Chapter 10

engaged and, Betty--I'm sure it was Miss Hale."

Betty looked at her in blank amazement. "You said you were ill and then came here!" she began. "Oh, Eleanor, how could you! But what makes you think that Miss Hale knows?"

"I'm sure I recognized her voice when she asked you for the fan, and then haven't you noticed her distant manner?" said Eleanor gloomily. "Are they friends, do you know?"

"They live in the same house."

"Then that settles it. You seem to be very chummy with Miss Hale, Betty. You couldn't reconcile it with your tender conscience to say a good word for me, I suppose?"

"I--why, what could I say after that dreadful message?" Then she brightened suddenly. "Why, Eleanor, I did. We talked about you all the way over here. Ethel asked questions and I answered them. I told her a lot of nice things," added Betty reassuringly, "though of course I couldn't imagine why she wanted to know. What luck that you hadn't told me sooner!"

Eleanor stared at her blankly. "I suppose," she said at last, "that it will serve me right if Miss Hale tells Miss Mansfield that I was here, and Miss Mansfield refuses me another examination; but do you think she will?"

Betty glanced at Ethel. She was standing at the other end of the room, talking to two Winsted men, and she looked so young and pretty and so like one of the girls herself that Betty said impulsively, "She couldn't!" Then she remembered how different Ethel had seemed on the train, and that the girls in her classes stood very much in awe of her. "I don't know," she said slowly. "She just hates any sort of cheating. She might think it was her duty to tell. Oh, Eleanor, why did you do it?"

Eleanor shrugged her shoulders expressively. Then she turned away with a radiant smile for Mr. West. "I am sorry to have kept you men waiting," she said. "How much more time do we have before the barge comes?"

Whatever Miss Hale meant to do, she kept her own counsel, deliberately avoiding intercourse with either Ethel or Betty. She bade the girls a gay good-bye at the station, and went off in state in the carriage they had provided for her.

"I suppose it's no use asking if you had a good time," said Betty sympathetically, as she and Eleanor, having decided to go home in comfort, rolled away in another.

"I had a lovely time until it flashed over me about that telephone message. After that of course I was worried almost to death, and I would give anything under the sun if I had stayed at home and passed off my math. like a person of sense."

"Then why don't you tell Miss Mansfield so?" suggested Betty.

"Oh, Betty, I couldn't. But I shan't probably have the chance," she added dryly. "Miss Hale will see her after dinner. I hope she'll tell her that I appeared to be enjoying life."

The next morning when Eleanor presented herself at Miss Mansfield's class-room for the geometry lesson, another assistant occupied the desk. "Miss Mansfield is out of town for a few days," she announced. Eleanor gave Betty a despairing glance and tried to fix her attention on the "originals" which the new teacher was explaining. It seemed as if the class would never end. When it did she flew to the desk and inquired if Miss Mansfield would be back to-morrow.

"To-morrow? Oh no," said the young assistant pleasantly. "She's in Boston for some days. No, not this week; next, I believe. You are Miss Watson? No, there was no message for you, I think."

The next week was a longer and more harassing one than any that Eleanor could remember. She had not been blind to Betty's scorn of her action. Ever since she came to Harding she had noted with astonishment the high code of honor that held sway among the girls. They shirked when they could, assumed knowledge when they had it not, managed somehow to wear the air of leisurely go-as-you-please that Eleanor loved; but they did not cheat, and like Betty they despised those who did. So Eleanor, who a few months before would have boasted of having deceived Miss Mansfield, was now in equal fear lest Miss Hale should betray her and lest some of her mates should find her out. She wanted to ask Lil Day or Annette Gaynor what happened if you cut a special examination; but suppose they should ask why she cared to know? That would put another knot into the "tangled web" of her deception. It would have been some comfort to discuss the possibilities of the situation with Betty, but Eleanor denied herself even that outlet. No use reminding a girl that she despises you! If only Betty would not look so sad and sympathetic and inquiring when they met in the halls, in classes or at table. At other times Eleanor barricaded herself behind a "Don't disturb" sign and studied desperately and to much purpose. And every morning she hoped against hope that Miss Mansfield would hear the geometry class.

The suspense lasted through the whole week. Then, just two days before the vacation, Miss Mansfield reappeared and Eleanor asked timidly for an appointment.

"Come to-day at two," began Miss Mansfield.

"Oh thank you! Thank you so much!" broke in Eleanor and stopped in confusion.

But Miss Mansfield only smiled absently. "Most of my belated freshmen don't express such fervent gratitude for my firmness in pushing them through before the vacation. They try to put me off." She had evidently quite forgotten the other appointment.

"I shall be so glad to have it over," Eleanor murmured.

Miss Mansfield looked after her thoughtfully as she went down the hall. "Perhaps I've misjudged her," she told herself. "When a girl is so pretty, it's hard to take her seriously."

She said as much to Ethel Hale when they walked home to lunch together, but Ethel was not at all enthusiastic over Miss Watson's earnestness.

"She's very late in working off a condition, I should say," she observed coldly.

