Betty Wales Senior
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Margaret Warde >> Betty Wales Senior
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"Have him telegraph that it begins at six," said Nita, firmly. "Go and
see to it now."
"Why, I did tell him to," said Polly, sighing at the prospect of going
out again. "Only he's so irresponsible that I think we ought to
decide----"
"Go and stand over him while he telegraphs," said Nita with finality.
"We can't understudy a monkey. Josephine Boyd, come here and go through
your long speech. I want to be sure that you get it right. It didn't
make sense the way you said it yesterday."
"Oh, Nita." It was Lucile Merrifield holding out a yellow envelope.
Nita clutched it frantically. "Perhaps she's not coming. Wouldn't I be
relieved!"
"It's not a telegram," explained Lucile, gently, "only the proof of the
programs that the printer has taken this opportune moment to send up.
The boy says if you could look at it right off, why, he could wait and
take it back. They want it the first thing in the morning."
"Give it to Helen Adams," said Nita, turning back to Josephine. "She can
mark proof. Go on Josephine, I'm listening, and don't stop again for
anybody."
Josephine, who was the father of the large and irrepressible Carmichael
family, had just finished declaiming her longest speech with
praiseworthy regard for its meaning, when somebody called out,
"Ermengarde St. John isn't here yet."
Nita sank down in Miss Amelia Minchen's armchair with a little moan of
despair. "Somebody go and get her," she said. "Betty Wales, you'd better
go. You can dress people fastest."
It seemed to Betty, as she hurried down-stairs and over to the Belden,
that she had toiled along the same route, laden with screens, rugs and
couch-covers, at least a hundred times that afternoon. She was tired and
exasperated at this final hitch, and she burst into the room of the fat
freshman who had Ermengarde's part with scant ceremony. What was her
amazement to find it quite empty.
"Oh, she can't have forgotten and gone off somewhere!" wailed Betty.
"Why, every one was talking about the rehearsal at dinner time."
The cast and committee included so many members of the house that it was
almost depopulated, and none of the few girls whom Betty could find knew
anything about the missing Ermengarde.
"I must have passed her on the way here," Betty decided at last, and
rushed down-stairs again. As she went by the matron's door she almost
ran into that lady, hurrying out.
"Oh, I beg your pardon, Mrs. Kent," she said. "You haven't seen
Ermengarde--that is, I mean Janet Kirk, have you?"
"No, not yet," said Mrs. Kent briskly. "I only heard about it five
minutes ago. I'm just getting ready now to go up and take the poor child
some things she's sent for."
"But she isn't in her room," said Betty, bewildered but certain that
Mrs. Kent's apparent affection for the irresponsible Janet was very
ill-bestowed.
"Of course not, my dear," returned Mrs. Kent, serenely. "She's at the
infirmary with a badly sprained ankle. She'll have to keep off it for a
month at least, the doctor says."
[Illustration: "OH, I BEG YOUR PARDON"]
"Oh, Mrs. Kent!" wailed Betty. "And she's Ermengarde St. John in the
house-play. What can we do?"
Mrs. Kent shook her head helplessly. "You'll have to do without Janet,"
she said. "That's certain. She was on her way home to dinner when she
slipped on a piece of ice near the campus-gate. She lay there several
minutes before any one saw her, and then luckily Dr. Trench came along
and drove her straight to the infirmary. She fainted while they were
bandaging her ankle."
"I'm very sorry," said Betty, her vision of a possible hasty recovery
dispelled by the last sentence. After a moment's hesitation she decided
not to go back to the Students' Building to consult Nita. It would be
better to bring some one over from the house to read the part for
to-night. It was important, but luckily it wasn't very long, and
somebody would have to learn it in time for the play the next evening.
So she hurried up-stairs again and the first person she met was Roberta
Lewis, marching down the corridor with a huge Greek dictionary under her
arm.
"Put that book down, Roberta; and come over to the rehearsal,"
commanded Betty. "Ermengarde St. John has sprained her ankle, and gone
to the infirmary and everybody's waiting."
"You mean that you want me to go and get her?" asked Roberta doubtfully.
"Because I think it would take two people to help her walk, if she's
very lame. She's awfully fat, you know."
"We want you to read Janet's part," explained Betty, "just for to-night,
until the committee can find some one to take it." And she gave a little
more explicit account of the state of affairs at the rehearsal.
"Yes, indeed, I'll be glad to," said Roberta readily. She was secretly
delighted to be furnished with an excuse for seeing the dress rehearsal.
