Betty Wales, Freshman Part 9

At least half of it was head, black and awful, with gruesome green features. Short, unjointed arms came out of its waist, with green claws dangling where the hands should have been; and below its short skirt flapped the tails of a swallow-tail coat. The girls were too much astonished to speak, as the creature advanced silently into the room, and without a word began dancing something that, as Katherine expressed it afterward, was a cross between a double-shuffle and a skirt-dance.

When it had succeeded in reducing its audience to a state of abject and tearful mirth, the creature stopped suddenly, announced, "You've seen the Jabberwock," in sepulchral tones, and flopped on to the end of a couch, saying breathlessly, "Mary Brooks, please help me out of this.

I'm suffocating."

"How did you do it, Miss Lewis?" inquired the stately senior, who was Mary's guest, wiping her eyes and gasping for breath as she spoke.

"It's perfectly simple," drawled Roberta indifferently. "The head is my black silk petticoat. I painted on the features, because the children like to have me do it at home, and it's convenient to be ready. The arms are a broom-handle, stuck through the sleeves of this old coat, which is b.u.t.toned around my waist."

"And now you're going to do the Banders.n.a.t.c.h, aren't you?" inquired the senior craftily, perceiving that the other side of the petticoat was decorated with curious red spots.

"I--how did you--oh, no," said Roberta, blus.h.i.+ng furiously, and stuffing the telltale petticoat under a convenient pillow. "I don't know why I brought the things for this. I never meant to do it up here. I--I hope you weren't bored. I just happened to think of it, and Eleanor couldn't sing forever, and that fudge----"

"That fudge won't cook," broke in Betty in tragic tones. "It doesn't thicken at all, and it's half-past nine this minute. What shall I do?"

Everybody crowded around the chafing-dish, giving advice and suggesting unfailing remedies. But none of them worked.

"And there's nothing else but tea and chocolate," wailed Adelaide.

"But you can all have both," said Betty bravely, "and you've forgotten the crackers, Adelaide. I'll pa.s.s them while you and Katherine go for more cups."

"And you can send the fudge round to-morrow," suggested Mary Brooks consolingly. "It's quite the thing, you know. Don't imagine that your chafing-dish is the only one that's too slow for the ten-o'clock rule."

Betty insisted upon sitting up to finish the fudge, but she ended by getting up before breakfast the next morning to cook it on Mrs. Chapin's stove.

"n.o.body seemed to care much about its being so slow, except me," she said to Helen, as they did it up in neat little bundles to be handed to the guests of the evening at chapel. "Weren't Eleanor and Roberta fine?"

"Yes," agreed Helen enthusiastically. "But isn't it queer that Roberta won't let us praise her? She seems to be ashamed of being able to be so funny."

Betty laughed. "That's Roberta," she said. "It will be months before she'll do it again, I'm afraid. I suppose she felt last night as if she had to do what she could for the honor of the house, so she came out of her sh.e.l.l."

"She told Rachel that she did it on your account. She said you looked as if you wanted to cry."

Betty flushed prettily. "How nice of her! I did want to cry. I felt as if I was to blame about the fudge. I wish I had a nice stunt like that of Eleanor's to come to people's rescue with."

"Were those what you call stunts?" inquired Helen earnestly. "I didn't know what they were, but they were fine."

"Why, Helen Chase Adams, do you mean that you've been in college two months and don't know what a stunt is----" began Betty, and stopped, blus.h.i.+ng furiously and fearing that she had hurt Helen's feelings. For the reason why she did not know about stunts was obvious.

Helen took it very simply. "You know I'm not asked to things outside,"

she said, "and I don't seem to be around when the girls do things here.

So why should I know?"

"No reason at all," said Betty decidedly. "They are just silly little parlor tricks anyway--most of them--not worth wasting time over. Do you know Miss Willis told us in English cla.s.s that a great deal of slang originated in college, and she gave 'stunt' as an example. She said it had been used here ever so long and only a few years outside, in quite a different meaning. Isn't that queer?"

"Yes," said Helen indifferently. "She told my division too, but she didn't say what it meant here. I suppose she thought we'd all know."

