ARCHITECT’S FINAL PLANS--CONSIDERED
BETTY WALES danced merrily across the campus to her office. It was
commencement Monday. Betty hadn’t meant to stay over at first, but the
affairs of the teachers’ agency were not quite settled, and they had
kept her. Besides, Lucile Merrifield graduated, Georgia was a junior
usher, Helen was to take her Master’s degree, and 19-- was coming
back “in bunches,” as Bob elegantly phrased it, for an “informal
between-years” reunion. And finally Jim Watson was coming to make his
much-heralded call on this very Monday evening. Betty had taken him
to 19--’s own Glee Club concert, and he had suggested celebrating the
anniversary, much to the disgust of the B. C. A.’s and the rest of the
old 19-- crowd, who found no occasion quite complete unless they could
have Betty Wales in their midst.
Half-way to her office she was hailed by President Wallace. “You’ll be
back next year, of course?” he asked. “The Morton couldn’t do without
you.”
Betty blushed and laughed. “I hoped I could escape without being asked
that, because I don’t know. Mother and father say they are all right,
but I must look them over and be quite sure before I decide to leave
them again.”
“Very well, only be quite sure also that we need you here,” the
President told her, and Betty hurried on, thinking hard about the
next year at Morton Hall. It would certainly be very nice, with the
Mystery explained and happy, Miss Romance departed to make a home for
her devoted suitor, the Digs beginning to appreciate the inherent
reasonableness of obeying rules, the Thorn no longer prickly, and the
Goop boarding with a married sister who had providentially come to live
in Harding.
“I don’t believe her manners are worth the ruin of your disposition and
mine,” Betty had told Mrs. Post, when, in June, the Goop had horrified
the house by appearing at breakfast collarless and with unbuttoned
shoes.
Besides these improvements six seniors were leaving--rather dull,
colorless girls, whose departure would make room for livelier, more
promising material. Betty resolved that Morton Hall should be the
gayest, jolliest house on the campus--if she came back.
Frisky Fenton was at the door of her office to meet her. She had been
sitting on the stairs waiting.
“I’m going home this afternoon, Miss Wales,” she said. “I’ve taken all
my prelims for Harding, and I hope I’ve passed most of them. Since
I’ve been over here so much with you, I simply can’t wait to get into
college. Miss Wales, I’ve come to consult you for one last time. How
shall I make my stepmother love me?”
Betty smiled into Frisky’s melting brown eyes that were fixed upon
her so earnestly. “Didn’t Miss Dwight advise you to puzzle that out
for yourself, if you wanted to learn how to win over crowds of people
later? But I know how I should begin. Call her mother. It almost makes
you love a person to call her that. And if you love her and try to
please her----”
“I’ve thought of another thing to do,” Frisky took her up. “I shall
pretend she’s like you. I’ve noticed that when people expect a great
deal of me--as you do, Miss Wales--I manage to come up to it. Perhaps
if I expect my--mother to be like you--to understand and sympathize----”
“And scold hard too, sometimes,” laughed Betty. “Don’t forget that part
of me.”
The girl whom Betty had picked out as a possible secretary to Jasper J.
Morton opened the door, and Frisky held up her flower-like face to be
kissed and went off, a mist in her eyes at the parting. The prospective
secretary didn’t stay long; if she hadn’t been a born “rusher,” capable
of getting through intricate discussions and momentous decisions in
double-quick time, Betty would never have thought of recommending her.
And then, with not time enough before her next appointment to begin on
anything important, Betty drew out a sheet of paper and began drawing
up rules, à la Madeline.
“If I come back next year,” she headed the page:
“_Rule One_--All ghosts whatsoever are tabooed.
_Rule Two_--Boarding-schools need not apply for assistance.
_Rule Three_--Matrons shall arrive on time and never be ill.
_Rule Four_--In short, bothers, fusses, complications, mysteries,
worries, and everything else that makes life----”
Betty paused for an adjective, finally decided upon “interesting,”
and threw down her pen with a little laugh. “That’s exactly it,” she
thought. “Work and bothering and planning are what make life worth
living and bring the big things around your way. Some day Morton Hall
will run itself, as the Tally-ho does. Until then---- Come in, Miss
Smith. Yes, I have heard from that school. Can you get a reference
for Latin? There is one first year class that this teacher may have
to take. You failed in Livy? Oh, I am sorry, Miss Smith! Yes, I
understand; it was when you were a freshman and never dreamed of having
to teach. But the Latin department could hardly recommend you, could
it? Let me see what other places are vacant.”
