Betty Wales on the campus

Betty Wales danced merrily across the campus to her office. It was commencement Monday. Betty hadn’t meant to stay over at first, but the affairs of the teachers’ agency were not quite settled, and they had kept her. Besides, Lucile Merrifield graduated, Georgia was a junior usher, Helen was to take her Master’s degree, and 19— was coming back “in bunches,” as Bob elegantly phrased it, for an “informal between-years” reunion. And finally Jim Watson was coming to make his much-heralded call on this very Monday evening. Betty had taken him to 19—’s own Glee Club concert, and he had suggested celebrating the anniversary, much to the disgust of the B. C. A.’s and the rest of the old 19— crowd, who found no occasion quite complete unless they could have Betty Wales in their midst.

Half-way to her office she was hailed by President Wallace. “You’ll be back next year, of course?” he asked. “The Morton couldn’t do without you.”

Betty blushed and laughed. “I hoped I could escape without being asked that, because I don’t know. Mother and father say they are all right, but I must look them over and be quite sure before I decide to leave them again.”

“Very well, only be quite sure also that we need you here,” the President told her, and Betty hurried on, thinking hard about the next year at Morton Hall. It would certainly be very nice, with the Mystery explained and happy, Miss Romance departed to make a home for her devoted suitor, the Digs beginning to appreciate the inherent reasonableness of obeying rules, the Thorn no longer prickly, and the Goop boarding with a married sister who had providentially come to live in Harding.

“I don’t believe her manners are worth the ruin of your disposition and mine,” Betty had told Mrs. Post, when, in June, the Goop had horrified the house by appearing at breakfast collarless and with unbuttoned shoes.

Besides these improvements six seniors were leaving—rather dull, colorless girls, whose departure would make room for livelier, more promising material. Betty resolved that Morton Hall should be the gayest, jolliest house on the campus—if she came back.

Frisky Fenton was at the door of her office to meet her. She had been sitting on the stairs waiting.

“I’m going home this afternoon, Miss Wales,” she said. “I’ve taken all my prelims for Harding, and I hope I’ve passed most of them. Since I’ve been over here so much with you, I simply can’t wait to get into college. Miss Wales, I’ve come to consult you for one last time. How shall I make my stepmother love me?”

Betty smiled into Frisky’s melting brown eyes that were fixed upon her so earnestly. “Didn’t Miss Dwight advise you to puzzle that out for yourself, if you wanted to learn how to win over crowds of people later? But I know how I should begin. Call her mother. It almost makes you love a person to call her that. And if you love her and try to please her——”

“I’ve thought of another thing to do,” Frisky took her up. “I shall pretend she’s like you. I’ve noticed that when people expect a great deal of me—as you do, Miss Wales—I manage to come up to it. Perhaps if I expect my—mother to be like you—to understand and sympathize——”

“And scold hard too, sometimes,” laughed Betty. “Don’t forget that part of me.”

The girl whom Betty had picked out as a possible secretary to Jasper J. Morton opened the door, and Frisky held up her flower-like face to be kissed and went off, a mist in her eyes at the parting. The prospective secretary didn’t stay long; if she hadn’t been a born “rusher,” capable of getting through intricate discussions and momentous decisions in double-quick time, Betty would never have thought of recommending her. And then, with not time enough before her next appointment to begin on anything important, Betty drew out a sheet of paper and began drawing up rules, à la Madeline.

“If I come back next year,” she headed the page:

Betty paused for an adjective, finally decided upon “interesting,” and threw down her pen with a little laugh. “That’s exactly it,” she thought. “Work and bothering and planning are what make life worth living and bring the big things around your way. Some day Morton Hall will run itself, as the Tally-ho does. Until then—— Come in, Miss Smith. Yes, I have heard from that school. Can you get a reference for Latin? There is one first year class that this teacher may have to take. You failed in Livy? Oh, I am sorry, Miss Smith! Yes, I understand; it was when you were a freshman and never dreamed of having to teach. But the Latin department could hardly recommend you, could it? Let me see what other places are vacant.”

