THEY WERE ALL THERE

BETTY WALES ON THE CAMPUS

by
MARGARET WARDE

author of

BETTY WALES, FRESHMAN
BETTY WALES, SOPHOMORE
BETTY WALES, JUNIOR
BETTY WALES, SENIOR
BETTY WALES, B.A.
BETTY WALES & CO.
BETTY WALES DECIDES

ILLUSTRATED BY
EVA M. NAGEL

THE PENN PUBLISHING
COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA
1920

COPYRIGHT
1910 BY
THE PENN
PUBLISHING
COMPANY

Betty Wales on the Campus

Introduction

Most of the girls in this story first became acquainted with each other in their freshman year at Harding College, and the story of their four jolly years together and their trip to Europe after graduation is told in “Betty Wales, Freshman,” “Betty Wales, Sophomore,” “Betty Wales, Junior,” “Betty Wales, Senior,” and “Betty Wales, B. A.”

It was during this memorable trip that Betty met Mr. Morton, the irascible but generous railroad magnate. “Betty Wales & Co.” describes how Betty and her “little friends” opened the successful “Tally-ho Tea-Shop” in Harding, and what came of it. Babbie Hildreth’s engagement to Mr. Thayer was one result, and another was that Mr. Morton gave to Harding College the money for a dormitory for the poorer girls. Betty’s “smallest sister” Dorothy was also in Harding attending Miss Dick’s school, and it was for her that Eugenia Ford invented the delightful Ploshkin. Somebody modeled one, and as little plaster ploshkins were soon being sold everywhere, it turned out to be one of the Tally-ho’s most popular and profitable features. Betty had thought she would leave the shop to Emily Davis and return to her family, but this story tells how she found herself again on the Harding Campus. And finally, how Betty Wales, with the aid of one other important person, chose her career and left Harding, will be found in “Betty Wales Decides.”

Margaret Warde.

Betty Wales on the Campus

Betty Wales On The Campus

CHAPTER I
“TENDING UP” AGAIN

Betty Wales, with a red bandanna knotted tightly over all her yellow curls—except one or two particularly rebellious ringlets that positively refused to be hidden—pattered softly down the back stairs of the Wales cottage at Lakeside. Softly, because mother was taking her afternoon nap and must on no account be disturbed. Betty lifted a lid of the kitchen range, peered anxiously in at the glowing coals, and nodded approvingly at them for being so nice and red. Then she opened the ice-box, just for the supreme satisfaction of gazing once more upon the six big tomatoes that she had peeled and put away to cool right after lunch—which is the only proper time to begin getting dinner for a fastidious family like hers. Finally she slipped on over her bathing suit the raincoat that hung on her arm, and carefully opened the front door. On the piazza the Smallest Sister and a smaller friend were cozily ensconced in the hammock, “talking secrets,” as they explained eagerly to Betty.

“But you can come and talk too,” they assured her in a happy chorus, for Betty was the idol of all the little girls in the Lakeside colony.

Betty smiled at them and pulled back the raincoat to show what was underneath. “Thank you, dears, but I’m going for a dip while the sun is hot. And Dorothy, don’t forget that you’ve said that you’d stay here and see to everything till I get back. And if more girls come up, don’t make a lot of noise and wake mother. Good-bye.” And she was off like the wind down the path to the beach staircase.

Half a dozen welcoming shouts greeted her from the sand.

“We’ve waited ages for you,” cried one.

“Dare you to slide down on the rail,” called another.

“I’M SORRY I WAS LATE”

“No, slide down the bank,” suggested a third.

Betty gave her head a funny little toss, threw the raincoat down to one of them and slid, ran, jumped, and tumbled down the sheer bank, landing in a heap on a mound of soft sand that flew up in a dusty cloud around the party.

“I’m sorry,” she sputtered, wiping the dust out of her eyes. “Sorry that I was late, I mean. The sand is Don’s fault, because he dared me. You see, I had to mend all Will’s stockings, because he’s going off to-morrow on a little business trip. And then I had to see to my fire, and remind Dorothy that she is now in charge of mother and the house. Beat you out to the raft, Mary.”

Mary Hooper shook off her share of the sand-cloud resignedly. “All right,” she said. “Only of course I’ve been in once already, and I’m rather tired.”

“Tired nothing,” scoffed one of the Benson girls. “You paddled around the cove for five minutes an hour ago, poor thing! That’s all the exercise you’ve had to-day. Betty’s the one who ought to be tired, with all the cooking and scrubbing and mending she does. Only she’s a regular young steam engine——”

Betty leaned forward and tumbled Sallie Benson over on her back in the sand. “Hush!” she said. “I don’t work hard, and I’m not tired, and besides, I shall probably lose the race. Come along, Mary.”

The race was a tie, but Betty declared that Tom Benson got in her way on purpose, and Mary Hooper retorted that Sally splashed her like a whole school of porpoises. So they finally agreed to try again going back, and then they sat on the raft in the sunshine, throwing sticks for Mary’s setter to swim after, and watching the Ames boys dive, until Will appeared on the shore shouting and waving a letter wildly—an incentive to Betty’s getting back in a hurry that caused Mary to declare the return race off also, especially as she had lost it.

“Didn’t want to bother you,” explained Will amiably, “but Cousin Joe drove me out in his car, and I thought that maybe the chief cook——”

Betty seized the letter and ran. “I knew things were going to happen,” she murmured as she flopped up the beach stairway. “But there’s an extra tomato that my prophetic soul told me to peel, and lots of soup, and lots of ice-cream. Oh, dear, I’m getting this letter so wet that I shan’t ever be able to read it.” She held it out at arm’s length and looked at the address. It was typewritten, and there was a printed “Return to Harding College” in the corner. “Nothing but an old circular, I suppose,” she decided, and laid it carefully down in a spot of yellow sunshine on the floor of her room to dry off.

Of course there was no time to open it until dinner was cooked and eaten; and then Cousin Joe piled his big car full of laughing, chattering young people and drove them off through the pine woods in the moonlight.

