SENIORS!
Could it be possible that the short summer was over? The Lee family had
exchanged news and experiences and made ready for a busy school year.
Dick, whose new name for the family was the “Foxy Five,” had changed
most of all since his summer at camp. All at once Dick seemed to have
grown up and to be as old as his twin, who had shown an earlier
maturity. He was rather heady and important upon his first arrival, but
had calmed down somewhat by the time of school’s opening. He and Doris
rather took the house, to use their father’s expression, and regaled
their parents with stories of camp life. They took a mild interest in
Betty’s trips and spent some time together in arguing over camp matters,
or comparing notes on canoeing, swimming and the like.
And now here they all were, in the same old scramble to get to school on
time.
“It seems to me,” said Mr. Lee, “that Betty might be more simply dressed
for school.”
He and Mrs. Lee were standing before the wide window of their front room
to watch Betty, Doris and Dick start to school. Amy Lou’s active little
figure had already disappeared around the corner as she hurried off to
the grade school, near enough to be reached by walking. There Amy Lou
would be in the advanced class and felt very old indeed.
The September morning was quite warm. Both girls wore cool, light frocks
and had taken great pains with their toilets; and Betty, as Doris had
told her, did not look as “schoolish” as usual.
The three were talking and laughing as they swung their books and walked
with light, rapid steps toward the usual corner, where they would catch
the street car. Mr. Lee sometimes drove them to school; but this morning
he was working out something at home before going to his office. Betty
carried a new, shining brown brief-case. Doris had a gay bag. Dick swung
his books from a strap.
In spite of Mr. Lee’s critical remark, the paternal eyes that followed
the three were fond and smiling. Mrs. Lee laughed a little, as she
linked her arm in that of her husband and smiled up at him. “Betty is a
little more dressed up than usual, Father, I will admit. But there is
the first auditorium session this morning and Betty for the first time
will sit in the senior section!”
“Ah!—I understand. No further explanation is necessary.”
“She can be a senior only once in this big school,” reflectively added
Betty’s mother. “I hope the child will have a happy year.”
“And not kill herself with all she wants to do,” finished Mr. Lee, “but
I insist on the honor roll.”
“Betty’s pride will keep her on that. We’ve talked things over, Betty
and I; but by this time we have found out that there is no way of
settling things beforehand. I’m not going to waste any time or energy in
worry.”
“Good!” laughingly returned Mr. Lee. “See that you keep to that
resolution. Doris is going to be more of a handful than Betty, for she
has great ideas sometimes and is more impulsive—ready to try anything
new. And Dick—I shall have to be a good father this year and keep an
eye upon what companions he has, any new ones. Perhaps I can get out to
some of the athletic events with him. I understand he’s going to try to
get on some team or other.”
“Is that so?” queried Mrs. Lee, rather dismayed. “Get us an extra supply
of liniment then!”
Meanwhile, Amy Lou had reached her school and her young friends. The
other three were on a crowded street car, full of high school pupils,
sitting and standing. Ignorant of their parents’ plans for oversight,
they were naturally and properly filled with anticipations of the day or
making their own plans for the interesting program of events and
activities that lay ahead.
Betty was not a little excited and happy over her new dignity as a
senior. Had she entered upon it unprepared, she might have been
confused. But three years in the large and well-organized high school of
which she was so proud and to which she was so loyal, had made her
entirely at home there. Now their classes had the opportunity to lead
and give tone to affairs. In some respects they must show what they
could do. This morning, taking their places in the large, central senior
section was the source of some thrills indeed. And boys and girls who
had successfully passed through the first three years of high school had
some reason to be proud. Senior complacency is another thing; but life
has a great way of taking that out of all of us.
This morning, as the crowds of young people filled the doors and swarmed
up the aisles of the assembly hall, Carolyn, who was ahead in Betty’s
small group of friends, deliberately stepped back at the row of seats
toward the front that was vacant, and gently pushed Betty in first.
“This is all right for this morning, isn’t it?” she asked Kathryn, who
was next. “We want to hear everything.”
Betty gasped a little, for she knew that if she went in first she would
have to sit next to some boy coming in from the right hand aisle. It was
understood that the boys had the right half of the senior section; the
girls, the left. But the girls were pushing into the seats behind her,
so with no choice she obeyed Carolyn. Gwen was there, too, and Kathryn
was sending her in after Carolyn. It had happened, and Gwen was a
conditional senior in Lyon High.
“You clever old skeezicks!—making me go in first!” Betty paused a
little to say this in Carolyn’s ear.