It was a long, busy morning—a thoroughly grown-up, responsible morning for the Small Person behind the Big Desk. Once she rushed to her window to see the Ivy procession wind its snowy, green-garlanded way past, and again she deserted her post to hear the Ivy Song and to watch the pretty picture the seniors made as they sang. But neither Babbie’s gay pleading, Mary Brooks’s mockery, nor Helen’s mournful sympathy could shake her purpose. She was going to “tend up” to the business in hand, until it was done. It might be deliciously cool and as gay and amusing as possible down under the swaying elms. 19— might be holding an “experience meeting illustrated with tableaux, blue prints, and babies” under the Hilton House birch tree.

“I can stand it to miss all that,” Betty confided to Mary Brooks, “but if the afternoon people don’t come on time and don’t hurry through, so I can go on our own special picnic, I shall fairly weep on their shoulders.”

So the last of the “afternoon people”—a leisurely freshman who had taken ten minutes to decide between two rooms in Morton Hall—was surprised to see the patient, dignified secretary of the Student’s Aid dart past her down the stairs, sprint, hatless, her curls flying, across the campus, and shriek wildly at a passing flat-car, which slowed up for a minute while a dozen willing hands caught the panting little secretary and pulled her up and on.

It was a flat-car picnic, in memory of old days. There were ginger-cookies for Roberta, who ate an unbelievable number of them, and chocolate éclairs for everybody, because on the sorrowful senior picnic there had been almost nothing else. This time there was bacon, sliced very thin, to toast on pointed sticks, rolls, some of Bridget’s delicious coffee keeping hot in thermos bottles, a huge chocolate cake, and dozens of little raisin pies—the Tally-ho’s very latest specialty.

“Where is Madeline?” asked Betty, helping to start the fire. She had spent the trip out in catching her breath, cooling off, and borrowing hairpins to replace those lost in her flight.

“In the gym basement,” explained Christy, “with Nita and Jean Eastman. They’re the costume committee for the aftermath parade, you know. They boasted that they had done themselves proud before they came up here, but this morning Madeline had a great thought and they’ve been hard at it all day. They may come out later for supper.”

“We promised to hang out a sign,” Rachel remembered, and borrowed Helen’s red sweater, which, tied by the sleeves to a sapling down near the fence, pointed unerringly to the presence of picnickers on the hill.

“If you don’t send Mr. James Watson packing the minute the concert is out, you’ll miss the sensation of this commencement,” Madeline warned Betty solemnly when she arrived. There was a smudge of brown paint across her white linen skirt, and Nita declared feelingly that she would never make another pair of wings, no, not for any aftermath parade that ever was. These were the only clues to the extra-special features that they had planned for the evening.

At seven the returning flat-car halted by the fence, and the revelers went singing home to dress for the concert.

“Come to the gym basement for your costume,” Nita whispered to Betty and K. “Find me or Jean. Madeline is as likely as not to forget all about being there.”

When Jim and Betty reached the campus it was gay with lanterns, and girls in evening dress and their escorts were everywhere.

“How about a hammock in a quiet spot?” suggested Jim. “The music is prettiest from a distance, don’t you think?”

Of course, all the hammocks were full long since, but the obliging Georgia Ames and three other footsore junior ushers politely vacated theirs, insisting that they were only resting for a minute, and Jim sat on the ground at Betty’s feet and inquired for her stage-struck friend, the cheery Mrs. Post, and the Morton Hall-ites, and then for Betty’s summer schedule.

“I might be in Cleveland,” Jim announced tentatively. “The firm is working on plans for two houses out there.”

“Then you could come out to the cottage for Sundays,” Betty said cheerily. “Will would love to take you sailing. I hate to go in those bobbing little boats, so I stay on shore.”

“I’m not so very keen about sailing, either,” Jim said.

“Then I’m afraid you’d better not come,” Betty told him sweetly. “Sailing and swimming are positively the only amusements out there.”

“Except talking to you.”