Betty was in front with Cousin Joe. “Things look so much more enchanted and fairylike if you’re in front,” she explained as she climbed in.

Cousin Joe chuckled. “You always have some good reason for wanting to sit in front, young lady,” he said. “When you were a kid, you had to be where you could cluck to the horses. But I certainly didn’t suppose you went in for moonlight and fairies and that sort of thing. I thought you were a hard-headed business woman, with all kinds of remarkable money-making schemes up your sleeves.”

Betty patted the embroidery on her cuff and frowned disapprovingly at him. “You shouldn’t make fun of the Tally-ho Tea-Shop, Cousin Joe. It does make money—really and truly it does.”

“Well, I guess I know that,” Cousin Joe assured her solemnly, “and I understand the extremely marketable nature of ploshkins. Will keeps me very well posted about his wonderful sister’s wonderful enterprises that are backed by the Morton millions.”

“Don’t be silly, please, Cousin Joe,” begged Betty. “I’ve just done what any girl would have under the circumstances, and I’ve had such very scrumptious luck—that’s all.”

Cousin Joe put on slow speed, and leaned forward to stare at Betty in the moonlight. “You’ve pulled off a start that any man might envy you, little girl, and you’re just as pretty and young and jolly as if you’d never touched money except to spend it for clothes and candy. And you still love fun and look out for fairies, and some day a nice young man—I say, Betty, here’s a long straight stretch. Change seats and see how fast you can tool her up to the Pine Grove Country Club for a cool little supper all around.”

“Oh, could I truly try?”

Betty’s voice sounded like a happy child’s, and her eyes sparkled with pleasure and excitement, as her small hands clutched the big wheel.

Cousin Joe leaned back and watched her. “I had a tough pull when I started out in life,” he was thinking, “and no ‘such very scrumptious luck,’ either, and I let it sour me. Betty’s game, luck or no luck. Luck’s not the word for it, anyway. Of course people want to keep friends with the girl who owns that smile. It means something, her smile does. It’s not in the same class with Miss Mary Hooper’s society smirk. I can’t see myself why that nice young man that I almost said was going to fall in love with her some day doesn’t come along—several of him in fact. But I’m glad I didn’t finish that sentence; I suppose you could spoil even Betty Wales.”

Betty remembered her letter again when she stepped on it in the dark and it crackled. She had undressed by moonlight, so as not to wake little Dorothy, who shared her room at the cottage. Now she lit a candle, and opening her letter read it in the dim flickering light. Something dropped out—a long slip that proved, upon further examination, to be a railroad ticket from Cleveland to Harding and back again. And the typewritten letter—that might have been “only an old circular”—was signed by no less a personage than the President of Harding College himself. Seeing his name at the end, in the queer scraggly hand that every Harding girl knew, quite took Betty’s breath away, and as for the letter itself! When she had finished it Betty blew out the candle and sank down in an awe-stricken little heap on the floor by the window to think things over and straighten them out.

Prexy had written to her himself—the great Prexy! He wanted her to come and advise with him and Mr. Morton and the architects about the finishing touches for Morton Hall. Of all absurd, unaccountable ideas that was the queerest.

“Mr. Morton originally suggested asking you,” he wrote, “but I heartily second him. We both feel sure that the ingenuity of the young woman who made the Tally-ho Tea-Shop out of a barn will devise some valuable features for the new dormitory, thereby fitting it more completely to the needs of its future occupants.”

Morton Hall was the result of a suggestion Betty had made to her friend Mr. Morton, the millionaire. It was to give the poorer girls at Harding an opportunity to live on the campus and share in the college life.

“Gracious!” sighed Betty. “He thinks I thought up all the tea-room features. It’s Madeline that they want. But Madeline’s in Maine with the Enderbys, and wouldn’t come. And then of course Mr. Morton may need to be pacified about something. I can do that part all right. Anyway, I shall have to go, so long as they have sent a ticket—right away too, or Mr. Morton will be sure to need pacifying most awfully. I wonder what in the world that postscript means.”

The postscript said, “I had intended to write you in regard to another matter, connected not so much with the architecture of the new hall as with its management; but talking it over together will be much more satisfactory.”

Betty lay awake a long while wondering about that postscript. When she finally went to sleep she dreamed that Prexy had hired her to cook for Morton Hall, and that she scorched the ice-cream, put salt in the jelly-roll, and water on the fire. She burned her fingers doing that and screamed, and it was Will calling to remind her that he wanted breakfast and his bag packed in time for the eight-sixteen.

At the breakfast table the cook—she ate with the family—gave notice. She was going away that very afternoon.

“Most unbusinesslike,” Mr. Wales assured her solemnly, but with a twinkle in his eyes.

“Most absurd,” Betty twinkled back at him. “I can’t suggest a thing to those architects, of course, and they’ll just laugh at me, and Prexy and Mr. Morton will be perfectly disgusted.”

“You’ve got to make good somehow,” Will assured her soberly. “It isn’t every girl that gets her expenses paid for a long trip like that, just to go and advise about things. You’re what they call a consulting expert, Betty. I’ll look up your trains and telephone you from town.”

“And I’ll help you pack a bag,” announced the Smallest Sister. “You’re just going in a bag, like Will, and coming back for Sunday, aren’t you, Betty dear?”

“Yes, I’m just going in a bag,” Betty assured her laughingly, “and coming right back to Lakeside for Sunday. But perhaps in September—well, we need not think about September when it’s only the middle of August; isn’t that so, little sister?”

The Smallest Sister stared solemnly at her. “We ought to make plans, Betty. Now Celissa Hooper wants me to be her chum if I’m going to school in Cleveland this winter, but if I’m going to be at Miss Dick’s again why of course I can’t be chums with Celissa, ’cause I’m chums with Shirley Ware. So I really ought to know before long who I’m to be chums with.”

“You certainly ought,” agreed Betty earnestly. “But you’ll just have to be very good friends with Celissa and with Shirley and with all the other girls until I come back, and then mother and father and you and I can have a grand pow-wow over you and me and the tea-shop and Miss Dick’s and everything else under the sun. Now, who’s going to wipe dishes for me this morning?”