"Yes, but I've been away, you know," explained Miss Mansfield. "Oh, Ethel, I wish you could meet him. You don't half appreciate how happy I am."

Ethel, who had decided after much consideration to let Eleanor's affairs take their course, made a mental observation to the effect that an engagement induces shortness of memory and tenderness of heart. Then she said aloud that she also wished she might meet "him."

* * * * *

Time flies between Thanksgiving and Christmas, particularly for freshmen who are looking forward to their first vacation at home. It flies faster after they get there, and when they are back at college it rushes on quite as swiftly but rather less merrily toward the fateful "mid-years." None of the Chapin house girls had been home at Thanksgiving time, but they were all going for Christmas, except Eleanor Watson, who intended to spend the vacation with an aunt in New York.

They prepared for the flitting in characteristic ways. Rachel, who was very systematic, did all her Christmas shopping, so that she needn't hurry through it at home. Roberta made but one purchase, an illustrated "Alice in Wonderland," for her small cousins, and spent all her spare time in re-reading it herself. Helen, in spite of Betty's suggestions about leaning back on her reputation, studied harder than ever, so that she could go home with a clear conscience, while Katherine was too excited to study at all, and Mary Brooks jeered impartially at both of them. Betty conscientiously returned all her calls and began packing several days ahead, so as to make the time seem shorter. Then just as the expressman was driving off with her trunk, she remembered that she had packed her short skirt at the very bottom.

"Thank you ever so much. If he'd got much further I should have had to go home either in this gray bath robe that I have on, or in a white duck suit," she said to Katherine who had gone to rescue the skirt and came back with it over her arm.

She and Katherine started west together and Eleanor and Roberta went with them to the nearest junction. The jostling, excited crowd at the station, the "good-byes" and "Merry Christmases," were great fun. Betty, remembering a certain forlorn afternoon in early autumn, laughed happily to herself.

"What's the joke?" asked Katherine.

"I was thinking how much nicer things like this seem when you're in them," she said, waving her hand to Alice Waite.

At the Cleveland station, mother and Will and Nan and the smallest sister were watching eagerly for the returning wanderer.

"Why, Betty Wales, you haven't changed one bit," announced the smallest sister in tones of deepest wonder. "Why, I'd have known you anywhere, Betty, if I'd met you on the street."

"Three months isn't quite as long as all that," said Betty, hugging the smallest sister, "but I was hoping I looked a little older. Nobody ever mistakes me for a senior, as they do Rachel Morrison. And I ought to look years and years wiser."

"Nonsense," said Will with a lordly air. "Now a college girl----"

Everybody laughed. "You see we all know your theories about intellectual women," said mother. "So suppose you take up the suit case and escort us home."

The next morning a note arrived from Eleanor.

"DEAREST BETTY," it ran:

"As you always seem to be just around the corner when I get into a box, I want to tell you that I rode down to New York with Miss Hale. She asked me to sit with her and I couldn't well refuse, though I wanted to badly enough. She knew, Betty, but she will never tell. She said she was glad to know me on your account. She asked me how the term had gone with me, and I blushed and stammered and said that I was coming back in a different spirit. She said that college was the finest place in the world for a girl to get acquainted with herself--that cowardice and weakness of purpose and meanness and pettiness stood out so clearly against the background of fineness and squareness; and that four years was long enough to see all sorts of faults in oneself, and change them according to one's new theories. As she said it, it didn't sound a bit like preaching.

"I didn't tell her that I was only in college for one year. I sent her a big bunch of violets to-day--she surely couldn't regard it as a bribe now--and after Christmas I'll try to show her that I'm worth while.

"Merry Christmas, Betty.

"Eleanor."

Nan frowned when Betty told her about Eleanor. "But she isn't a nice girl, Betty. Did I meet her?"

"Yes, she's the one you thought so pretty--the one with the lovely eyes and hair."

"Betty," said Nan soberly, "you don't do things like this?"

"I!" Betty flushed indignantly. "Weren't there all kinds of girls when you were in college, Nan? Didn't you ever know people who did 'things like this'?"

Nan laughed. "There certainly were," she said. "I'll trust you, Betty. Only don't see too much of Miss Watson, or she'll drag you down, in spite of yourself."

"But Ethel's dragging her up," objected Betty. "And I gave her the first boost, by knowing Ethel. Not that I meant to. I never seem to accomplish things when I mean to. You remember Helen Chase Adams?"

"With great pleasure. She noticed my youthful appearance."

"Well, I've been all this term trying to reform her clothes, but I can't improve her one bit, except when I set to work and do it all myself. I should think you'd be afraid she'd drag me into dowdiness, I have to see so much of her."

Nan smiled at the dainty little figure in the big chair. "I don't notice any indications yet," she said. "It took you an hour to dress this morning, exactly as it always does. But you'd better take care. What are you going to do to-day?"

"Make your friend Helen Chase Adams a stock for Christmas," announced Betty, jumping up and pulling Nan after her. "And you've got to help, seeing you admire her so much."