A WAVE OF REFORM
Bea did her hair high for the first time in public on the evening of the
Philalethean Reception in her sophomore year. As was to have been
expected, this event of vital importance demanded such careful
preparation that she missed the address in chapel altogether and was late
for the first dance. When at last she really put in an appearance--and a
radiant appearance it was, with cheeks flushed from the ardor of her
artistic labors, she found the revelry in full swing, so to speak. The
corridors and drawing-rooms were thronged with fair daughters and brave
sons. Naturally the daughters were in the majority, most of them fair
with the beauty of youth. The sons were necessarily brave to face the
cohorts of critical eyes that watched them from all sides.
Two of the critical eyes belonged to Bea as she stood on the stairs for a
few minutes and mourned that her handsomest cousin was not there to
admire her new white crêpe, and also to be admired of the myriad
guestless girls. She caught a glimpse of Lila in rose-colored mull as she
promenaded past with a cadet all to herself. Berta and Robbie were
walking together in the ceaseless procession from end to end of the
second floor corridor, while the orchestra played and the couples whirled
in the big dining-room. They were talking just as earnestly as if they
had not seen each other every day for a year. Bea's dimple twinkled and
she took a step forward under the impulse to join them for the fun of
chaffing them about such polite devotion.
At that moment Gertrude touched her shoulder.
"Oh, Beatrice Leigh, have you anybody engaged for this number and the
next? My brother has turned up unexpectedly, and I haven't a single
partner for him. Won't you take care of him while I rush around to fill
his program? Do! There's a dear!"
"All right," said Bea, "can he talk?"
"N-no, not much, but you can, and he's awfully easy to entertain. Tell
him about the girls or college life or anything. He's interested in it
all. Will you? Oh, please! There goes Sara now. I've got to catch her
first thing."
"Bring on the brother," exclaimed Bea magnanimously, "I'll talk to him."
And she did. Twenty minutes later, when Gertrude in her frantic search
through the shifting crowds explored the farthest group of easy chairs in
senior corridor, she discovered Miss Bea still chattering vivaciously to
a rapt audience of one.
"I've been telling him about our playing at politics last month," she
paused to explain; "he was interested."
The brother smiled down at her. "It is certainly a most entertaining
story," he said.
"Things generally are when Bea tells them," commented Gertrude, "that is
one of her gifts."
"Oh, thank you!" Bea swept her a curtsey. "But don't hurry. Didn't you
know that I promised him a dance as a reward for listening to my
dissertation on reform. Some day I'll maybe tell you the story."
This is the story:
Did Gertrude ever tell you about our playing at politics when we were
sophomores? Possibly you have heard politics defined as present history,
and history as past politics. On that understanding, this tale is a
history. It is the history of a great reform. When I sit down to reflect,
a luxury for which I seldom have time even in vacation, it really seems
to me that I have been reforming all my life. Lila has reformed a good
deal since she entered college, and Berta has been almost as bad as I.
Robbie Belle is the best one among us, but she does not realize it. That
is the reason why she is such a dear. She never preaches--that is, never
unless it is her plain duty as at that time in the north tower, when we
were freshmen, you remember. If she disapproves of any of our schemes,
she simply says she doesn't want to do it. That was what she said when
the rest of us proposed to masquerade as a gang of wardheelers on
election day.
You know what wardheelers are, I suppose. They are politicians who hang
around the polls and watch the voting and see that people vote for the
right party, or the wrong party, for the matter of that. It all depends
on which side they belong. When they notice anybody going to vote for the
other side, they sort of intimidate him, tell him to get away, or else
push him out of line or punch him in the head or something like that.
Sometimes they stuff the ballot-boxes, too, or go from one poll to
another, voting over and over.
Now Robbie Belle had joined in with all the other fun that autumn. There
were imitation rallies and parades and receptions to candidates and mock
banquets with real speeches and fudges and crackers to eat. She made a
perfectly splendid presidential candidate at one of the meetings. She
looked ever so much like him too as she sat gravely on the platform with
her hair parted on one side, and a borrowed silk hat clasped to the bosom
of her brother's dress suit. When all at once her face crinkled in a
sudden irresistible smile, even the seniors said she was dear. But this
time she said she'd rather not be a wardheeler. She wouldn't come to a
banquet of the gang the night before election day either. She said she
guessed she didn't want to.