But Carolyn only grinned, then had the grace to change expression as she
said, “Betty, I’m sorry! Look who’s coming.”
Betty looked, glanced back at the crowd of girls following and sat down
in a seat not quite midway, only to hop up again as she saw that the
whole row must be filled. “Oh, it’s all right, Caro’. I’ll not mind.”
Nonchalant, as nattily dressed as ever, Ted Dorrance had appeared in his
most effective suit, better looking than ever. Jack Huxley came toward
Betty, stopped in the exact middle of the row and looked down at her
from a somewhat superior height.
“’Lo, Betty,” said he in friendly fashion.
“Hello, Jack,” she responded. She sat down, tucked her books under the
seat and rose again to wait till the principal was ready to lead in the
salute to the flag, with which every assembly session began.
Carolyn, repentant, began to talk to her, but Gwen was asking questions
on the other side of Carolyn. They were early. The room was not yet
full.
“Have a good vacation, Betty?” asked Jack.
“Ever so nice,” replied Betty.
“You didn’t know that I saw you, did you in the East?”
“No—where?” Betty looked up wonderingly. It was pleasant to have Jack
rather friendly, but the memory of that experience at his birthday party
and of her necessary frankness to him about it later was not a happy
one. And for him it had doubtless been more annoying. Well, she couldn’t
help it.
“I was with a party at an inn on a little Maine lake. We were just
leaving when you drove up. I knew some of your girls, but only the
Dorrances and Larry Waite of the boys.”
“Oh—yes—I remember. But I didn’t see you at all. Of course I wasn’t
looking for any one that I knew. I didn’t look at you and not speak, did
I?”
“No. One of the boys was out and snapping a picture of you all in the
car.”
“Oh, that was Archie Penrose! Funniest thing—we met the Penroses on the
way East. I was with the Gwynnes, motoring. We all got acquainted, of
course, and they said they were thinking of moving here. Then we were
together in a lot of fun in Maine; Kathryn and I motored to Boston with
them, and I never knew at all that Mr. Penrose was considering going
into the same firm my father’s in, not until I was home and Father asked
me ‘who are these Penroses you talk about? There’s a man by that name in
the firm now!’”
“Probably Penrose was undecided and not talking about it,” Jack
suggested.
“That was it—so Father supposed. And Father was awfully busy in New
York, too full of his own affairs to listen to my babblings. And
probably I didn’t babble to him much, either.”
Betty was babbling now and knew it. She had always tried to be as
friendly to Jack in public as would ordinarily be natural.
Some thought of the sort seemed to occur to Jack. All at once he bent
toward her and said, “You’re a peach, Betty Lee. I’ve forgiven you.” He
said it with a laugh and turned to speak to the boy standing on his
other side.
Betty sighed with relief and turned to Carolyn; but a hush fell over the
assembly and all eyes were on the principal and the flag.
Busy, pushing hours followed. After all, there was something good about
being at work. You were getting somewhere and there wasn’t any time
going to waste!
After school some of the girls were playing hockey and a number were at
the tennis court. There, tired after games, a group of the reunited
seniors were gathered. On a grassy elevation, heels dug into the slight
incline, Betty, Carolyn and Mary Emma Howland were recovering breath
from their last effort.
“One thing,” Mary Emma was saying, “about playing hockey with seniors is
that they know how to play by this time and you’re not in danger of
having some girl swing her stick over her head and give you a side
swipe!”
That amused Carolyn Gwynne. “Did I ever hit you when I was a freshman,
Mary Emma?”
“Never, Carolyn. _You_ don’t get excited when you’re learning anything.
Who beat at tennis?”
“Betty beat, you might know,” laughed Carolyn, looking at her recent
opponent. “But I don’t care. I can play tennis all right and I
occasionally beat even Betty.”
Betty was too pre-occupied just now to do more than give Carolyn a
smiling look. The two girls understood each other.
Kathryn Allen now strolled up with Gwen Penrose and Betty hopped up,
saying that she forgot to tell Gwen to save a certain date for
“something doing.” And as Betty moved toward the girls, near at hand,
Mary Emma said softly to Carolyn, “Remember, Carolyn, that we simply
must have Betty as President of the G. A. A. this year. I’ve got to talk
to you about it. Mathilde has something started already about it and
there is another girl that would like to be it.”
“Mathilde! Why, she couldn’t do it any more than a—rabbit!”
“Mathilde has some following, Carolyn, and she is a sorority girl. I
doubt if Mathilde could get it herself, but she might fix it up so Betty
couldn’t divide the vote and—you know—get a ‘second best’ girl in to
keep Betty out, even if she couldn’t get it for herself.”
