CHAPTER XVII
AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION
"I wish I could do it, Betty, but I'm sure it wouldn't be the least usefor me to try. I thought I had a little hold on her for a while, but I'mafraid I was too sure of her. She avoids me now--goes around corners andinto recitation rooms when she sees me coming. You see--I wonder if shetold you about our trip to New York?"
Betty nodded, wishing she dared explain the full extent of herinformation.
"I thought so from your coming up here to-night. Well, as you've justsaid, she's very reserved, strangely so for a young girl; when she letsout anything about herself she wishes that she hadn't the next minute."
"Yes, I've noticed that," admitted Betty grudgingly.
"And so, having once let me get a glimpse of her better self, and thenhaving decided as usual that she wished she hadn't, she needed a prooffrom me that I was worthy of her confidence. But I didn't give it; I wasbusy and let the matter drop, and now I am the last person who could goto her. I'm very sorry."
"Oh, dear!" said Betty forlornly.
"But isn't it so? Don't you agree with me?"
"I'm afraid I do."
"Then go back and speak to her yourself, dear. She's very fond of you,and I'm sure a little friendly hint from you is all that she needs."
"No, I can't speak to her either, Ethel. You wouldn't suggest it if youknew how things are between us. But I see that you can't. Thank you justas much. No, I mustn't stop to-night."
Betty walked down the elm-shaded street lost in thought. Eleanor haddeclaimed upon the foolishness of coming back on time after vacationsthrough most of the dinner hour, and Betty understood as she had notthat afternoon what Dorothy meant. But now her one hope had failed her;Ethel had shown good cause why she should not act as Eleanor's adviserand Betty had no idea what to do next.
"Hello, Betty Wales! Christy and I thought we saw you up at the golfclub this afternoon." Nita Reese's room overlooked the street and shewas hanging out her front window.
"I was up there," said Betty soberly, "but I had to come right back. Ididn't play at all."
"Then I should say it was a waste of good time to go up," declared Nitaamiably. "You'd better be on hand to-morrow. The juniors are going to beawfully hard to beat."
"I'll try," said Betty unsmilingly, and Nita withdrew her head from thewindow, wondering what could be the matter with her usually cheerfulfriend.
At the corner of Meriden Place Betty hesitated. Then, noticing that Mrs.Chapin's piazza was full of girls, she crossed Main Street and turnedinto the campus, following the winding path that led away from thedwelling-houses through the apple orchard. There were seats along thispath. Betty chose one on the crest of the hill, screened in by a clumpof bushes and looking off toward Paradise and the hills beyond. Thereshe sat down in the warm spring dusk to consider possibilities. And yetwhat was the use of bothering her head again when she had thought it allover in the afternoon? Arguments that she might have made to Etheloccurred to her now that it was too late to use them, but nothing else.She would go back to Dorothy, explain why she could not speak to Eleanorherself, and beg her to take back the responsibility which she hadunwittingly shifted to the wrong shoulders. She would go straight offtoo. She had found an invitation to a spread at the Belden housescrawled on her blotting pad at dinner time, and she might as well beover there enjoying herself as here worrying about things she could notpossibly help.
As she got up from her seat she glanced at the hill that sloped offbelow her. It was the dust-pan coasting ground. How different it lookednow in its spring greenery! Betty smiled at the memory of her mishap.How nice Eleanor had been to her then. And Miss Ferris! If only MissFerris would speak to Eleanor. "Why, perhaps she will," thought Betty,suddenly remembering Miss Ferris's note. "I could ask her to, anyway.But--she's a faculty. Well, Ethel is too, though I never thought of it."And Dorothy had wanted Betty's help in keeping the matter out of thehands of the authorities. "But this is different," Betty decided atlast. "I'm asking them not as officials, but just as awfully nicepeople, who know what to say better than we girls do. Miss King wouldthink that was all right."