“I am. What’s a grand pow-wow?”

“We’ll have one in the kitchen,” Betty explained diplomatically, hurrying off with both hands full of dishes.

But the pow-wow was a rather spiritless affair.

“You’re thinking of something else, Betty Wales,” declared the Smallest Sister accusingly, right in the midst of the story of the Reckless Ritherum, who is second cousin to the Ploshkin and has a very nice tale of its own. “If you’re going to look way off over my head and think of something else, I guess I’d rather go up-stairs and make beds all by my lonesome.”

“I’m sorry, dearie,” Betty apologized humbly, “but you see I feel just like a reckless ritherum myself this morning—going out to play with three terrible giants.”

“What giants are you going to play with?” demanded the Smallest Sister incredulously.

“The fierce giant, the wise giant, and the head of all the giants,” Betty told her. “The fierce giant eats reckless little ritherums for his breakfast—that’s Mr. Morton. The wise giant laughs at them when they try to show him how to make the house that Jack built—that’s the New York architect. The head of all the giants—that’s Prexy—shakes the paw of the poor little Ritherum kindly, and asks it not to be so silly again as to try to play with giants, and it gets smaller and smaller and smaller——”

“Just exactly like Alice in Wonderland,” put in the Smallest Sister excitedly.

“Until it runs home,” Betty concluded, “to play with a little girl named Dorothy Wales, and then all of a sudden it gets big and happy and reckless again.”

“Then don’t be gone long,” advised Dorothy eagerly, “because I’m always in a hurry to begin playing with you some more.”

“Thank you,” Betty bowed gravely. “In that case I won’t let the fierce giant eat me, nor the wise giant blow me away with his big laugh, nor the head giant stare at me until I vanish, recklessness and all, into the Bay of the Ploshkin.”

“I’d fish you up, if you did fall into the bay,” Dorothy assured her, with a sudden hug that ended fatally for a coffee-cup she was wiping.

“But it was nicked anyway, so never mind,” Betty comforted her, “and you’ve fished me up lots of times already, so I know you would again.”

“Why, I never——” began the Smallest Sister in amazement.

“All right for you,” Betty threatened, putting away her pans with a great clatter. “If you’ve stopped believing in fairies and if you’ve forgotten how you ever went to the Bay of the Ploshkin and fished up ritherums and did other interesting things, why should I waste my time telling you stories?”

This terrible threat silenced the Smallest Sister, who therefore never found out how or when she had “fished up” her sister. But on the way east Betty, still feeling very like a ritherum, consoled herself by remembering first her own simile, and then Will’s “Maybe I’m not proud to know you!” blurted out as he had put her on board her train. A little sister to hug one and a big brother to bestow foolishly unqualified admiration are just the very nicest things that a reckless ritherum can have. And who hasn’t felt like a reckless ritherum some time or other?

Mr. Morton was pacing the station platform agitatedly when Betty’s train pulled in.

“Twenty-three minutes late, Miss B. A.,” he panted, rushing up to her. He had always called her that. It stood for Benevolent Adventurer, and some other things. Grasping her bag and her arm, he pulled her down the stairs to his big red touring car. “The way these railroads are run is abominable—a disgrace to the country, in my opinion. Now when I say I’ll get to a place at four P. M.—I mean it. And very likely I arrive at six by train—most unbusinesslike. Well, it’s not exactly your fault that idiots run our railroads, is it, Miss B. A.? I thought of that without your telling me—give me a long credit mark for once. Well, I certainly am glad to see you, and to find you looking so brown and jolly. No bothers and worries these days, Miss B. A.?”

“Except the responsibility of having to think up enough good suggestions for Morton Hall to pay you for asking me to come and for taking the time to be here to meet me,” Betty told him laughingly.

Mr. Morton snorted his indignation. “That responsibility may worry you, but it doesn’t me—not one particle. Now, by the way, don’t be upset by any idiotic remarks of the young architect chap that has this job in charge. Whatever a person wants, he says you can’t have it—that seems to be his idea of doing business. Then after you’ve shown him that your idea of doing business is to do it or know the reason why, he sits down and figures the thing out in great shape. He’s a very smart young fellow, but he hates to give in. I presume that’s why Parsons and Cope put him on this job—they’ve done work for me before, and they know that I have ideas of my own and won’t be argued out of them except by a fellow who can convince me he really knows more about the job than I do. Just the same, don’t you pay much attention to his obstruction game. Remember that you’re here because I want this dormitory to be the way you want it.”

Betty promised just as the car drew up in front of the Tally-ho. “Thought you’d like a cup of your own tea,” explained Mr. Morton, “and a sight of your new electric fixtures, and so forth. Miss Davis is expecting you. Let’s see.” He consulted his watch, comparing it carefully with Betty’s and with the clock in the automobile, which aroused his intense irritation by being two minutes slow. “It’s now three forty-one. I’ll be back in nineteen minutes. If I can find that architect chap, I’ll bring him along. He knows all the main features of the building better than I do, and he’s a pretty glib talker, so I guess we’ll let him take you over the place the first time.”

Exactly nineteen minutes later, just as Betty and Emily Davis had “begun to get ready to start to commence,” according to Emily’s favorite formula, the inspection of the tea-shop and the exchange of summer experiences, the big red car came snorting back and stopped with a jerk to let out a tall young man, who ran across the lawn and in at the Tally-ho’s hospitably opened door.

“Mr. Morton wishes to know if Miss Wales——” he began. Then he rushed up to Betty. “By all that’s amazing, the great Miss Wales is the one I used to know! How are you, Betty?”

“Why, Jim Watson, where did you come from?” demanded Betty in amazement.

Jim’s eyes twinkled. “From the Morton Mercedes most recently, and until I get back to it with you I’m afraid we’d better defer further explanations.”

Betty nodded. “Only you must just meet Emily Davis—Miss Davis, Mr. Watson. She’s a friend of Eleanor’s too. And you must tell me one thing. Is the architect out there with Mr. Morton?”

