PLANS FOR A COOPERATIVE COMMENCEMENT
It was Saturday afternoon and time for the "Merry Hearts'" meeting,
which had been postponed for a day to let every one recover from
Thursday evening's excitement.
"Come along, Betty," said Roberta Lewis, poking her head in at Betty's
half-open door. "We're going to meet out on the back campus, by Nita's
hammock."
"Could you wait just a second?" asked Betty absently, looking up from a
much crossed and blotted sheet of paper. "If I can only think of a good
way to end this sentence, I can inform Madeline Ayres that my
'Novelists'' paper is done. She said I couldn't possibly finish it by
five. See my new motto."
"'Do not let study interfere with your regular college career,'" read
Roberta slowly. "What a lovely sentiment! Where did you get it?"
"Helen gave it to me for a commencement present," said Betty, drawing a
very black line through the words she had written last. "Isn't it just
like her?"
"Do you mean that it's like her to give you something for commencement
that you won't have much use for afterward?"
"Yes," laughed Betty, "and to give it to me because she says I made her
see that it's the sensible way of looking at college, although she
thinks the person who got up these mottoes probably meant it for a joke.
She wishes she could find out for sure about that. Isn't she comical?"
"Yes," said Roberta, "she is. You haven't written as much as you've
crossed out since I came, Betty Wales. We shall be late."
Betty shut her fountain pen with a snap, and tossed the much blotted
page on top of a heap of its fellows, which were piled haphazard in a
chair beside her desk.
"Who cares for Madeline Ayres?" she said, and arm in arm the two friends
started for the back campus, where they found all the rest of the senior
"Merry Hearts" waiting for them. Dora Carlson couldn't come, Eleanor
explained; and Anne Carter and Georgia thought that they were too new to
membership in the society to have any voice in deciding how it should be
perpetuated.
"It's rather nice being just by ourselves, isn't it?" said Bob.
"It's rather nice being all together," added Babbie in such a
significant tone that Babe gave her a withering glance and summarily
called the meeting to order.
The discussion that followed was animated, but it didn't seem to arrive
anywhere. There were Lucile and Polly and their friends in the sophomore
class who would be proud to receive a legacy from the seniors they
admired so much; and there was a junior crowd, who, as K. put it, were a
"jolly good sort," and would understand the "Merry Hearts'" policy and
try to keep up its influence in the college. Everybody agreed that, if
the society went down at all, it ought to descend to a set of girls who
were prominent enough to give a certain prestige to its democratic
principles, and who, being intimate friends, would enjoy working and
playing together as the first generation of "Merry Hearts" had, and
would know how to bring in the "odd ones" like Dora and Anne, when
opportunity offered.
"But after all," said Rachel dejectedly, "it would never be quite the
same. We are 'Merry Hearts' because we wanted to be. The idea just
fitted us."
"And will look like a rented dress suit on any one else," added Madeline
frivolously. "Of course I'm not a charter member of 19--, and perhaps I
ought not to speak. But don't you think that the younger classes will
find their own best ways of keeping up the right spirit at Harding? I
vote that the 'Merry Hearts' has done its work and had its little fling,
and that it would better go out when we do."
"Then it ought to go out in a regular blaze of glory," said Bob, when
murmurs of approval had greeted Madeline's opinion.
"I know a way." Betty spoke out almost before she thought, and then she
blushed vividly, fearing that she had been too hasty and that the "Merry
Hearts" might not approve of her plan.
"Is it one of the things you thought of while you were being run away
with?" asked Madeline quizzically.
Betty laughed and nodded. "You'd better make a list of the things I
thought of, Miss Ayres, if the subject interests you so much."
"Was there one for every scratch on your face?" asked Katherine.
Betty drew herself up with a comical affectation of offended dignity. "I
almost wish I'd broken my collar-bone, as Bob thought I ought to. Then
perhaps I should get a little sympathy."
"And where would the costumes for the play have been, with you laid up
in the infirmary for a month?" demanded Babbie with a groan.
"Do you know that's the very thing I worried about most when Lady was
running," began Betty, so earnestly that everybody laughed again.
"Just the same it wouldn't have been any joke, would it, about those
costumes," said Bob, when the mirth had subsided, "nor about all the
other committee work that you've done and that nobody else knows much
about."
"Not even to mention that we should hate to have anything happen to you
for purely personal reasons," said Madeline, shivering in the warm
sunshine as she remembered how that dreadful pile of white stones had
glistened in the moonlight.
"I think this class would better pass a law: No more riding by prominent
seniors," declared Katherine Kittredge. "If Emily Davis should get
spilled, there would go our good young Gobbo and our Ivy Day orator,
besides nobody knows how much else."
"Christy is toastmistress and Antonio."
"Kate is chairman of the supper committee and Portia."
