Betty Wales on the campus

Stopping at Prexy’s house to get him to join the grand tour brought back Betty’s “ritherum” feeling very hard indeed. Jim was so dignified and businesslike when he talked to Prexy and Mr. Morton; they were both so dignified and intent on their plans for Morton Hall. And evidently they all seriously expected Betty to do something about it. Betty set her lips, twisted her handkerchief into a hard little knot, and walked up to the door, resolved to do the something expected of her or die in the attempt.

Jim, who was ahead, had the door open for the others when Mr. Morton commanded a halt.

“Might as well be systematic,” he ordered, “and take things as they come,—or as we come, rather. Now, Miss B. A., shall there or shan’t there be a ploshkin put up over this front door?”

“A ploshkin over the front door?” Betty repeated helplessly.

“Exactly,” snapped Mr. Morton, who disliked repetition as much as he disliked other kinds of delay. “What could be more appropriate than a large ploshkin, cut in marble, of course, by a first-class sculptor? Stands for you, stands for earning a living when you have to, therefore stands for me and my methods, stands for our coöperation in putting through a good thing, whether it’s a silly plaster flub-dub that half-witted people will run to buy, or a building like this with a big idea back of it. But Mr. President here seems to think I’m wrong in some way, and young Watson says a ploshkin won’t harmonize with the general style of the architecture. Now what do you say, Miss B. A.?”

Betty suppressed a wild desire to laugh, as she looked from one to another of her three Giants’ faces. “Please don’t be disappointed, Mr. Morton,” she began at last timidly, “but I’m afraid I think you’re wrong too. A ploshkin—why, a ploshkin’s just nonsense! It would look ridiculous to stick one up there.” She laughed in spite of herself at the idea. “It’s 19—’s class animal, you know. The Belden might as well have a purple cow, and the Westcott a yellow chick, and some other house a raging lion to commemorate the other class animals. Oh, Mr. Morton, you are just too comical about some things!”

Mr. Morton frowned fiercely, and then sighed resignedly. “Very well, Miss B. A. It’s your ploshkin. If you say no, that settles it. Mr. President, you and young Watson can decide between that Greek goddess of wisdom you mentioned and any other outlandish notion you’ve thought of since. It’s all one to me. Now let’s be systematic. The next unsettled row that we have on hand is about the reception-room doors.”

This time, fortunately, Betty could agree with Mr. Morton, and the others yielded gracefully, being much relieved at her first decision. Then, quite unexpectedly, she had an idea of her own.

“Laundry bills cost a lot, and the Harding wash-women tear your thin things dreadfully. It would be just splendid if there could be a place in the basement where the Morton Hall girls could go to wash and iron, and press their skirts, and smooth out their thin dresses.”

Everybody agreed to this; the Giants forgot their differences and grew quite friendly discussing it. And up-stairs Betty thought of something else.

“Typewriters and sewing-machines are dreadfully noisy. That’s one reason why the cheap off-campus houses are so uncomfortable, where most of the girls use one or the other or both. I remember Emily Davis used to say that sometimes it seemed as if her head would burst with the click and the clatter. If there could only be a room for typewriters and a sewing-room, with sound-proof walls——”

“There can be,” interrupted Jasper J. Morton oracularly, “and there shall be, if we have to put an annex to accommodate them. Miss B. A., you’ll ruin me if you keep on at this rate. I presume I’m expected to install typewriters and sewing-machines. They’re part of the fixtures, aren’t they, Watson? If I say so they are? Well, I do say so, provided Miss B. A. accepts that proposal from—— See here, Mr. President, why don’t you take her off in a quiet corner and tell her what you want of her?”

Betty blushed violently at the idea of giving such summary advice to the great Prexy.

“Please don’t hurry,” she begged. “You can tell me what you want to any time, President Wallace. Mr. Morton is always in such a rush to get things settled himself; he doesn’t realize that other people don’t feel the same way.”