Berta and Lila and I collected butter and sugar and milk at the dinner
table that evening. In our dormitory we are allowed to carry away bread
and milk to our rooms, but we are not supposed to take sugar or butter
for fudges. That seemed awfully stingy to us then; for in the pantry
there were barrels of sugar, great cans of milk, hundreds and thousands
of little yellow butterballs piled on big platters. We thought it
wouldn't do any harm to use a tiny bit of it all for our banquet.
At dinner I slid two butterballs into my glass of milk, and Lila filled
her glass with sugar from the bowl and then poured enough milk over it to
hide the grainy look. Robbie Belle kept her eyes in another direction,
but Berta said we had a right to one of the balls anyhow, because she had
not eaten butter all day. Berta is the brightest girl in the class and
she can argue about everything, and let the other person choose her side
of the question first too. It was not until later that she reformed from
that tendency to juggle with her intellect, as Prexie calls it.
Well, Lila and I marched down the long dining-room, past the seniors and
the faculty table, with our glasses held up in plain sight. As soon as we
reached the corridor in unmolested safety, Lila gave a skip so joyous
that some drops spattered on the floor.
She said, "Nobody caught us that time."
"Hush!" I jogged her elbow so that unluckily more milk splashed on the
rubber matting, "there's Martha."
Martha, you know--or probably you don't know until I tell you--was a
freshman who roomed with Lila and me that year. She was the dearest
little conscientious child with big eyes that were always staring at us
solemnly and giving me the shivers. She appeared to think so much more
than she spoke that we respected her a lot and tried to set her a good
example.
Martha was waiting for the elevator. She turned around and gazed at us
without saying a word. She is considerably like Robbie Belle in her
exasperating power of silence, but neither of them does it on purpose.
Unfortunately just then a senior behind her turned around too and said,
"Nobody catches anybody here. This is a college, not a boarding school."
Now such a remark as that was distinctly unkind, not so much because
either Lila or I had ever been to a boarding school, for we hadn't, as
because we wished we had. We had devoured all the stories about them and
envied the girls in them. We had hoped that we would find some of the
same kind of fun at college itself.
Lila blushed, and I could not think of any repartee that would be
appropriate, especially as Martha was staring so hard at the glass of
sugar. I had noticed all the fall that she was an odd child about candy.
She never would touch a mouthful of any that we made--and we made it
pretty often--maybe four times a week. She always just shook her head and
said she'd rather not.
It was a relief to hear the elevator come rattling up from the first
floor. The dining-room is on the second, you see, though I don't know
that this fact has any bearing on the story; still it may supply local
color or realism or something like that. Well, we entered the elevator,
and there stood a junior in the corner. This junior chanced to be an
editor of the college magazine which had offered a ten dollar prize for
the best short story handed in before October twentieth. She glanced at
us and then stared hard at Martha till we had passed the third floor, and
at the fourth she walked out behind us and spoke to Martha. She said,
"Miss Reed, I think I am not premature in congratulating you upon the
story which you submitted in the contest. You will receive official
notice of your victory before very long." And then she smiled the nicest
sweetest smile at sight of Martha's face. It was like a burst of
sunshine--anybody would have smiled. I hugged her--Martha, not the
junior, because I am not well acquainted with her, you understand--but I
wanted to hug everybody. Lila squeezed Martha so hard that she squeaked
out loud.
"Oh," sighed the little freshman almost to herself, "now I can send
mother a birthday present."
Wasn't that dear of her to think of giving it away first thing! Of course
some girls would have thought of having a spread to celebrate and invite
in all the crowd; but Martha was only a freshman and probably had no
college spirit as yet. Her remark seemed to remind Lila of something, for
she quite jumped and exclaimed, "Why, you baby, I had forgotten all about
that two dollars and seventy-five cents I borrowed of you last month. And
here it is only the sixth of November, but my allowance is nearly gone.
Why didn't you poke up my memory?"
"And I owe her ninety cents," said I.
The little freshman walked on with her hands clasped high up over her
necktie. "Will they give me the prize soon?" she asked softly, "because
the birthday is Thursday, and to-day is Monday, and it takes two days to
get there."
Lila looked at me and I looked at Lila. "We can scrape it together
somehow," she said. Then she touched Martha on the shoulder. "Do you want
to buy it to-morrow?" she inquired, "because if you do, you shall. We'll
manage it somehow. We'll pay you what we owe, and then you can buy a
present even if the prize doesn't arrive in time."
"Oh, thank you!" It was strange to see how voluble happiness was making
the child. "Will you really? I've wanted and wanted, but I couldn't ask.
