Tally-ho.

Miss Dwight off the stage was a demure little lady with wonderful eyes, a smile that made people who saw it smile back in spite of themselves, and a voice that thrilled one no matter what its owner said. Her hair was gray, and so were her clothes, when they weren’t black. She hated attention, shrank forlornly behind Madeline when the girls stared or sang to her, and only came to dinner at the Tally-ho because Madeline had assured her that it was, at the dinner-hour, the very soul and centre of the college world.

Having come, she exclaimed rapturously at all the “features,” and then, perceiving that she was the chief of them, she hid in the remotest corner of Jack o’ Hearts’ stall, with Madeline on one side for protection and Mary and Betty to talk to across the way. Her big hat drooped so far over her face that girls who rudely looked in as they went by the stall saw nothing but the soft curve of her cheek and her chin cleft by a big dimple—unless it happened to be a moment when she had boldly resolved to look out upon these “wonderful, frightful collegians.” Then she lifted the brim of the absurd hat with a fascinating gesture, and smiled her clear, childlike smile at the curious passers-by.

Dorothy’s table was the one nearest to Jack o’ Hearts’ stall, so that she and her friends came in for a generous share of Miss Dwight’s smiling inspection of her surroundings. But that wasn’t enough for Frisky Fenton.

“I’ve just got to speak to her,” she declared. “If she’s as retiring as you say, Dot, I’m afraid we shan’t get any chance later. I think I’ll go over there now.”

“But I’m afraid Betty wouldn’t like it,” objected the Smallest Sister anxiously.

“Well, if she doesn’t, she won’t blame you,” retorted Frisky, “and I shan’t mind being in hot water with her, as long as I get a chance to talk to Miss Dwight. I can make it all right with your sister afterward, I’m sure.”

“Please don’t go, Frisky,” begged Dorothy, sending imploring glances across at Betty, who was perfectly oblivious of the Smallest Sister’s efforts. “It’s not polite to go where you’re not invited. Betty said she’d have us meet Miss Dwight later if she could.”

Frisky gave an irritating little laugh. “You don’t understand about such things, dear. I’m not a child, to be sent for with dessert.” And with that she jumped up and crossed quickly to Jack o’ Hearts’ stall, where she appeared, a very pretty, demure, totally inexplicable vision, before the astonished party of diners. She nodded to Betty and Madeline, smiled at Mary, and curtseyed, with dropped eyes, before Miss Dwight.

“Excuse me, Miss Dwight,” she said sweetly, “but do you think I’d be a success on the stage? I’m crazy about it.”

Miss Dwight laughed heartily at the absurd question. “Sit down, my dear,” she said, not seeming to mind the unwarranted invasion of her privacy. “Are you one of these astonishing Harding girls?”

“No, I’m only at school,” explained Frisky calmly, “but I’m as old as some college girls. And anyway, isn’t it better to begin acting when you’re very young?”

Miss Dwight stared at her, a sombre shadow in her great dark eyes. “You’re far too pretty to begin young,” she said. “Some day, if you really want it, and your mother is willing——”

“I’ve only a stepmother,” put in Frisky airily, “so I needn’t consider that.”

Miss Dwight looked at her again. “It’s a hard life, my dear—a long pull, and very little besides more hard work for you if you win, and if you never do make good—and most of us don’t——”

“Oh, please don’t discourage me,” Frisky broke in impulsively. “It’s the one thing in life for me.”

“Wait till you have some idea about life before you say that,” Miss Dwight advised her rather sharply. “Make friends with your stepmother, to begin with. If you can do that now, perhaps some day you can make friends with an audience. Go back to school and study hard. Read the great plays and the great poems. And in five years, if you’re still stage-struck, come to me—and I’ll give you some more good advice. Good-bye, my dear.” She held out her hand with a definite gesture of dismissal that even Frisky could not ignore.

“Good-bye, and thank you,” said the girl, “but five years is an awfully long time to wait, Miss Dwight. You may see me sooner.”

With which parting shot, Frisky returned to her horrified friends more stage-struck than ever, and more confident of her ability to manage any situation to her liking. Her vanity would have received a severe shock if she had heard Miss Dwight call her a silly child, Madeline emphasize the fact that Frisky wasn’t a college girl, or a type of even the shallowest variety, and Betty confide to Mary Brooks Hinsdale that she was thoroughly ashamed of the Smallest Sister’s new chum.

The next morning Frisky sent Miss Dwight a bunch of violets and a gushing note, which her divinity refused to read because “the handwriting made her nervous.” But there was also a note from Helena Mason, enclosing a little verse which she asked permission to print in the next “Argus.” Miss Dwight laughed and cried over it, declared it was the best thing that had ever been written about her, and made Madeline take her at once to see the author, who gushed, in conversation, as badly as Frisky had on paper, and seemed to have the vaguest possible ideas about Miss Dwight’s genius, which she had described so aptly in her poetical mood.

“All literary people are bores but you, my dear,” Miss Dwight declared, hurrying Madeline away. “I discovered that years ago, but I’m always forgetting it again. If anybody else sends me a poem, please remind me to shun her. Time in Harding is too precious to be wasted.”