“Oh, I’m the family cook,” Betty explained. “If you think I’m busy here, you should see me bustle around in summer.”

“I see.” Jim changed the subject. “Is Morton Hall to the queen’s taste since we fixed the linen rooms?”

“Oh, yes, Jim,” Betty assured him. “It’s a model—any amount nicer than the other campus houses.”

“Thanks for the firm,” Jim said, and then was quiet so long that Betty inquired laughingly if he had been to the Bay of the Ploshkin after his blues.

“Not yet,” he told her. “I’ve felt like it sometimes, but I was afraid I’d worn out your sympathy. I say, Betty, you’ll write to a fellow once in a while, won’t you? And if I should come to Cleveland—doesn’t the family cook get her evenings off?”

“Some of them.”

“Betty, Betty, Betty Wales!” chanted an unseen chorus. “Time to dress for the aftermath parade!”

So Jim said a hasty good-bye and waited under the group of elms that Betty had pointed out, to see 19— march by. Somebody had suggested having a costumed procession this year, and the seniors and half a dozen recently graduated classes had vied with one another in planning queer and effective uniforms. There were masked classes, classes with red parasols, classes with purple sunbonnets and purple fans, classes with yellow caps and gowns. But 19—’s close-fitting green robes were lighted up by weird green torches, and in the middle of the ranks marched all the 19— animals—the Jabberwock, the Green Dragon, the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon from an Alice in Wonderland show, ploshkins in assorted sizes with pink shoe-strings waving in their paws, and finally a little reckless ritherum hopping along in the rear. It jumped at the waving pink shoe-strings, it snatched a green lantern from the hands of a green-robed figure and charged with it blithely into the laughing crowd, and when it came to the elm trees where Jim was standing it darted straight at him and whispered, “Good-bye again, Jim. Do manage to come to Cleveland sometimes and talk to the cook,” and was off again after a pink shoe-string before Jim had discovered what was happening to him.

An hour later Betty shed her ritherum costume—it was rather warm, being composed of Georgia’s gym suit, the burlap that Lucille had bought to pack around her Morris chair, a peacock feather fan, and a pair of snowshoes for wings—and she and Madeline, Roberta, Rachel, K., Nita, Helen, the B’s, and Christy went out on the fire-escape to cool off and watch the other classes coming home.

“Must be jolly to stay up here all the time,” said Nita hungrily. “There’s always something going on, and it’s all queer and different and fun.”

“It’s a pretty good world, wherever you are, I think,” announced K. briskly.

“It’s whatever kind you make it,” Madeline amended K.’s sentiment.

“And we’re all making it something rather nice that it wouldn’t be, perhaps, without us,” Roberta added.

“We’ve never decided what it takes to make a B. C. A.,” said Madeline. “If we had we could tell Nita, and she could cultivate the combination.”

“We shall have that left for conversation at the first tea-drinking next fall,” laughed Christy. “There are always such dreadful pauses.”

“It’s always well to have something left for next fall just the same,” said little Helen primly.

“Yes,” agreed Rachel, who was secretly considering a year’s study in New York. “There may be more of us B. C. A.’s and there may be less, but there’ll surely be a topic of conversation.”

“And an Object,” added Madeline, hugging Betty, “with curls and a dimple, and a finger in everybody’s pie, and a few over.”

“Why, that’s just what Jim Watson said about me,” laughed Betty, “only he didn’t call it pie.”

“Jim Watson,” said Madeline severely, “is politely requested to keep his distance. We can’t spare you to him—not for years and years and years to come.”

“I should think not,” echoed Christy, Rachel, and Helen in an indignant chorus.

“Girls, please stop talking such perfect nonsense,” said Betty calmly. “Let’s climb down the fire-escape and go to bed.”

The Stories in this Series are:

BETTY WALES, FRESHMAN
BETTY WALES, SOPHOMORE
BETTY WALES, JUNIOR
BETTY WALES, SENIOR
BETTY WALES, B. A.
BETTY WALES & CO.
BETTY WALES DECIDES