GOOD-BYES
"Oh, Betty Wales, what's your hurry?"
Betty, who had strolled up Main Street with Emily Davis and now was
walking back alone, turned to see Eleanor and Dora Carlson coming down
the steps of the house behind her.
"We're hunting rooms," explained Eleanor, gaily, "the most systematic
hunt you ever heard of. We went to every possible house on the other side
on the way up, and then we came back on this side, doing the same thing.
So if you want any pointers--"
"But you're not going off the campus, Eleanor," asked Betty anxiously.
"Oh, no, it's a room for me," interposed Dora, with an adoring glance at
Eleanor. "I've always longed to live up among the elm-trees of Main
Street, but I knew its glories were not for me until--"
"Dora," warned Eleanor, laughingly, "I told you not to mention elm-trees
again this afternoon." She turned to Betty. "They all come down to two
possibilities. Which should you prefer, a big room with a microscopic
closet or a microscopic room with an enormous closet?"
"Oh, the one with the big closet," said Betty, decidedly. "I've tried the
other, you know."
"And unknown horrors are always preferable to familiar ones," laughed
Eleanor.
Dora left them at the next corner and as soon as she was out of hearing
Betty turned upon Eleanor. "Well," she said, "I've caught you in the act,
and I think it's perfectly lovely of you. College will be a different
place to her if she can live up here somewhere near things."
"It will be nicer for her, I think," said Eleanor, simply. "But Betty,
I'm not doing much,--just making her a little present of the difference
between Mrs. Bryant's prices and the very cheapest ones up here. I can do
as much as that, I hope, after spoiling her sugaring-off party; and I
really don't need that extra-priced room again."
"You mean," said Betty, in amazement, "that you're going to give up your
corner-room with the three windows and the lovely burlap hangings?"
Eleanor nodded. "It wouldn't be much of a present from me if I just asked
father for the money."
"Eleanor," said Betty, solemnly, "I don't believe I could do it."
"But it's really all your doing, Betty. If it hadn't been for you, I
shouldn't have known Dora Carlson, and I shouldn't be here now. Besides,
you set the example with Helen. So if you don't like it, there's only
yourself to thank, you see," ended Eleanor, playfully.
"No, I don't see,--not one bit," declared Betty. "You'll be telling me
that I'm responsible for the way you recite next."
"Well, you are, partly," laughed Eleanor, turning off to the Hilton.
Betty went up-stairs behind two strange girls who were evidently
expecting to be in the Belden House next year.
"Of course the fourth floor is a long way up," one was saying, "and I
suppose it's hot sometimes. But if I can get a single room there, I'd
rather have it, wouldn't you?"
"Well, perhaps," answered the other doubtfully.
"No perhapses about it, my friend," thought Betty, turning off to her own
quarters. Rooms and roommates--the air was full of them! And to-morrow
was the day that the Belden House matron had appointed for settling all
such matters. Betty could have a single room, if she wanted it, on the
other side of Madeline Ayres, and she had almost made up her mind to take
it. To be sure, it did seem a little hard on Helen. Nobody in the house
had approached her on the subject of roommates, Betty felt sure of that;
she would have to be "assigned" with some outsider. Well, why not? If she
didn't take the trouble to make friends, of course she would have to
suffer the consequences. And yet--if Eleanor had really been influenced
by what she had tried to do for Helen, wouldn't it be mean to back out
now? "But Eleanor has decided already," thought Betty, "and there's no
reason why I should keep on bothering with Helen forever. I don't believe
she's one bit happier for it."
Helen looked up expectantly when Betty came in. After all she was a sweet
little thing; her face lighted up wonderfully at times.
"What's the news, Helen?" Betty asked. "You look as if something extra
nice had happened."
"Why no," answered Helen, "unless you count that I've learned my Latin
for tomorrow."
The answer was just like her, Betty reflected with a sigh. She might
improve a great deal, but she would be a "dig" to the end of the chapter.
As she dressed, Betty tried to lead up gradually to the subject of rooms
by telling about the two strange girls she had met in the hall. But it
was no use; Helen preserved the same gentle, obtuse silence that had kept
Betty from opening the subject before. Little by little her courage oozed
out, and with the ringing of the supper-bell she surrendered.