It was a long, busy morning--a thoroughly grown-up, responsible morning
for the Small Person behind the Big Desk. Once she rushed to her window
to see the Ivy procession wind its snowy, green-garlanded way past,
and again she deserted her post to hear the Ivy Song and to watch the
pretty picture the seniors made as they sang. But neither Babbie’s gay
pleading, Mary Brooks’s mockery, nor Helen’s mournful sympathy could
shake her purpose. She was going to “tend up” to the business in hand,
until it was done. It might be deliciously cool and as gay and amusing
as possible down under the swaying elms. 19-- might be holding an
“experience meeting illustrated with tableaux, blue prints, and babies”
under the Hilton House birch tree.
“I can stand it to miss all that,” Betty confided to Mary Brooks, “but
if the afternoon people don’t come on time and don’t hurry through,
so I can go on our own special picnic, I shall fairly weep on their
shoulders.”
So the last of the “afternoon people”--a leisurely freshman who had
taken ten minutes to decide between two rooms in Morton Hall--was
surprised to see the patient, dignified secretary of the Student’s
Aid dart past her down the stairs, sprint, hatless, her curls flying,
across the campus, and shriek wildly at a passing flat-car, which
slowed up for a minute while a dozen willing hands caught the panting
little secretary and pulled her up and on.
It was a flat-car picnic, in memory of old days. There were
ginger-cookies for Roberta, who ate an unbelievable number of them,
and chocolate éclairs for everybody, because on the sorrowful senior
picnic there had been almost nothing else. This time there was bacon,
sliced very thin, to toast on pointed sticks, rolls, some of Bridget’s
delicious coffee keeping hot in thermos bottles, a huge chocolate cake,
and dozens of little raisin pies--the Tally-ho’s very latest specialty.
“Where is Madeline?” asked Betty, helping to start the fire. She had
spent the trip out in catching her breath, cooling off, and borrowing
hairpins to replace those lost in her flight.
“In the gym basement,” explained Christy, “with Nita and Jean Eastman.
They’re the costume committee for the aftermath parade, you know. They
boasted that they had done themselves proud before they came up here,
but this morning Madeline had a great thought and they’ve been hard at
it all day. They may come out later for supper.”
“We promised to hang out a sign,” Rachel remembered, and borrowed
Helen’s red sweater, which, tied by the sleeves to a sapling down near
the fence, pointed unerringly to the presence of picnickers on the hill.
“If you don’t send Mr. James Watson packing the minute the concert
is out, you’ll miss the sensation of this commencement,” Madeline
warned Betty solemnly when she arrived. There was a smudge of brown
paint across her white linen skirt, and Nita declared feelingly that
she would never make another pair of wings, no, not for any aftermath
parade that ever was. These were the only clues to the extra-special
features that they had planned for the evening.
At seven the returning flat-car halted by the fence, and the revelers
went singing home to dress for the concert.
“Come to the gym basement for your costume,” Nita whispered to Betty
and K. “Find me or Jean. Madeline is as likely as not to forget all
about being there.”
When Jim and Betty reached the campus it was gay with lanterns, and
girls in evening dress and their escorts were everywhere.
“How about a hammock in a quiet spot?” suggested Jim. “The music is
prettiest from a distance, don’t you think?”
Of course, all the hammocks were full long since, but the obliging
Georgia Ames and three other footsore junior ushers politely vacated
theirs, insisting that they were only resting for a minute, and Jim sat
on the ground at Betty’s feet and inquired for her stage-struck friend,
the cheery Mrs. Post, and the Morton Hall-ites, and then for Betty’s
summer schedule.
“I might be in Cleveland,” Jim announced tentatively. “The firm is
working on plans for two houses out there.”
“Then you could come out to the cottage for Sundays,” Betty said
cheerily. “Will would love to take you sailing. I hate to go in those
bobbing little boats, so I stay on shore.”
“I’m not so very keen about sailing, either,” Jim said.
“Then I’m afraid you’d better not come,” Betty told him sweetly.
“Sailing and swimming are positively the only amusements out there.”
“Except talking to you.”
“Oh, I’m the family cook,” Betty explained. “If you think I’m busy
here, you should see me bustle around in summer.”