Without giving herself time to reconsider, Betty sped toward the Hiltonhouse. All sorts of direful suppositions occurred to her while shewaited for a maid to answer her ring. What if Miss Ferris had forgottenabout writing the note, or had meant it for what Nan called "a politenothing"? Perhaps it would be childish to speak of it anyway. PerhapsMiss Ferris would have other callers. If not, how should she tell herstory?
"I ought to have taken time to think," reflected Betty, as she followedthe maid down the hall to Miss Ferris's rooms.
Miss Ferris was alone; nevertheless Betty fidgeted dreadfully during thepreliminary small-talk. Somebody would be sure to come in before shecould get started, and she should never, never dare to come again. Atthe first suggestion of a pause she plunged into her business.
"Miss Ferris, I want to ask you something, but I hated to do it, so Icame right along as soon as I decided that I'd better, and now I don'tknow how to begin."
"Just begin," advised Miss Ferris, laughing.
"That is what they say to you in theme classes," said Betty, "but itnever helped me so very much, somehow. Well, I might begin by tellingyou why I thought I could come to you."
"Unless you really want to tell that you might skip it," said MissFerris, "because I don't need to be reminded that I shall always be gladto do anything I can for my good friend Betty Wales."
"Oh, thank you! That helps a lot," said Betty gratefully, and went onwith her story.
Miss Ferris listened attentively. "Miss Watson is the girl with thewonderful gray eyes and the lovely dark hair. I remember. She comes downhere a great deal to see Miss Cramer, I think. It's a pity, isn't it,that she hasn't great good sense to match her beauty? So you want me tospeak to her about her very foolish attitude toward our college life.Suppose I shouldn't succeed in changing her mind?"
"Oh, you would succeed," said Betty eagerly. "Mary Brooks says you canargue a person into anything."
Miss Ferris laughed again. "I'm glad Miss Brooks approves of myargumentative ability, but are you sure that Miss Watson is the sort ofperson with whom argument is likely to count for anything? Did you everknow her to change her mind on a subject of this sort, because herfriends disapproved of her?"
Betty hesitated. "Yes--yes, I have. Excuse me for not going intoparticulars, Miss Ferris, but there was a thing she did when she camehere that she never does now, because she found how others felt aboutit. Indeed, I think there are several things."
Miss Ferris nodded silently. "Then why not appeal to the same people whoinfluenced her before?"
It was the question that Betty had been dreading, but she met itunflinchingly. "One of them thinks she has lost her influence, MissFerris, and another one who helped a little bit before, can't,because--I'm that one, Miss Ferris. I unintentionally did something lastterm that made Eleanor angry with me. It made her more dissatisfied andunhappy here too; so when I heard about this I felt as if I was a littleto blame for it, and then I wanted to make up for the other time too.But of course it is a good deal to ask of you." Betty slid forward on tothe edge of her chair ready to accept a hasty dismissal.
Miss Ferris waited a moment. "I shall be very glad to do it," she saidat last. "I wanted to be sure that I understood the situation and that Icould run a chance of helping Miss Watson. I think I can, but you mustforgive me if I make a bad matter worse. I'll ask her to have tea withme to-morrow. May I send a note by you?"
"Of course you won't tell her that I spoke to you?" asked Bettyanxiously, when Miss Ferris handed her the note. Miss Ferris promisedand Betty danced out into the night. Half-way home she laughed merrilyall to herself.
"What's the joke?" said a girl suddenly appearing around the corner ofthe Main Building.
"It was on me," laughed Betty, "so you can't expect me to tell you whatit was."
It had just occurred to her that, as there was no possib
ility ofEleanor's finding out her part in Miss Ferris's intervention, areconciliation was as far away as ever. "She wouldn't like it if sheshould find out," thought Betty, "and perhaps it was just anothertactless interference. Well, I'm glad I didn't think of all these thingssooner, for I believe it was the right thing to do, and it was a loteasier doing it while I hoped it might bring us together, as Nan said. Iwonder what kind of things Nan meant."
