Edith K. Dunton

“ Having discovered the rules of true concentration, Marie had plenty of time for recreation, especially now that soft April breezes had melted hard faculty hearts, and spring-term standards made life easy. She entered into all the season’s diversions with her customary zest, but the event that fairly stirred her soul was the junior prom. For one day—nay, two,—the Harding campus would be black with men! ”

“ And just as Betty was ready to open her catering establishment, a famous author from London came to Harding to deliver a lecture, and also to see Miss Raymond, whom he had met years before in England and wanted to meet again. Miss Raymond was giving a dinner for him. Celine’s cooking would do beautifully, she told Betty, coming to her to ask if Nora or Bridget knew of a waitress that she could have in for the great occasion. But Celine’s waiting and Celine’s table-laying—they would strike terror to his orderly English soul. ”

“ I have an idea that I’m going to miss you fearfully, Betty Wales. A career is an awfully lonely thing, the week your very best little pal is getting married. But you’ve always been true to your title. You’ve been Miss B. A. to Mr. Morton and to every single other soul you’ve ever had anything to do with. That’s why we’re bound not to lose you now, for all of Jim.”
“You dear old Madeline! As if Jim or I wanted to lose our dearest friends! Now tell me about the wedding-with-features, so I can write it all to Mother, and then she won’t mind so much about the cottage. ”

“ Betty, who had been busy all the week with plans and estimates, memoranda of “things we ought to have,” “things to speak to Jim about,” “necessary glass and silver,” and so on, was duly grateful that Madeline consented to accompany her on any pretext; for when Madeline was once on the ground, with the actual site of the Coach and Six, Jim’s ideas, and Mr. Morton’s fury of energy to inspire her, Betty knew she would forget even the fairy play and plan a tea-shop that would dazzle “little old New York.” ”

“ RESCUING MONTANA MARIE
Pre-Christmas excitements and Christmas gaieties were alike things of the past. Harding was bleak and snow-bound in the clutches of a real old-fashioned New England January. And the college cynics declared gloomily that the cold and forbidding weather was a symbol of cold and unforgiving faculty hearts.
“There are too many of us,” sighed Straight, who was more worried than she cared to admit over her record in junior argument. “Prexy thinks this college is getting too big. Maybe it is, but can’t they wait till next year to have it get smaller? ”

“ Betty wanted every girl who had applied for the Association’s help to get it, if she was worthy; she wanted every lonely freshman to be met at her train, every boarding-house keeper in search of waitresses, and every well-to-do student who hated to do her own mending, to feel that nobody could supply their varied wants so well as the Students’ Aid. ”

“ Being Straight, she would probably have guessed at once, but Amelia saved her the trouble by letting fall two big tears and then dabbling wildly at the tears and the freckles, which mingled in a sticky brownish fluid on her peach-blossom cheeks.
Straight stared at the strange spectacle in absolute mystification, and Montana Marie boldly decided that the situation was not yet desperate.
“I told you not to fuss with any of those horrid face-washes,” she reproached the choking Amelia. “Freckles aren’t the worst thing in the world. You’ll be lucky if you haven’t ruined your pretty complexion. ”

“ Being an insuperable optimist, she cared not that the sophomore players were known as the Invincibles because they had never lost an interclass match.
When a practical-minded freshman player remarked, “Of course we can’t win, but we can play ball,” Montana Marie smiled her dazzling smile and retorted, “Don’t you give up yet. You can play ball and the rest of us can shriek—yelling is forbidden, they say, in this polite institution. And maybe—well, truth is stranger than fiction,” Montana Marie concluded with a cheerful giggle. ”

“ I shall love having the tea-shops. It makes me feel less as if this was the end of Betty Wales—less as if I’d been blown out to make room for Mrs. Jim.” Betty made a funny little face at Jim, who retorted with, “Haven’t forgotten that train, have you, Mrs. Jim?”
[355] When the carriage came for them, the elves and wood fairies surrounded it and pelted the bridal couple with armfuls of daisies instead of rice and old shoes. So it was through a rain of daisies that Betty caught her last glimpse of the Merry Hearts, who stood in a little group by themselves waving her off. ”