“No,” said Jim solemnly, “he isn’t, naturally, since he’s in here with you. Architect Watson, with Parsons and Cope, at your service, Miss Wales.”

“Are you the real one—the one in charge?” persisted Betty. “You aren’t the one that won’t let Mr. Morton have his own way?”

“I am that very one,” Jim assured her briskly, “but there are some lengths to which I don’t go. So please come along to the car in a hurry, or I shall certainly be sent back to New York forthwith.”

“Gracious! That would be perfectly dreadful! Good-bye, Emily.” Betty sped down the path at top speed, Jim after her.

“Did you stop to introduce yourself in detail, Watson?” inquired Mr. Morton irritably, opening the door of the tonneau.

“He didn’t have to introduce himself,” Betty put in breathlessly, “but I made him stop to explain himself, and now I certainly shan’t worry about his objections and opinions, because I’ve known him for ages. Why, he’s Eleanor Watson’s brother Jim. You’ve heard Babe and me talk about Eleanor.”

“I should say that I have,” cried Mr. Morton jubilantly. “So you can manage her brother as nicely as you manage me, can you, Miss B. A.? I knew you ought to come up and see to things. Hurry along a little, Jonas, can’t you? We’re not out riding for our health to-day. There are some little things I haven’t just liked, and now that I’ve got Miss B. A. to help me manage you—— Feeling scared, Watson?”

“Not a bit, sir, thank you,” said Jim with his sunniest smile. “But I’m certainly feeling glad to see Miss Betty again.”

“What’s that? Glad to see Miss B. A.? Well, I should certainly hope so,” snapped Jasper J. Morton. “I’d have a good deal less use for you, sir, than I’ve had so far, if you weren’t.”

CHAPTER II
ARCHITECT’S PLANS—AND OTHERS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Betty “came to” with a frightened little gasp.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“As long as that?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Appearances are frequently deceitful,” Jim assured her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Get along all right?” he demanded briskly.

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

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

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

CHAPTER III
THE CULT OF THE B. C. A.’S

When Betty first unfolded what Will flippantly called the Morton-Prexy Proposition to the family circle, the “if” loomed very large indeed on mother’s face and larger still on Dorothy’s.

It would be too much for Betty, mother said. “And I don’t want my little girl to get tired and dragged-out and old before she has to. There was some reason in her trying to earn money in her own way last year, but now there isn’t the least sense in plunging into this project, just when the tea-shop is so nicely started and she has won the right to an easy time.”

“But, mother dear,” Betty interposed, “an easy time isn’t the chief thing in life.”

“Not exactly a cause worth living for, is it, child?” laughed father. “And being cook to the Wales family in the intervals when they happen to have a kitchen never did seem to satisfy your lofty aspirations.”

“Yes, it does, father,” declared Betty soberly, “but you’re going to board again this winter, so I can’t be cook much longer. It’s just a question of where I’m needed most. That sounds dreadfully conceited, but it really isn’t.”

So father laughed, and said that he and mother would “talk it over,” whereat Will winked wickedly at Betty in a way that meant, “Everything’s settled your way, then,” and hustled her off to dress for a tennis match, in which the skill of the Wales family was to be pitted against that of the Bensons. And just as the Wales family had won two sets out of a hard-fought three, father was saying diplomatically to mother on the piazza, “Well, dear, I think you’re right as usual; we ought to let her go and try herself out. It’s not many parents whose daughters are sought for to fill positions of such trust and responsibility.”

“I hope she won’t have to learn to run a typewriter like a regular secretary,” sighed mother, who had never in the world meant to let herself be coaxed, by father’s adroit methods, into approving or even permitting another of those “dreadful modern departures” that her old-school training and conservative temper united to disapprove.

Father smiled at her indulgently. “If girls learned to write a copper-plate hand nowadays as they did when you were young, we shouldn’t be so dependent on typewriters. Betty’s scrawl is no worse than the rest. Well, now that this matter is settled and off our minds, let’s walk out to the big bluff before dark.”

So the discussion was closed, the “if” dwindled to nothingness once more, and two weeks after Jim Watson had assisted Mr. Morton to see Betty off in a fashion befitting that gentleman’s idea of her importance, he was at the Harding station to meet her—quite without assistance.

“Was I the last straw?” he inquired gaily, as they walked down the long platform toward Main Street.

“The last straw?” repeated Betty absently. She was wondering whether the Student’s Aid seniors would expect her to help meet the freshmen at their trains.

“Well, the last figure in the column that you added up in order to estimate the possibilities of Harding as a mission field,” amended Jim. “Because if I helped to turn the scales in favor of your coming here I can at last consider myself a useful member of society.”

“Now don’t be absurd, Jim,” Betty ordered sternly. “Whatever else you do, I’m sure you’ll never succeed in being a brilliant object of charity.”

“Unappreciated, as usual,” sighed Jim. “Nevertheless I invite you to have an ice at Cuyler’s. It’s going to be very awkward, Betty—your being proprietress of the Tally-ho. I can never ask you to feed there.”

“But you can ask all the pretty girls I’m going to introduce you to,” Betty suggested, but Jim only shrugged his shoulders sceptically.

“Pretty girls are all right,” he said, “but I already know as many girls here as I can manage—or I shall when they all arrive. Don’t forget that I’m to help you meet Miss Helen Chase Adams to-night, and Miss Morrison to-morrow, and Miss Ayres whenever she telegraphs.”

“You mustn’t neglect your work,” Betty warned him.

“Shan’t,” Jim assured her. “I’ve merely arranged it so I can meet all Eleanor’s friends’ trains. There’s everything in arrangement. I generally begin my arduous duties at nine, but to-morrow seven o’clock shall see me up and at ’em—meaning the carpenters, bricklayers, plasterers, sewing-machine agents, and all the rest of my menials.”

“With all the extra men that Mr. Morton had sent up, can’t you possibly get through before Christmas?” demanded Betty eagerly.

“I can’t say yet,” Jim told her. “Is it so long to wait for your sewing-machines and things?”

