Betty Wales Senior
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15 [Illustration: THE STREAM OF GIRLS DESCENDED]
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BETTY WALES SENIOR
by
MARGARET WARDE
_author of_
BETTY WALES, FRESHMAN
BETTY WALES, SOPHOMORE
BETTY WALES, JUNIOR
BETTY WALES, B.A.
BETTY WALES & CO.
BETTY WALES ON THE CAMPUS
BETTY WALES DECIDES
ILLUSTRATED BY EVA M. NAGEL
THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA 1919
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COPYRIGHT 1907 BY THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY
Betty Wales, Senior
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INTRODUCTION
For the information of those readers who have not followed Betty Wales
through the first three years of her college career, as described in
"Betty Wales, Freshman," "Betty Wales, Sophomore," and "Betty Wales,
Junior," it should be explained that most of Betty's little circle began
to be friends in their freshman year, when they lived off the campus at
Mrs. Chapin's, and Mary Brooks, the only sophomore in the house, ruled
them with an autocratic hand. Betty found Helen Adams a comical and
sometimes a trying roommate. Rachel Morrison and Katherine Kittredge
were also at Mrs. Chapin's, and Roberta Lewis, who adored Mary Brooks
and was desperately afraid of every one else in the house, though Betty
Wales guessed that shyness was at the bottom of Roberta's haughty
manner. Eleanor Watson was the most prominent member of the group that
year and part of the next. Betty admired her greatly but found her a
very difficult person to win as a friend, though in the end she proved
worthy of all the trouble she had cost.
At the beginning of sophomore year the Chapin House girls moved to the
campus, and "the B's" and Madeline Ayres, who explained that she lived
in "Bohemia, New York," joined the circle. In their junior year Betty
and her friends organized the "Merry Hearts" society, and Georgia Ames,
a freshman friend of Madeline's, amused and mystified the whole college
until she was finally discovered to be merely one of Madeline's many
delightful inventions. But the joke was on the "Merry Hearts" when a
real Georgia Ames entered college. It was when they were juniors, too,
that the "Merry Hearts" took a vacation trip to the Bahamas and
incidentally manoeuvred a romance for two of their faculty friends--which
caused Mary Brooks to rename their society the Merry Match-makers.
And now if any one wishes to know what Betty Wales and her friends did
after they left college, well--there's something about it in "Betty
Wales, B.A.," "Betty Wales & Co.," "Betty Wales on the Campus," and
"Betty Wales Decides."
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I "BACK TO COLLEGE AGAIN" 9
II A SENIOR CLASS-MEETING 25
III THE BELDEN HOUSE "INITIATION PARTY" 49
IV AN ADVENTUROUS MOUNTAIN DAY 69
V THE RETURN OF MARY BROOKS 86
VI HELEN ADAMS'S MISSION 106
VII ROBERTA "ARRIVES" 126
VIII THE GREATEST TOY-SHOP ON EARTH 143
IX A WEDDING AND A VISIT TO BOHEMIA 169
X TRYING FOR PARTS 189
XI A DARK HORSE DEFINED 211
XII CALLING ON ANNE CARTER 230
XIII GEORGIA'S AMETHYST PENDANT 250
XIV THE MOONSHINERS' BACON-ROAST 269
XV PLANS FOR A COOPERATIVE COMMENCEMENT 291
XVI A Hoop-Rolling and a Tragedy 308
XVII BITS OF COMMENCEMENT 325
XVIII THE GOING OUT OF 19-- 350
XIX "GOOD-BYE!" 366
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ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
The Stream of Girls Descended _Frontispiece_
"Here Are Some Perfectly Elegant Mushrooms" 76
"Oh, I Beg Your Pardon," 132
"I Do Care About Having Friends Like You," She Said 171
"Well, We've Found Our Shylock," He Said 224
The Girls Watched Her in Bewilderment 318
"Ladies, Behold the Preceptress of the Kankakee Academy" 373
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BETTY WALES, SENIOR
CHAPTER I
"BACK TO THE COLLEGE AGAIN"
"Oh, Rachel Morrison, am I too late for the four-ten train?"
Betty Wales, pink-cheeked and breathless, her yellow curls flying under
her dainty lingerie hat, and her crisp white skirts held high to escape
the dust of the station platform, sank down beside Rachel on a steamer
trunk that the Harding baggage-men had been too busy or too
accommodating to move away, and began to fan herself vigorously with a
very small and filmy handkerchief.
