Betty Wales Senior
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Margaret Warde >> Betty Wales Senior
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Madeline stared at her for a moment, her eyes half-closed. "Eleanor,"
she declared at last, "you're a genius. We could. I can fairly see my
friends turning into toys. You and Betty and the rest of the class
beauties are French dolls of course. Helen Adams would make a perfect
jumping-jack--she naturally jerks along just like one."
"And Bob can be a jack-in-the-box," cried Betty eagerly, getting
Madeline's idea.
"Or a monkey that climbs a rope," suggested Eleanor. "Don't you think
Babe would pop out of a box better?"
"And that fat Miss Austin will be just the thing for a top," put in
Madeline. "We can ask five cents for a turn at making her spin." And
Madeline twirled the purple plum vigorously, in joyous anticipation of
taking a turn at Miss Austin.
"Then there could be a counter of stuffed animals," suggested Eleanor,
"with Emily Davis to show them off."
"Easily," agreed Madeline, "and a Noah's ark, if we want it, and a Punch
and Judy show. Oh, there's no end to the things we can have! Let's go
over and tell Marie about it before dinner."
"You and Betty go," objected Eleanor. "I really haven't time."
"Nonsense," said Madeline firmly. "It's long after five now,
and--Eleanor Watson, are you trying to crawl out of your
responsibilities? It was you that thought of this affair, remember."
"Please don't try to drag me in," begged Eleanor. "I'll be a doll, if
you like, or anything else that you can see me turning into. But Marie
didn't ask me to suggest, and she might feel embarrassed and obliged to
ask me to be on the committee, and--please don't try to drag me in,
Madeline."
Madeline looked at her keenly, for a moment. "Eleanor Watson," she began
sternly, "you're thinking about last fall. Don't you know that that
stupid girl didn't stand for anybody but her own stupid self?"
"She was in the right," said Eleanor simply.
"Not wholly," objected Madeline, "and if she was this isn't a parallel
case. In making you toastmistress 19-- was supposed to be doing you an
honor. You're doing her a favor now, and a good big one."
"And if we tell Marie about the toy-shop, we shall tell her that you
thought of it," put in Betty firmly.
"And we shall also say that you hate committee meetings as much as I
do," put in Madeline artfully, "but that we are both willing to help in
any way that we can with ideas and costumes."
Eleanor looked pleadingly from one to the other.
"We won't give in," declared Betty, "so it's no use to make eyes at us
like that."
"Either we suppress the whole idea and 19-- goes begging for another, or
it stands as yours," said Madeline in adamant tones.
"Well, then, of course," began Eleanor slowly at last.
"Of course," laughed Betty, jumping up to hug her. "I knew you'd see it
sensibly in a minute. Come on, Madeline. We haven't any time to lose."
"Do you remember what she was like two years ago, Betty?" asked Madeline
thoughtfully when Eleanor had left them, persisting that she really had
an engagement before dinner.
"I even remember what she was like three years ago," laughed Betty
happily.
"Fancy her giving up a chance like this then!" mused Madeline. "Fancy
her contributing ideas to the public good and trying to escape taking
the credit for them. Why, Betty, she's a different person."
"I'm so glad you're friends now," said Betty, squeezing Madeline's arm
lovingly.
"That's so," Madeline reflected. "We weren't two years ago. I used to
hate her wire-pulling so. And now I suppose I'm pulling wires for her
myself. Well, I'm going to be careful not to pull any of them down on
her head this time. I say, Betty, wouldn't the Blunderbuss make a superb
jack-in-the-box? I'm sure everybody would appreciate the symbolic effect
when she popped, and perhaps we could manage to smother her by mistake
between times."
The toy-shop took "like hot-cakes," to borrow Bob's pet comparison.
Everybody told Madeline that it was just like her, and Madeline assured
everybody gaily that she had always known she was misunderstood and that
anyhow Eleanor Watson was responsible for the toy-shop. Having spent the
better part of a day in spreading this information Madeline rushed off
to New York on a vague and mysterious errand that had something to do
with sub-letting the apartment on Washington Square.
* * * * *
"I remembered after I got down here," she wrote Betty a week later,
"that I couldn't eat my solitary Christmas dinner in the flat if I let
it. Besides my prospective tenants are bores, and bores never appreciate
old furniture enough not to scratch it. But I'm staying on to oversee
the fall cleaning, and we haven't had one for a good while, so it will
take another week. I'm sorry not to be on hand for the toy-shop doings
(don't you let them put it off, Betty, or I can never make up my work),
but I send a dialogue--no, it's for four persons--on local issues for
the Punch and Judy puppets. If they can't read it, tell them to
cultivate their imaginations. I'll print the title, 'The Battle of the
Classes,' to give them a starter.