She dropped the note on the hall table and slipped softly up-stairs. Asshe sat down at her desk she looked at the clock and hesitated. It wasnot so late as she had thought, only quarter of nine. There was stilltime to go back to the Belden. But after a moment's wavering Betty begangetting out of her dress and into a kimono. Since the day of thebasket-ball game she had honestly tried not to let the little thingsinterfere with the big, nor the mere "interruptions" that were fun andvery little more loom too large in her scale of living. "Livy to-nightand golf to-morrow," she told the green lizard, as she sat down againand went resolutely to work.
When Eleanor came in to dinner the next evening Betty could hardlyconceal her excitement. Would she say anything? If she said nothing whatwould it mean? The interview had apparently not been a stormy one.Eleanor looked tired, but not in the least disturbed or defiant. She ateher dinner almost in silence, answering questions politely but brieflyand making none of her usual effort to control and direct theconversation. But just as the girls were ready to leave the table shebroke her silence. "Wait a minute," she said. "I want to ask you pleaseto forget all the foolish things I said last night at dinner. I've saidthem a good many times, and I can't contradict them to every one, but Ican here--and I want to. I've thought more about it since yesterday, andI see that I hadn't at all the right idea of the situation. The studentsat a college are supposed to be old enough to do the right thing aboutvacations without the attaching of any childish penalty to the wrongthing. But we all of us get careless; then a public sentiment must becreated against the wrong things, like cutting over. That was what theregistrar was trying to do. Anybody who stays over as I did makes itless possible to do without rules and regulations and penalties--inother words hurts the tone of the college, just as a man who likes tolive in a town where there are churches but never goes to them himself,unfairly throws the responsibility of church-going on to the rest of thecommunity. I hadn't thought of it in that way; I didn't mean to be ashirk, but I was one."
A profound silence greeted Eleanor's argument. Mary Rich, who had beenloud in her championship of Eleanor's sentiments the night before,looked angry at this sudden desertion; and Mary Brooks tried ratherunsuccessfully not to smile. The rest were merely astonished at sosudden a change of mind. Finally Betty gave a little nervous cough andin sheer desperation began to talk. "That's a good enough argument tochange any one's mind," she said. "Isn't it queer how many differentviews of a subject there are?"
"Of some subjects," said Eleanor pointedly.
It was exactly what Betty should have expected, but she couldn't helpbeing a little disappointed. Eleanor had just shown herself so fine anddownright, so willing to make all the reparation in her power for acourse whose inconsistency had been proved to her. It was verydisheartening to find that she cherished the old, reasonless grudge aswarmly as ever. But if Betty had accomplished nothing for herself, shehad done all that she hoped for Eleanor, and she tried to feel perfectlysatisfied.
"I think too much about myself, anyway," she told the green lizard, whowas the recipient of many confidences about this time.
The rest of the month sped by like the wind. As Betty thought it overafterward, it seemed to have been mostly golf practice and bird club.Roberta organized the bird club. Its object, according to her, was toassist Mary Brooks with her zoology by finding bird haunts and conveyingMary to them; its ultimate development almost wrought Mary's ruin. Maryhad elected a certain one year course in zoology on the supposition thatone year, general courses are usually "snaps," and the further theorythat every well conducted student will have one "snap" on her schedule.These propositions worked well together until the spring term, whenzoology 1a resolved itself into a bird-study class. Mary, who wasnear-sighted, detested bird-study, and hardly knew a crow from akinglet, found life a burden, until Roberta, who loved birds and wasonly too glad to get a companion on her walks in search of them,organized what she picturesquely named "the Mary-bird club." Rachel andAdelaide immediately applied for admission, and about the time that Maryappropriated the forget-me-nots that Katherine had gathered for MarionLawrence and wore them to a dance on the plea that they exactly matchedher evening dress, and also decoyed Betty into betraying her connectionwith the freshman grind-book, Katherine and Betty joined. They seldomaccompanied the club on its official walks, preferring to stroll off bythemselves and come back with descriptions of the birds they had seenfor Mary and Roberta to identify. Occasionally they met a friendly birdstudent who helped them with their identifications on the spot, andthen, when Roberta was busy, they would take Mary out in search of"their birds," as they called them. Oddly enough they always found theserare species a second time, though Mary, because of hernear-sightedness, had to be content with a casual glance at them.
