PARADES AND PARTIES
It was surprising how well the girl from Bohemia fitted into the life at
Harding. She had never experienced an examination or even a formal
recitation until the beginning of her freshman term. She had seldom lived
three months in any one place, and she had grown up absolutely without
reference to the rules and regulations and conventions that meant so much
to the majority of her fellow-students. But she did not find the
recitations frightful, nor the simple routine of life irksome. She was
willing to tell everybody who cared to listen what she had seen of French
pensions, Italian beggars, or Spanish bullfights. It astonished her to
find that her experiences were unique, because she had always accepted
them as comparatively commonplace; but her pity for the girls who had
never been east of Cape Cod nor west of Harding,--there were two of them
at the Belden,--was quite untinged with self-congratulation.
She was very much amused and not a little pleased, by her election to the
post of class secretary.
"They did it because I passed up four languages," she explained to Betty.
"Somehow it got around--I'm sure I never meant to boast of it--and they
seemed to think they ought to show their appreciation. Nice of them,
wasn't it? But I fancy I shan't have a large international
correspondence. It would have been more to the point if they'd found out
whether I can write plainly." And the girl from Bohemia chuckled softly.
"What's the joke?" inquired Betty.
"Nothing," answered Madeline, "only I can't. Miss Felton made me spell
off every word of my Spanish examination paper, because she couldn't read
it, and I can't read my last theme myself," and she laughed again
merrily.
"Let's see it," demanded Betty, reaching for the paper at the top of the
pile on Madeline's desk.
"That's next week's," said Madeline. "I thought I'd do them both while I
was at it. But this week's is funnier."
"This week's" proved to be an absurd incident founded upon the
illegibility of Henry Ward Beecher's handwriting. It was cleverly told,
but the cream of its humor lay in the fact that Madeline's writing, if
not so bad as Mr. Beecher's, was certainly bad enough.
"Maybe Miss Raymond can make out what he really wrote, but I've forgotten
now, and I can't," said Madeline, tossing the theme back on the pile.
"And I didn't try to write badly either. It just happened."
Everything "just happened" with Madeline Ayres. Betty had said that
things fell into place for her, and people seemed to have a good deal the
same pleasant tendency. But if they did not, Madeline seldom exerted
herself to make them do her bidding. She admired hard work, and did a
good deal of it by fits and starts. But she detested wire-pulling, and
took an instant dislike to Eleanor Watson because some injudicious person
told her that Eleanor had said she was sure to be popular and prominent
at Harding.
"What nonsense!" she said, with a flash of scorn in her slumberous hazel
eyes. "How it spoils life to count up the chances like that! How it takes
the fun out of everything! The right way is to go ahead and enjoy
yourself, and work your prettiest, and take things when they come. They
always come--if you give them a little time," she added with a return of
her usual serenity.
So it was wholly a matter of chance that Madeline Ayres should have
succeeded in turning Helen Chase Adams into an athlete. Helen had come to
college with several very definite theories about life, most of which had
been shattered at the start. She had promptly revised her idea of a
college in conformity with what she found--and loved--at Harding. She had
decided, with some reluctance, that she had been mistaken in supposing
that all pretty girls were stupid. But she still believed that genius is
an infinite capacity for taking pains--laying no very stringent emphasis
on the "infinite"; and she was determined to prove the truth of that
bold, if somewhat elusive, assertion, at least to the extent of showing
that she, Helen Chase Adams, could make a thoroughgoing success of her
college course.
Success may mean anything. To Helen Adams it had meant, ever since the
day of the sophomore-freshman basket-ball game, the ability to write
something that would interest her classmates. It might be a song that
they would care to sing, or a little verse or a story that Miss Raymond
would read in her theme class, as she had Mary Brooks's version of the
Chapin house freshmen's letters home, and that the girls would listen to
and laugh over, and later discuss and compliment her upon. It was not
that she wanted the compliments, but they would measure her success.
Helen admired the girl from Bohemia because she could write--Betty had
told her about the Henry Ward Beecher theme,--also because she was quick
and keen, seldom hurried or worried out of her habitual serenity, and
finally because Betty admired her. Madeline Ayres, for her part, thought
of Helen chiefly as Betty's roommate, noticed the awkward little forward
tilt of her head just as she had noticed the inharmonious arrangement of
Betty's green vase, and commented upon the one in exactly the same spirit
that she had called attention to the other.