“Perfect ages!”

Jim frowned. Betty didn’t mean to be unkind, but any one else, he reflected sadly, would have considered the personal side of the matter. Betty was a jolly girl, but all she really cared for was this confounded philanthropic job—and her tea-shop, maybe. She expected a fellow to be the same—all wrapped up in his job.

Madeline arrived, according to custom, ten minutes before her telegram, and swung up the Tally-ho steps to the lilting tune of her famous song, “Back to the College Again.”

“Hello, Betty! Hello, Emily! Hello, Nora and Bridget! I say, but isn’t this Improved Version of the Tally-ho almost too grand? No, I didn’t write. I couldn’t; I didn’t decide in time. I had a special article on fresh air children to write up for a friend of Dick’s, and a Woman’s Page for the ‘Leader,’ because the person who does it usually, known to Newspaper Row as Madam Bon Ton, has gone on a vacation to Atlantic City. But I sat up all last night out at Bob’s, listening to her merry tales and writing them down, and then pinching her awake to tell me more whenever I ran out of material. And I did the Woman’s Page on the train coming up here. We ought to have a real celebration for me after I’ve worked so hard as all that just to come.”

“You go ahead and plan one and we’ll have it,” Betty promised recklessly.

Madeline nodded, and rushed on to something else. “Is Rachel really going to teach Zoo, and is Helen Chase Adams going to adorn the English department? Christy wrote me about her appointment for History. Why, Betty, there’ll be a regular Harding colony of the finest class this year. You round them all up for tea to-morrow, and I’ll have the celebration ready. Never fear about that!”

“You want Mary Brooks Hinsdale, of course,” Betty suggested.

Madeline nodded. “All the old bunch, but nobody who’s still in college. It’s to be strictly a B. C. A. party, tell them.”

“Madeline,” demanded Emily sternly, “do you know what that stands for, or are you going to think something up later?”

Madeline grinned placidly. “Dearest girl, as Madam Bon Ton calls all her fair correspondents, never so far forget your breeding as to give way to idle curiosity. It tends to create wrinkles. And speaking of wrinkles, do you suppose Georgia will murder or otherwise dispose of her new roommate and take me in for the night?”

They were all there the next afternoon. Little Helen Chase Adams was just as prim and demure as ever, but the great honor that had come to her had put a permanent sparkle in her eyes, and added a comical touch of confidence to her manner. Rachel’s air of quiet dignity that the head of her department approved of only made the funny stories she told of her first experiences as a “faculty” all the funnier. Christy was her old, serene, dependable self. Mary, in a very becoming new suit, smiled her “beamish” smile at everybody, and argued violently with Madeline about the relative importance of being a “small” faculty or a “big” faculty’s wife.

“George Garrison Hinsdale is a genius, and he says he couldn’t live without me,” declared Mary modestly but firmly. Then she smiled again at the obvious humor of George Garrison Hinsdale’s remark. “Of course he did live without me until he discovered me.”

“We couldn’t live without you either, Mary dear,” Rachel assured her.

“No indeed we couldn’t, you Perfect Patron,” added Madeline. “And that reminds me that if you don’t hustle around and do something nice for the Tally-ho right away, you’ll be expelled from the society.”

“There’s no rule about how often you have to do things,” declared Mary indignantly, “and anyway I can’t be expelled when I’m the only member. It’s too utterly absurd.”

“Is the Perfect Patrons a society?” demanded Christy eagerly. “Can’t we join? It’s not limited to faculty’s wives, is it?”

“Rules for the Perfect Patron,” chanted Madeline impressively. “Rule one: Only the prettiest and best-dressed faculty wife existing at Harding is eligible. Rule two: In estimating Perfection patronizing the firm is counted against patronizing the menu. That’s where little Mary always meets her Waterloo.”

“I do not, and anyway those rules aren’t half so funny as the real ones that you made up first,” interpolated Mary sweetly.

“Well, I’ve forgotten the real ones. Anyway, we don’t need Perfect Patrons nowadays as much as we did when we were young and poor, instead of prosperous and almost too elegant. So suppose we attend to the organization of the B. C. A.’s.”

“Is that a society, too?” demanded Helen the practical.

“No, it’s a cult,” explained Madeline curtly.

“What’s a cult?”

“What does it stand for?”

“We’re all ‘Merry Hearts.’ What’s the use of any more clubs?”

Madeline met the avalanche of questions calmly.

“A cult is a highly exclusive club—nothing vulgar and common about a cult, like the Perfect Patrons’ Society, with its crowded membership list. As for the B. C. A. part, you can take a turn at guessing that. If any one gets it right we shall know that it’s too easy and that we’d better change to Greek letters or something. When you’ve guessed what it’s the cult of, of course you’ll understand the object of organizing it.”

“Very lucid indeed,” said Christy solemnly.

“Don’t try your patronizing faculty airs on me,” Madeline warned her. “I may say in passing that in my humble opinion no faculty should be caught belonging to a nice frivolous affair like the ‘Merry Hearts.’ A kindly desire not to exclude our faculty friends of 19— from our councils was of course my chief object in promoting the more dignified cult of the B. C. A.’s.”

“B. C. A.—Betty Can’t Argue.” Mary, who had been lost in thought, burst out with her solution. “She can’t, you know. She always smiles and says, ‘I don’t know why I think so, but I do.’”

“Beans Cooked Admirably,” suggested Emily. “Then the obvious entertainment would be Saturday suppers à la Boston.”

“Butter Costs Awfully,” amended Christy. “Then the obvious procedure would be to open a savings account.”

“Better Come Again,” was Rachel’s contribution. “That sounds nice and sociable and Madelineish.”

“Thanks for the compliment. You’re getting the least little speck of a bit warm,” Madeline told her encouragingly.

“Brilliant Collegians’ Association,” interposed Betty eagerly. “That must be right, because you’re all brilliant but me, and I’m the exception that proves it. Have I guessed, Madeline?”