“ Of the various amusing things with which one may fill a broken afternoon at Harding, Fluffy chose the company of Montana Marie O’Toole and the pursuit of chocolate soda.
“I take back some of what I said about sociology,” she told Montana Marie over the soda. “It’s interesting and up to date, but it’s very misleading. It doesn’t tell anything about the bother of protecting your rights. Why, it’s even dangerous to try to protect them! Here we are now, honor-bound to keep their old rules—just so much worse off than before. ”

“ The B. C. A.’s left her mornings and early afternoons undisturbed, save for friendly offers of help from the tutors. But about four there was always some fun afoot. A walk, a skating or snow-shoeing party, a sleigh-ride in Mary’s trim cutter,—then a merry dinner at the Tally-ho or the Belden, and after that you [177] were much too sleepy to sit up and study. So Connie and the new coffee-maker retired behind a screen, and Montana Marie slept the dreamless sleep of those who have had their fill of fresh air. ”

“ Georgia rebuked her sternly. “If you want to race and make a general disturbance you must ride way ahead alone. But if I were you——”
“Oh, I shouldn’t think of stirring up anything more,” declared Montana Marie demurely, pulling the Imp into a decorous park-trot beside the unlucky sophomore, who was luckily not a bit the worse for her tumble. “I’m only a little freshman, and I want to learn the college ways in riding as in other things.” ”

“ JISTS AND SUFFRAGISTS
“You can get a thing off your mind easily enough by telling it to somebody,” said little Binks Ames very soberly. “But it isn’t so easy to get it off your heart. I don’t know how to begin, and I hate to bother you and Miss Wales any more, Georgia, but something has simply got to be done for that poor freshman Jones.” ”

“ Binks is just as sensible as I am, and lots and lots more—decent,” ended the unsentimental Georgia. “Takes home stray cats, you know, and goes walking with freaks,—and doesn’t mind the bother. I never in all my life set eyes on as many stray cats as Binks finds homes for in a good average week. Of course Esther Bond is her big discovery. She was responsible for getting Esther into the Morton, you know, and since then Esther has mysteriously developed into the biggest all-around Senior Star that we’ve got.” ”

“ Montana Marie rocked back and forth in an ecstasy of mirth and satisfaction.
“The world is such a small place,” she added with much originality, and smiled impartially on all classes present.
Then they turned out the lights and had the “weird eats”—the largest raw oysters to be bought in Harding, dipped in very thick, very hot chocolate sauce. And then they had “real food,” namely: Cousin Kate’s cookies and pineapple ice. Eugenia had requisitioned the “real food” of Betty Wales, at Straight’s instigation. ”

“ Young Constance has confided to Georgia that she’ll have a try at Harding. Now what got her was that Timmy and Dickie and Bill and Bob Blake are all the finest ever. If they hadn’t been, everything would have gone to smash. It’s certainly queer how many nicest girls get nicknamed Bob and Bill and Dickie.”
“The reason,” said Madeline wisely, “is that the very nicest girls are all-around nice—not sissy nice, or young-lady nice, or clever nice, but nice every way,—and just as good fun to play about with as any man in the world. ”

“ Seems to me there ought to be girls enough in college to do that sort of thing without putting it off on Betty. Betty is too valuable to be wasted on mere tutoring.”
“Poor girls ought not to need to be tutored,” announced Madeline, in her oracular manner. “Unless they are bright and shining lights in their studies, they ought not to try to go through college at all.”
“But Madeline——” chorused the permanent B. C. A.’s—the ones who were always on hand in Harding, because they were either faculty or faculty wives. “But Babbie—you two don’t understand. Haven’t you heard about Betty’s freshman?” ”

“ Poor Marie sighed deeply. “It’s a great responsibility, wasting the time of a faculty and a—what’s that Miss Mason is?—oh, yes, a Fellow in Mathematics. And I can’t pay Miss Adams, because it is against the rules for the faculty to be paid for tutoring. Is it against [99] the rules for me to send her flowers every day, Miss Wales?”
Betty remembered how violets used to make Helen’s eyes shine, and said no. “Only you mustn’t be extravagant, you know. Every day is much too often to send flowers.”
“I can’t say that I think it’s any too often to get flowers,” smiled Montana Marie. ”