I've got an engagement down town to try on my gymnasium suit to-morrow
afternoon and I shall be so glad. I can mail it then."
"All right," said I, "we'll get it for you."
Then we forgot all about it till noon the next day. That was election day
and full of excitement, even if we hadn't been late to breakfast, because
the fudges kept us awake the night before. Martha had gone into her room
early to study. Though she had closed the door I am afraid the girls made
a lot of noise; and she woke up with a headache. Of course Berta and I
and the others had a right to cut late if we wanted to do so, but we
didn't mean to keep anybody from working.
Martha returned from breakfast just as I was catching together a tiny
hole in my stocking above the shoe. It wasn't really my stocking, for I
had lost mine by sending them unmarked to the laundry, and so I had
borrowed these from Martha. They were her finest best ones, I believe,
and very nice, though her clothes generally seemed shabby. This morning
she told us to hurry down please, because the maid was feeling miserable.
We did hurry and tried not to complain of the cold cocoa or the tough
steak, though it is certainly the maid's duty to get fresh hot things no
matter how late the girls are. She couldn't find our favorite crescent
rolls in the pantry or down-stairs in the bakery or anywhere. Before we
were through eating, the other maids had cleared away their breakfast
dishes and had their tables all set for luncheon. Our maid was naturally
slow, I suspect.
After breakfast we had barely time to smooth the counterpanes over sheets
and blankets that lay in wrinkles. They looked pretty well on top, but
honestly I was relieved to have Martha and her big eyes out of the way.
Though we snatched our books and ran through the corridors we were two
minutes tardy in reaching the Latin room. The instructor was so irritable
that she laid down her book and the whole class waited while Lila and I
tiptoed to our seats in the middle of the last row.
With all the campaign excitement of course we had let our work get
crowded out, and the other girls appeared to be in the same fix. When the
most dazzling star in the class flunked on a grammatical reference, the
instructor bit her lip and sent the question flying up one row and down
another as fast as the students could shake their heads. As it came
leaping nearer and nearer to us, Lila remembered a college story about a
girl sliding from her place and kneeling behind the seat in front till
the question had passed on over the vacant spot. Lila was so agitated
that she forgot how conspicuous we had been in entering late. She slipped
out of her seat and hid like the girl in the story. Then fell an awful
stillness. The question stopped right there, hovering over the empty
place. Everybody waited. The instructor set her mouth in grimmer lines,
and waited, her eyes glued to the spot from where Lila had vanished.
Those in front turned around to look. Lila knelt there waiting and
waiting for the question to be passed on to me. I shook my head as
vigorously as I dared, but nobody paid any attention. Lila waited and
waited; the instructor waited; everybody waited and waited, till Lila's
knees ached so that she lifted her face and peeked. She peeked straight
into those grim waiting eyes on the platform.
Then the instructor said, "Miss Allan?" with the usual dreadful
interrogative inflection, and Lila shook her head. She slid back into her
seat with her cheeks as red as fire.
The minute we escaped into the hall at the end of the recitation, the
girls gathered around us and giggled and teased Lila till she almost
broke down and cried before them all. There is a lot of difference
between playing jokes on another person and appearing ridiculous
yourself. The first few weeks of the year we had teased Martha by telling
her it was etiquette for freshmen to rise when addressed by sophomores
and stuff like that. The little thing was so unsophisticated that we made
up yards and yards of stories about the dangers of going walking alone or
being out after dusk. One student really did have her purse snatched last
year, and a senior saw a masked robber in the pines, and once a maid
caught a glimpse of a face outside her window, and actually one evening
six of us beheld with our own eyes a man jump through the hedge.
On this particular morning I had no time to waste, for my tutor in
mathematics had warned me that she intended to charge me for the hour for
which I had engaged her, no matter whether I arrived on the scene or not.
That struck me as queer and rather mean, because on some days I did not
feel like going, and I failed to see why I should pay her for tutoring
that I had not received. She said that her time was valuable and an hour
squandered in waiting for a delinquent pupil was so much loss. I guess it
was a loss to me too.
While I was flying around, trying to find my notes and pen, I heard a
gulp and a sob from Martha's bedroom, and popped in to find her with her
head buried in the pillow. The little idiot was crying because she had
flunked in English.
"Oh, but English is so easy to bluff in!" I exclaimed, "almost any string
of words will do if the teacher asks for a discussion of a tendency or of
nature or vocabulary or poetic form or something. Didn't you make a try
at some sort of an answer?"