She had longed with all her soul to be appointed a member of the
play-committee, but of course the house-president had not put her on;
she was the last person, so the president thought, who would be useful
there. And Roberta could not screw her courage up to the point of trying
for a place in the cast. So no one knew, since she had never told any
one, that she thought acting the most interesting thing in the world
and that she loved to act, in spite of the terrors of having an
audience. But she had let slip her one chance--the offer of a part in
Mary's famous melodrama away back in her freshman year--and she had
never had another.
And now, because she was Roberta Lewis, proud and shy and dreadfully
afraid of pushing in where she wasn't wanted, she did not think it
necessary to mention to Betty that she had borrowed a copy of the play
from little Ruth Howard, who was Sara, and that she had read it over
until she knew almost every line of it by heart.
Of course the committee were thrown into a state bordering upon panic by
the news of Janet's accident, but Madeline comfortingly reminded them
that the worse the last rehearsal was, the better the play was sure to
be; and there was certainly nothing to do now but go ahead.
So they began to rehearse at last, almost an hour late, and the first
act went off with great spirit, in spite of the handicap of a strange
Ermengarde, who had to read her part because she was ashamed to confess
that she knew it already, and who was supposed not to be familiar with
her "stage business." To be sure, she had not very much to do in this
scene, but at the end everybody thanked her effusively and Ruth Howard
declared that she never saw anybody who "caught on" so fast.
"You ought to take the part to-morrow night," she said.
"Oh, oh!" Roberta cautioned her, in alarm and embarrassment. "They're
going to have Polly Eastman. I heard Nita say so. Besides, I wouldn't
for anything."
Ermengarde's chance comes in the second act, where, half in pity and
half in admiration for the queer little Sara Crewe, she comes up to make
friends with her, and, finding to her horror that Sara is actually
hungry, decides to bring her "spread" up to Sara's attic. There, later,
the terrible Miss Minchen finds her select pupils gathered, and
wrathfully puts an end to their merry-making.
At the opening of this scene the attic was supposed to be lighted by one
small candle, and consequently the stage was very dim.
"I don't believe Roberta can manage with that light," whispered Nita to
Betty who was standing with her in one of the wings.
"Don't let's change unless we have to," Betty whispered back. "You know
we wanted to get the effect of Miss Minchen's curl papers and night-cap.
Why, Nita, Roberta hasn't any book. She's saying her part right off."
"No!" Nita was incredulous. "Why, Betty Wales, she is, and she's doing
it splendidly, fifty per cent, better than Janet did."
Sure enough Roberta, becoming engrossed in the play, had forgotten to
conceal her unwarranted knowledge of it. She realized what she had done
when a burst of applause greeted her exit, and actors and committee
alike forgot the proprieties of a last rehearsal to make a united
assault upon her.
"Roberta Lewis," cried Betty accusingly, "why didn't you tell me that
you knew Ermengarde's part?"
"Oh, I don't know it," protested Roberta. "I only know snatches of it
here and there. Polly can learn it in no time."
"She won't have the chance," said Nita decisively. "You must take it,
Roberta. Why didn't you tell people that you could act like that?"
"I shall have stage-fright and spoil everything," declared Roberta
forlornly.
"Nonsense," said Nita. "You'd be ashamed to do anything of the kind."
"Yes," agreed Roberta solemnly, "I should." Whereupon everybody laughed,
and Nita hugged Roberta and assured her that there was no way out of it.
"Somebody go and get Janet's costume," she ordered, "and any one who has
a spare minute can be fitting it over. We shall have to have an extra
rehearsal to-morrow of the parts where Ermengarde comes in. Go on now,
Sara. Use Lucile's muff for the monkey."
When at last act three was finished it was ten o'clock and Nita gave a
sigh of utter exhaustion. "If Madeline's rule holds," she said, "this
play ought to go like clockwork to-morrow."
And it did, despite the rather dubious tone of the chairman's prophecy.
The Princess arrived duly just after luncheon, and everybody except the
cast, who would do their share later, helped to entertain her. This was
not difficult. She wasn't a college girl, she explained, and she had
never known many of them. She just wanted to hear them talk, see their
rooms, and if it wasn't too much trouble she should enjoy looking on at
a game of--what was it they played so much at Harding? Basket-ball,
somebody prompted. Yes, that was it. The sophomore teams which had just
been chosen were proud to play a game for her, and they even suggested,
fired by her responsive enthusiasm, that they should teach her to play
too.
