Chapter 9

PAYING THE PIPER

"I feel as if there were about three days between Thanksgiving and Christmas," said Rachel, coming up the stairs, to Betty, who stood in the door of her room half in and half out of her white evening dress.

"That leaves one day and a half, then, before vacation," laughed Betty. "I'm sorry to bother you when you're so pressed for time, but could you hook me up? Helen is at the library, and every one else seems to be off somewhere."

"Certainly," said Rachel, dropping her armful of bundles on the floor. "I'm only making Christmas presents. Is the Kappa Phi dance coming off at last?"

"Yes--another one, that is; and Mr. Parsons asked me, to make up for the one I had to miss. Now, would you hold my coat?"

"Betty! Betty Wales! Wait a minute," called somebody just as Betty reached the Main Street corner, and Eleanor Watson appeared, also dressed for the dance.

"Why didn't you say you were going to Winsted?" she demanded breathlessly. "Good, here's a car."

"Why didn't you say you were going?" demanded Betty in her turn as they scrambled on.

"Because I didn't intend to until the last minute. Then I decided that I'd earned a little recreation, so I telegraphed Paul West that I'd come after all. Who is your chaperon?"

"Miss Hale."

"Well please introduce me when we get down-town, so that I can ask if I may join her party."

Ethel Hale received Betty with enthusiasm, and Eleanor with a peculiar smile and a very formal permission to go to Winsted under her escort. As the two were starting off to buy their tickets, she called Betty back.

"Aren't you going to sit with me on the way over, little sister?" she asked.

"Of course," said Betty, and they settled themselves together a moment later for the short ride.

"You never come to see me, Betty," Miss Hale began, when they were seated.

"I'm afraid to," confessed Betty sheepishly. "When you're a faculty and I'm only a freshman."

"Nonsense," laughed Miss Hale. Then she glanced at Eleanor, who sat several seats in front of them, and changed the subject abruptly. "What sort of girl is Miss Watson?" she asked.

Betty laughed. "All sorts, I think," she said. "I never knew any one who could be so nice one minute and so trying the next."

"How do you happen to know her well?" pursued Miss Hale seriously.

Betty explained.

"And you think that on the whole she's worth while?"

"I'm afraid I don't understand----" Betty was beginning to feel as if she was taking an examination on Eleanor's characteristics.

"You think that on the whole she's more good than bad; and that there's something to her, besides beauty. That's all I want to know. She is lovely, isn't she?"

"Yes, indeed," agreed Betty enthusiastically. "But she's very bright too. She's done a lot of extra work lately and so quickly and well. She's very nice to me always, but she dislikes my roommate and she and I are always disagreeing about that or something else. I don't think--you know she wouldn't do a dishonorable thing for the world, but I don't approve of some of her ideas; they don't seem quite fair and square, Ethel."

"Um," assented Ethel absently. "I'm glad you could tell me all this, Betty. I shouldn't have asked you, perhaps; it's rather taking advantage of our private friendship. But I really needed to know. Ah, here we are!"

As she spoke, the train slowed down and a gay party of Winsted men sprang on to the platform, and jostled one another down the aisles, noisily greeting the girls they knew and each one hunting for his particular guest of the afternoon. They had brought a barge down to take the girls to the college, and in the confusion of crowding into it Betty found herself separated from Ethel. "I wish I'd asked her why she wanted to know all that," she thought, and then she forgot everything but the delicious excitement of actually being on the way to a dance at Winsted.

Most of the fraternity house was thrown open to the visitors, and between the dances in the library, which was big enough to make an excellent ball-room also, they wandered through it, finding all sorts of interesting things to admire, and pleasantly retired nooks and corners to rest in. Mr. Parsons was a very attentive host, providing partners in plenty; and Betty, who was passionately fond of dancing and had been to only one "truly grown-up" dance before, was in her element. But every once in awhile she forgot her own pleasure to notice Eleanor and to wonder at her beauty and vivacity. She was easily belle of the ball. She seemed to know all the men, and they crowded eagerly around her, begging for dances and hanging on her every word. Eleanor's usually listless face was radiant. She had a smile and a gay sally for every one; there was never a hint of the studied coldness with which she received any advances from Helen or the Riches, nor of the scornful ennui with which she faced the social life of her own college.

"Aren't you glad you came?" said Betty, when they met at the frappé table.

"Rather," said Eleanor laconically. "This is life, and I've only existed for months and months. What would the world be like without men and music?"

"Goodness! what a wise-sounding remark," laughed Betty.

Just then Miss Hale came up in charge of a very young and callow freshman.

"Please lend me your fan, Betty," she said. "I was afraid it would look forward for a chaperon to bring one, and I'm desperately warm."

Eleanor, who had turned aside to speak to her partner, looked up quickly as Ethel spoke, and meeting Miss Hale's gray eyes she flushed suddenly and moved away.

Betty handed Ethel the fan. "I wish----" she began, looking after Eleanor's retreating figure. But as she spoke the music started again and a vivacious youth hurried up and whisked her away before she had time to finish her sentence; and she could not get near Ethel again.

"Men do make better partners than girls," she said to Mr. Parsons as they danced the last waltz together. "And I think their rooms are prettier than ours, if these are fair samples. But they can't have any better time at college than we do."

"We certainly couldn't get on at all without you girls across the river," Mr. Parsons was saying gallantly, when the music stopped and Eleanor, followed by Mr. West, hurried up to Betty.

"Excuse me one moment, Mr. Parsons," she said, as she drew Betty aside. "I've been trying to get at you for ever so long," she went on. "I'm in a dreadful fix. You know I told you I hadn't intended to come here to-day, but I didn't tell you the reason why. The reason was that to-day was the time set for my math. exam, with Miss Mansfield. I tried to get her to change it, but I couldn't, so finally I telephoned her that I was