"No, you're not late, dearie," laughed Rachel, pulling Betty's hat
straight, "or rather the train is late, too. Where have you been?"
Betty smiled reminiscently. "Everywhere, pretty nearly. You know that
cunning little freshman that had lost her trunks----"
"All those that I've interviewed have lost their trunks," interpolated
Rachel.
Betty waved a deprecating hand toward the mountain of baggage that was
piled up further down the platform.
"Oh, of course, in that lovely mess. Who wouldn't? But this girl lost
hers before she got here--in Chicago or Albany, or maybe it was Omaha.
She lives in Los Angeles, so she might have lost them almost anywhere,
you see."
"And of course she expected Prexy or the registrar to go back and look
for them," added Rachel.
Betty laughed. "Not she. Besides she doesn't seem to care a bit. She
seems to think it's a splendid chance to go to New York next week and
buy new clothes. But what she wanted of me was to tell her where she
could get some shirt waists--just enough to last until she's perfectly
sure that the trunks are gone for good. I didn't want to stick around
here from three to four, so I said I'd go and show her Evans's and that
little new shirt waist place. Of course I pointed out all the objects of
interest along the way, and when I mentioned Cuyler's, she insisted
upon going in to have ices."
"And how many does that make for you to-day?" demanded Rachel severely.
"Well," Betty defended herself, "I treated you once, and you treated me
once, and then we met Christy Mason, and as you couldn't go back with
her I had to. But I only had lemonade that time. And this child was so
comical, and it was such a good idea."
"What was such a good idea?" inquired Rachel.
"Oh, didn't I tell you? Why, after we'd finished at Cuyler's, she asked
me if there weren't any other places something like it, and she said she
thought if we tried them all in a row we could tell which was best. But
we couldn't," sighed Betty regretfully, "because of course things taste
better when you're hungriest. But anyhow she wanted to keep on, because
now she can give pointers to other freshmen, and make them think she is
a sophomore."
"How about the shirt waists?"
"Oh, she had just got to that when I had to leave her." Betty rose,
sighing, as a train whistled somewhere down the track. "Do you suppose
Georgia Ames will be on this one?"
"Who can tell?" said Rachel. "There'll be somebody that we know anyway.
Wasn't that first day queer and creepy?"
"Yes," agreed Betty, "when nobody got off but freshmen frightened to
pieces about their exams. And that was only two days ago! It seems two
weeks. I've always rather envied the Students' Aid Society seniors,
because they have such a good chance to pick out the interesting
freshmen, but I shan't any more."
"Not even after to-day?"
Betty frowned reflectively. "Well, of course to-day has been pretty
grand--with all those ices, and Christy, and the freshmen all so
cheerful and amusing. And then there's the eight-fifteen. Won't it be
fun--to see the Clan get off that? Yes, I think I do envy myself. Can a
person envy herself, Rachel?" She gave Rachel's arm a sudden squeeze.
"Rachel," she went on very solemnly, "do you realize that we can't ever
again in all our lives be Students' Aid Seniors, meeting poor little
Harding freshmen?"
Rachel hugged Betty sympathetically. "Yes, I do," she said. "Why at this
time next year I shall be earning my own living 'out in the wide, wide
world,' as the song says, miles from any of the Clan."
Betty looked across the net-work of tracks, to the hills that make a
circle about Harding. "And miles from this dear old town," she added.
"But we can write to each other, and make visits, and we can come back
to class reunions. But that won't be the same."
Rachel looked at the pretty, yellow-haired child, and wondered if she
realized how different her "wide, wide world" was likely to be from
Katherine's or Helen Chase Adams's--or Rachel Morrison's. To some of the
Clan Harding meant everything they had ever known in the way of culture
and scholarly refinement, of happy leisure and congenial friendship. It
was comforting somehow to find that girls like Betty and the B's, who
had everything else, were just as fond of Harding and were going to be
just as sorry to leave it. Rachel never envied anybody, but she liked to
think that this life that was so precious to her meant much to all her
friends. It made one feel surer that pretty clothes and plenty of
spending-money and delightful summers at the seashore or in the
mountains did not matter much, so long as the one big, beautiful fact of
being a Harding girl was assured. All this flashed through Rachel's mind
much more quickly than it can be written down. Aloud she said
cheerfully, "Well, we have one whole year more of it."
"I should rather think so," declared Betty emphatically, "and we mustn't
waste a single minute of it. I wish it was evening. It seems as if I
couldn't wait to see the other girls."