"I said I didn't know," sobbed Martha, "and I didn't. My thoughts were
all mixed up and I couldn't remember a line."
"You goosie!" I was disgusted. "If I said I didn't know at every
opportunity where I could say it truthfully, how long do you think I
would be allowed to stay in this institution of learning? When I don't
know a fact, I use fancy. It is the greatest fun to catch a hint and
elaborate it into a brilliant recitation without a jot of knowledge to
back it up. It takes brains to do it. You've got to learn to bluff, and
then get along without studying."
The little freshman raised her heavy eyes, all reddened about the lids.
"Oh, but that isn't honest," she said.
"Not honest?" For an instant I was actually alarmed. Once when I myself
was a freshman I nearly lost my faith in human nature because a senior
whom I admired did something that looked dishonest. But sending
valentines to yourself in order to win a prize is different from
bluffing. So I said, "Nonsense!" and was just hurrying out of the door
when she called in a quivery voice: "P-please, may I borrow a sheet of
theme paper? Mine's all gone and I can't buy--I mean, it's due to-night."
"Help yourself," I answered, "there's a heap of it that I carried away
from the last German test. Right hand drawer of the desk."
"No, no! I can't take that. Haven't you any that you bought with your own
money? I'll pay it back. That paper--they gave it to you--didn't they
give it to you just for the test?"
I stopped and walked over to feel of her head and tell her that she ought
to see the doctor or take a nap or something. Then I gave her three
sheets of the paper and told her not to be silly. I don't know whether
she used it or not. At luncheon she appeared with her fingers inky and
her hat on.
Berta said, "Whither, my child?"
She answered, "Down town." And then she looked at Lila with such anxious
eyes that I jumped and clapped my hands together in contrition.
"Lila, we've forgotten to get that money for her!"
Martha turned her face toward me and sat gazing like a little dog. We
asked all the girls at the table for contributions, but they were nearly
penniless. I said, "Are you in a hurry, Martha?" And she said she had to
be there at two o'clock. So we told her to hurry on, and we would get the
money somewhere and meet her on the corner of Main and Market Streets at
quarter past four sharp. She said, "Honest?" And I answered, "Yes, trust
me. We'll be there, and I'll stand treat for soda water, if I can scrape
up any extra pennies. You run along and pick out your present."
And then, do you know, in spite of all that and our promise to meet her,
we forgot every bit about it till half-past four! You see, it was
election day, and we were frightfully busy. After the fifth hour
recitation we hurried into the ragged blue overalls that we had worn in
one of the torchlight parades. Lila punched up the crown of an old felt
alpine hat, and I battered my last summer's sailor till it looked
disreputable enough. Then we rushed over to the gymnasium to join our
gang of wardheelers.
We found the judges sitting at bare tables with their lists before them
and wooden booths along the walls. And then--oh, I can't do justice to
the fun we had! Some of us hung around outside and tried to scare away
opposing voters by telling how the judges might make them sing scales or
slide down ropes or wipe off their smiles on the carpets or chant the
laundry list or write their names in ink with their noses, if they should
be challenged. We actually succeeded in frightening away several timid
freshmen. The rest of the gang pretended to stuff ballot-boxes and buy
votes, just as we had read in the papers.
Berta, Lila and I voted while wearing our overalls. Then we dashed back
to our rooms and dressed in our ordinary clothes and attempted to vote a
second time. Such fun! The judges recognized us and refused to accept our
ballots. Such an uproar as we raised! The other wardheelers stormed to
the rescue; the lists were scattered, and the tables overturned. Of
course it was only a joke, and most of us were too weak from laughing to
clear away the disorder in time for the polls to close promptly.
And then we happened to remember Martha.
There it was half-past four and it would certainly be five before we
could get ready and catch the car and reach the corner of Main and
Market. So we let it go and decided that she would be tired of waiting by
that time and start for home, and we might most likely miss her anyhow,
even if we should collect the money and try to keep the engagement. And
besides that we were having such a picnic telling about the turmoil at
the polls that we hated to waste a minute away from the scene. Berta had
a splendid idea about dressing up as policemen and borrowing the express
wagon belonging to the janitor's grandson, and then tearing over to the
gym as if we had been summoned to arrest the hoodlums and take them to
jail in the patrol. It was so late, however, that we had to give this
plan up and get ready for dinner. It was a dreadful disappointment.