"I should love it," she said, "if somebody would lend me one of those
becoming suits. But I mustn't." She sighed. "The newspapers would be
sure to get hold of it. Besides they're giving a tea for me at the
Belden. It begins in five minutes. Doesn't time just fly at Harding?"
The monkey also arrived in good season, whether thanks to or in spite of
Polly's exertions was not clear, since his master spoke no English and
not even Madeline could understand his Italian. The bagdads worked
beautifully. The new Ermengarde was letter-perfect, and nobody but
herself had any fear that she would be stage-struck, even though the
Princess would be sitting in the very middle of the fourth row. Janet's
name was still on the program, for Roberta had sternly insisted that it
shouldn't be crossed out; and as neither of the two Ermengardes was very
well known to the college in general, only a few people noticed the
change. But the part made a hit.
"Isn't she just like some little girl who used to go to school with
you--that funny, stupid Ermengarde?" one girl would say to another.
"They're all natural, but she's absolutely perfect."
"Sara's a dear," said the Princess, "but I want to talk to Ermengarde.
Mayn't I go behind? We actor people always like to do that, you know."
So she was escorted behind the scenes, and it was the proudest moment of
Roberta's life when the Princess, having asked particularly for her,
said all sorts of nice things about her "real talent" and "artistic
methods."
"That settles it, Roberta," said Betty, who was behind the scenes in her
capacity of chief dressing-maid and first assistant to the make-up man.
"You've got to try for senior dramatics."
"Do you really think I could get a part?" asked Roberta coolly.
"I think you might," said Betty, amazed beyond words by Roberta's ready
acquiescence. "You probably won't get anything big," she added
cautiously. "There are such a lot of people in our class who can act.
But the girls say that the only way to get a small part is to try for a
big one. Don't you remember how Mary Brooks tried for the hero and the
heroine and the villain and then was proud as a peacock to be a page and
say two lines, and Dr. Brooks and her mother and two aunts and six
cousins came to see her do it."
"Dear me," said Roberta in frightened tones, "do you suppose my father
and my cousin will feel obliged to come?"
"I don't know," laughed Betty, "but I feel obliged to remind you that
the third act of Sara Crewe is on and you belong out there where you can
hear your cue."
"I hope Roberta won't be disappointed about getting a part in the senior
play," Betty confided to Madeline, as they parted afterward in the
Belden House hall. "She did awfully well to-night, but I think she takes
it too seriously. She doesn't realize what tremendous competition there
is for the parts in our plays, nor what lots of practice some of the
girls have had."
"Oh, I wouldn't worry," said Madeline easily. "If she doesn't get
anything, she'll have to do without. She'll have plenty of company. She
probably won't try when the time comes."
"Yes," said Betty, "she will, and she's so sensitive that she'll hate
terribly to fail. So, as I started her on her mad career as an actress,
I feel responsible."
"You always feel responsible for something," laughed Madeline. "While
you're in the business why don't you remember that you're responsible
for a nice little slice of to-night's performance. Miss Ferris says it's
the best house-play she's seen."
"I know. Isn't it just splendid?" sighed Betty rapturously. "And isn't
the Princess a dear? But Madeline, you haven't any idea how my feet
ache."
CHAPTER VIII
THE GREATEST TOY-SHOP ON EARTH
"No," said Betty, "I haven't found it, and now I'm almost sure I shan't,
because Nita's lost hers."
"What has Nita lost?" asked Madeline from her nest of pillows. It was
the evening after the play, and the Belden House felt justified in
taking life easily. "She lost her head last night," chuckled Madeline,
without waiting for Betty's answer. "Did you hear her imploring the
organ-man in her most classic English not to let me take the monkey out
in front to show to the President? As if I really would!"
"You've done just as crazy things in your time, dear," retorted
Katherine Kittredge, who had come over to borrow one of Betty's
notebooks and had found the atmosphere of elegant leisure that pervaded
the room irresistible.
"Do you really think so?" asked Madeline amiably. "Well, before we go
into that I want to know what else Nita has lost."
"Why, a pin," explained Betty,--"that lovely one with the amethyst in
the centre and the ring of little pearls in a quaint old setting. It
used to be her great-grandmother's. Mine wasn't much to lose, and I felt
sure until to-day that it would turn up, but it hasn't, and now I'm
afraid it was really stolen."
"Have you looked all through that?" asked Madeline, pointing to the
miscellaneous assortment of books, papers, dance-cards and bric-a-brac
that littered Betty's small desk to the point of positive inundation.