Betty, stealing a glance at her, saw her wink back the tears. "She does care about the fun," thought Betty. "She cares as much as Rachel or I, or Eleanor even. And she is left out. It isn't a bit fair, but what's to be done about it?"

Being young and very happy herself, she speedily forgot all about the knotty problem of the unequal distribution of this world's goods, whether they be potatoes or fudge parties. Occasionally she remembered again, and gave Helen a helping hand, as she had done several times already. But college is much like the bigger world outside. The fittest survive on their own merits, and these must be obvious and well advertised, or they are in great danger of being overlooked. And it is safer in the long run to do one's own advertising and to begin early.

Eleanor understood this, but she forgot or ignored the other rules of the game. Betty practiced it unconsciously, which is the proper method.

Helen never mastered its application and succeeded in spite of it.

Several evenings after that one on which the fudge had refused to cook, Alice Waite was trying to learn her history lesson, and her "queer"

roommate, who loved to get into her bed as well as she hated to make it, was trying to go to sleep--an operation rendered difficult by the fact that the girl next door was cracking b.u.t.ternuts with a marble paper-weight--when there was a soft tap on the door.

"Don't answer," begged the sleepy roommate.

"May be important," objected Alice, "but I won't let her stay. Come in!"

The door opened and a young gentleman in correct evening dress, with an ulster folded neatly over his arm, entered the room and gazed, smiling and silent, about him. He was under average height, slightly built, and had a boyish, pleasant face that fitted ill with his apparent occupation as house-breaker and disturber of damsels.

The roommate, who had sat up in bed with the intention of repelling whatever intruder threatened her rest, gave a shriek of mingled terror and indignation and disappeared under the bedclothes. Alice rose, with as much dignity as the three heavy volumes which she held in her lap, and which had to be untangled from her kimono, would permit. She moved the screen around her now hysterical roommate and turned fiercely upon the young gentleman.

"How dare you!" she demanded sternly. "Go!" And she stamped her foot somewhat ineffectively, since she had on her worsted bedroom slippers.

At this the young gentleman's smile broke into an unmistakably feminine giggle.

"Oh, you are so lovely!" he gurgled. "Don't cry, Miss Madison. It's not a real man. It's only I--Betty Wales."

"Betty!" gasped Alice. "Betty Wales, what are you doing? Is it really you?"

"Of course," said Betty calmly, pulling off her wig by way of further evidence, and sitting down with careful regard for her coattails in the nearest chair. "I hope," she added, "that I haven't really worried Miss Madison. Take the screen away, Alice, and see what she's doing."

"Oh, I'm all right now, thank you," said Miss Madison, pus.h.i.+ng back the screen herself. "But you gave me an awful fright. What are you doing?"

"Why, we're going to give a play at our house Sat.u.r.day," explained Betty, "and to-night was a dress rehearsal. I wanted to bring Alice a ticket, and I thought it would be fun to come in these clothes and frighten her; so I put on a skirt and a rain-coat and came along. I left my skirt in your entrance-way. Get it for me please, Alice, and I'll put it on before I send any one else into hysterics."

"Oh, not yet," begged Miss Madison. "I want to look at you. Please stand up and turn around, so I can have a back view."

Betty readjusted her wig and stood up for inspection.

"What's the play?" asked Alice.

Betty considered. "It's a secret, but I'll tell you to pay for giving you both such a scare. It's 'Sherlock Holmes.' Mary Brooks saw the real play in New York, and she wrote this, something like the real one, but different so we could do it. She could think up the plot beautifully but she wasn't good at conversation, so Katherine helped her, and it's fine."

"Is there a robbery?" inquired Alice.

"Oh, yes, diamonds."

"And a murder?"

"Well, a supposed murder. The audience thinks it is, but it isn't really. And there's a pretend fire too, just as there is in the real play."

"And who are you?"

"I'm the villain," said Betty. "I'm to have curling black mustaches and a fierce frown, and then you'd know without asking."

"I should think they'd have wanted you for the heroine," said Alice, who admired Betty immensely.