"I can't do it," she told the green lizard savagely. "She thinks we're
settled here forever and I can't bear to disappoint her. It's not
generosity though; it's just hating to make a fuss."
At supper all the girls were talking about rooms. "I'm first on the
waiting list for singles," Nita Reese announced, "but I might as well be
first on the waiting list for a trip to the moon, I suppose. Nobody ever
gives up a chance at a single."
Betty opened her mouth to tell Nita the sad truth, saw Helen looking at
her queerly, and shut it again. It would be time enough for Nita to hear
of her good fortune to-morrow.
After supper Helen hurried back to her work and Betty joined a merry
party on the piazza, went for a moonlight stroll on the campus, helped
serenade Dorothy King, and finally, just as the ten o'clock bell was
pealing warningly through the halls, rushed in upon Helen in a state of
breathless excitement.
"Helen," she cried, "T. Reed's coming into the Belden and you never told
me."
"I didn't know till this afternoon."
"Then that was the piece of news I saw in your face. Why didn't you tell
it?"
"Why, I don't know--"
"Helen," cried Betty, with a sudden inspiration, "you and T. Reed want to
room together."
"Oh, Betty, Theresa couldn't have gone and said so!" Helen looked the
picture of distress.
"Nobody went and said so till you did just now," laughed Betty. "Oh,
Helen, why didn't you tell me?"
"Why didn't you tell me that you'd rather room alone?"
Then they both laughed and, sitting close together on Helen's bed in the
dark, talked it all over.
"You've been just lovely," Helen said. "You've given me all the good
times I've had--except Theresa. But you couldn't make it any different
from what it is. I never shall know how to get along the way other girls
do, and Theresa is a good deal the same way, except that she can play
basket-ball. So I guess we belong together."
"You needn't think you'll be rid of me," said Betty. "I shall be just two
doors away, and I shall come in and bother you when you want to work and
take you walking and ask you to hook up my dresses, just as I do now.
Helen, how fast things are getting settled."
"They'd better be," said Helen. "There's only two weeks left of our
sophomore year."
For a long time Betty lay awake, staring at the patch of moonlight on the
floor beside her bed. "How mean I should have felt, if I'd told her when
she wouldn't tell me," she thought. "I wonder if it's all right now. I
wonder if next year is going to be as perfect as it seems. I wonder--"
Betty Wales was asleep. Five minutes later she woke from a cat-nap that
had turned her last thoughts into a very realistic dreamland. "No," she
decided, "it won't be quite perfect. Dorothy will be gone."
Those are the good-byes that count--the ones you must say to the seniors.
Dorothy would come back to visit the college, of course, and to attend
class reunions, but that would not be the same thing as living next door
to her all through the year. Betty was not going to stay to Commencement.
Sophomores were only in everybody's way then, she thought, and she
preferred to say good-bye to Dorothy before the onslaught of families,
alumnae and friends should have upset the regular routine of life and
made the seniors seem already lost to the college world. Packing was
worse than ever this year, and examinations could not have been more
inconveniently arranged, but in spite of everything Betty slipped off on
her last evening for a few minutes with Dorothy.
The Belden House was a pandemonium, the piazzas deserted, the hot rooms
ablaze with lights, the halls noisy with the banging of trunk-lids and
the cries of distracted damsels; but the Hilton, either because it had
more upper-class girls who were staying to Commencement, or because its
freshmen and sophomores were of a serener temperament, showed few signs
of "last days." The piazza was full, as it always was on warm nights, and
a soft little crooning song was wafted across the lawn to Betty's ears.
Dorothy was singing. Her voice was not highly cultivated, but it was the
kind of voice that has a soul in it--which is better than much training.
As Betty stole softly up to the piazza, so as not to interrupt the song,
and found a place on the railing, she remembered her first evening in
Harding. How forlorn and frightened she had been, and how lovely Dorothy
was to her. Well, she had been just as lovely ever since.
Dorothy's song stopped suddenly. "Girls, I can't sing to-night," she
said. "It's--so--warm. And besides, Betty Wales has come to see me on a
very particular errand, haven't you, Betty, dear?"