"Miss me a little,
"MADELINE.
"P. S. How are the wires working?"
If Eleanor suspected any hidden motive behind Madeline's sudden
departure she had no way of confirming her theory, and when Betty
escorted the entertainment committee, all of whom happened to be
splendid workers but without a spark of originality among them, to
Eleanor's room, and declaring sadly that she couldn't remember half the
features of the toy-shop that they had discussed together, claimed
Eleanor's half-promise of help, why there was nothing for Eleanor to do
but redeem it. Nothing at least that the new Eleanor Watson cared to do.
It was plain enough that the committee wanted her suggestions, and what
other people might think of her motive for helping them really mattered
very little in comparison with the success of 19--'s entertainment. Thus
the new Eleanor Watson argued, and then she went to work.
"The wires are all right so far," Betty wrote Madeline. "The girls are
all lovely, and they'd better be. Eleanor has arranged the dearest play
for the dolls, all about a mad old German doll-maker who has a shop full
of automatons and practices magic to try to bring them to life. Some
village girls come in and one changes clothes with a doll and he thinks
he's succeeded. Eleanor saw it somewhere, but she had to change it all
around.
"Alice Waite wanted the dolls to give Ibsen's 'Doll's House.' She didn't
know what it was about of course, or who wrote it. She just went by the
name. The other classes have got hold of the joke and guy us to death.
"You'd better come back and have some of the fun. Besides, nobody can
think how to make a costume for the mock-turtle. It's Roberta, and it's
going to dance with the gryphon for the animal counter's side-show.
Eleanor thought of that too."
But Madeline telegraphed Roberta laconically: "Gray carpet paper shell,
mark scales shoe-blacking, lace together sides," and continued to
sojourn in Washington Square.
Late in the afternoon of the toy-shop's grand opening she appeared in
the door of the gymnasium and stood there a moment staring at the
curious spectacle within.
The curtain was just going down on the dolls' pantomime, and the
audience was applauding and hurrying off to make the rounds of the other
attractions before dinner time. In clarion tones that made themselves
heard above the din Emily Davis was advertising an auction of her
animals, beginning with "one perfectly good baa-lamb."
"Hear him baa," cried Emily, "and you'll forget that his legs are
wobbly."
"This way to the Punch and Judy," shouted Barbara Gordon hoarsely
through a megaphone. "Give the children a season of refined and
educating amusement. Libretto by our most talented satirist. Don't miss
it."
"Hello, Madeline," cried Lucile Merrifield, spying the new arrival.
"When did you get back? Come and see the puppets with me. They say your
show is great."
"It all looks good to me," said Madeline, "but--is there a top to spin?"
Lucile laughed and nodded. "That fat Miss Austin has taken in two
dollars already at five cents a spin. She says she used to love making
cheeses, and that she hasn't had such a good time since she grew up."
"That's where I want to go first," said Madeline decisively; but on her
way to the tops the doll counter beguiled her.
"Betty Wales," she declared, "when you curl in your lips and stare
straight ahead you look just like the only doll I ever wanted. I saw her
in a window on Fifth Avenue, and the one time in my life that I ever
cried was when daddy wouldn't buy her for me. Where's Eleanor?"
"I don't know," said Betty happily. "She was here a minute ago playing
for the dolls' pantomime. But she's all right. Everybody has been
thanking her and praising the pantomime, and she's so pleased about it
all. She told me that she had felt all this year as if everybody was
pointing her out as a disgrace to the class and the college, and that
she was beginning to think that her whole life was spoiled. And now--"
"Why, Madeline Ayres," cried Katherine Kittredge hurrying up to them,
her hair disheveled and her hands very black indeed. "I'm awfully glad
you've come. There's a class meeting to-morrow to decide on the senior
play and I want--"
"You want tidying up," laughed Madeline. "What in the world have you
been doing?"
"Being half of a woolly lamb," explained Katherine. "The other half
couldn't come back this evening, so Emily has been selling us--or it,
whichever you please--at auction. Now listen, Madeline. You don't know
anything about this play business."
Madeline had heard Katherine's argument, spun Miss Austin, and seen the
"Alice in Wonderland" animals dance before she found Eleanor, and by
that time an interview with Jean Eastman had prepared her for the hurt
look in Eleanor's eyes and the little quiver in her voice, as she
welcomed Madeline back to Harding.