Madeline shook her head. “Certainly not. Brilliance should be seen, not heard, Betty, my child. Besides, according to my well-known theory of names, a good one should bring out subtle, unsuspected qualities. That’s why editors get so excited, and even annoyed, about the titles of my stories; they aren’t generally subtle enough themselves to get my subtle points.”

“Well, I may say that I sympathize with the editors,” declared Mary feelingly. “Hurry and give a guess, Helen Chase, and then maybe she’ll tell us.”

“Bromides Can’t Attend,” said Helen timidly. “I suppose that’s wrong too.”

“Wildly,” Madeline assured her.

“And also senseless, I should say,” added Mary. “What in the world are Bromides?”

“People who ask foolish questions,” explained Christy, “like that one you’ve just propounded. The others are Sulphites. Get the book from Helen, who had it presented to her to read on the train, and then you’ll know all about it. Now, Madeline, tell us quick.”

Madeline shrugged her shoulders and stirred her tea with a provoking air of leisureliness. “It’s nothing to get excited about. Really, after all your ingenious guesses, the humble reality sounds very tame and obvious. We are the B. C. A.’s—the Back-to-the-College Again’s. It sounds simple, but like all my titles it involves deep subtleties. Why are we, of all the 19—’s who would give their best hats to be here, ‘elected’ to honor Harding with our presence? What have we in common? The answer is of course the sign of the cult and the mark of eligibility. It’s rather late to-day, so probably we’d better postpone the discussion until the next weekly tea-drinking.”

“Oh, do we have weekly tea-drinkings?” asked Christy. “Goodie! now tell our fortunes, Madeline.”

“Yes, that’s a lot more fun than a silly old discussion,” said Betty, holding out her cup.

“Wait a minute, Betty,” interrupted the methodical Rachel. “She hasn’t told us the object of the cult yet.”

Madeline swept the circle with a despairing glance. “As if perfectly good tea and talking about that ever-interesting subject, Ourselves, wasn’t ‘object’ enough for anybody. But you can have an ‘object’ if you like. I don’t mind, only you know I always did refuse to get excited over objects and causes and all that sort of thing.” Madeline reached for Betty’s cup, and promptly discovered a tall, fair-haired “suitor” in the bottom of it. “He has an object,” she declared. “Can you guess what it is? It’s Betty Wales.”

“Well, I’m sure Betty’s a worthy object for any suitor or any cult,” Rachel declared. “If you don’t believe it, watch her blush.”

“I’m not blushing,” Betty defended herself vigorously. “I’m only thinking—thinking how nice it would be if the B.C.A.’s would take me for an object. I shall need lots of help and advice, and maybe other things, and I shall make you give them to me anyway, so you’d better elect me to be your object, and then you won’t mind so much.”

“I shall be much relieved, for my part,” declared Madeline. “An object with yellow curls——”

“And a dimple,” put in Mary.

“Isn’t likely to be very much of a bore,” Madeline finished, and turned her attention to tea-grounds again, discovering so many suitors, European trips, and splendid presents, that Christy, who was house teacher at the Westcott, disgraced herself by being late to dinner. As for Mary Brooks Hinsdale, in the excitement of recounting it all to her husband, she utterly forgot that she had promised to chaperon the Westcott House dance and had to be sent for by an irate and anxious committee, who, however, forgave her everything when she arrived in her most becoming pink evening gown, declaring fervently that she should be heart-broken if she couldn’t dance every single number.

CHAPTER IV
THE GRASSHOPPER WAGER

The two weeks after college opened were the most confused, crowded, delightful, and difficult ones that Betty Wales had ever lived through. There seemed to be twice as many freshmen as there had ever been in Harding before. The town swarmed with them and with their proud and anxious fathers and mothers and sisters and aunts. They fell upon the Tally-ho Tea-Shop with such ardor that Emily was in despair—or would have been if Betty hadn’t assumed charge of the dinner hour herself and adroitly impressed Madeline with the literary value of seeing life from the cashier’s desk at lunch time.

Miss Dick’s school opened a fortnight after Harding, and then there was Dorothy to meet—the Bensons had brought her east with them on their way to New York—and the little girl was to be established this time in the boarding department, to the arrangements of which she immediately took a perverse dislike. Considering that she was the youngest boarder and the pet and darling of the whole school, this seemed quite unreasonable, particularly as all the year before she had teased to be a “boarder.” But Eugenia Ford took most of this worry off Betty’s hands, getting up early every morning to go over for a before-breakfast story, told while she combed out the Smallest Sister’s tangled curls, and never forgetting to appear in the evening at the exactly right minute to deliver a good-night kiss.

“Don’t thank me, please,” she begged Betty imploringly. “Feeling as if I had to do it makes her seem a little more like my very own. Just think!” Eugenia’s eyes filled, but she went on bravely. “I might be doing it for my very own little sister, if a dreadful French ‘bonne’ hadn’t been careless about a cold she took. How can mothers ever care more about having dinner parties and dances and going to the opera, Miss Wales, than about playing with their babies and seeing that they’re all right? My mother is like Peter Pan, I think. She will never grow up. And she never liked dolls when she was little, so naturally she didn’t care to play with us.” Eugenia flushed, suddenly realizing that she was indulging in rather strange confidences. “My mother is a great beauty, Miss Wales, and awfully bright and entertaining. I’m very, very proud of her. And if Dorothy is the least bit sick or tired or unhappy on a day when you don’t see her, I’ll be sure to notice and tell you, so you can feel perfectly safe.”

Of course the greatest problem, and one that nobody but Betty could do much to cope with, was the launching of the secretaryship. The secretary had been provided with a cozy little office, very businesslike with its roller-topped desk, a big filing cabinet, and a typewriter stand, tucked away in a corner of the Main Building; but beyond that the trustful directors apparently expected her to shift for herself. Betty promptly interviewed the two faculty members of the board, who smiled at her eagerness and anxiety to please, and advised her not to be in a hurry, but to begin with the obvious routine work—that meant interviewing and investigating the needs and the deserts of the girls who had applied for loans from the Student’s Aid—and to branch out gradually later, as opportunity offered.