Martha hadn't come yet. It was half-past five and dark, and then it was
quarter of six, and then it was six, and we went down to dinner, but she
hadn't come yet. And then it was half-past six, and we went down the
avenue to the Lodge to watch the car unload, but no Martha. We danced in
parlor J for a while, and then we went to chapel at seven, but she hadn't
come yet. And then we walked down to the Lodge again and watched three
cars stop and turn around the curve, one after another, but she wasn't in
any of them. And then we went back to tell Mrs. Howard, the lady
principal, about it. And she was awfully anxious and asked all sorts of
questions about Martha, and what kind of a girl she was, and if she had
any money with her, or any friends in town, or any peculiar habits about
running away from her friends, or any trouble lately or anything.
Then she began to telephone and went to see Prexie, and Lila and I
wandered out to the stairs above the bulletin board where the students
were waiting to hear the election returns. Between the successive
telegrams the girls clapped and laughed and stamped and hissed at
speeches by the seniors and juniors, or else they sang patriotic songs.
When Miss Benton, president of the Students' Association, the greatest
honor in the college course, and she is the finest senior in the class
too--was urged upon a chair to make a speech, Lila almost pushed me
through the banisters in her excitement. She has admired Miss Benton ever
since the first day when it rained, and we were so terribly homesick, and
she smiled at us in the corridor.
"Hush!" whispered Lila, "listen! Isn't she beautiful!"
"Ouch!" said I, "she isn't beautiful, she's downright plain with her hair
smoothed back that way." But I said it pretty low, because that staircase
banked with girls was no place for distinctly enunciated personalities.
It was a humorous speech, for one reason of Miss Benton's popularity is
her fun under a dignified manner. In the middle of the cheering after she
had finished, the messenger girl appeared with a new bulletin. Somebody
read it aloud so that we could all hear. It reported the victory of the
corrupt party machine in an important city. Nobody spoke. There was just
the faint sound of a big sighing oh-h-h! and then a hush.
The next thing I knew, Miss Benton and some other seniors were coming up
the stairs, and the girls were moving this way and that to open a path
for them. Lila crowded closer to me so as to make way. A junior on the
step below reached up her hand and stopped Miss Benton as she was
passing.
"Do wait for the next telegram, Mary," she said, "perhaps that will be
more encouraging. The country as a whole seems to be going right."
Miss Benton dropped down beside her with an awfully discouraged sort of a
sigh. "You don't live there, and I do," she said. "You do not know how
the reform party has worked with soul and strength to defeat that boss.
Something is terribly wrong with the citizens and their standards of
honesty. How could they? How could they?"
The junior bent nearer to speak in lower tones; but Lila and I could not
help hearing. "Mary, something is wrong with us too," she whispered. "Did
you know that to-day at our mock election some of the sophomores
pretended to be corrupt voters and wardheelers? They intimidated voters,
challenged registrations, played at buying votes, tried to stuff the
ballot-boxes. There was a most disgraceful scrimmage! To turn such crimes
into a joke! How could they? How could we?"
Miss Benton straightened herself with a movement that was sorrowful and
angry and discouraged all at once. She drew a deep breath.
"I will tell you what is wrong with us as well as with the entire
country. Our ideal of honesty is wrong. With us here at college the
trouble is in little things; with the world of business and politics the
evil is in great matters too. But the principle is the same. We are not
honest. We condemn graft in public office. Is it not also graft when a
student helps herself to examination foolscap and takes it for private
use? Is the girl who carries away sugar from the table any better than
the government employee who misappropriates funds or supplies in his
charge? We cry out in horror at revelations of bribery. Ah, but in our
class elections do we vote for the candidate who will best fill the
office, or for our friends? I have known a girl who desired to be
president of the Athletic Association to bargain away her influence to
another who was running for an editorship."
"And some of us travel on passes which are made out in other names."
Miss Benton did not hear. "We exclaim--we point our fingers--we groan
over the trickery of officials, scandals, bribery, treachery,
lawlessness. And yet we--is it honest to bluff in recitations--to lay
claim to knowledge which we do not possess? Is it honest to injure a
library book and not pay for the damage? Is it honest to neglect to
return borrowed property? Some of us rob the maids of strength by
obliging them to work overtime in waiting on us at the table. Our lack of
punctuality steals valuable time from tutors and teachers and each other.
We cheat the faculty by slighting our opportunities and thus making their
life work of inferior quality to that which they have a right to expect.
By heedless exaggeration we may murder a reputation--mutilate an
existence. We wrong each other by being less than our best. We are
unscrupulous about breaking promises. Down town this afternoon at the
corner of Main and Market Streets I saw a freshman waiting in the cold.