Up in Dorothy's room, in the dusk, nobody said much of anything. There is
never much left to say at the last. But Dorothy had a way of putting
things and of looking at things that was like nobody's else, Betty
thought; and when she said, "I know I can trust you to work for the
democratic, helpful spirit and to keep down cliques and snobbishness and
see that everybody has a fair chance and a good time," Betty felt more
pleased than she had about her election to Dramatic Club. She had been
Dorothy's lieutenant. Now she must be Dorothy's successor, and it was a
great honor and a greater responsibility--but first she must pack her
trunks.
On the way home she overtook Roberta. "I'm in the Belden, Betty," she
announced, breathlessly, "and there are a lot of things I want to ask you
and Mary about, but I can't stay long, because those dear little freshmen
are going to give me a good-bye spread."
"Those snippy freshmen?" laughed Betty.
"Oh, but they came around after the Jabberwock party, just as you said
they would. It was an impromptu party, Betty. I did it the night Sara
Westervelt was there, and somebody stole the ice cream. That's why you
weren't invited."
Up-stairs the rest of the "old guard" were sitting on boxes, trunks and
the floor, waiting to say good-bye to Betty and meanwhile being
entertained by Madeline Ayres, who was giving a lively account of her
experience with a washwoman.
"She said, 'It's twinty white skirruts Oi have to do up now, me dear,'
and I said, 'But I can't go without a skirt, Mrs. Mulvaney, and everybody
who doesn't wear white to chapel will be expelled, and then where will
your goose that lays the golden eggs be?' 'Shure, I kape no geese, me
dear,' said she, and--oh, here's Betty."
"Finish up," demanded Katherine.
"Oh, there isn't any more," said Madeline, "except that she's just sent
the skirt home, and it isn't mine, but it fits rather well, doesn't it,
and I can't possibly return it before chapel, now can I?"
"Is that the way they do in Bohemia?" said Mary, severely. "Betty, I've
got to have half your bed to-night. An alum, who came on from San
Francisco got mixed in her dates and appeared a day too early. And as she
is a particular pal of the matron and I am notoriously good-natured,
she's got my room."
"To think of it," said Katherine, impressively, "and you a senior next
week."
"And we juniors next week!" said Rachel. "It doesn't seem possible, does
it? Here's to hoping we shall all be back next year."
"What a forlorn toast!" said Katherine, who knew better than the rest how
hard it was for Rachel to make both ends meet. "Here's to hoping that we
all go on as splendidly as we've begun!"
"You have done tolerably well so far, children," said Mary, beaming
around the group.
"See the society pins bristle in our midst!" said Katherine, with
melodramatic gestures in the direction of Mary, Betty, and of Rachel, who
wore the Clio Club insignia proudly.
"And we've got the college beauty," added Betty quickly.
"And the Jabberwock," put in Eleanor.
"Please don't forget the basket-ball stars," suggested Katherine, with
becoming modesty.
"Nor the basket-ball song," added Rachel, smiling at Helen.
"So many honors," laughed Betty. "Do you suppose we've left anything for
next year?"
"The song of the classes talks about 'jolly juniors,'" said Rachel. "That
sounds as if there would be plenty of fun in it."
"There is; junior year is the nicest one in college," declared Mary.
"It can't be," objected Katherine, "because each year has been as nice as
it possibly could."
"Unless you were foolish enough to spoil it," whispered Eleanor in
Betty's ear.
Roberta suddenly remembered her waiting freshmen, Mary offered to escort
her to Mrs. Chapin's, and the other three declared they must go home to
their packing. Betty and the girl from Bohemia went to the head of the
stairs to see them off. It was not exactly good-bye, because there were
chances of meeting at chapel and the station, but it was near enough to
it to be a little sad.
"Oh, dear, I hate endings," said Betty, waving her hand to Eleanor.
"Do you?" said the girl from Bohemia. "You'd get used to them if you
lived my scrappy, now-here-and-now-there kind of life. You'd find out
that one thing has to end before another can begin, and that each new one
is too good to miss."
"Um--perhaps," said Betty, doubtfully. "Any how we've got to take the
chance. So here's to junior year!"
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's Betty Wales, Sophomore, by Margaret Warde