Miss Dwight could stay away from New York only two days—“two sweet, stolen days,” she called them. Then she hurried back to the rehearsals, leaving Madeline in Betty’s charge.

“She’s done all that she can for her play now,” she explained, “and she’d far better stay here. She might make us nervous, and she’d certainly make herself miserable. Rehearsals are such contrary things. They’ve gone so abominably up to now that I’m absolutely sure the play will be a hit.”

The nature of the hit was still a mystery. Madeline, Miss Dwight, and her manager were all stubbornly dumb. The title wasn’t even put on the bill-boards until a week before the opening night, and then it might mean anything—“Her Choice.”

Nearly all the B. C. A.’s were going down to see the first performance, but the one who was most excited at the prospect, next to Madeline, was undoubtedly Eleanor Watson. Her gowns had figured in Madeline’s “walking part,” but that wasn’t the chief reason for her interest in the play. The great thing was that Richard Blake was giving a box party and a supper, and he had asked her and Jim to come. Dick had almost never taken her anywhere, and this winter he had been too busy even to come often to call. Yet Madeline seemed to see a good deal of him.

“He doesn’t care for me. Why should he?” Eleanor had reflected sadly. “He likes Madeline because she’s clever about the same sort of things that he is interested in. And yet when he does come to see me, he looks and acts as if——”

And then Dick had telephoned about the box party. “It’s almost never that I can ask you to anything you really care about,” he had said, “so do say you’ll come this time.”

And when Eleanor had accepted, declaring that she always enjoyed doing things with him, he had taken her challenge. “Then I shall ask a pretty girl for your brother and two dull pairs of devoted people who won’t bother us. Remember it’s to be our very own party—only I can’t come for you because ‘The Quiver’ goes to press that night, and I shall have a form to ‘O. K.’ between seven and eight.”

Eleanor decided to wear her new yellow dress. At noon a huge bunch of violets arrived with Dick’s card. At three Jim sent a messenger for his evening clothes. He wouldn’t be able to get home to dinner. He might come for Eleanor at quarter to eight; if not, he would send a cab. Eleanor went across the street very early to the hotel where they took their dinners, and afterward slipped out of her street clothes and into a kimono, and curled up on the couch by the sitting-room fire to rest until it was time to dress for the evening. By and by she stretched luxuriously, sat up, and without turning on a light went down the hall to her room. As she felt for the electric switch a low angry growl sounded from within. It was Peter Pan, Jim’s new bulldog. He was feeling neglected, probably. Jim took him for a walk or romped with him indoors nearly every evening.

“Why, Peter!” Eleanor called persuasively. “Poor old Peter Pan! Were you lonely and bored and very cross?”

Another growl, and the noise of Peter’s claws digging into the matting, as he scrambled to his feet. Eleanor turned on the light hastily, but Peter, unpropitiated and growling angrily, came forward a step or two and stood defiantly, ready to resist any encroachment on his domain.

“Why, Peter, you silly dog,” coaxed Eleanor. “Don’t you know me? Did you think I was a burglar coming in the dark to rob your dear master? Well, I’m not. Come here, Peter, good dog!”

Generally Peter would have come pattering across the floor, eager to lick Eleanor’s hand. To-night he only growled again and showed his teeth. Eleanor had had very little experience with dogs, and she was horribly frightened at Peter’s extraordinary behavior. She remembered that when she came down to New York and was introduced to the apartment and to the room that Jim had moved out of because it was the largest and pleasantest he had to offer her, Jim had warned her to “go slow” with Peter Pan.

“He seems to have a little prejudice against strangers, especially ladies,” Jim had said. “He snapped pretty hard at the janitor’s wife one day when she was making my bed. She won’t come in now unless he’s out or chained. Don’t try to pet him if he acts cross. He may resent your moving into my special quarters.”

But Peter Pan had never acted cross or regarded Eleanor as an interloper, and Eleanor had petted him, taken him walking in the park, and quite forgotten Jim’s warning until now.

“Peter,” began Eleanor desperately again, “please stop growling. I’ve got to dress, and to do that I’ve got to come in where you are and go right past you to my dressing-room. Now be a good dog and cheer up.” Peter Pan paid no attention to this pathetic appeal. He growled again in a low but menacing key, and yawned, showing all his teeth once more in the process.

Eleanor shivered and retreated a step or two so that she could see the clock in the sitting-room. Twenty minutes past seven; if Jim came for her, she could dress and arrive late, but if not—— On a chair near the door of her room were the walking skirt and blouse she had taken off. Near by were her black pumps. She had changed her stockings to a pair of pale yellow silk ones, leaving those she had taken off in the dressing-room, with her yellow dress and evening cape. Unless Jim came, she must appear at Dick’s party in yellow stockings, black shoes, a mussy linen blouse, and a blue serge street-suit, or she must pass that growling dog twice in order to get her evening things. She wouldn’t be downed! There was a dog-whip in the hall; she would get that and armed with it make the fatal dash. Then she remembered Jim’s warning. “He’s a dandy dog, but a puppy’s temper is always uncertain. So go slow and don’t get near him when he’s low in his mind.”