“But I can’t do just that,” Betty told the second B. C. A. tea-drinking, “because it’s no more than they did themselves before they had a secretary. It would be like stealing to take their money for just that.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” advised Madeline lazily. “If they want to make it a snap course, isn’t that entirely their affair?”

“Why, Madeline Ayres,” objected Helen Adams solemnly, “it’s a charitable enterprise. I don’t suppose snap courses are exactly wrong, though they never amount to much, and so they waste the time of the ones that take them. But it would be positively wrong for the Student’s Aid to waste its money, when so many more poor girls want educations than can have them.”

Madeline listened, frowning intently. “‘The Immorality of the Snap Course’—I’ll do a little essay on that for the alumnæ department of the ‘Argus.’ It will rattle the editor awfully, but she will almost have to print it, after having teased and teased me for a few words from my facile and distinguished pen. Thanks a lot, Helen, for the idea. I’d give you the credit in a foot-note, only it might scare girls away from your courses.”

“Aren’t you thankful, girls,” began Mary, waving her teacup majestically around the circle, “that only one of us is a literary light? I wonder if real authors are as everlastingly given to changing the subject back to their own affairs as is our beloved Madeline. Now let’s get down to business——”

“Hear! Hear!” cried Madeline. “Little Mary will now voice her own and George Garrison Hinsdale’s sentiments on the immorality of the snap course. Lend me a pencil, somebody, so I can take notes of her valued ideas.”

“The business,” continued Mary, scornfully ignoring the interruption, “is to find more work for Betty, so she can earn her munificent salary properly. The meeting is now open for suggestions.”

“Well, Mary, fire away,” ordered Madeline briskly. “Of course a person with your head for business is simply overflowing with brilliant thoughts.”

“You think you’re being sarcastic, but just the same,” declared Mary modestly, “I have got a head for business——”

“Witness the way you used to make your accounts balance when you were in college, and the way your allowance lasted,” put in Rachel laughingly.

Mary smiled reminiscently. “My dear Rachel, a head for business is entirely different from being able to remember what you’ve spent. And even if I remembered, I couldn’t add it all up. But that’s bookkeeping, not business. As for using up my allowance ahead of time, I’m naturally an expansionist, and where would any respectable business be, may I ask you, if it didn’t go out every now and then and get more capital to expand with? I expanded the possibilities of the Harding course, and my father paid the bills; unfortunately there are always bills,” concluded Mary with a sigh.

“Do you still finish your allowance on the fourth of the month?” demanded Christy.

Mary shook her pretty head smilingly. “Never—for the good and sufficient reason that George Garrison Hinsdale understands me too well to give me an allowance.”

“The business of this meeting,” chanted Madeline sonorously, “is not, as you might suppose, a discussion of little Mary’s domestic and financial affairs.”

“Well, the girls asked me questions,” declared Mary indignantly, “and I didn’t know that there was any such awful rush. I’m not trying to gain time while I think up an inspiration, as you—well, I won’t start any more quarrels. I’ll only say that I’m not delaying in hopes of having an idea for Betty, because I’ve already got one. I think she ought to advertise.”

“How?”

“Why?”

“Sounds as if she was a breakfast food or a patent medicine.”

“She’s an employment bureau at present,” explained Mary serenely, “and when Morton Hall is ready to open she’ll be a house agent. She’s got to let people know that the bulletin-board in the gym basement is a back member, because she has it beaten cold. She impersonates the great and only link between the talented poor and the idle rich in this community.”

“That sounds well,” admitted Christy, “but how in the world is she to do it—be the great and only link, I mean?”

Mary shrugged her shoulders, and began putting on her gloves, which were new and fitted beautifully. “I leave all that to you,” she said. “I really must go now. Miss Ferris is having an intellectual dinner party for a philosopher from Boston, and we’re asked. I always make a point of wearing my prettiest things to their intellectual dinners—it’s the least and the most that I can do—and one’s prettiest things do take ages to get into. Good-bye, my dears.”

“She’s hit it, as usual,” said Rachel admiringly, when Mary’s trim little figure had rustled out of sight. “The important thing to do is to make the girls realize what you’re here for. Most of them know that you’re the new Student’s Aid secretary——”

“But they don’t know how to use you in their business,” Christy took her up.

“And the ones that need you most will always be too scared,” put in Helen Adams earnestly. “When I was a junior”—she blushed a little at her tardy admission—“my mother lost some money, and we didn’t have as much interest to live on. I thought I might have to leave college, and I wondered if the Student’s Aid would help me to stay. But I was too scared to ask. I started twice to go and see one of the faculty directors, but I just couldn’t screw up my courage. And then mother sold a farm that she’d wanted to get rid of for years, so it was all right. But—well, I wasn’t ashamed to ask for help; I was just scared,” ended Helen incoherently.

“Results of investigation up to date,” began Emily, who was dividing her time between the cashier’s desk and the B. C. A.’s table. “First, let people know what you are here for; secondly, take away the scared feeling from girls, who, as well as you can guess, may need help; third—this is original with me—get the girls who have money properly excited about having things done for them. I can tell you, I used to bless the B’s for the sentiment they created in favor of hiring somebody to sew on skirt braids and mend stockings.”

“Well, the B’s aren’t the only ones who can create sentiments,” said Madeline. “Georgia’s very good at it, and the Dutton twins are regular geniuses. Fluffy Dutton could make people so wildly enthusiastic over the binomial theorem that they’d be ready to die for it if she asked them to.”

“Then get them started on Betty,” ordered Rachel. “Madeline Ayres is hereby elected to enthuse all the champion enthusers on the subject of the enjoyability of being mended up by somebody else.”

Madeline bowed gravely. “I hereby accept the chairmanship of the committee on Proper Excitement of the Idle Rich, and I would suggest Rachel Morrison as chairman of the committee on Proper Encouragement of the Timid Poor, and Christy Mason to head one on Proper Exploitation of Miss Betty Wales, the eager, earnest, and insufficiently employed Student’s Aid Secretary.”