“Don’t I realize it?” snorted Mr. Morton indignantly. “Haven’t I spent half my life hunting for people that can keep my pace? But I beg your pardon, Mr. President, if I seemed to dictate or to meddle in your personal affairs.”

Prexy’s eyes twinkled. “That’s all right, Mr. Morton. Let’s give him his way this time, Miss Wales, as long as we’ve got ours about the ploshkin. Come and sit on that broad and inviting window-seat, and hear what we want you to do for us.”

It was an amazing proposal, though Prexy made it in the calmest and most matter-of-fact way. The Student’s Aid Association, it seemed, had reorganized at its commencement meeting, had received a substantial endowment fund—so much Betty already knew—and had since decided to employ a paid secretary to direct its work and to look after the interests of the self-supporting students. It had occurred to President Wallace that the right place for the secretary to live was in Morton Hall, and to the directors that the right person to act as secretary was Betty Wales.

“The salary is small,” explained Prexy, “but the duties at first will be light, I should think. I assume that you will be in Harding in any case, to supervise your tea-shop enterprise. Now this salary will pay several extra helpers there, and give you time for an occupation that may be more congenial and that will certainly be of real help to the girls you have always wanted to help—to the whole college also, I hope. Living in this hall instead of the regular house teacher, you will have a chance to keep in touch with us as you could not off the campus, and you will still be reasonably near to the famous Tally-ho Tea-Shop.”

When he had finished, Betty continued to stare at him in bewildered silence. “How does it strike you, Miss Wales?” he asked, with an encouraging smile.

Betty “came to” with a frightened little gasp.

“Why, I—I—it strikes me as too big to take in all at once, and much, much too splendid for me, President Wallace. I should just love to do it, of course. But I can’t imagine myself doing it. Now Christy Mason or Emily or Rachel Morrison—I could imagine them doing it beautifully, but not me—I—me. Oh, dear!” Betty stopped in complete confusion.

“But the rest of us can easily imagine you as the first secretary of the Student’s Aid,” Prexy told her kindly. “We considered several others, but none of them quite fitted. We are all sure that you will fit. The board of directors wished you to understand that the choice was unanimous. As for me, I’ve always meant to get you on the Harding faculty some way or other, because the Harding spirit is the most important thing that any of us has to teach, and you know how to teach it. This position will enable you to specialize on the Harding spirit without bothering your head about logarithms or the principles of exposition or cuneiform inscriptions or Spanish verbs. It seems like a real opportunity, and I hope you can take it.”

“Oh, I hope so, too!” exclaimed Betty eagerly. “But the trouble is, President Wallace, the world seems to be just crammed with opportunities, and they conflict. One that conflicts with this is the opportunity to stay at home with my family. I hadn’t decided, when I got your letter, whether I ought to come back to the tea-shop, or be with mother and father this winter. But living here and looking out for the Morton Hall girls does sound just splendid. Please, what would be the duties of the secretary, President Wallace?”

The President smiled. “Whatever you made them, I think. Perhaps the Student’s Aid directors may want to offer a few suggestions, but in the main I guarantee you a perfectly free hand.”

“Isn’t that even worse than to be told just what to do—harder, I mean?” demanded Betty, so despairingly that Prexy threw back his head and laughed.

“Think it over,” he advised. “Talk it over with Mr. Morton and your family. Write to your friends about it. By the way, I suppose you know that Miss Morrison and Miss Adams are to be members of our faculty next year.”

Betty knew about Rachael’s appointment, but not about Helen’s.

“Oh, it would be great to be back,” she declared. “There’s no question of what I want to do,—only of what I ought to do, and what I can do. It would be terrible if I should start and then have to give up because I didn’t know how to go on. It would be worse than being ‘flunked out’—I mean than failing to pass your examinations,” added Betty hastily.

“I understand the expression ‘flunked out,’” Prexy assured her gaily, “but I never noticed any of your kind of girl in the ‘flunked out’ ranks. Well, think it all over. Mr. Morton will dance with impatience when he finds that everything can’t be decided in a breath, and just as he wants it, but we’ll let him dance a little; and if he uses too persuasive powers on you in the meantime I should not be unwarrantably interfering if I objected.”