"But what you've seen, you've seen," she said. "I've got to see fiftybirds before June 1st; that doesn't necessarily mean see them so you'llknow them again. Now I shouldn't know the nestle or the shelcuff, but Ican put them down, can't I?"
"Of course," assented Katherine, "a few rare birds like those will makeyour list look like something."
The pink-headed euthuma, which came to light on the very last day ofMay, interested Mary so much that she told Roberta about it immediatelyand Roberta questioned the discoverers. Their accounts were perfectlyconsistent.
"Way out on Paradise path, almost to the end, we met a man dashingaround as if he were crazy," explained Betty. "We should have thought hewas an escaped lunatic if we hadn't seen others like him."
"Yes," continued Katherine. "But he acted too much like you to take usin. So we said we were interested in birds too, and he danced aroundsome more and said we had come upon a rare specimen. Then he pointed tothe top of an enormous pine-tree----"
"Those rare birds are always in the very tops of trees," put in Maryeagerly.
"Of course; that's one reason they're rare," went on Betty. "But thatminute it flew into the top of a poplar, and we three pursued it. It wasa beauty."
"And then you came back after me, and it was still there. Tell her howit was marked," suggested Mary. "Perhaps she knows it under some othername."
"It had a pink head, of course," said Katherine, "and blue wings."
"Goodness!" exclaimed Roberta suspiciously.
"Don't you mean black wings, Katherine?" asked Betty hastily.
"Did I say blue? I meant black of course. Mary thought they looked blueand that confused me. And its breast was white with brown marks on it."
"What size was it?" asked Roberta.
Katherine looked doubtful. "What should you say, Mary?"
"Well, it was quite small--about the size of a sparrow or a robin, Ithought."
"They're quite different sizes," said Roberta wearily. "Your old manmust have been color-blind. It couldn't have had a pink head. Who everheard of a pink-headed bird?"
"We three are not color-blind," Katherine reminded her. "And thenthere's the name." Roberta sighed deeply. The new members of theMary-bird club were very unmanageable.
Meanwhile Mary was industriously counting the names on her list, whichmust be handed in the next day. "I think I'd better put the euthumadown, Roberta," she said finally. "We saw it all right. They won't lookthe list over very carefully, but they will notice how many birds are onit, and even with the pink-headed euthuma I haven't but forty-five. Irather wish now that I'd bought a text-book, but I thought it was awaste of money when you knew all about the birds, and it would certainlybe a waste of money now."
"Oh, yes," said Roberta. "If only the library hadn't wanted its copyback quite so soon!"
"It w
as disagreeable of them, wasn't it?" said Mary cheerfully, copyingaway on her list. "You were going to look up the nestle too. Girls, didwe hear the nestle sing?"
"It whistled like a blue jay," said Katherine promptly.
"It couldn't," protested Roberta. "You said it was only six incheslong."
"On the plan of a blue jay's call, but smaller, Roberta," explainedBetty pacifically.
"Well, it's funny that you can never find any of these birds when I'mwith you," said Roberta.
Katherine looked scornful. "We were mighty lucky to see them even twice,I think," she retorted.
Next day Mary came home from zoology 1a, which to add to its otherunpleasant features met in the afternoon, wearing the air of a martyr tocircumstance. Roberta, Katherine and Betty happened to be sitting on thepiazza translating Livy together. "Girls," she demanded, as she came upthe steps, "if I get you the box of Huyler's that Mr. Burgess sent mewill you tell me the truth about those birds?"