"You ought to go in for gym," she said one afternoon when she had
strolled into Betty's room and found only Helen. "It would straighten you
up, and make you look like a different person. I'm going in for it
myself, hard. I'm hoping that it will cure my slouchy walk, and turn me
out 'a marvel of grace and beauty,' as the physical culture
advertisements always say. Let's be in the same class, so that we can
practice things together at home."
"But I should take sophomore gym and you'd be with the freshmen,"
objected Helen.
"Why don't you take freshman gym too? You can't do the exercises any too
well, can you?"
"No," admitted Helen, frankly. "I cut a lot last year, and I couldn't do
them anyway."
"Don't you hate to struggle along when you're not ready to go?" asked the
girl from Bohemia.
Helen agreed that she did, and a moment later they were comparing
schedules and deciding upon a class which they could both join. It came
directly in the middle of the afternoon, and Helen Adams had always
considered gym at any hour a flagrant waste of time; but she did not say
so. There had been something in Madeline's outspoken reference to her
awkward carriage that, without hurting her, had struck home. Helen Chase
Adams aspired to literary honors at Harding; to this desire was suddenly
added a violent ambition to be what Madeline had termed "a marvel of
grace."
Betty was amazed, when she came in a little later, to find Helen trying
on her gym suit.
"What in the world are you doing?" she demanded. "Gym doesn't begin for
two weeks yet."
"I know it," said Helen, "but the neck of my suit never was right. It's
awfully unbecoming. How would you fix it?"
"You frivolous thing!" laughed Betty, squinting at the unbecoming neck
for a moment. "It's too high behind, that's all. Rip off the collar and
I'll cut it down. And I have an extra blue tie that you can have--it
needs a tie. But I thought you'd manage to get an excuse from gym, when
you hate it so."
"Perhaps I shan't hate it this year," ventured Helen, and neither then
nor later did Betty exactly understand her roommate's sudden devotion to
parallel bars, ropes, the running track, and breathing exercises. But in
time she did thoroughly appreciate the results of this physical training.
Helen Chase Adams was never exactly "a marvel of grace"; but she was
erect and supple, with considerable poise and dignity of bearing, when
she left Harding.
Another thing that Madeline Ayres "happened upon" was the Republican
parade. Presidential elections had been celebrated in various ways at
Harding. There had been banners spread to the breeze, songs and bells in
the night-watches, mock caucuses and conventions, campaign speeches, and
Australian balloting, before election time. But the parade was of
Madeline's invention.
It was about eight o'clock on the evening after election day that she
appeared in Mary Brooks's door--she had made friends with Mary almost as
easily as Betty had.
"I say," she said, dropping off her rain-coat and displaying a suit of
manly black beneath, to match the short brown wig above. "Let's have a
Republican parade. Who'll be the defeated candidate, in chains?"
Then she smiled broadly, displaying rows of even white teeth, and Mary
grasped the situation in a moment.
"I'm with you, Roosevelt," she said. "Nita Reese can be the defeated one.
I'll go and get her."
"And you be leader of the band," said Madeline. "You get combs and I'll
get tin pans."
"Let's take up a collection and have ice-cream later," proposed Mary.
"All right. I'll tell Betty to see to that. I've got to lead a strenuous
life finding clothes for Fairbanks," and "President Roosevelt"
disappeared down the hall.
Promptly at nine the parade assembled on the third floor corridor. The
president elect was drawn in an express wagon, except down the stairs
between floors. Out of consideration for the weight of his chains the
defeated candidate was allowed to ride in a barouche, alias a rocking-
chair. But he objected to riding backward, and the barouche would not
move the other way round, so he accepted the arm of the leader of the
band and walked, chains and all. The vice-president walked from the
start. At intervals of five minutes one or both of the successful
candidates made speeches. The defeated candidate wished to do likewise,
but the other two drowned him out. Between times the band, composed of
all the Belden House who could play on combs or who could find tin pans,
discoursed sweet music. Those who could not do either formed what Mary
Brooks called "a female delegation of the G.O.P. from Colorado," and
closed in the rear of the procession in a most imposing manner.
