Betty Wales on the campus

The Smallest Sister was reconciled at last to being a boarder.

“I’ve got a new chum,” she announced eagerly, coming to see her sister on an afternoon which Betty, feeling more than usually “caught-up” with her other activities, had decided to devote to Dorothy.

“What’s happened to Shirley Ware?” asked Betty.

“We’re mad at each other—at least I’m mad at Shirley.” The Smallest Sister assumed an air of injured innocence. “We don’t speak any more, except to say good-morning at breakfast if Miss Dick is looking right at us.”

“But that’s so silly, Dorothy,” Betty protested. “Shirley is a dear little girl, and if you’ve quarreled it’s probably more your fault than hers. Tell me all about it, dearie.”

“Well,” Dorothy began sulkily, “I’d just as soon tell you, only Frisky—that’s Francisca Fenton, my new chum—she asked us all not to say anything more about it. I’m not the only one that’s mad at Shirley. Nearly every single girl at Miss Dick’s is too,—only being chums with her makes it worse for me, because I’m so ashamed of her.”

“Who is this Francisca Fenton?” asked Betty, digressing diplomatically for a moment from the main issue. “I never even heard you speak of her before. Haven’t you become chums very fast?”

Dorothy nodded importantly. “She’s one of the older girls. Maybe you haven’t heard me speak of her, but I’ve just nearly worshipped her ever since she came last fall. The other day when I cried because I was so mad at Shirley and so ashamed of her, why, she came and asked me to be chums. Her chum was in it too, you see. I mean she took sides with Shirley.”

“Sides about what?” asked Betty innocently.

“About being a tattle-tale, of course,” Dorothy began, and stopped short, setting her pretty little mouth in a straight, determined line. “Frisky asked me not to talk about it, and I shan’t,” she announced. “So don’t you try to make me.”

Betty was mending a pair of Dorothy’s gloves. She stuck the needle into the rip, folded the gloves, and silently began upon the holes in her own stockings. Dorothy pretended to look out the window, but she kept one eye on Betty, who appeared completely absorbed in her work.

“It’s a lovely day,” the Smallest Sister observed presently.

No answer.

“Aren’t we going for our walk pretty soon?” demanded the Smallest Sister, after a polite interval.

There was another polite interval, then she came over to Betty’s chair and repeated her question. “Didn’t you hear me, Betty? I asked can’t we go for our walk pretty soon?”

Betty looked at her coldly. “You can go any time you like,” she said.

“But I’m your company. You asked me to spend the afternoon, and have supper with you and Miss Eleanor and Eugenia.”

Betty continued her cold scrutiny of the Smallest Sister’s small person. “I asked my nice little sister to supper,” she announced judicially. “I didn’t ask a silly little girl who has silly little quarrels with her best friends, and then won’t talk it over with me and let me help her straighten it all out.”

“I don’t want to straighten it out,” muttered Dorothy defiantly, “and Frisky specially asked us——”

“Not to talk about it in the school,” concluded Betty. “If she asked you not to talk about it to your mothers and big sisters, why, she isn’t a good kind of chum for you. She can’t be.”

Dorothy flushed an angry pink. “Just wait till you see her. She’s lovely. She’s the nicest chum I ever, ever had.”

Betty got up quietly and handed the Smallest Sister her hat and coat. “You’d better be going back, I think,” she said very cheerfully.

“Back where?”

“To school, of course, for supper.”

“I can’t do that,” Dorothy interposed hastily. “Why, I asked Miss Dick for permission to come and stay with you till the evening study hour. She’d think it was very queer for me not to stay.”

“I’ll telephone her and explain,” said Betty inexorably.

“I shan’t go if you do,” declared the little rebel. “So now! I shan’t go!”

“Dorothy Wales,” began Betty gravely, putting one arm around the Smallest Sister’s waist and drawing her stiff little figure closer, “if mother were here and you acted this way you know as well as I do what she’d do. She’d send you straight to bed to stay all this lovely long afternoon. Now I’m not mother, so I can’t do that. It’s not my place. But I can see that I’ve made a mistake in bringing you here. I thought you loved me enough to do as I want—as I think best, I mean. You don’t, so I must send you home to mother at once. Now I want you to go right back to Miss Dick’s, and tell her that I can’t have you to tea to-day. You needn’t say why. And I shall write to mother to-night.”

