Betty Wales, Senior Part 28

"I object to the president's English," interrupted Madeline. "The connotation of the term splurge is unpleasant. We don't wish to splurge.

Now go ahead, Betty."

"Why, it's nothing much," said Betty modestly, "and probably it's not at all what Bob is thinking of. It's just that, as Helen says, everybody who is in anything is in a lot of things and most of the cla.s.s are being left out of the commencement plans. I thought of it first that day we had a lecture on monopolies in sociology. Don't you remember Miss Norris's saying that there were cla.s.ses and ma.s.ses and excellent examples of monopolies right here in college, and that we needn't wait until we were out to have a chance to fight trusts and equalize wages."

"Oh, that was just an ill.u.s.tration," objected Bob blandly. "Miss Norris didn't mean anything by it."

"She's a Harding girl herself," Betty went on, "and it's certainly true, even if she didn't intend it to be acted on. Thursday night when I went over the things I had to do about commencement and thought I couldn't do any of them I felt dreadfully greedy."

"But Betty," Rachel took her up, "don't you think it takes executive ability to be on committees and plan things? Commencement would be at sixes and sevens if the wrong girls had charge of it."

"Yes, of course it would," agreed Betty. "Only I wondered if all the left-out people are the wrong kind."

"Of course they're not," said Madeline Ayres with decision. "What is executive ability, anyway?"

"The thing that Christy Mason has," returned Bob promptly.

"Exactly," said Madeline, "and that is just practice in being at the head of things,--nothing more. Christy isn't much of a pusher, she isn't particularly brilliant or particularly tactful; but she's been on committees as regularly as clockwork all through her course, and she's learned when to pull and when to push, and when to sit back and make the rest push. It's a thing any one can learn, like French or bookkeeping or how to make sugar-cookies. I hate it myself, but I don't believe it's a difficult accomplishment."

"Perhaps not," protested Bob, "but it takes time, if it's anything like French or cookies--I never tried the bookkeeping. We don't want to make any experiments with our one and only commencement."

"Why, I'm an experiment," said Roberta hastily, as if she had just thought of it and felt impelled to speak.

"Yes, but you're the exception that proves the rule," said Nita Reese brusquely. Nita's reputation for executive ability was second only to Christy's and she was badly overworked, and tired and cross in consequence. "I don't think I quite get your idea, Betty. Do you want K., for instance, to give up her part in the play to Leslie Penrose, who was told she could have it at first and cried for a whole day when she found there had been a mistake?"

"Come, Nita," said Madeline lazily, but with a dangerous flash in her gray eyes. "That's not the way to take our last chance to make more 'Merry Hearts.' Let Betty tell us exactly what she does mean."

"Please do, Betty," begged Nita, half ashamed already of her ill-tempered outburst.

"Of course I don't want K. to give up her part," began Betty with a grateful look at Madeline and a smile for Katherine. "I only thought that some of us are in so many things that we're tired and rushed all the time, and not enjoying our last term half as much as we might."

"My case exactly," put in Nita repentantly.

"Whereas there are girls in the cla.s.s who've never had anything to do here but study, and who would be perfectly delighted to be on some little unimportant commencement committee."

"But they ought to realize," said Babbie loftily, "that in a big college like Harding very few people can have a chance to be at the head of things. Our commencement is pretty enough to pay our families for coming even if the girls they are particularly interested in don't have parts. Being on a committee isn't a part anyway."

"Girls who are never on them think it is," said Helen Adams.

There was an ominous silence.

At the end of it Babbie slipped out of the hammock and sat down beside Betty on the gra.s.s. "It's no use at all fighting you, Betty Wales," she declared amiably. "You always twist the things we don't want to do around until they seem simple and easy and no more than decent. Of course it's true that we are all tired to death doing things that the left-outs will be blissful at the prospect of helping us with. But it's been so every year and no other cla.s.s ever turned its play and its commencement upside down. And yet you make it seem the only reasonable thing to do."

"Lucky our cla.s.s-meeting happened to be postponed," said Bob in matter-of-fact tones, "Makes it easier arranging things."

"A cooperative commencement will send us out with a splurge all right,"

remarked Babe.

Thus the B's made a graceful concession to the policy of trying more experiments with 19--'s commencement.

"One man, one office--that's our slogan," declared Katherine, when Babe had announced that the vote in favor of Betty's plan was unanimous. "No hard and fast policy, but the general encouragement of pa.s.sing around the honors. I haven't but one myself, so I shall have to look on and see that the rest of you do your duty."