“He can’t object to you dictating in his private affairs a little,” quoted Betty gaily, as they went back to join the other Giants, who were sitting on a pile of lumber, animatedly discussing the relative merits of different makes of typewriters.

“Sewing-machines we leave entirely to you, Miss B. A.,” Mr. Morton told her, with a keen glance that tried to guess at her reception of Prexy’s offer. “Just let me know the kind you want and the number. No hurry.”

“That means that in about ten minutes he’ll ask you what you’ve decided,” murmured Jim in her ear. “Haven’t you had enough of business for to-day, Betty? Let’s cut out and take a walk in Paradise before dinner. We can just about catch the sunset if we hurry.

“My eye, but it seems good to see you again,” Jim assured her warmly, as they scrambled down the path to the river. “And it seems good to see Paradise again, only it doesn’t look natural in its present uninhabited state. There ought to be a pretty girl in a pretty dress behind every big tree.”

Betty demanded the latest news of Eleanor, who was a very bad correspondent, and then burst forth with her own plans and perplexities.

“I think you should accept the Harding offer by all means,” Jim assured her soberly. “Only there’s one thing I ought to tell you. I’ve been trying for a week to screw my courage up to the point of confiding it to the peppery Mr. Morton. His beloved dormitory can’t possibly be finished in time for the opening of college.”

Betty looked her dismay. “He’ll be perfectly furious, Jim.”

“Can’t help it,” returned Jim firmly. “He comes up nearly every week, and at least once in ten minutes, while he’s here, he decides to enlarge or rebuild something. See how he upset everything to-day for your sewing-machines and typewriters and washing-machines. To-morrow some book-worm will get hold of him and suggest a library, and he’ll want us to design some patent bookcases and build a wing to put them in.” Jim looked Betty straight in the eyes. “You simply can’t hurry a good honest job. I’m likely to be hanging around here till Christmas.”

“As long as that?”

Jim nodded, still scrutinizing her face closely. “Of course I know it won’t make any difference to you, but it would make all kinds of difference to me, having you here. You can be dead sure of that, Betty.”

Betty smiled at him encouragingly. “You mean you want me to be here to protect you from the pretty girls in pretty gowns who will begin jumping out at you from behind the trees the day college opens?”

Jim shrugged his broad shoulders defiantly. “I’m not afraid of any pretty girls. I suppose it will be a fierce game going around the campus with no other man in sight, but I guess I can play it.”

“Oh, I see,” murmured Betty, who was in a teasing mood. “You want me to introduce you to the very prettiest pretty girls.”

“Prexy can do that,” Jim told her calmly. “He’s my firm friend since I stood by him so nobly in the war of the ploshkin. But I do hope you’ll be here. We could have some bully walks and rides, Betty—you ride, don’t you?”

Betty nodded. “But I shall be dreadfully busy—if I come.”

“I’ll help you work,” Jim offered gallantly. “I understand this secretary proposition pretty well. I was secretary to the O. M.—Old Man, that stands for, otherwise the august head of our firm—until they put me on this little job. I could give you pointers, I’m sure, though it’s not exactly the same sort of thing you’re up against. And I say, Betty, Eleanor has half promised me to come on this fall while I’m here. I’m sure she’ll do it if you’re here too.”

“That would be splendid,” Betty admitted, “only of course I couldn’t decide to come just for a lark, Jim. I mustn’t let that part of it influence me a bit.”

“Well, just the same”—Jim played his last and highest card,—“if you want to be a real philanthropist, Miss Betty Wales, you’ll let me influence you a little. If ever there was a good object for charity, it’s a fellow who hasn’t seen any of his family for nine months and has had to give up a paltry two weeks’ vacation that he’d been counting the hours to, to hold down a job that may, in a dozen years or so, lead to something good. It takes stick, I can tell you, Betty, this making your way in the world, and sometimes it’s a pretty lonesome proposition. But I don’t intend to be just dad’s good-for-nothing son all my life, so I’m bound to keep at it. I hate a quitter just as much as dad does. I can tell you, though, it helps to have a good friend around to talk things over with.”

