AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION
"I wish I could do it, Betty, but I'm sure it wouldn't be the least use
for me to try. I thought I had a little hold on her for a while, but I'm
afraid I was too sure of her. She avoids me now--goes around corners and
into recitation rooms when she sees me coming. You see--I wonder if she
told you about our trip to New York?"
Betty nodded, wishing she dared explain the full extent of her
information.
"I thought so from your coming up here to-night. Well, as you've just
said, she's very reserved, strangely so for a young girl; when she lets
out anything about herself she wishes that she hadn't the next minute."
"Yes, I've noticed that," admitted Betty grudgingly.
"And so, having once let me get a glimpse of her better self, and then
having decided as usual that she wished she hadn't, she needed a proof
from me that I was worthy of her confidence. But I didn't give it; I was
busy and let the matter drop, and now I am the last person who could go
to her. I'm very sorry."
"Oh, dear!" said Betty forlornly.
"But isn't it so? Don't you agree with me?"
"I'm afraid I do."
"Then go back and speak to her yourself, dear. She's very fond of you,
and I'm sure a little friendly hint from you is all that she needs."
"No, I can't speak to her either, Ethel. You wouldn't suggest it if you
knew how things are between us. But I see that you can't. Thank you just
as much. No, I mustn't stop to-night."
Betty walked down the elm-shaded street lost in thought. Eleanor had
declaimed upon the foolishness of coming back on time after vacations
through most of the dinner hour, and Betty understood as she had not
that afternoon what Dorothy meant. But now her one hope had failed her;
Ethel had shown good cause why she should not act as Eleanor's adviser
and Betty had no idea what to do next.
"Hello, Betty Wales! Christy and I thought we saw you up at the golf
club this afternoon." Nita Reese's room overlooked the street and she
was hanging out her front window.
"I was up there," said Betty soberly, "but I had to come right back. I
didn't play at all."
"Then I should say it was a waste of good time to go up," declared Nita
amiably. "You'd better be on hand to-morrow. The juniors are going to be
awfully hard to beat."
"I'll try," said Betty unsmilingly, and Nita withdrew her head from the
window, wondering what could be the matter with her usually cheerful
friend.
At the corner of Meriden Place Betty hesitated. Then, noticing that Mrs.
Chapin's piazza was full of girls, she crossed Main Street and turned
into the campus, following the winding path that led away from the
dwelling-houses through the apple orchard. There were seats along this
path. Betty chose one on the crest of the hill, screened in by a clump
of bushes and looking off toward Paradise and the hills beyond. There
she sat down in the warm spring dusk to consider possibilities. And yet
what was the use of bothering her head again when she had thought it all
over in the afternoon? Arguments that she might have made to Ethel
occurred to her now that it was too late to use them, but nothing else.
She would go back to Dorothy, explain why she could not speak to Eleanor
herself, and beg her to take back the responsibility which she had
unwittingly shifted to the wrong shoulders. She would go straight off
too. She had found an invitation to a spread at the Belden house
scrawled on her blotting pad at dinner time, and she might as well be
over there enjoying herself as here worrying about things she could not
possibly help.
As she got up from her seat she glanced at the hill that sloped off
below her. It was the dust-pan coasting ground. How different it looked
now in its spring greenery! Betty smiled at the memory of her mishap.
How nice Eleanor had been to her then. And Miss Ferris! If only Miss
Ferris would speak to Eleanor. "Why, perhaps she will," thought Betty,
suddenly remembering Miss Ferris's note. "I could ask her to, anyway.
But--she's a faculty. Well, Ethel is too, though I never thought of it."
And Dorothy had wanted Betty's help in keeping the matter out of the
hands of the authorities. "But this is different," Betty decided at
last. "I'm asking them not as officials, but just as awfully nice
people, who know what to say better than we girls do. Miss King would
think that was all right."