"Everybody who's anything is a lot of things, I guess," said little
Helen Adams. She herself was in the mob that made the background for the
trial scene in "The Merchant of Venice," and she was as elated over her
part as any of the chief actors could possibly be over their leading
rôles. But that wasn't all. She was trying for the Ivy song, which is
chosen each year by competition. She had been working on her song in
secret all through the year, and she felt sure that nobody had cared so
much or tried so hard as she,--though of course, she reminded herself
sternly it took more than that to write the winning song and she didn't
mean to be disappointed if she failed.
"Order please, young ladies," commanded Babe, who delighted to exercise
her presidential dignities. "We are straying far from the subject in
hand--to adapt the words of our beloved Latin professor. Betty Wales was
going to tell us how the 'Merry Hearts' could go out with a splurge."
"I object to the president's English," interrupted Madeline. "The
connotation of the term splurge is unpleasant. We don't wish to splurge.
Now go ahead, Betty."
"Why, it's nothing much," said Betty modestly, "and probably it's not at
all what Bob is thinking of. It's just that, as Helen says, everybody
who is in anything is in a lot of things and most of the class are being
left out of the commencement plans. I thought of it first that day we
had a lecture on monopolies in sociology. Don't you remember Miss
Norris's saying that there were classes and masses and excellent
examples of monopolies right here in college, and that we needn't wait
until we were out to have a chance to fight trusts and equalize wages."
"Oh, that was just an illustration," objected Bob blandly. "Miss Norris
didn't mean anything by it."
"She's a Harding girl herself," Betty went on, "and it's certainly true,
even if she didn't intend it to be acted on. Thursday night when I went
over the things I had to do about commencement and thought I couldn't do
any of them I felt dreadfully greedy."
"But Betty," Rachel took her up, "don't you think it takes executive
ability to be on committees and plan things? Commencement would be at
sixes and sevens if the wrong girls had charge of it."
"Yes, of course it would," agreed Betty. "Only I wondered if all the
left-out people are the wrong kind."
"Of course they're not," said Madeline Ayres with decision. "What is
executive ability, anyway?"
"The thing that Christy Mason has," returned Bob promptly.
"Exactly," said Madeline, "and that is just practice in being at the
head of things,--nothing more. Christy isn't much of a pusher, she isn't
particularly brilliant or particularly tactful; but she's been on
committees as regularly as clockwork all through her course, and she's
learned when to pull and when to push, and when to sit back and make the
rest push. It's a thing any one can learn, like French or bookkeeping or
how to make sugar-cookies. I hate it myself, but I don't believe it's a
difficult accomplishment."
"Perhaps not," protested Bob, "but it takes time, if it's anything like
French or cookies--I never tried the bookkeeping. We don't want to make
any experiments with our one and only commencement."
"Why, I'm an experiment," said Roberta hastily, as if she had just
thought of it and felt impelled to speak.
"Yes, but you're the exception that proves the rule," said Nita Reese
brusquely. Nita's reputation for executive ability was second only to
Christy's and she was badly overworked, and tired and cross in
consequence. "I don't think I quite get your idea, Betty. Do you want
K., for instance, to give up her part in the play to Leslie Penrose,
who was told she could have it at first and cried for a whole day when
she found there had been a mistake?"
"Come, Nita," said Madeline lazily, but with a dangerous flash in her
gray eyes. "That's not the way to take our last chance to make more
'Merry Hearts.' Let Betty tell us exactly what she does mean."
"Please do, Betty," begged Nita, half ashamed already of her
ill-tempered outburst.
"Of course I don't want K. to give up her part," began Betty with a
grateful look at Madeline and a smile for Katherine. "I only thought
that some of us are in so many things that we're tired and rushed all
the time, and not enjoying our last term half as much as we might."
"My case exactly," put in Nita repentantly.
"Whereas there are girls in the class who've never had anything to do
here but study, and who would be perfectly delighted to be on some
little unimportant commencement committee."
"But they ought to realize," said Babbie loftily, "that in a big
college like Harding very few people can have a chance to be at the head
of things. Our commencement is pretty enough to pay our families for
coming even if the girls they are particularly interested in don't have
parts. Being on a committee isn't a part anyway."
"Girls who are never on them think it is," said Helen Adams.
There was an ominous silence.
At the end of it Babbie slipped out of the hammock and sat down beside
Betty on the grass. "It's no use at all fighting you, Betty Wales," she
declared amiably. "You always twist the things we don't want to do
around until they seem simple and easy and no more than decent. Of
course it's true that we are all tired to death doing things that the
left-outs will be blissful at the prospect of helping us with. But it's
been so every year and no other class ever turned its play and its
commencement upside down. And yet you make it seem the only reasonable
thing to do."
"Lucky our class-meeting happened to be postponed," said Bob in
matter-of-fact tones, "Makes it easier arranging things."
"A coöperative commencement will send us out with a splurge all right,"
remarked Babe.
Thus the B's made a graceful concession to the policy of trying more
experiments with 19--'s commencement.