Jean was one of the few seniors who had had no active part in the
toy-shop. "So I'm patronizing everything regardless," she exclaimed,
sauntering up to Madeline and holding out a bag of fudge. "It's a
decided hit, isn't it? Polly says the other classes are in despair at
the idea of getting up anything that will take half as well."
"It's certainly a lovely show," said Madeline, trying the fudge.
"And a big feather in Eleanor Watson's cap," added Jean carelessly. "She
always was the cleverest thing. I'd a lot rather be chairman of the play
committee, or even a member of it, for that matter, than toastmistress.
I suppose you know that there's a class-meeting to-morrow."
"Have you said that to Eleanor?" asked Madeline coldly.
"Oh, I gave her my congratulations on her prospects," said Jean with a
shrug. "We're old friends, you know. We understand each other
perfectly."
Madeline's eyes flashed. "It won't be the least use to tell you so," she
said, "but lobbying for office is not the chief occupation of humanity
as you seem to think. Neither Eleanor Watson nor any of her friends has
thought anything about her being put on the play committee. I made the
mistake once of supposing that our class as a whole was capable of
appreciating the stand she's taken, and I shan't be likely to forget
that I was wrong. But this affair was entirely her idea, and she
deserves the credit for it."
"Oh, indeed," said Jean quickly. "I suppose you didn't send telegrams--"
But Madeline, her face white with anger was half way across the big
hall.
Jean watched her tumultuous progress with a meaning smile. "Well, I've
fixed that little game," she reflected. "If they did intend to put her
up, they won't dare to now. They'll be afraid of seeing me do the
Blunderbuss's act with variations. She'd have been elected fast enough,
after this, and there isn't a girl in the class who could do half as
well on that committee. But as for having her and that insufferable
little Betty Wales on, when I shall be left off, I simply couldn't stand
it."
Madeline found Betty taking off her doll's dress by dim candle-light,
which she hoped would escape the eagle eye of the night-watchman. "I've
come to tell you that the wires are all down again," she began, and went
on to tell the story of Jean's carefully timed insinuations.
"I almost believe that the Blunderbuss was the tool of the Hill crowd,"
she said angrily. "At any rate they used her while she served, and now
they're ready to take a hand themselves."
Betty stared at her in solemn silence. "What an awful lot it costs to
lose your reputation," she said sadly.
"And it costs a good deal to be everybody's guardian angel, doesn't it,
dearie?" Madeline said affectionately. "I oughtn't to have bothered you,
but I seem to have made a dreadful mess of things so far."
"Oh, no, you haven't," Betty assured her. "Eleanor knows how queer Jean
is, and what horrid things she says about people who won't follow her
lead. None of that crowd would help about the toy-shop except Kate
Denise, but every one else has been fine. And I know they haven't
thought that Eleanor was trying to get anything out of them."
Madeline sighed mournfully. "In Bohemia people don't think that sort of
thing," she said. "It complicates life so to have to consider it always.
Good-night, Betty."
"Good-night," returned Betty cheerfully. "Don't forget that the senior
'Merry Hearts' have a tea-drinking to-morrow."
"I'm not likely to," laughed Madeline. "Every one of them that I've seen
has mentioned it. They're all agog with curiosity."
"They'll be more so with joy, when I've told them the news," declared
Betty, holding her candle high above her head to light Madeline through
the hall.
"Dear me! I wish there could be a class without officers and committees
and editors and commencement plays," she told the green lizard a little
later. "Those things make such a lot of worry and hard feeling. But then
I suppose it wouldn't be much of a class, if it wasn't worth worrying
about. And anyway it's almost vacation."
CHAPTER IX
A WEDDING AND A VISIT TO BOHEMIA
Betty and Madeline went to their class meeting on the following
afternoon very much as a trembling freshman goes to her first midyears,
but nothing disastrous happened.
"I fancy that Jean has taken more than Eleanor and me into her
confidence," Madeline whispered. Besides, the Blunderbuss was in her
place, her placid but unyielding presence offering an effectual reminder
to the girls who had been admiring Eleanor's executive ability and
resourcefulness that it would be safer not to mention her name in
connection with the play committee.
But before that was elected the preliminary committee, which, to quote
Katherine Kittredge, had been hunting down the masterpieces of Willy
Shakespeare ever since the middle of junior year, made its report. The
members had not been able to agree unanimously on a play, so the
chairman read the majority's opinion, in favor of "As You Like It," and
then Katherine Kittredge explained the position of the minority, who
wanted to be very ambitious indeed and try "The Merchant of Venice."