“But Betty——”

“There’s no use arguing about it, Dorothy,” Betty cut her short. “I mean exactly what I say. Put on your hat at once.”

A month of being the youngest boarder and the school pet, supplemented by Eugenia’s many flattering attentions, had badly spoiled the Smallest Sister, but she could still recognize the voice of authority. In an uncomfortable flash she came to her senses. Her sister Betty meant what she said. She was going to be sent back to mother in disgrace. For a few minutes longer pride sustained her. Silently she lifted her chin for Betty to draw the elastic of her hat beneath it. Silently she stretched out her arms for Betty to pull on her coat. With only a faint tremor in her voice she said good-bye, and holding herself very erect marched out of the room, shutting the door after herself in a fashion that could not absolutely be called banging, because then Betty might tell her to come back and do it over, but was perilously near that unladylike mode of procedure.

When she had gone Betty sank down wearily in her big chair. She was bewildered, frightened, discouraged. “I didn’t manage right,” she reflected sadly. “I ought to have got around her some way. I can’t bear to send her home. I love to have her here so, and then she will feel that it’s a punishment—and it is too—when it’s only that I have to do it, because I don’t know how to manage. I’ve tried to do more than I can. Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear!” Betty’s golden head sank down on the arm of the big chair, and her slender figure shook with her tears.

It was thus that the Smallest Sister, flying up the stairs and bursting precipitately into the room she had left with such dignity, found her.

“Please go away. I’m t-tired. I’d rather be let alone,” Betty sobbed, evidently mistaking the invader for somebody else.

The Smallest Sister hesitated, then her soft little arms tugged at the prostrate figure. “Please don’t cry,” she begged. “Please listen to me, Betty. I know I’ve got to go home. I haven’t come to tease you to take it back—honestly I haven’t. But I’m going to tell you all about Shirley and Francisca and me. I’d rather. Please don’t cry any more, Betty dear.”

Betty sat up, dabbing at her wet cheeks with a damp handkerchief. Dorothy offered her a dry one, and when Betty moved to one side of the big chair and smoothed down her skirts invitingly, the Smallest Sister climbed in beside her. Two in a chair is always the way to begin to make up.

“Now I’ll tell you,” she began. “You see Frisky had a spread for her four roommates in their study after the lights were out. She rooms ’way down at the end of the long corridor, and they shut the door—that’s against the rules—and lit a candle, and trusted to luck that nobody would see it shining underneath the door. Miss Carson—the one we call Kitty Carson, because she comes along so still—is their corridor teacher, and she doesn’t often bother to go ’way down to that end, unless there’s a noise. She didn’t that night, but Shirley woke up and was thirsty and wanted a drink. And on the way to where the table with the pitcher of ice-water is, she got lost, because the hall is pretty dark, and she saw the light under the door and knocked, and they started her back the right way. Next morning she was telling about it at breakfast, and Kitty Carson heard her, and asked her all about how she got back, and Shirley told every single thing—about the spread and who was there and all. And so now Frisky has to stay in bounds for two weeks, and she can’t have any candy or a box from home till after Christmas. Kitty Carson wrote to say so—and that’s all, Betty dear. Frisky said she was sick of the subject, and not to mention it again, but of course she never meant not to tell you. I s’pose you have a good reason to want to know. I’m sorry you had to cry.”

Betty leaned over and kissed the flushed, eager little face so close beside hers. “Thank you for coming back,” she said. “Now we’re good friends again, aren’t we?”

Dorothy nodded.

“And do you want to know what I think?”

Another nod.

“Well, I’m afraid you’ve all been very unkind to Shirley. Have you called her tattle-tale, and shut her out of all the fun, and maybe made her cry?”

This time the nod was very emphatic.