"One man, one office--that's our slogan," declared Katherine, when Babe
had announced that the vote in favor of Betty's plan was unanimous. "No
hard and fast policy, but the general encouragement of passing around
the honors. I haven't but one myself, so I shall have to look on and see
that the rest of you do your duty."
"Let's make a list of the vacancies that will probably occur in our
midst, as it were," suggested Rachel.
"I wonder if we couldn't lengthen the Ivy Day program and make room for
a few more girls in that way," put in Eleanor. "The oration and the song
don't take any time at all."
"Fine idea!" cried Madeline. "We have a lot of musical and literary
talent in the class that isn't being used anywhere. We'll turn it over
to the Ivy Day committee with instructions to build their program
accordingly."
"But we must manage things tactfully," interposed Babbie, "as we did
about the junior usher dresses. We mustn't let the left-overs suspect
that we are making places for them."
"By the way," said Madeline, "have you heard that this year's junior
ushers are going to keep up the precedent, out of compliment to us?"
"Pretty cute," cried Babe. "I hope they'll manage to look as well as we
did."
"And as we are going to again this year in our sweet simplicity
costumes," said Babbie, with a little sigh of regret for the wonderful
imported gown that her mother had suggested buying as part of her
commencement present.
It was growing late, so the "Merry Hearts" made a hasty outline of
procedure, and delegated Rachel to see Marie Howard and ask her to help
with the plan as far as she could at the approaching class-meeting.
Luckily this was not until the following Tuesday, so there was plenty of
time to interview all the right people and get the coöperative campaign
well established before Marie rose at the meeting to read what would
otherwise have seemed an amazing list of committee appointments. Emily
Davis gave up Gobbo at once and Christy, after weighing the relative
glories of being toastmistress and Antonio decided that she could help
more at the class supper. Both girls declared that they were delighted
to be relieved of part of their responsibilities.
"Those toasts that I hadn't time to brown properly were getting on my
nerves," Christy declared.
"And my Ivy oration was growing positively frivolous, it was so mixed up
with young Gobbo's irresponsible way of changing masters," confessed
Emily. "I've wanted to drop out of the play, but I was afraid the girls
would think me as irresponsible as Gobbo. Leslie Penrose knows my part
and she can step into the place as well as not."
It was a surprise to everybody when Kate Denise joined the movement,
without even having been asked to do so. She gave up everything but her
part as Portia, and used her influence to make the rest of the Hill
girls do the same.
"I guess she remembers how we did them up last year on the dress
business," chuckled Bob.
"She's a lot nicer than the rest of her crowd," Babbie reminded her,
"and I think she's tired of acting as if she wasn't."
"I hate freaks," said Babe, "but it is fun to see them bustle around,
acting as if they owned the earth. Leslie's whole family is coming to
commencement, down to the youngest baby, and the fat Miss Austin is
fairly bursting with pride just because she's on the supper committee.
She has some good ideas, too."
"Of course they're proud," said little Helen Adams sententiously.
"Things you've never had always look valuable to you."
Helen had won in the song contest. Her family would see her name and her
song in print on the Ivy Day program, and May Hayward, a friend of hers
and T. Reed's in their desolate freshman year, was to be in the mob in
Helen's place.
All the changes had been made without any difficulty and no one was
worrying lest experiments should prove the ruin of 19--'s commencement.
Mr. Masters had protested hotly against Christy's withdrawal from the
play, but the new Antonio was proving herself a great success and even
Mr. Masters had to admit that the whole play had gained decidedly the
minute that the actors had dropped their other outside interests. But
the great difference was in the spirit of good-fellowship that prevailed
everywhere. Everybody had something to do now, or if not, then her best
friend had, and they talked it over together, told what Christy had
suggested about the tables for class-supper, how Kate was having all her
own dresses made for Portia and Nerissa couldn't afford to, so Eleanor
Watson had lent her a beautiful blue satin, or what the new Ivy Day
committees had decided about the exercises. There was no longer a
monopoly of anything in 19--. Incidentally, as Katherine pointed out,
nobody was resting her nerves at the infirmary.
Betty would have been perfectly happy if she hadn't felt obliged to
worry a little about Georgia Ames. Ashley Dwight had been up to see her
twice since the prom. Betty felt responsible for their friendship and
wondered if she ought to warn Tom that she really didn't know anything
about Georgia. For suppose Georgia hadn't had anything to do with the
Westcott house robbery; that didn't prove anything about her having
taken Nita's pin in the fall.
If Madeline had spoken to her protégée, as she intended to do, about
excluding the Blunderbuss from her acquaintance, Georgia had paid the
advice scant heed. The Blunderbuss came to see her more and more often
as the term went on. To be sure Georgia was very seldom at home when the
senior called. Indeed her roommate was getting to feel decidedly injured
because Georgia never used her room except to sleep and dress in.