Without giving herself time to reconsider, Betty sped toward the Hilton
house. All sorts of direful suppositions occurred to her while she
waited for a maid to answer her ring. What if Miss Ferris had forgotten
about writing the note, or had meant it for what Nan called "a polite
nothing"? Perhaps it would be childish to speak of it anyway. Perhaps
Miss Ferris would have other callers. If not, how should she tell her
story?
"I ought to have taken time to think," reflected Betty, as she followed
the maid down the hall to Miss Ferris's rooms.
Miss Ferris was alone; nevertheless Betty fidgeted dreadfully during the
preliminary small-talk. Somebody would be sure to come in before she
could get started, and she should never, never dare to come again. At
the first suggestion of a pause she plunged into her business.
"Miss Ferris, I want to ask you something, but I hated to do it, so I
came right along as soon as I decided that I'd better, and now I don't
know how to begin."
"Just begin," advised Miss Ferris, laughing.
"That is what they say to you in theme classes," said Betty, "but it
never helped me so very much, somehow. Well, I might begin by telling
you why I thought I could come to you."
"Unless you really want to tell that you might skip it," said Miss
Ferris, "because I don't need to be reminded that I shall always be glad
to do anything I can for my good friend Betty Wales."
"Oh, thank you! That helps a lot," said Betty gratefully, and went on
with her story.
Miss Ferris listened attentively. "Miss Watson is the girl with the
wonderful gray eyes and the lovely dark hair. I remember. She comes down
here a great deal to see Miss Cramer, I think. It's a pity, isn't it,
that she hasn't great good sense to match her beauty? So you want me to
speak to her about her very foolish attitude toward our college life.
Suppose I shouldn't succeed in changing her mind?"
"Oh, you would succeed," said Betty eagerly. "Mary Brooks says you can
argue a person into anything."
Miss Ferris laughed again. "I'm glad Miss Brooks approves of my
argumentative ability, but are you sure that Miss Watson is the sort of
person with whom argument is likely to count for anything? Did you ever
know her to change her mind on a subject of this sort, because her
friends disapproved of her?"
Betty hesitated. "Yes--yes, I have. Excuse me for not going into
particulars, Miss Ferris, but there was a thing she did when she came
here that she never does now, because she found how others felt about
it. Indeed, I think there are several things."
Miss Ferris nodded silently. "Then why not appeal to the same people who
influenced her before?"
It was the question that Betty had been dreading, but she met it
unflinchingly. "One of them thinks she has lost her influence, Miss
Ferris, and another one who helped a little bit before, can't,
because--I'm that one, Miss Ferris. I unintentionally did something last
term that made Eleanor angry with me. It made her more dissatisfied and
unhappy here too; so when I heard about this I felt as if I was a little
to blame for it, and then I wanted to make up for the other time too.
But of course it is a good deal to ask of you." Betty slid forward on to
the edge of her chair ready to accept a hasty dismissal.
Miss Ferris waited a moment. "I shall be very glad to do it," she said
at last. "I wanted to be sure that I understood the situation and that I
could run a chance of helping Miss Watson. I think I can, but you must
forgive me if I make a bad matter worse. I'll ask her to have tea with
me to-morrow. May I send a note by you?"
"Of course you won't tell her that I spoke to you?" asked Betty
anxiously, when Miss Ferris handed her the note. Miss Ferris promised
and Betty danced out into the night. Half-way home she laughed merrily
all to herself.
"What's the joke?" said a girl suddenly appearing around the corner of
the Main Building.
"It was on me," laughed Betty, "so you can't expect me to tell you what
it was."
It had just occurred to her that, as there was no possibility of
Eleanor's finding out her part in Miss Ferris's intervention, a
reconciliation was as far away as ever. "She wouldn't like it if she
should find out," thought Betty, "and perhaps it was just another
tactless interference. Well, I'm glad I didn't think of all these things
sooner, for I believe it was the right thing to do, and it was a lot
easier doing it while I hoped it might bring us together, as Nan said. I
wonder what kind of things Nan meant."