“We call her Tattle-tale Shirley. How did you ever guess that, Betty? And we don’t associate with her at all. And she cries into her pillow at night, because she hears us whispering secrets and we leave her out. But, Betty, she ought to have to feel bad. It’s just mean to tell on another girl. Poor Frisky has to walk up and down the tennis-courts alone for her exercise hour, with Kitty Carson watching out of her window to see that she does it. But she says she wouldn’t mind that. What she minds is thinking anybody could be so hateful that she’d go and tell.”

“But did Shirley mean to tell, or did she just get frightened and confused and speak before she thought?”

“Well,” the Smallest Sister admitted reluctantly, “I s’pose maybe she got rather frightened. Kitty Carson looks at you so hard through her big specs that you generally do. But she had ought to have thought.” Dorothy was earnest if not grammatical. “Frisky says she’d sooner be expelled from school herself than get another girl into disgrace.”

“Frisky, as you call her, is older. Shirley is little and timid, and I’m sure she didn’t realize that she was saying anything wrong. Did she now, Dorothy? Tell me ‘honest and true,’ what you think. Did she dislike Frisky, and want to get her into trouble?”

“No-o, I s’pose not. She used to say she worshipped her just as much as I did.”

“Then do you think it’s quite fair to treat her as you have?”

“No-o, I guess maybe not. Frisky’s old chum, that she had before me, said it wasn’t, but I didn’t s’pose she knew. I’ll tell Frisky what you think, and I’ll tell Shirley that I forgive her if she truly didn’t mean it. Of course I can’t be chums with her again, because now I’m chums with Frisky. But I won’t call her tattle-tale any more, and I’ll tell the others what you think.” The Smallest Sister sighed and slipped off the chair. “I guess—I guess I’d better be going,” she said very softly. “Were you—were you going to have ice-cream for supper, maybe?”

Betty stifled an impulse to take the appealing little figure in her arms and promise her ice-cream and chicken patties and hot chocolate and all the other dainties she loved best. She had been a very naughty little girl, and mother would say——

The Smallest Sister, oddly enough, was also thinking of mother. “I guess it doesn’t matter what you’re going to have,” she announced hastily. “I guess mother would say I’d better go back and think it all over by myself quietly, and—and next time ’member to ask you first what you think about tattle-tales that don’t mean to be and—and perhaps come some other night for supper. Oh”—her voice broke—“I honestly forgot that I’m to go home.”

“But we’re friends again, now,” Betty told her, “and you’re going to tell me things just as you always have. Aren’t you? Will you, I mean, if I should think it over, and decide that it will be all right for you to stay?”

“Yes, I will. I will ask you about every least little thing I want to do,” declared Dorothy earnestly. “Do you think that maybe you’ll decide I may stay?”

“Yes, I think I’ll decide that you may stay,” laughed Betty. “So don’t ever make me sorry that I’ve decided that way.”

“I won’t. I’m sure I won’t. I just hate to have you cry, Betty.”

“I think,” Betty told her with a very sober face, “that you’d better not come for supper for two whole weeks. That will make you remember better perhaps. And when you come you may bring your new chum, if Miss Dick is willing.”

“Oh, goody for joy!” The Smallest Sister quite overlooked the penalty imposed on herself in the idea of being able to do something for her dear, misused Frisky.

She said good-bye contentedly, because she could tell Frisky the sooner by going home to tea, and she skip-hopped down-stairs and up the street much too gaily for a naughty little girl who had been deprived of a treat and sent away to think over her naughtiness in private.

Betty watched her smilingly. “I don’t seem to be able not to spoil her,” she reflected. “But she’s just as sweet as she can be usually. And she came back of herself to tell me, and she really sent herself home, so I guess it’s all right—that is, if this new chum is a nice girl. I do hope she is.”

The Smallest Sister did not ask to be invited to supper before the appointed time, though two meals a week with Betty or Eugenia were her usual allowance, and she had grumbled and even wept before, if anything had happened to keep her away.

“Poor Francisca can’t even go to walk or down-town for two weeks. I guess I can give up one thing I like as long as that,” she told Eugenia, when that soft-hearted little person suggested intervening with Betty for a restoration of privileges. “Francisca says it’s a comfort to her to feel that somebody else has troubles.”