"Well, there's plenty to do just now," said Rachel briskly, as the
four-ten halted, and the streams of girls, laden with traveling bags,
suit-cases, golf-clubs, tennis-rackets, and queer-shaped bulky parcels
that had obviously refused to go into any trunk, began to descend from
it.
Rachel hurried forward at once, eager to find someone who needed help or
directions or a friendly word of welcome. But Betty stood where she was,
just out of the crowd, watching the old girls' excited meetings and the
new girls' timid progresses, which were sure to be intercepted before
long by some white-gowned, competent senior, anxious to miss no possible
opportunity for helpfulness.
Betty had done her part all day, and in addition had taken Rachel's
place earlier in the afternoon, to give her a free hour for tutoring.
She was tired now and hot, and she had undoubtedly eaten too many ices;
but she was also trying an experiment. Where she stood she could watch
both platforms from which the girls were descending. Her quick glance
shot from one to the other, scanning each figure as it emerged from the
shadowy car and stopped for an instant, hesitating, on the platform. The
train was nearly emptied of its Harding contingent when all at once
Betty gave a little cry and darted forward to meet a girl who was making
an unusually careful and prolonged inspection of the crowd below her.
She was a slender, pretty girl, with yellow hair, which curled around
her face. She carried a trim little hand-bag and a well-filled bag of
golf-clubs.
"Can I help you in any way?" asked Betty, holding out a hand for the
golf-bag.
The pretty freshman turned a puzzled face toward her, and surrendered
the bag. "I don't know," she said doubtfully. "I'm to be a freshman at
Harding. Father telegraphed the registrar to meet me. Could you point
her out, please?"
"I knew it," laughed Betty, gleefully. Then she turned to the girl. "The
registrar is up at the college answering fifty questions a minute, and
I'm here to meet you. Give me your checks, and we'll find an expressman.
Oh, yes, and where do you board?"
The pretty freshman answered her questions with an air of pleased
bewilderment, and later, on the way up the hill, asked questions of her
own, laughed shamefacedly over her misunderstanding about the registrar,
was comforted when Betty had explained that it was not an original
mistake, and invited her new friend to come and see her with that
particular sort of eager shyness that is the greatest compliment one
girl can pay to another.
"Dear old Dorothy," thought Betty, when she had deposited the freshman,
considerably enlightened about college etiquette, at one of the
pleasantest of the off-campus houses, and was speeding to the Belden
for tea. "What a little goose she must have thought me! And what a dear
she was! I wonder if this freshman will ever really care about me that
way. I do mean to try to make her. Oh, what a lot of things seniors have
to think about!"
But the only thing to think about that evening was the arrival of the
eight-fifteen train, which would bring Eleanor, the B's, Nita Reese,
Katherine Kittredge, Roberta Lewis, and Madeline Ayres, together with
two-thirds of the rest of the senior class back to Harding. It was such
fun to saunter down to the station in the warm twilight, to wait,
relieved of all responsibilities concerning cabs, expressmen, and
belated trunks, while the crowded train pulled in, and then to dash
frantically about from one dear friend to another, stopping to shake
hands with a sophomore here, and there to greet a junior, but being
gladdest, of course, to welcome back the members of "the finest class."
Betty and Rachel had arranged not to serve on the reception committee
for freshmen that evening, and it was not long before the reunited
"Merry Hearts" escaped from the pandemonium at the station to
reassemble on the Belden House piazza for what Katherine called a "high
old talk."
How the tongues wagged! Eleanor Watson had come straight from her
father's luxurious camp in the Colorado mountains, where she and Jim had
been having a house-party for some of their Denver friends.
"You girls must all come out next summer," she declared
enthusiastically. "Father sent a special invitation to you, Betty, and
he and--and--mother"--Eleanor struggled with the new name for the
judge's young wife--"are coming on to commencement, and then of course
you'll all meet them. Mother is so jolly--she knows just what girls
like, and she enters into all the fun, just like one of us. Of course
she is absurdly young," laughed Eleanor, as if the stepmother's youth
had never been her most intolerable failing in her daughter's eyes.
Babbie had been abroad, on an automobile trip through France. She looked
more elegant than ever in a chic little suit from Paris, with a toque to
match, and heavy gloves that she had bought in London.
"I've got a pair for each of you in my trunk," she announced, "and
here's hoping I didn't mix up the sizes."