She dropped the note on the hall table and slipped softly up-stairs. As
she sat down at her desk she looked at the clock and hesitated. It was
not so late as she had thought, only quarter of nine. There was still
time to go back to the Belden. But after a moment's wavering Betty began
getting out of her dress and into a kimono. Since the day of the
basket-ball game she had honestly tried not to let the little things
interfere with the big, nor the mere "interruptions" that were fun and
very little more loom too large in her scale of living. "Livy to-night
and golf to-morrow," she told the green lizard, as she sat down again
and went resolutely to work.
When Eleanor came in to dinner the next evening Betty could hardly
conceal her excitement. Would she say anything? If she said nothing what
would it mean? The interview had apparently not been a stormy one.
Eleanor looked tired, but not in the least disturbed or defiant. She ate
her dinner almost in silence, answering questions politely but briefly
and making none of her usual effort to control and direct the
conversation. But just as the girls were ready to leave the table she
broke her silence. "Wait a minute," she said. "I want to ask you please
to forget all the foolish things I said last night at dinner. I've said
them a good many times, and I can't contradict them to every one, but I
can here--and I want to. I've thought more about it since yesterday, and
I see that I hadn't at all the right idea of the situation. The students
at a college are supposed to be old enough to do the right thing about
vacations without the attaching of any childish penalty to the wrong
thing. But we all of us get careless; then a public sentiment must be
created against the wrong things, like cutting over. That was what the
registrar was trying to do. Anybody who stays over as I did makes it
less possible to do without rules and regulations and penalties--in
other words hurts the tone of the college, just as a man who likes to
live in a town where there are churches but never goes to them himself,
unfairly throws the responsibility of church-going on to the rest of the
community. I hadn't thought of it in that way; I didn't mean to be a
shirk, but I was one."
A profound silence greeted Eleanor's argument. Mary Rich, who had been
loud in her championship of Eleanor's sentiments the night before,
looked angry at this sudden desertion; and Mary Brooks tried rather
unsuccessfully not to smile. The rest were merely astonished at so
sudden a change of mind. Finally Betty gave a little nervous cough and
in sheer desperation began to talk. "That's a good enough argument to
change any one's mind," she said. "Isn't it queer how many different
views of a subject there are?"
"Of some subjects," said Eleanor pointedly.
It was exactly what Betty should have expected, but she couldn't help
being a little disappointed. Eleanor had just shown herself so fine and
downright, so willing to make all the reparation in her power for a
course whose inconsistency had been proved to her. It was very
disheartening to find that she cherished the old, reasonless grudge as
warmly as ever. But if Betty had accomplished nothing for herself, she
had done all that she hoped for Eleanor, and she tried to feel perfectly
satisfied.
"I think too much about myself, anyway," she told the green lizard, who
was the recipient of many confidences about this time.
The rest of the month sped by like the wind. As Betty thought it over
afterward, it seemed to have been mostly golf practice and bird club.
Roberta organized the bird club. Its object, according to her, was to
assist Mary Brooks with her zoology by finding bird haunts and conveying
Mary to them; its ultimate development almost wrought Mary's ruin. Mary
had elected a certain one year course in zoology on the supposition that
one year, general courses are usually "snaps," and the further theory
that every well conducted student will have one "snap" on her schedule.
These propositions worked well together until the spring term, when
zoology 1a resolved itself into a bird-study class. Mary, who was
near-sighted, detested bird-study, and hardly knew a crow from a
kinglet, found life a burden, until Roberta, who loved birds and was
only too glad to get a companion on her walks in search of them,
organized what she picturesquely named "the Mary-bird club." Rachel and
Adelaide immediately applied for admission, and about the time that Mary
appropriated the forget-me-nots that Katherine had gathered for Marion
Lawrence and wore them to a dance on the plea that they exactly matched
her evening dress, and also decoyed Betty into betraying her connection
with the freshman grind-book, Katherine and Betty joined. They seldom
accompanied the club on its official walks, preferring to stroll off by
themselves and come back with descriptions of the birds they had seen
for Mary and Roberta to identify. Occasionally they met a friendly bird
student who helped them with their identifications on the spot, and
then, when Roberta was busy, they would take Mary out in search of
"their birds," as they called them. Oddly enough they always found these
rare species a second time, though Mary, because of her
near-sightedness, had to be content with a casual glance at them.