"She had the lists read in class!" shouted Katherine.
"I knew it!" said Roberta in tragic tones.
"Did you tell her about the shelcuff's neck?" inquired Betty.
Mary sat down on the piazza railing with her feet cushioned on alexicon. "I told her all about the shelcuff," she said, "likewise theeuthuma and the nestle. What is more, the head of the zoology departmentwas visiting the class, so I also told him, and when I stayed to explainhe stayed too, and--oh, you little wretches!"
"Not at all," said Katherine. "We waited until you'd made a reputationfor cleverness and been taken into a society. I think we wereconsiderateness itself."
Roberta was gazing sadly at Mary. "Why did you try all those queerones?" she asked. "You knew I wasn't sure of them."
"I had to, my dear. She asked us for the rare names on our lists. I wasthe third one she came to, and the others had floundered around and toldabout birds I'd never heard of. I didn't really know which of mine wererare, because I'd never seen any of them but once, you know, and I wasafraid I should strike something that was a good deal commoner than arobin, and then it would be all up with me. So I boldly read off thesethree, because I was sure they were rare. You should have seen her facewhen I got to the pink-headed one," said Mary, beginning suddenly toappreciate the humor of the situation. "Did you invent them?"
"Only the names," said Betty, "and the stories about finding them. Ithought of nestle, and Katherine made up the others. Aren't they lovelynames, Roberta?"
"Yes," said Roberta, "but think of the fix Mary is in."
Mary smiled serenely. "Don't worry, Roberta," she said. "The names wereso lovely and the shelcuff's neck and the note of the nestle and all,and I am honestly so near-sighted, that I don't think Miss Carter willhave the heart to condition me. But girls, where did you get thedescriptions? Professor Lawrence particularly wanted to know."
Betty looked at Katherine and the two burst into peals of laughter."Mary Brooks, you invented most of those yourself," explained Katherine,when she could speak. "We just showed you the first bird we happened tosee and told you its new name and you'd say, 'Why it has a green crestand yellow wings!' or 'How funny its neck is! It must have a pouch.' Allwe had to do was to encourage you a little."
"And suppress you a little when you put colors like pink and blue intothe same bird," continued Betty, "so Roberta wouldn't get toosuspicious."
"Then those birds were just common, ordinary ones that I'd seen before?"
"Exactly. The nestle was a blue jay, and the euthuma was a sparrow. Wecouldn't see what the shelcuff was ourselves, the tree was so tall.
"'The primrose by a river's brim, A yellow primrose was to him, And it was nothing more.'"
quoted Mary blithely. "You can never put that on my tombstone."
"Better tell your friend Dr. Hinsdale about your vivid ornithologicalimagination," suggested Katherine. "It might interest him."
"Oh, I shall," said Mary easily. "But to-night, young ladies, you willbe pleased to learn that I am invited up to Professor Lawrence's todinner, so that I can see his bird skins. Incidentally I shall meet hisfascinating brother. In about ten minutes I shall want to be hooked up,Roberta."
"She's one too many for us, isn't she?" said Katherine, as Mary wentgaily off, followed by the devoted Roberta, declaring in loud tones thatthe Mary-bird club was dissolved.
"I wish things that go wrong didn't bother me any more than they doher," said Betty wistfully.
"Cheer up," urged Katherine, giving her a bearish hug. "You'll win inthe golf again to-morrow, and everything will come out all right in theend."
"Everything? What do you mean?" inquired Betty sharply.
"Why, singles and doubles--twosomes and foursomes you call them, don'tyou? They'll all come out right."
A moment later Katherine burst in upon her long-suffering roommate witha vehemence that made every cup on the tea-table rattle. "I almost lether know what we thought," she said, "but I guess I smoothed it over. Doyou suppose Eleanor Watson isn't going to make up with her at all?"