“ Betty Wales was not thinking of the Tally-ho Catering Department (which was deciding to be the howling success that Babbie had predicted) , nor of the Student’s Aid Secretaryship, nor of Montana Marie O’Toole, among whose faults was certainly not to be ranked a lack of decision.
“Oh, goodness me!” said Betty Wales at last to the open fire in her cheerful sitting-room [182] at Morton Hall. “A girl ought to know her own mind. I’m old enough to know what I want. I’m grown up. But I don’t feel a bit grown up. I just hate flirts. It’s perfectly dreadful to keep a nice man on the string. ”

“ Even Madeline was somewhat over-awed by the great name of the novelist, and Babbie Hildreth was frankly aghast at Betty’s daring.
“Couldn’t we have started in with a freshman spread?” she asked. “Then, after a year or so, we could work up to the grandeur of Miss Raymond. Aren’t you scared to death, Betty, for fear things will go wrong? Imagine how she’d glare at a waitress who didn’t pass things to suit her! The poor creature would probably drop her dishes and flee for her very life.” ”

“ Betty protested.
“Business,” began Madeline dogmatically, “is the art of putting your best foot forward. Our best foot is features. Business is giving [164] the people what they want. They all want features, even the touch-me-not Raymonds and the high and mighty Jorams. Ergo——” she waved her mystic veil convincingly. “You began with features, Betty. You’re therefore committed to features. And I, crystal-gazing palmist and seeress of renown, prophesy that the Tally-ho Catering Department will succeed beyond our wildest dreams, with features. Now come and help me find those cookies.” ”

“ Her pithy comments were quoted from end to end of the Harding campus, and beyond. But her giggle was contagious, her sweetness really appealing, her appreciation of any small favors touching in its breezy Western sincerity. Montana Marie had “done” New York and the European capitals; she had been “finished” in “dear [46] old Paree”; but she had also been born and brought up in a Montana mining camp, and she was not ashamed of that fact, nor of her very plain, as well as very peculiar, parentage. So Harding College agreed with Fluffy Dutton in liking Montana Marie. ”

“ Anybody could do anything that I’ve ever done,—if they’d only try,” ended Betty Wales, with a fine disregard for antecedents and a serene lack of appreciation of the rarity of people who try—and who keep on trying to the bitter end.
If Dorothy didn’t go back to Miss Dick’s there would be two extra ones at home; that would put boarding, with five in the family, out of the question, and rents in town were frightfully expensive. It did seem as if a person who had a good salary waiting for her in Harding would better “go back on the job,” as Will would have put it. ”

“ And she took the matter to the most wonderful person about troubles that she knew: namely, Miss Betty Wales.
“You see,” said Binks solemnly, “Constance Ames is the pretty, society kind of girl. But she’s awfully bright, too. She’s five years younger than Georgia; so she’ll be a year younger in entering college. That is, if she will come, when she’s ready, in the fall. But she won’t. She has an idea that college is awfully solemn and serious and studious, and she says she’d rather go to boarding-school, where the girls are lively, even if there are a lot of rules. And Georgia feels dreadfully. ”

“ Betty was as serious as Binks. “Why doesn’t Georgia have her little sister up here for a visit? She’d be sure to have a splendid time, and then she’d want to enter college. Has she put in her application for the campus?”
Binks nodded. “Georgia did it for her the minute she saw how nice Harding is. The reason Georgia doesn’t have her up is because she’s afraid to. You see, Constance belongs to a crowd of boys and girls who have a lot going on all the time, and Georgia is afraid—well, to tell the truth, Constance is man-crazy. She doesn’t think you can have a good time with just girls. ”

“ As for solid geometry, I’ll wager that not a person in this crowd could demonstrate—is that the right word for it?—a single proposition. And as for Latin prose, it’s a gift from the gods. You can’t learn it. Even Professor Owen, who is a genius, can’t teach it. So stop worrying here and now, and eat that muffin before somebody is tempted beyond what she can bear, and a theft is committed in our midst.”
“Is all this trouble caused by Montana Marie O’Toole?” inquired Christy practically.
Betty nodded, being too busy with the muffin to speak. ”