There was a spirited debate between the two sets of partisans, after
which, to Katherine's infinite satisfaction, 19-- voted to give "The
Merchant of Venice" at its commencement.
Then the committee to manage the play was chosen, and Betty Wales was
the only person who was much surprised when she was unanimously elected
to the post of costume member.
"I on that committee!" she exclaimed in dismay. "Why, I don't know
anything about Shakespeare."
"You will before you get through with this business," laughed Barbara
Gordon, who had been made chairman. "The course begins to-morrow at two
in my room. No cuts allowed."
[Illustration: "I DO CARE ABOUT HAVING FRIENDS LIKE YOU," SHE SAID.]
Betty's pleasure in this unexpected honor was rather dampened by the
fact that Jean Eastman had proposed her name, making it seem almost as
if she were taking sides with Eleanor's enemies. But Madeline only
laughed at what she called Jean's neat little scheme for getting the
last word.
"Ruth Ford was all ready to nominate you," she said, "but Jean dashed in
ahead of her. She wanted to assure me that I hadn't silenced her for
long."
So Betty gave herself up to the happy feeling of having shown herself
worthy to be trusted with part of 19--'s most momentous undertaking.
"I must write Nan to-night," she said, "but I don't think I shall
mention the costume part. She would think I was just as frivolous as
ever, and Barbara says that all the committee are expected to help with
things in general."
Whereupon she remembered her tea-drinking, and hurried home to find most
of the guests already assembled, and Eleanor, who had not gone to the
class meeting but who had heard all about it from the others, waiting on
the stairs to congratulate her.
"I don't care half as much about being on the committee as I do about
having friends like you to say they're glad," declared Betty, hugging
Eleanor because there were a great many things that she didn't know how
to say to her.
"Yes, friends are what count," said Eleanor earnestly, "and Betty, I
think I'm going to leave Harding with a good many. At least I've made
some new ones this week."
And that was all the reference that was ever made to the way Eleanor's
oldest friend at Harding had treated her.
"Well," said Betty, when everybody had congratulated her and Rachel,
whose appointment on all 19--'s important committees had come to be a
foregone conclusion, "I hope Nita and Rachel and K. won't be sorry they
came. You three aren't so much mixed up in it as the rest of us, but I
thought I'd ask you anyway."
"Do you mean that I can't have my usual three slices of lemon?" demanded
Katherine indignantly.
"Hush, material-minded one," admonished Nita. "There's more than tea and
lemon in this. There's a great secret. Of course we shall be interested
in it. Fire away, Betty."
"And everybody stop watching the kettle," commanded Babbie, who had
taken it in charge, "and then perhaps it will begin to boil."
"What I wanted to tell you," began Betty, impressively, "is that Miss
Hale is going to be married this vacation."
"Good for Miss Hale!" cried Bob, throwing up a pillow. "Did her sister
get well?"
"Yes," said Betty. "She was dreadfully ill all summer, and then she had
to go away for a change. Ethel wanted to wait until she was perfectly
strong, because she had looked forward so to being maid-of-honor."
"I think we ought to send Miss Hale a present," said Babe, decisively.
"Madame President, please instruct the secretary---- Why, we haven't any
president now," ended Babe in dismay.
"Let's elect Betty," suggested Nita.
"She's too young for such a responsible position," objected Bob. "It's
only the dramatics committee that takes infants."
"And besides, her hair curls," added Madeline, reaching out to pull one
of the offending ringlets. "Curly-haired people don't deserve to be
elected to offices."
"Let's have Babe," suggested Rachel.
"She's older than her name, her hair has always been straight----"
"Except once," put in Katherine, and everybody shrieked with laughter at
the recollection of Babe's one disastrous experience with a marcelle
wave.
"And then she looked like a wild woman of Borneo," went on Rachel, "so
it shouldn't count against her. Furthermore this society was organized
to give her a chance."
"All right," agreed Nita. "I withdraw my nomination. Babe, you're
elected. Instruct the secretary to cast a unanimous ballot for
yourself."
"Very well," said Babe with much dignity. "Please do it, Madeline, and
then I appoint you and Betty and Eleanor to choose a present for Miss
Hale. I was just going to say, when I interrupted myself to remark upon
the extraordinary absence of a presiding officer"--Babe coughed and
dropped her presidential manner abruptly--"I was going to say that I'm
all for a stuffed turtle, like those we got in Nassau. I think a ripping
big one would be the very thing."