"Sixes for me," cried Bob.
"Five and a-half," shrieked Babe.
"Six and a-half," announced Katherine, "and you ought to have brought me
two pairs, because I wear mine out more than twice as fast as anybody
else."
"What kind of a summer have you had, K?" asked Babe, who never wrote
letters, and therefore seldom received any.
"Same old kind," answered Katherine cheerfully. "Mended twenty dozen
stockings, got breakfast for seven hungry mouths every morning, played
tennis with the boys and Polly, tutored all I could, sent out father's
bills,--oh, being the oldest of eight is no snap, I can tell you, but,"
Katherine added with a chuckle, "it's lots of fun. Boys do like you so
if you're rather decent to them."
"I just hate being an only child," declared Bob hotly. "What's the use
of a place in the country unless there are children to wade in the
brook, and chase the chickens and ride the horses? Next summer I'm going
to have fresh-air children up there all summer, and you
two"--indicating the other B's--"have got to come and help save them
from early deaths."
"All right," said Babe easily, "only I shall wade too."
"And you've got to wash them up before I can touch them," stipulated the
fastidious Babbie. "Where have you been all summer, Rachel?"
"Right at home, helping in an office during the day and tutoring
evenings. And I've saved enough so that I shan't have to worry one
single bit about money this year," announced Rachel triumphantly.
"Good for old Rachel!" cried Madeline Ayres, who had spent the summer
nursing her mother through a severe illness and looked worn and thin in
consequence. "Then you're as glad to get back to the grind as I am.
Betty here, with her summer on an island in Lake Michigan, and Eleanor,
and these lucky B's with their childless farms, and their Parisian
raiment, don't know what it's like to be back in the arms of one's
friends."
"Don't we!" cried a protesting chorus.
"Don't you what?" called a voice out of the darkness, and the real
Georgia Ames, cheerful and sunburned and self-possessed shook hands all
around, and found a seat behind Madeline on the piazza railing.
"You were all so busy talking that you didn't see me at the train," she
explained coolly. "A tall girl with glasses asked if there was anything
she could do for me, and I said oh, no, that I'd been here before. Then
she asked me my name, and when I said Georgia Ames, I thought she was
going to faint."
"She took you for a ghost, my dear," said Madeline, patting her double's
shoulder affectionately. "You must get used to being treated that way,
you know. You're billed to make a sensation in spite of yourself."
"But we're going to make it up to you all we can," chirped Babbie.
"And you bet we can," added Bob decisively.
"Let's begin by escorting her home," suggested Babe. "There's just about
time before ten."
"I saw Miss Stuart yesterday about her coming into the Belden,"
explained Betty, after they had left Georgia at her temporary off-campus
boarding place. "She was awfully nice and amused about it all, and she
thinks she can get her in right away, in Natalie Smith's place.
Natalie's father has been elected senator, you know, and she's going to
come out this winter in Washington."
"Fancy that now!" said Madeline resignedly. "There's certainly no
accounting for tastes."
"I should think not," declared Katherine hotly. "If my father was
elected President, I'd stay on and graduate with 19-- just the same."
"Of course you would," agreed Babbie. "You can come out in Washington
any time--or if you can't, it doesn't matter much. But there's only one
19--."
"And yet when we go we shan't be missed," said Katherine sadly. "The
college will go on just the same."
"Oh, and I've found out the reason why," cried Betty eagerly. "It's
because all college girls are alike. Miss Ferris said so once. She said
if you waited long enough each girl you had known and liked would come
back in the person of some younger one. But I never really believed it
until to-day." And Betty related the story of her successful hunt for
the freshman who was like herself.
Everybody laughed.
"But then," asserted Babbie loyally, "she's not so nice as you, Betty.
She couldn't be. And I don't believe there are freshmen like all of us."
"Not in this one class," said Rachel. "But it's a nice idea, isn't it?
When our little sisters or our daughters come to Harding they can have
friends just as dear and jolly as the ones we have had."
"And they will be just as likely to be locked out if they linger on
their own or their friends' door-steps after ten," added Madeline
pompously, whereat Eleanor, Katherine, Rachel and the B's rushed for
their respective abiding places, and the Belden House contingent marched
up-stairs singing
"Back to the college again,"
a parody of one of Kipling's "Barrack-Room Ballads" which Madeline
Ayres had written one morning during a philosophy lecture that bored
her, and which the whole college was singing a week later.