The vice-president elect wanted to make a tour of the campus houses, but
the twenty minutes to ten bell rang, and there was only time to eat the
ice cream.
The fact that Roberta Lewis, who happened to be in Mary's room when the
president made his first call, laughed herself into hysterics over the
parade, proves that it was funny. The further fact that she had firmly
decided to leave college at Christmas time, but changed her mind after
she had seen the parade, shows that even "impromptu stunts" are not
always as silly and futile as they seem.
But before the Republican parade came Hallowe'en, and Hallowe'en on the
campus is not a thing to pass over lightly. Each house has some sort of
party, generally in costume. There is a good deal of rivalry, and as
every house wishes to see and judge of the achievements of its neighbors,
the most interesting encounters are likely to take place midway between
houses, on the journeys from one party to another.
In Betty's sophomore year the Belden had a masquerade ball, under the
direction of Mary Brooks and the girl from Bohemia. The Hilton House
indulged in an old-fashioned country Hallowe'en, with a spelling match,
dancing to "Roger de Coverley" and "Money Musk," apple-bobbing and all
the other traditional methods of finding out about your lover on All
Saints' Eve. The Westcott gave a "spook" party, one of the other houses a
play, still another a goblin dance, to which everybody carried jack-o'-
lanterns, and the rest celebrated the holiday in other characteristic and
amusing ways. The campus resembled a cross between the midway at a
World's Fair and the grand finale of a comic opera; for ghosts consorted
there with ballet dancers and Egyptian princesses, spooks and goblins
linked arms with pirates in top-boots and rosy farmers' daughters in
calico, and nuns and Puritan maidens chatted familiarly with villainous
and fascinating gentlemen, who twirled black mustaches and threatened to
kiss them.
By nine o'clock everybody had seen everybody else, and congratulations
for successful costumes, clever acting, and thrilling ghost stories were
nearly all distributed. Toward the end of the evening there were a good
many small gatherings, met to talk over the fun in detail and enjoy the
numerous "spreads" that had been sent on from home,--for the college
girl's family becomes almost as expert in detecting a festival afar off
as is the girl herself.
Nan never let the Wales household forget its duty in such matters, and a
merry party was assembled in Betty's room to eat the salad, sandwiches,
jelly, olives, cake, candy, nuts, and fruit that her mother had provided.
"How time flies," observed Mary Brooks sagely, helping herself to another
sandwich. "I suppose you gay young sophomores don't realize it, but it's
almost Christmas time."
"And after Christmas, midyears," wailed a freshman from her corner.
"And after midyears what?
"'To be or not to be, that is the question,'" quoted Katherine
Kittredge loudly.
"But for sophomores who survive the midyears," went on Mary, "the next
thing of importance is the society elections."
"That's so," said Betty eagerly. "We can get into your wonderful
societies after midyears, if we're brainy enough. I'd forgotten all about
them."
"Then I'll wager you're about the only sophomore who hasn't thought of
them occasionally this fall," announced Mary. "And now I'm ready for some
candy."
"Tell us how to go to work to get into those societies, can't you?" asked
Bob from her place beside the salad bowl.
"Work hard and write themes," said Mary briefly, and the subject was
dropped.
Betty thought no more about Mary's remark then, but when she and Helen
were alone it came back to her.
"I suppose some girls do think about the societies a lot, and plan and
hope to get in," she said.
"I suppose so," returned Helen. "I shan't have to. I am perfectly safe to
stay out."
"Oh, so am I, as far as that goes," said Betty carelessly.
Helen, watching her closely, wondered how any popular girl could be as
unconscious as Betty seemed. She had overheard a Belden House senior
telling Mary Brooks that Betty Wales was sure to go into a society the
minute she became eligible. Helen opened her mouth to convey this
information to Betty, but stopped just in time.
"For she's not unhappy about it," thought Helen, "and it would be
dreadful if they should be mistaken. But they can't be," concluded Helen
loyally, watching Betty's face as she read a note that her mother had
tucked in among the nuts. Most pretty girls might be stupid, but the best
of everything was none too good for Betty Wales, so thought her roommate.