Betty assented with dignity. "And I haven't had time since to put it
back in the pigeon-holes. When Nita told me about her pin, I got worried
about mine--mother gave it to me and I couldn't bear to lose it for
good--so I went through my desk and all my drawers and it was
sweeping-day, so I asked Belden House Annie to look too. It's not here."
"Is Nita sure hers was stolen?" asked Katherine.
Betty nodded. "As sure as she can be without actually seeing it taken.
She left it on her cushion yesterday when she came down to luncheon, and
when she got back from physics lab, it was gone."
"What a shame!" said Madeline. "She ought to tell Mrs. Kent right away.
I should strongly suspect the new table-girl."
"Oh, but she's a cousin of Belden House Annie's," explained Betty, "and
I'm sure Annie would look after her. We all know that she's as honest as
the day herself, and all the other maids have been here for years and
years."
"It's queer," said Katherine, "if it was an outsider--a more or less
professional thief, I mean--that he or she should come to this house
twice, several weeks apart, and each time take so little. If it was a
college girl now----"
"Oh, don't, Katherine," begged Betty. "I can't bear to think that any
Harding girl would do such a thing. I'd ten times rather never know who
it was than to find it was that way."
Just then the B's appeared airily attired in kimonos concealed under
rain-coats, and laden with a huge pan of marshmallow fudge, which they
had made, they explained, in honor of Roberta's successful debut.
"What are you all looking so solemn about?" demanded Bob, when Babbie
had gone in search of Roberta.
Betty told her, and Babe and Bob exchanged glances.
"It's not necessarily any one in this house who's responsible, I guess,"
said Babe. "Babbie's lost a valuable pin too, and Geraldine Burdett has
lost a ring. Oh, about two weeks ago Gerry's was taken, and Babbie's
before that. They've been keeping dark and trying to get up a clue, but
they can't. They'll be all off when they hear about these other
robberies."
"There was one awfully queer thing about Babbie's thief," put in Bob.
"Her little gold-linked purse was on the chiffonier right beside her pin
and it wasn't touched, though it was just stuffed with bills. That makes
them afraid it was some girl who's awfully fond of jewelry and can't
afford any."
"It isn't right to leave our lovely things around so, is it?" said Betty
seriously. "It's just putting temptation in the way of poor girls."
"Exactly," agreed Madeline. "We go off for hours, never locking up
anything, leaving our money and other valuables in plain sight, and if
we do miss anything we can't be sure it's stolen and we don't have time
to investigate for weeks after. It's a positive invitation to
dishonesty."
"But it's such a nuisance to lock up," complained Babe, "and if I hide
things I can't ever find them again, so I might as well not bother."
"I haven't any golden baubles," said Bob, "but I'm going to keep my
money in 'Love's Labor Lost.' You'll find it there if you ever want to
borrow."
"'Much Ado about Nothing' would be the most appropriate place for mine,"
laughed Katherine, "so I choose that. You probably won't find any if you
want to borrow."
"But seriously, girls, let's all be more careful," advised Betty, "and
let's ask other people to be. Think how perfectly awful it is to make
chances for girls to forget themselves. But I shan't believe it's a
Harding girl," she added decisively. "It would be perfectly easy for
any dishonest young woman to go through the houses without being
questioned. Perhaps she got frightened and didn't notice Babbie's money
on that account or didn't have time to snatch up anything but the pin."
Just then Babbie appeared, bringing Roberta and Rachel Morrison who had
met them in the hall, and in the general attack upon the fudge pan more
serious issues were forgotten.
It was now the busiest, gayest part of the long fall term. Flying fast
on the heels of the house play came Thanksgiving Day.
"And just to think of it!" wailed Bob. "Only two days vacation this
year, and Miss Stuart and the president dropping the most awful hints
about what will happen if you cut over. Nobody can go home. I hope the
faculty will all eat too much and have horrible attacks of indigestion."
"Well, we may as well have as much fun as we can out of it," said Babbie
philosophically. "I've written home for a spread; so we shan't die of
hunger."
"Mrs. Kent says she's going to give us the best Thanksgiving dinner we
ever ate," announced Betty cheerfully.
"I hope our matron will be seized with the same lofty ambition," said
Katherine. "If she is, and if the skating holds, I shan't mind staying
here."
"Weren't you going to stay anyway?" asked Helen Adams.
"Being a resident of the remote village of Kankakee, Illinois, and not
having been urged to visit any of my Eastern friends, I was," admitted
Katherine, solemnly, "but that doesn't make it any the nicer to have to
work all day Saturday."