CHAPTER II
A SENIOR CLASS-MEETING
It was great fun exercising all the new senior privileges. One of the
first and most exciting was occupying the front seats at morning chapel.
"Although," complained Betty Wales sadly, "you don't get much good out
of that, if your name begins with a W. Of course I am glad there are so
many of 19--, but they do take up a lot of room. Nobody could tell that
Eleanor and I were seniors, unless they knew it beforehand."
"And then they wouldn't believe it about you," retorted Madeline, the
tease.
Madeline, being an A, was one of the favored front row, who were near
enough "to catch Prexy's littlest smiles," as Helen Adams put it, and
who were the observed of all observers as they marched, two and two,
down the middle aisle, just behind the faculty. Madeline, being tall and
graceful and always perfectly self-possessed, looked very impressive,
but little Helen Adams was dreadfully frightened and blushed to the
roots of her smooth brown hair every morning.
"And yet I wouldn't give it up for anything," she confided to Betty. "I
mean--I'll exchange with you any time, but I do just love to sit there,
although I dread walking out so. It's just the same when I am talking to
Miss Raymond or Miss Mills. I wish I weren't such a goose."
"You're a very dear little goose," Betty reassured her, wondering why in
the world the clever Helen Adams was afraid of people, while she, who
was only little Betty Wales, without much brains and with no big talent,
felt perfectly at home with Dr. Hinsdale, Miss Raymond, and even the
great "Prexy" himself.
"I suppose that is my talent," she decided at last,--"not being afraid,
and just plunging right in. Well, I suppose I ought to be glad that I
have anything."
Another senior privilege is the holding of the first class-meeting.
Fresh indeed is the freshman class which neglects this order of
precedence, and in deference to their childish impatience the seniors
always hold their meeting as early in the term as possible. Of course
19--'s came on a lovely afternoon,--the first after an unusually long
and violent "freshman rain."
"Coming, Madeline?" asked Betty, passing Madeline's single on her way
out.
"Where?" inquired Madeline lazily from the depths of her Morris chair.
"To the class-meeting of course," explained Betty. "Now don't pretend
you've forgotten and made another engagement. I just heard Georgia Ames
telling you that she couldn't go walking because of an unexpected
written lesson."
Madeline wriggled uneasily. "What's the use?" she objected. "It's too
nice a day to waste indoors. There'll be nothing doing for us. We
elected Rachel last year, and none of the rest of the crowd will do for
class officers."
"What an idea!" said Betty loftily. "I'm thinking of nominating Babe for
treasurer. Besides Rachel is going to wear a cap and gown--it's a new
idea that the council thought of, for the senior president to wear
one--and Christy and Alice Waite are going to make speeches about the
candidates. And I think they're going to vote about our ten thousand
dollars."
Madeline rose despondently. "All right then, for this once. By the way,
whom are they going to have for toastmistress at class-supper? They
elect her to-day, don't they?"
"I suppose so. I know the last year's class chose Laurie at their first
meeting. But I haven't heard any one mentioned."
"Then I'm going to nominate Eleanor Watson," declared Madeline. "She's
never had a thing from the class, and she's by far the best speaker we
have except Emily Davis."
"And Emily will be class-day orator of course," added Betty. "Oh,
Madeline, I'm so glad you thought of Eleanor. Won't it be splendid to
have a 'Merry Heart' for toastmistress?"
Madeline nodded carelessly. She was thinking more about a letter from
home, with news that her father and mother were to sail at once for
Italy, than about matters of class policy. She loved the Italian sea and
the warm southern sunshine; and the dear old "out-at-elbows" villa on
the heights above Sorrento was the nearest thing she had known to a
home. Father had told her to come along if she liked--ever since she
could remember she had been allowed to make her own decisions. But then,
as Babbie had said, there was only one 19--, and with plenty of "passed
up" courses to her credit she could work as little as she pleased this
year and never go to a class-meeting after to-day.
"Let's stop for the B's," she suggested, as they went out into the
September sunshine. "Bob hates meetings as much as I do. I'm not going
to be the only one to be disciplined."
Before they had reached the Westcott, the B's shouted to them from their
hammocks in the apple-orchard, which they reluctantly abandoned to go to
the meeting. Bob had just had an exciting runaway--her annual spills
were a source of great amusement to her friends and of greater terror to
her doting parents--and she was so eager to recount her adventures and
display her bruises, that nothing more was said about Madeline's plan
for Eleanor.
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