“Does she dislike Betty that much?”
“She has always been jealous of her.”
“By the way, does anybody know whether Lucia Coletti is coming back or
not? Betty hadn’t heard at last accounts.”
“Well, Betty would be the first one. I wish she would come back. She and
Peggy Pollard have a good deal of influence with the sorority girls. I
sometimes think Betty should have gone in. She had the chance, I know,
with the Kappa Upsilons.”
Carolyn did not reply to this, and Betty was turning back with the
girls, who selected a grassy seat and dropped down to join their
friends. “Can you realize it, girls?” queried Kathryn. “We’re actually
seniors at last!”
“Let’s have a club,” suggested Betty. “I was thinking about that just
before you and Gwen came up.”
“Another club?” asked Carolyn. “Seems to me Lyon High needs most
anything more than any new organization.”
“I didn’t mean a big club. I mean a little club of our own, not a
sorority and not exactly secret; but just to get together sometimes, for
fun and to plan things if we want to.”
“A secret caucus!”
“That’s it, Kathryn,” laughed Betty, who had no such intention at all.
“We could have it a hiking club or a swimming club or even a literary
club—for collateral reading.”
“Now wouldn’t _that_ be wonderful!” cried Carolyn, as sarcastically as
generous Carolyn ever could manage. Betty giggled.
“Think of the time we’d save, reading together,” suggested Mary Emma, in
pretended sincerity.
“No,” urged Betty, “but here we are together this year for the last,
maybe. Carolyn’s going East to school, Mary Emma’s folks may move to
California, I don’t know _what_ I’m going to do, and anyhow we’ve this
grand senior year together. Besides, what’s the matter with taking a
book along if we go on a picnic together and having—_Carolyn_, who is
so _so enthusiastic_ about the literary idea—read us some famous poem,
or whatever they give us this year? Somebody think up a name for it,
though if you all don’t want it, I’m too lazy to urge it.”
“I think that the Hiking Hoodlums or some pretty name like that would be
least revealing of our real object,” giggled Mary Emma.
“Lovely,” assented Betty. “We can consider that suggestion. By the
way—I ought to get home before too late. I called up Mother at noon
about something very important—a change in my schedule, and she told me
that a letter from Lucia had come and was ‘waiting for me!’ I hope it is
to tell me that she’s coming back to Lyon High, don’t you!”
The assent was general and emphatic. “I was just talking to Carolyn
about Lucia,” said Mary Emma. “Do call us all up and tell us the news
after you have read it.”
“I will if I have time,” promised Betty. “Come on, seniors. Let’s make
up a senior song of our own and sing it on the first hike of the Happy
Hoodlums.”
“Oh, Betty!” cried Carolyn. “You wouldn’t really have such a name for a
club, would you?”
“Unless you promise to read poetry to us,” threatened Betty.
“I don’t know which would be worse,” laughed Carolyn.
In high spirits the senior girls separated; but Mary Emma caught up with
Betty before they left the grounds. “By the way, Betty,” said she,
“wasn’t it terribly dramatic and wasn’t Ramon Balinsky simply _thrilled_
to find out that his mother and sister were living?”
It was all Betty could do not to show her surprise and a certain dismay
at this speech from Mary Emma. “Gwendolyn Penrose told me _all about it_
this noon at lunch,” Mary Emma added.
“Why no, Mary Emma,” said Betty. “You would expect it to be dramatic, I
know. But you see Ramon was so nearly dead when the boys told him,
partly to rouse him, Ted said; and when he finally took it in, he was by
himself, I suppose, though the boys would never make a big story of it
anyhow. But you must be careful, Mary Emma, not to tell about it,
because Ramon had to go after that man, he said, and they might worry if
they knew. So we’re not telling his mother and sister yet, because he
asked us not to.”
“I think that’s all nonsense,” said Mary Emma, “but I won’t tell anyhow.
I promised Gwen I wouldn’t. And isn’t Gwen Penrose an addition to the
class and our crowd! Everybody that meets her likes her so far.”
“Gwen is nice, Mary Emma, and you must meet her brothers. One is a real
artist already. They’re just getting settled now. And what do you think?
We may move, the first of the month to a whole house instead of an
apartment. Father and Mother are looking, to decide now. It is a
terrible undertaking, but it will be wonderful to have more room. If we
do, I’m going to have a party first thing!”
But Betty wondered, on her way home, how in the world, with all the
people knowing about it that did, “the facts were to be kept from Mrs.
Sevilla and Ramona Rose.” That was what Ramon had called his sister,
Betty remembered.