“If I might humbly suggest something at this point,” laughed Christy, “it would be that Betty might like to invent her own committees and choose the chairmen of them.”

“Oh, no indeed,” cried Betty heartily. “You all have such splendid ideas and Madeline has such lovely names for things. Please go on and think of something else. I haven’t dared to say a word all this time, because I was so afraid that you would stop.”

“That’s the proper spirit for an Object.” Madeline patted Betty’s shoulder encouragingly. “Accept the goods the B. C. A.’s provide. Instead of not earning your salary, my child, you’re going to give the Student’s Aid the biggest kind of a bargain. Besides one small secretary (with curls and a dimple) they’re getting the invaluable assistance of at least six prominent graduates, and any number of influential college girls. If that’s not a run for their money, I should like to know what they want.”

“Oh, they haven’t acted dissatisfied,” explained Betty hastily. “It was only I that was worried.”

“Well, I should like to know what you want, then,” amended Madeline with severity. Then she smiled a self-satisfied little smile. “It’s all right to ask ‘What’s in a name?’ There’s nothing much in some names, but if these committees of mine aren’t rather extra popular on account of their stylish headings, I shall stop trying to make a reputation for clever titles and devote my life to producing horrible commonplaces for the Woman’s Page of the Sunday papers. I’m going up to the campus this minute to talk to Georgia and Fluffy Dutton. Come along, Rachel, and get your committee started too.”

“Wait a minute, Madeline,” Emily broke in. “Why not organize a sort of council of all the committees, and have a meeting of it here some afternoon next week to talk over the situation?”

Madeline stared at her sadly. “If you think I’m going to spoil my perfectly good committee by asking it to meet, you don’t understand the first principles of my sweet and simple nature. The last way to properly excite people is to hold stupid meetings. Come along, Rachel, before my beautiful enthusiasm vanishes.”

The next morning Fluffy Dutton appeared in “Psych. 6” ten minutes after the hour, with a yard of black mohair braid trailing conspicuously from her note-book.

The lecture was hopelessly dull, and the class concentrated its wandering attention on the braid which, with a notice pinned to one end, traveled slowly up and down the room.

“For those wishing to be neat

Here’s a plan that can’t be beat.

Pin your name upon this braid

You’ll a needy student aid.

Tell her where and when to call

And she’ll do it—that is all.

She’ll rip the old braid, sew on new,

And prompt return your skirt to you.”

So read the rhyming notice, and below it was printed in large letters, “Lowest Prices for all Repairing, Mending, and Plain Sewing (including Gym Suits).”

When the strip of braid got back to Fluffy it looked like the tail of a kite, with its collection of orders scattered artistically up and down its length.

“Yes, I wrote the rhyme,” Fluffy admitted modestly, when the class was dismissed. “Wrote it between breakfast and chapel. What made me late to Psych. was buying the braid. Georgia wrote one too, and we are racing each other to see who gets the largest number of orders. Oh, yes, I suppose they do need the work—or the money rather. But the thing that appeals to me is the impression I shall make on my mother when I go home all neat and tidy and mended up for once. Haven’t you a freshman sister? Well, put her down for a gym suit, that’s a dear! Georgia’s going to catch me a dozen grasshoppers if I win. I hate catching things so—my hair always blows in my eyes.”

“And what if Georgia wins?”

“Oh, then I’ve got to catch her a dozen grasshoppers,” said Fluffy resignedly. “But I don’t care much, because I shall hire it done, and that will be all for the good of the cause. But I can’t believe that she will win, because gym suits count as three skirt braids, and positions for waitresses count as five. I’m going to get a lot of those from eleven to twelve. Georgia is furious because this is her lab. morning, and she can’t get a good start.” And Fluffy trailed her skirt braid over to Junior Lit. where she got so many orders that she had to unpin them, place them on file, so to speak, in the front of her shirt-waist, and start over.

It may be reprehensible to wager grasshoppers; but, as Fluffy pointed out to some humane friend, they were doomed in any case, and there was a piquant flavor of adventure about the whole proceeding that appealed strongly to one type of the Harding mind. The committee on the Encouragement (and discovery) of the Timid Poor convened hastily that same evening in Betty’s shiny new office, and discovered that while their day’s work had necessarily been less spectacular than their rivals’, it had been equally effective. There would be no trouble in matching workers to skirt braids.

“But there’ll be all kinds of trouble about flunked courses,” announced Eugenia Ford solemnly, “unless we remember to pay better attention in ‘Psych. 6.’ He gave out a written lesson for to-morrow on purpose, because there was so much whispering and rustling around to-day.”

“The more flunking, the more tutoring,” suggested a pretty junior, and blushed very pink when she remembered that Rachel Morrison was on the faculty.

“That was a foolish remark,” she added apologetically. “For my part, I honestly think there’ll be less flunking than usual. It makes you more in earnest about your own college course when you see how some girls value it, and what they’ll sacrifice to get it. Come along, Eugenia, and let’s begin to burn the midnight oil.”

CHAPTER V
REINFORCEMENTS

The initiation of Babbie Hildreth, which had to be over in time for the participants to meet Eleanor Watson’s train, was the feature of the next B. C. A. tea-drinking, held two days ahead of time in honor of the double reinforcement to the ranks of 19—.

“I hope you’re all satisfied. I’ve come up here out of pure curiosity about this old cult,” announced Babbie, when they were settled cozily in Flying Hoof’s stall. “You all wrote the most maddening letters—it was arranged, I know, what each one should say, so that I’d keep getting crazier and crazier to be let into the secret.”

“Didn’t you rather want to see your elegant new tea-shop?” demanded Rachel innocently.

“Ye-es”—Babbie flushed,—“of course I did. It’s lovely, isn’t it? Nora must appreciate her splendid kitchen——”

“Why, you haven’t seen the kitchen yet, Babbie,” cried Helen Adams reproachfully. “I’ve been with you every minute since you came.”

“Well, I can guess what it’s like, can’t I?” Babbie defended herself.

“Babbie Hildreth,” demanded Madeline, sternly, “when were you up here last?”