Betty’s brown eyes grew big and soft, and her voice vibrated with sympathy. “Don’t I know that, Jim? Last year when Madeline and Babbie were both away at once it seemed as if things always went wrong at the Tally-ho, and I used to nearly die, worrying. And when they came back and we talked everything over, there was usually nothing much the matter.”

“Exactly,” agreed Jim. “So don’t forget me when you’re footing up the philanthropic activities that you can amuse yourself with if you decide on a Harding winter.”

Betty laughed. “I won’t,” she promised gaily, “although you don’t look a bit like an object of charity, Jim.”

“Appearances are frequently deceitful,” Jim assured her.

“I should think so.” Betty jumped up in dismay. “I appear to have the evening before me, but really I’ve promised to take dinner with Mr. Morton.”

“Who-can’t-be-kept-waiting,” chanted Jim, giving her a hand up the steep bank.

Betty stayed in Harding two days, during which she had many long talks with Emily about the secretaryship and its possibilities. Being, as she picturesquely put it, a Morton Hall girl born too soon, Emily could speak from experience, and she suggested all sorts of things that Betty would never have thought of.

“But that’s all I can do,” she told Betty, when that modest little person declared that Emily, and not she, was surely the ideal secretary. “I can explain what ought to be done, but I couldn’t do it. It takes a person with bushels of tact to manage those girls. Maybe you aren’t as good at planning as Rachel or I. That’s nothing. You’ve got the bushels of tact. That’s the unique quality that the directors had the sense to see was indispensable. You’re ‘elected’ to accept, Betty dear, so you might just as well telegraph for your trunks.”

But Betty did nothing quite so summary. She wanted to talk things over with the family, who would be sorely disappointed, she knew, if she decided to come back to Harding, after she had hinted that perhaps the Tally-ho could go on with only flitting visits from its Head Manager. Besides, there was no use in losing the rest of August at Lakeside, and the Smallest Sister would grieve bitterly if the ritherum broke its promise to come home soon and play. Betty resolved to have Dorothy back again in Miss Dick’s school. There were lonely times and discouraged times ahead of her, she knew, and if a little sister is a responsibility, she is much more of a comfort. Mother would have Will and father, and if father went South again she would want to go too, so it wouldn’t be selfish to ask for Dorothy, if——

But in her secret soul, Betty knew that the “if” was a very, very small one. Father and mother would tell her to do what she felt was best, and she had no doubt about her final decision. She almost owed it to Mr. Morton to do anything she could toward making his splendid gift to Harding as useful as possible, and if Prexy and the directors and Emily were right she could do a great deal.

“And isn’t it splendid,” she reflected, “that when I’ve got less money than ever I can do more? That proves that money isn’t everything—it isn’t anything unless you are big enough to make it something. Oh, dear! What if I shouldn’t ‘make good,’ as Will says? Why, I’ve just got to!”

Betty set her lips again and walked down the platform of the Cleveland station with her head so high that she almost ran into Will, who had come to meet her.

“Get along all right?” he demanded briskly.

“All right so far,” Betty told him, “but there’s more ahead, and it’s fifty times bigger than anything I’ve tried before.”

“Of course,” Will took it placidly. “No better jobs in this world without extra work. If it wasn’t a lot bigger thing than you’ve tackled before, it probably wouldn’t be worth your while.”

Betty sighed as she surveyed him admiringly. “I suppose you’re right. I wish I were a man. They’re always so calm and cool. No, I don’t wish that either. I’m glad I’m a girl and can get just as excited as I like, and act what you call ‘all up in the air’ once in a while. I don’t believe things are half so much fun when a person doesn’t get dreadfully excited about them. So now, Will Wales!”