"But what you've seen, you've seen," she said. "I've got to see fifty
birds before June 1st; that doesn't necessarily mean see them so you'll
know them again. Now I shouldn't know the nestle or the shelcuff, but I
can put them down, can't I?"
"Of course," assented Katherine, "a few rare birds like those will make
your list look like something."
The pink-headed euthuma, which came to light on the very last day of
May, interested Mary so much that she told Roberta about it immediately
and Roberta questioned the discoverers. Their accounts were perfectly
consistent.
"Way out on Paradise path, almost to the end, we met a man dashing
around as if he were crazy," explained Betty. "We should have thought he
was an escaped lunatic if we hadn't seen others like him."
"Yes," continued Katherine. "But he acted too much like you to take us
in. So we said we were interested in birds too, and he danced around
some more and said we had come upon a rare specimen. Then he pointed to
the top of an enormous pine-tree----"
"Those rare birds are always in the very tops of trees," put in Mary
eagerly.
"Of course; that's one reason they're rare," went on Betty. "But that
minute it flew into the top of a poplar, and we three pursued it. It was
a beauty."
"And then you came back after me, and it was still there. Tell her how
it was marked," suggested Mary. "Perhaps she knows it under some other
name."
"It had a pink head, of course," said Katherine, "and blue wings."
"Goodness!" exclaimed Roberta suspiciously.
"Don't you mean black wings, Katherine?" asked Betty hastily.
"Did I say blue? I meant black of course. Mary thought they looked blue
and that confused me. And its breast was white with brown marks on it."
"What size was it?" asked Roberta.
Katherine looked doubtful. "What should you say, Mary?"
"Well, it was quite small--about the size of a sparrow or a robin, I
thought."
"They're quite different sizes," said Roberta wearily. "Your old man
must have been color-blind. It couldn't have had a pink head. Who ever
heard of a pink-headed bird?"
"We three are not color-blind," Katherine reminded her. "And then
there's the name." Roberta sighed deeply. The new members of the
Mary-bird club were very unmanageable.
Meanwhile Mary was industriously counting the names on her list, which
must be handed in the next day. "I think I'd better put the euthuma
down, Roberta," she said finally. "We saw it all right. They won't look
the list over very carefully, but they will notice how many birds are on
it, and even with the pink-headed euthuma I haven't but forty-five. I
rather wish now that I'd bought a text-book, but I thought it was a
waste of money when you knew all about the birds, and it would certainly
be a waste of money now."
"Oh, yes," said Roberta. "If only the library hadn't wanted its copy
back quite so soon!"
"It was disagreeable of them, wasn't it?" said Mary cheerfully, copying
away on her list. "You were going to look up the nestle too. Girls, did
we hear the nestle sing?"
"It whistled like a blue jay," said Katherine promptly.
"It couldn't," protested Roberta. "You said it was only six inches
long."
"On the plan of a blue jay's call, but smaller, Roberta," explained
Betty pacifically.
"Well, it's funny that you can never find any of these birds when I'm
with you," said Roberta.
Katherine looked scornful. "We were mighty lucky to see them even twice,
I think," she retorted.
Next day Mary came home from zoology 1a, which to add to its other
unpleasant features met in the afternoon, wearing the air of a martyr to
circumstance. Roberta, Katherine and Betty happened to be sitting on the
piazza translating Livy together. "Girls," she demanded, as she came up
the steps, "if I get you the box of Huyler's that Mr. Burgess sent me
will you tell me the truth about those birds?"