Visions of herself pinioned helplessly in Peter Pan’s vise-like grip until Jim, frightened at her failure to appear at the theatre, should appear, perhaps after she had endured hours of agony, to rescue her, kept Eleanor from going after the dog-whip. Bulldogs did maim and even kill people. Even a yellow dress, chosen especially to suit Dick’s fastidious taste, wasn’t worth that risk. But if she went in her street suit they would all laugh at her and say that there wasn’t any risk. Two big tears dropped from Eleanor’s eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She brushed them away scornfully, and crooning soft speeches to Peter Pan reached for the black pumps, the mussy blouse, and the walking skirt. Having secured them, she slammed the door upon the hateful dog, locked it, and dressed before the tiny mirror over the mantelpiece. Her tricorn hat and her coat were in the hall, but Dick’s violets were in the dressing-room. Eleanor almost wept again as she thought of them. If only Jim came for her! But he didn’t—he sent a puffing taxi, whose driver stared curiously at her yellow stockings as he held open the door for her.

Everybody in the theatre lobby seemed to be staring. Eleanor’s face flushed as she hurried to Dick’s box. As she pulled back the curtain Dick jumped to meet her—and he stared at her stockings. The dull devoted ladies and the pretty girl for Jim were in very elaborate evening gowns—and they stared at her stockings, then at her mussy shirt-waist, and her plain little hat.

“Introduce me quick,” pleaded Eleanor softly to Dick, who was trying to take her coat, “and then I can explain my clothes. No, I can’t take off my coat. It’s all the fault of that horrid, hateful Peter Pan.”

Dick smiled at her blandly. “You look just as lovely as usual. In fact I like you best of all in plain dark things. Didn’t some violets come?”

“They were in the dressing-room too, behind that miserable dog. If Jim ever comes—I must sit somewhere back in a corner.”

“You must sit there with me beside you.” Dick pointed to a chair in the front of the box.

“Don’t you really mind?” demanded Eleanor. “Of course the stockings are the worst, and they won’t show——”

“I asked you to come to our very own party,” Dick told her, “not your clothes. I’ve got plenty of clothes here already. Come and meet them, and tell them about the horrid Peter Pan. Did he chew up your entire wardrobe while you were out?”

It was a very funny story when once you were free to see it that way. The dull devoted couples got quite hysterical over it. Jim, when he came, was almost as bad, though he assured his sister soberly that she had done very well to “play safe” when Peter Pan was low in his mind.

“Most girls think all a man cares for is clothes,” said Dick, as the orchestra played with lowered lights waiting for the first curtain.

“And most men think a girl cares only for flowers and candy and suppers.”

“Before the wedding—and clothes and servants and all the luxuries she’s used to afterward,” added Dick a little bitterly.

“Whereas,” Eleanor took him up, “if a girl loves a man, she is willing to do without all but the plainest, simplest necessities. What she wants is a chance to help him, to be with him through thick and thin, to watch him make good, and to feel that she has a little bit of a share in the fine things he’s doing and going to do.”

She never could have said it if the lights had been on. She even flushed in the dark as she saw Dick lean forward to look into her eyes.

“Do you mean,” he asked eagerly, “that you’d feel that way yourself?”

“I mean that any and every nice girl feels that way.”

Just then the curtain went up, but for all Dick’s interest in Madeline’s play, his hand was crushing one of Eleanor’s, and his heart was pounding so hard that the first act was half over before he had gathered his wits to know what it was all about.

The minute the curtain rang down, Dick turned to Eleanor. “In that case,” he said under cover of the applause, “you’ve got to promise to marry me now. I can give you a good deal besides love and a chance to help, but I’ve waited almost two years without daring to say a word, and I’ve been frightened to death for fear I should lose you to some fellow who could speak sooner.”

“You needn’t have worried,” Eleanor told him, “because I was waiting too. But I consider that you’ve wasted two whole years for me out of my life. You’ll have that to make up for, monsieur. Can you do it?”

“I can only try,” said Dick very soberly.

The play was a triumph for Miss Dwight and for the author. That young person was sitting alone in the last row of the peanut gallery. Occasionally she pinched herself to make sure that she was awake, and just before the final curtain fell she crept softly out and went home by herself in a jolting, jangling Broadway car. There Dick and Eleanor found her rocking by the fire, the inevitable black kitten in her lap.

“Come to supper,” Dick said. “You promised, and the taxi waits.”

Madeline smiled dreamily up at them and patted the kitten. “Yes, Dick, I’ll come to supper as long as I needn’t dress up for it. What’s the matter, Eleanor?”

“I want to know how you knew,” demanded Eleanor eagerly. “How you guessed exactly how I’ve felt all these years about—about everything and—and Dick.”

Madeline smiled. “If every woman in the audience wants to know that,” she said, “the play goes. The shop-girl next me in the gallery wants to know, and Miss Dwight, and now you—— Excuse me, Eleanor, but where did you get those stockings?”