On the appointed evening Eugenia had a house-play rehearsal from five to six, a class officers’ meeting at quarter to seven, and a written lesson to cram for in Psych. 6. So Betty and the chums supped alone at a cunning little table by the Tally-ho’s famous fireplace. It was lighted with the “extra-special” candle-shades and there were new menu-cards with fat, rosy-faced, red-coated coachmen cracking long whips at the top, and an adorable sketch of the Peter Pan Annex growing up the left side. Bob Enderby had designed them—under protest, because he said he was much too famous to be doing menu-cards nowadays; Madeline had colored them by hand, and the Tally-ho waitress had to keep a sharp lookout to prevent their all being carried off for souvenirs. One was lost that very evening; yes, for the first time in the Tally-ho’s history, an extra-special candle-shade was missing at the close of the dinner-hour.

Francisca and Dorothy arrived late and breathless—they had been kept to tidy their rooms, Dorothy explained, but Francisca shook her head playfully at her small friend and took all the blame.

“I’m always being kept for something,” she said cheerfully. “It’s a perfect miracle that I’m here at all. If I don’t have to copy my French exercise one hundred times because I didn’t pay attention in class, I have to learn ‘Paradise Lost’ because I contradicted Kit—Miss Carson, or else I don’t pick up my nightie and—well, I’m just always in hot water, Miss Wales. It was lovely of you to ask me. Please call me Frisky—everybody does.”

Francisca was the prettiest girl—next to Eleanor Watson—that Betty had ever seen. Her eyes were soft and deep and very, very brown—like big chocolate creams. Her hair was dark and wavy, growing low down on her forehead in a widow’s peak. She puffed it out around her face in a fashion that was too old for her, but was nevertheless very becoming. Her manner was that of an older girl too—very assured and confident, but very charming. When she smiled, which she did most of the time, two big dimples showed. She lisped a little, and this gave a funny, childlike twist to her remarks, which were not at all childlike. She adopted a curious attitude of resignation toward the cruel fate that kept her always “in hot water.” She was sweetly forgiving toward those who had inflicted the two weeks’ penance just ended, and she thanked Betty for her opinion, sent by Dorothy, about little Shirley Ware. She had entirely forgiven Shirley, she said, and she meant to forget about it and hoped Shirley would do the same.

“You see,” she explained, “all the little girls love me so that I imagine they did make her pretty uncomfortable. I never meant them to, Miss Wales, but you can’t help being a favorite and having people champion your cause. Can you now?”

She made picturesquely vague references to some secret sorrow that was even worse than being in perpetual hot water at Miss Dick’s. Afterward Betty inquired about it from Dorothy.

“Oh, she’s got a stepmother,” Dorothy explained in awe-struck tones. “They don’t get along well together. Frisky says she’s very unsympathetic.” Dorothy pulled out the long word with much difficulty.

But for all her vanity and absurdity Frisky Fenton was a lovable creature. She was preëminently a “jolly girl.” She had comical names for all Miss Dick’s teachers. She hit off the peculiarities of her schoolmates, and told absurd stories about them. She noticed everything that went on around her and kept up a vivacious fire of comment. As soon as she forgot to affect resignation and the secret sorrow, she was most appreciative of all the pleasures life had to offer and particularly of the treat Betty had given her. Everything they had to eat was “simply great,” the Tally-ho was “exactly perfect,” Betty was “too sweet,” and Dorothy “a little darling.”

Betty decided that she was only silly on top, and, though she much preferred Shirley as a best friend for Dorothy, she saw no reason to worry about Francisca’s bad influence, especially as the Smallest Sister displayed much conscientiousness in the matter of coming to consult her big sister on all important matters.

She came twice that very week. Once it was to ask if she should wear her best white dress, or only her second best blue one to Shirley’s birthday party. Frisky had advised the best, under all the delicate circumstances, but Dorothy wanted to be quite sure. The next time a moral question was involved. If you were asked to a spread after bedtime was it wrong to go? Betty, who detested prigs, dexterously evaded the issue.

“It’s rather messy eating in the dark, and you must get awfully sleepy waiting for the teachers to go to bed. When you’ve all got desperately hungry for good eats let me know, and we’ll have a scrumptious spread at the Tally-ho.”