"She had the lists read in class!" shouted Katherine.
"I knew it!" said Roberta in tragic tones.
"Did you tell her about the shelcuff's neck?" inquired Betty.
Mary sat down on the piazza railing with her feet cushioned on a
lexicon. "I told her all about the shelcuff," she said, "likewise the
euthuma and the nestle. What is more, the head of the zoology department
was visiting the class, so I also told him, and when I stayed to explain
he stayed too, and--oh, you little wretches!"
"Not at all," said Katherine. "We waited until you'd made a reputation
for cleverness and been taken into a society. I think we were
considerateness itself."
Roberta was gazing sadly at Mary. "Why did you try all those queer
ones?" she asked. "You knew I wasn't sure of them."
"I had to, my dear. She asked us for the rare names on our lists. I was
the third one she came to, and the others had floundered around and told
about birds I'd never heard of. I didn't really know which of mine were
rare, because I'd never seen any of them but once, you know, and I was
afraid I should strike something that was a good deal commoner than a
robin, and then it would be all up with me. So I boldly read off these
three, because I was sure they were rare. You should have seen her face
when I got to the pink-headed one," said Mary, beginning suddenly to
appreciate the humor of the situation. "Did you invent them?"
"Only the names," said Betty, "and the stories about finding them. I
thought of nestle, and Katherine made up the others. Aren't they lovely
names, Roberta?"
"Yes," said Roberta, "but think of the fix Mary is in."
Mary smiled serenely. "Don't worry, Roberta," she said. "The names were
so lovely and the shelcuff's neck and the note of the nestle and all,
and I am honestly so near-sighted, that I don't think Miss Carter will
have the heart to condition me. But girls, where did you get the
descriptions? Professor Lawrence particularly wanted to know."
Betty looked at Katherine and the two burst into peals of laughter.
"Mary Brooks, you invented most of those yourself," explained Katherine,
when she could speak. "We just showed you the first bird we happened to
see and told you its new name and you'd say, 'Why it has a green crest
and yellow wings!' or 'How funny its neck is! It must have a pouch.' All
we had to do was to encourage you a little."
"And suppress you a little when you put colors like pink and blue into
the same bird," continued Betty, "so Roberta wouldn't get too
suspicious."
"Then those birds were just common, ordinary ones that I'd seen before?"
"Exactly. The nestle was a blue jay, and the euthuma was a sparrow. We
couldn't see what the shelcuff was ourselves, the tree was so tall.
"'The primrose by a river's brim,
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more.'"
quoted Mary blithely. "You can never put that on my tombstone."
"Better tell your friend Dr. Hinsdale about your vivid ornithological
imagination," suggested Katherine. "It might interest him."
"Oh, I shall," said Mary easily. "But to-night, young ladies, you will
be pleased to learn that I am invited up to Professor Lawrence's to
dinner, so that I can see his bird skins. Incidentally I shall meet his
fascinating brother. In about ten minutes I shall want to be hooked up,
Roberta."
"She's one too many for us, isn't she?" said Katherine, as Mary went
gaily off, followed by the devoted Roberta, declaring in loud tones that
the Mary-bird club was dissolved.
"I wish things that go wrong didn't bother me any more than they do
her," said Betty wistfully.
"Cheer up," urged Katherine, giving her a bearish hug. "You'll win in
the golf again to-morrow, and everything will come out all right in the
end."
"Everything? What do you mean?" inquired Betty sharply.
"Why, singles and doubles--twosomes and foursomes you call them, don't
you? They'll all come out right."
A moment later Katherine burst in upon her long-suffering roommate with
a vehemence that made every cup on the tea-table rattle. "I almost let
her know what we thought," she said, "but I guess I smoothed it over. Do
you suppose Eleanor Watson isn't going to make up with her at all?"