The skating did last, and the man at the rink, being taken in hand by
the B's, sympathized heartily with their wrongs, and promised them a
three days' ice carnival, which meant search-lights, bonfires and a big
band on the ice every evening. There is nothing in the world more
exhilarating than skating to good music. The rink was thronged with
Harding girls and Winsted men, and the proprietor could not easily
regard himself as a bona fide philanthropist.
The paper-chase, to get up an appetite on Thanksgiving morning, was
Katherine Kittredge's idea and the basket-ball game in the afternoon
between the Thanksgiving Dinners and the Training Tables was too
fantastic to have originated with any one but Madeline Ayres.
Georgia Ames, dressed as a huge turkey gobbler, captained the
Thanksgiving Dinners, who were gotten up as bunches of celery and mounds
of cranberry jelly. The captain of the Training Table simulated a big
bottle labeled "Pure Spring Water," and the members of her team were
tastefully trimmed with slices of dry bread. Being somewhat less
spectacular than their rivals, they were a little more agile and they
won the game, which was so funny that it sent two of the faculty into
hysterics.
"And that's almost as bad as indigestion," said Babe, who was a bunch of
celery. At least she had been one until she came into collision with the
water bottle and lost most of her trimmings.
It was really the Thanksgiving game that precipitated the plans for the
senior entertainment for the library fund. The fire the year before had
not only damaged the library considerably, but it had brought its
shortcomings and the absurdly small number of its volumes, compared with
the rapidly increasing number of the girls who used them, to the
attention of the public. Somebody had offered fifty thousand dollars for
a library fund provided the college raised an equal amount. The alumnae
were trying to get the money, and because they had helped the
undergraduates with their beloved Students' Building, they wanted the
undergraduates to help them now.
On the very evening of the game Marie Howard, the senior president,
caught Madeline on the way to Babbie's spread and laid the matter before
her.
"The alums want us to subscribe to the fund," she explained, "and then
they think each class ought to give an entertainment. Not a bit nervy,
are they? Well, of course 19-- has got to take the lead, and I've fairly
racked my brains to think what we can do. Now it's no trouble to you to
have lovely, comical ideas, and if you'll only help me out with this
entertainment, I'll be your friend for life."
"Why don't you appoint a committee to take charge of it?" inquired
Madeline, serenely.
Marie gave her a mournful look. "I suppose you think I haven't tried.
The girls are all willing to help, but they insist upon having the idea
to start with. I know you hate committees, Madeline, and I'm not asking
you to be on one--"
"You'd better not," interpolated Madeline, darkly, remembering the
drudgery she had submitted to to make the Belden House play a success.
"Just think up the idea," Marie went on, persuasively, "and I'll make a
committee do the rest. I don't care what we have, so long as it's new
and taking--the sort of thing that you always seem to have in your head.
That's what we want. Plays and lectures are too commonplace."
"Marie," said Madeline, laughingly, "you talk as if ideas were cabbages
and my head was a large garden. I can't produce ideas to order any more
than the rest of you can. But if I should think of anything, I'll let
you know."
"Thank you," said Marie, sweetly, and went back to her room, where she
gave vent to some forcible remarks about the "exasperatingness" of
clever people who won't let themselves be pinned down to anything.
It was Betty Wales who, dancing into Madeline's room the next afternoon,
gave, not Madeline, but Eleanor Watson,--who had been having tea with
Madeline and listening to her absurd version of Marie's request,--an
inspiration.
"I wish it wasn't babyish to like toys," she sighed. "I've been
down-town with Bob, and they've opened a big toy-shop in the store next
Cuyler's, just for the holidays, I suppose. Bob got a Teddy bear, and I
bought this box of fascinating little Japanese tops for my baby sister.
They're all like different kinds of fruit and you spin them like
pennies, without a string. I just love toy-stores."
"So do I. So does everybody," said Madeline, oracularly, clearing a
place on the polished tea-table and emptying out the miniature tops.
"They renew your youth. Let's get all these things to spinning at once,
Betty."
"Why don't you have a toy-shop for your senior entertainment?" asked
Eleanor, watching the two absorbed faces.
"How do you mean?" asked Madeline, absently, trying to make the purple
plum she was manipulating stay upright longer than Betty's peach.
"Why, with live toys, something on the plan of the circus that you and
Mary got up away back in sophomore year," explained Eleanor. "I should
think you might work it up beautifully."
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