“I see.” Jim changed the subject. “Is Morton Hall to the queen’s taste
since we fixed the linen rooms?”
“Oh, yes, Jim,” Betty assured him. “It’s a model--any amount nicer than
the other campus houses.”
“Thanks for the firm,” Jim said, and then was quiet so long that Betty
inquired laughingly if he had been to the Bay of the Ploshkin after his
blues.
“Not yet,” he told her. “I’ve felt like it sometimes, but I was afraid
I’d worn out your sympathy. I say, Betty, you’ll write to a fellow once
in a while, won’t you? And if I should come to Cleveland--doesn’t the
family cook get her evenings off?”
“Some of them.”
“Betty, Betty, Betty Wales!” chanted an unseen chorus. “Time to dress
for the aftermath parade!”
So Jim said a hasty good-bye and waited under the group of elms that
Betty had pointed out, to see 19-- march by. Somebody had suggested
having a costumed procession this year, and the seniors and half a
dozen recently graduated classes had vied with one another in planning
queer and effective uniforms. There were masked classes, classes with
red parasols, classes with purple sunbonnets and purple fans, classes
with yellow caps and gowns. But 19--’s close-fitting green robes were
lighted up by weird green torches, and in the middle of the ranks
marched all the 19-- animals--the Jabberwock, the Green Dragon, the
Mock Turtle and the Gryphon from an Alice in Wonderland show, ploshkins
in assorted sizes with pink shoe-strings waving in their paws, and
finally a little reckless ritherum hopping along in the rear. It jumped
at the waving pink shoe-strings, it snatched a green lantern from
the hands of a green-robed figure and charged with it blithely into
the laughing crowd, and when it came to the elm trees where Jim was
standing it darted straight at him and whispered, “Good-bye again, Jim.
Do manage to come to Cleveland sometimes and talk to the cook,” and was
off again after a pink shoe-string before Jim had discovered what was
happening to him.
An hour later Betty shed her ritherum costume--it was rather warm,
being composed of Georgia’s gym suit, the burlap that Lucille had
bought to pack around her Morris chair, a peacock feather fan, and a
pair of snowshoes for wings--and she and Madeline, Roberta, Rachel, K.,
Nita, Helen, the B’s, and Christy went out on the fire-escape to cool
off and watch the other classes coming home.
“Must be jolly to stay up here all the time,” said Nita hungrily.
“There’s always something going on, and it’s all queer and different
and fun.”
“It’s a pretty good world, wherever you are, I think,” announced K.
briskly.
“It’s whatever kind you make it,” Madeline amended K.’s sentiment.
“And we’re all making it something rather nice that it wouldn’t be,
perhaps, without us,” Roberta added.
“We’ve never decided what it takes to make a B. C. A.,” said Madeline.
“If we had we could tell Nita, and she could cultivate the combination.”
“We shall have that left for conversation at the first tea-drinking
next fall,” laughed Christy. “There are always such dreadful pauses.”
“It’s always well to have something left for next fall just the same,”
said little Helen primly.
“Yes,” agreed Rachel, who was secretly considering a year’s study in
New York. “There may be more of us B. C. A.’s and there may be less,
but there’ll surely be a topic of conversation.”
“And an Object,” added Madeline, hugging Betty, “with curls and a
dimple, and a finger in everybody’s pie, and a few over.”
“Why, that’s just what Jim Watson said about me,” laughed Betty, “only
he didn’t call it pie.”
“Jim Watson,” said Madeline severely, “is politely requested to keep
his distance. We can’t spare you to him--not for years and years and
years to come.”
“I should think not,” echoed Christy, Rachel, and Helen in an indignant
chorus.
“Girls, please stop talking such perfect nonsense,” said Betty calmly.
“Let’s climb down the fire-escape and go to bed.”
The Stories in this Series are:
BETTY WALES, FRESHMAN
BETTY WALES, SOPHOMORE
BETTY WALES, JUNIOR
BETTY WALES, SENIOR
BETTY WALES, B. A.
BETTY WALES & CO.
BETTY WALES DECIDES
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
On page 20, pow-pow has been changed to pow-wow.
On page 169, tower-room has been changed to tower room.
On page 186, gift shop has been changed to gift-shop.
On page 252, child-like has been changed to childlike.
On page 298, started has been changed to stared.
All other spelling, variants and dialect have been retained as typeset.
Some illustrations have been moved to avoid interrupting the flow of a
paragraph.