She was walking to and fro to get warm. Her teeth chattered,--she was
crying from nervous suspense. When I spoke to her and advised her to
return to college before dark, she shook her head, and said no, somebody
had promised to meet her, and she had to stay. Now that girl, whoever it
was, who broke that engagement, is responsible----"
I leaned forward and clutched Miss Benton's shoulder.
"She hasn't come back yet," I cried; "do you think she is there still? I
forgot--I thought it didn't matter. I didn't mean to--"
Miss Benton turned around her head to look up at me, and the others near
us looked too, and down at the foot of the stairs the crowd packed in
front of the bulletin board sort of quieted for a minute and seemed to be
listening and watching us. And up on the wall over their heads the big
clock went tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, and its long pendulum swung
to and fro.
Then swish, swish, swish, the lady principal came hurrying through the
reception hall beyond, with her silk skirts rustling, and her face quite
pale. And the girls turned their heads toward her. She raised her hand
and said in her soft voice: "Are Miss Martha Reed's roommates here?"
And then some more girls with their hats and coats on came running up the
steps from the vestibule. The crowd was buzzing like everything when Lila
and I pushed our way through to tell Mrs. Howard we were there. We caught
scraps of sentences flying hither and thither.
"Run over?"
"Lying in the road----"
"Who found her?"
"Yes, right there in the loneliest part."
"Such a timid little thing----"
"Frightened and fell maybe----"
"Queer she didn't take the car."
"Is she dead?"
Lila pushed ahead, thrusting the girls right and left from her path. I
couldn't see her face, but her shoulders kept pumping up and down as if
she were smothering. You know she's more sensitive than I am, and I felt
badly enough.
Mrs. Howard took her hand and said, "Miss Reed wishes to see you both and
leave a message."
Of course such a speech would make anybody think she was dying. I rubbed
my sleeve across my eyes and shut my teeth together and swallowed once,
for the other girls around were gazing after us. Lila walked on with her
head up. I couldn't see anything but the line of her cheek, and that
looked sort of cold and stony. We followed on over the thick rugs into
the second reception room. There sitting in a big chair, leaning back
against a cushion kind of limp and pale but not dead at all--there was
Martha.
"Did you get the money?" she asked.
Lila didn't answer. She just dropped on her knees and hid her face
against Martha's dress.
"It was a centerpiece I thought Mother would like. I chose it in the
shop-window there at the corner while I was waiting. Maybe it will get
there almost in time if it is mailed to-morrow, but the doctor says I
must go to the infirmary for a day or two. If you would please send it
away for me in the morning--if you have the money to buy it, Lila,--I'm
sorry."
The doctor walked in alert and brusque as usual but gentle too.
"Now for my captive," she said, "time's up. Life in a study with two
sophomores is hard on a freshman's nerves. A few days of the rest-cure
will about suit you."
Martha glanced at me, for Lila was still hiding her face.
"It was silly of me," she explained shyly, "but I grew so nervous when
you didn't meet me that I cried and that made it worse. I watched every
car and both sides of the street, and I waited till after dark. You see,
I didn't have any money for car-fare. After they began to light the
lamps, I started to walk out here to the college. Everybody was eating
supper, and I was all alone on the road with dark fields on both sides. I
could not help thinking of those dreadful robbers and maniacs and
tramps----"
"What?" cried the doctor.
I drew a deep breath. "We told her," I said. "I--I'm afraid we
exaggerated. I--I thought it would be more interesting."
"Oh!" said the doctor. It was such a grim sort of an oh that I repented
some more, though indeed it was not necessary.
Martha smiled at me. I always did consider her the dearest, most
sympathetic little thing. "It was my fault," she said, "I am such a
coward anyhow. And then when I ran past a rock, I imagined I saw
something move and jump toward me. I lost my wits and ran and ran and ran
till I twisted my ankle and fell. I must have struck my head on a stone.
I'm sorry. It was silly of me to run. Please don't worry."
"That will do for the present," said the doctor.
Then they carried her over to the infirmary. Lila and I walked out past
the crowd in front of the bulletin board. They were cheering.
"Listen, Lila," I said, "good news from somewhere."
"We promised to meet her," said Lila.
I hate regrets. "Well," I said, "that's all over and done with. There is
no use in bothering about it now. But the next promise we make----"
Berta rushed up to us. "Oh, girls!" she exclaimed, "did you catch that
last return? Reform is sweeping the country. Hurrah!"