"Let's make a list of the vacancies that will probably occur in our midst, as it were," suggested Rachel.

"I wonder if we couldn't lengthen the Ivy Day program and make room for a few more girls in that way," put in Eleanor. "The oration and the song don't take any time at all."

"Fine idea!" cried Madeline. "We have a lot of musical and literary talent in the cla.s.s that isn't being used anywhere. We'll turn it over to the Ivy Day committee with instructions to build their program accordingly."

"But we must manage things tactfully," interposed Babbie, "as we did about the junior usher dresses. We mustn't let the left-overs suspect that we are making places for them."

"By the way," said Madeline, "have you heard that this year's junior ushers are going to keep up the precedent, out of compliment to us?"

"Pretty cute," cried Babe. "I hope they'll manage to look as well as we did."

"And as we are going to again this year in our sweet simplicity costumes," said Babbie, with a little sigh of regret for the wonderful imported gown that her mother had suggested buying as part of her commencement present.

It was growing late, so the "Merry Hearts" made a hasty outline of procedure, and delegated Rachel to see Marie Howard and ask her to help with the plan as far as she could at the approaching cla.s.s-meeting.

Luckily this was not until the following Tuesday, so there was plenty of time to interview all the right people and get the cooperative campaign well established before Marie rose at the meeting to read what would otherwise have seemed an amazing list of committee appointments. Emily Davis gave up Gobbo at once and Christy, after weighing the relative glories of being toastmistress and Antonio decided that she could help more at the cla.s.s supper. Both girls declared that they were delighted to be relieved of part of their responsibilities.

"Those toasts that I hadn't time to brown properly were getting on my nerves," Christy declared.

"And my Ivy oration was growing positively frivolous, it was so mixed up with young Gobbo's irresponsible way of changing masters," confessed Emily. "I've wanted to drop out of the play, but I was afraid the girls would think me as irresponsible as Gobbo. Leslie Penrose knows my part and she can step into the place as well as not."

It was a surprise to everybody when Kate Denise joined the movement, without even having been asked to do so. She gave up everything but her part as Portia, and used her influence to make the rest of the Hill girls do the same.

"I guess she remembers how we did them up last year on the dress business," chuckled Bob.

"She's a lot nicer than the rest of her crowd," Babbie reminded her, "and I think she's tired of acting as if she wasn't."

"I hate freaks," said Babe, "but it is fun to see them bustle around, acting as if they owned the earth. Leslie's whole family is coming to commencement, down to the youngest baby, and the fat Miss Austin is fairly bursting with pride just because she's on the supper committee.

She has some good ideas, too."

"Of course they're proud," said little Helen Adams sententiously.

"Things you've never had always look valuable to you."

Helen had won in the song contest. Her family would see her name and her song in print on the Ivy Day program, and May Hayward, a friend of hers and T. Reed's in their desolate freshman year, was to be in the mob in Helen's place.

All the changes had been made without any difficulty and no one was worrying lest experiments should prove the ruin of 19--'s commencement.

Mr. Masters had protested hotly against Christy's withdrawal from the play, but the new Antonio was proving herself a great success and even Mr. Masters had to admit that the whole play had gained decidedly the minute that the actors had dropped their other outside interests. But the great difference was in the spirit of good-fellows.h.i.+p that prevailed everywhere. Everybody had something to do now, or if not, then her best friend had, and they talked it over together, told what Christy had suggested about the tables for cla.s.s-supper, how Kate was having all her own dresses made for Portia and Nerissa couldn't afford to, so Eleanor Watson had lent her a beautiful blue satin, or what the new Ivy Day committees had decided about the exercises. There was no longer a monopoly of anything in 19--. Incidentally, as Katherine pointed out, n.o.body was resting her nerves at the infirmary.

Betty would have been perfectly happy if she hadn't felt obliged to worry a little about Georgia Ames. Ashley Dwight had been up to see her twice since the prom. Betty felt responsible for their friends.h.i.+p and wondered if she ought to warn Tom that she really didn't know anything about Georgia. For suppose Georgia hadn't had anything to do with the Westcott house robbery; that didn't prove anything about her having taken Nita's pin in the fall.

If Madeline had spoken to her protegee, as she intended to do, about excluding the Blunderbuss from her acquaintance, Georgia had paid the advice scant heed. The Blunderbuss came to see her more and more often as the term went on. To be sure Georgia was very seldom at home when the senior called. Indeed her roommate was getting to feel decidedly injured because Georgia never used her room except to sleep and dress in.

CHAPTER XVI