"Babe!" said Babbie scornfully. "Imagine how a turtle would look among
her wedding presents."
"I think it would look stunning," persisted Babe, "and it would be so
appropriate from us."
"Don't be dictatorial, Babe," advised Rachel. "It isn't seemly in a
president. Perhaps your committee can think of something appropriate
that won't be quite so startling as a turtle. When is the wedding,
Betty?"
"The thirty-first of December at half-past eight," explained Betty.
"New Year's eve--what a nice, poetical time," interposed Babbie,
thoughtfully. "I think that if I ever marry----"
"Hush, Babbie," commanded Nita. "You probably never will. Do let Betty
finish her story."
"Well, it's to be a very small wedding," went on Betty, hastily, "with
no cards, but announcements, but Ethel wrote me herself and she wants us
all--the Nassau ones, I mean--and Mary Brooks, to come."
"Jolly for Miss Hale!" cried Bob, tossing up two pillows this time.
"How perfectly dear of her!" said Babbie.
"The biggest turtle we can get won't be a bit too good for her,"
declared Babe.
"But where could we stay over night?" asked Helen, the practical-minded.
"You don't give me a chance to tell you the whole of anything,"
complained Betty, sadly. "We're invited guests--specially invited, I
mean, and it's all arranged where we are to stay. Ethel is going to have
her sister and four bridesmaids to walk with her, and she wants us girls
to hold a laurel rope along the line of march of the wedding-party, as
they go through the rooms."
"Jolly," began Babe, but she was promptly suppressed by Madeline, who
tumbled her flat on her back and held her down with a pillow while she
ordered Betty to proceed.
"I'll read you what else she says," went on Betty, triumphantly
producing Miss Hale's letter. "She says, 'There won't be many people to
get in the way of the procession, but the aisle effect will be pretty,
and besides I want my match-makers to have a part in the grand
denouement of all their efforts. Will you ask the others and write Mary
Brooks, whose address I don't know. My uncle's big house next door to
us will have room for you all, and you must come in time for my
bridesmaids' luncheon and a little dance, both on the thirtieth.' Now
isn't that splendid?"
"Perfectly splendid," echoed her auditors.
"Why, we shall be almost bridesmaids," said Roberta Lewis in awestruck
tones. "Does Mary know?"
Betty nodded. "She hasn't had time to answer yet, but she can certainly
go, as she lives so near Ethel."
"The only difficulty about our going," said Babe, "is what to do with
the few days between the wedding and the opening of college."
"And that's easily settled," said Madeline promptly. "Miss Hale lives
just out of New York, doesn't she? Well, you are all to come and stay in
the flat with me. Hasn't it just been beautifully cleaned? And aren't
you all longing for a glimpse of Bohemia?"
That was the climax of the tea drinking. The Merry Match-Makers spent
the evening writing home to their parents for permission to go to the
wedding and considering momentous problems of dress. For Roberta's best
evening-gown was lavender and Babbie's was pink, and the question was
how to distribute Betty, Babe and Helen in white, Bob in blue, Eleanor
in her favorite yellow, Madeline in ecru, and Mary in any one of a
bewildering number of possible toilettes, so as to justify Ethel's hope
that the aisle would be ornamental as well as useful.
How the days flew after that! For besides the wedding there were the
luncheon and the dance to anticipate and plan for, as well as the
unknown joys of Bohemia, New York, not to mention the regular excitement
of going home, the fun of tucking Christmas presents into the corners of
half-packed trunks, and the terrors of the written lesson that some
inhuman member of the faculty always saves for the crowded last week of
the term.
On the afternoon of the twenty-ninth the Merry Match-Makers met in New
York. Babbie had sent a sad little note to Miss Hale and a tearful one
to Betty to say that her mother, who was a good deal of an invalid, had
"looked pretty blue over my running off early, and so of course I won't
leave her;" and Helen Adams had decided that considering all the extra
expenses of senior year she couldn't afford the trip to New York. So
there were only seven "almost bridesmaids," as Roberta called them, or
"posts," which was Bob's name for them, to fall upon one another as if
they had been separated for years, instead of a week, say thank you for
the presents that were each "just what I wanted," and exclaim excitedly
over Betty's new suit, Mary's fur coat, and the sole-leather kit-bag
that Santa Claus had brought Roberta.
"It's queer," said Bob. "I feel as if I'd had one whole vacation
already, and ought to be unpacking and digging on psychology 6 and
history 10. Whereas in reality I'm just beginning on another whole
vacation. It's like having two Thanksgiving dinners in one year."
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