BACK TO WORK
The end of the Nassau visit had come at last, much too soon to suit
Betty Wales and the rest of "The Merry Hearts."
"Everything lovely always ends so soon," Betty lamented, as she stood
by the deck-railing between Madeline and Mary Brooks and looked back
across the shimmering bay to catch a last glimpse of the sunny little
city, half hidden in its circle of tall palms.
"Well, so do horrid things end," announced Madeline philosophically.
"Everything ends, and how dull life would be if it didn't. Besides,
we're going back to spring term."
"Yes," agreed Betty. "That's my one comfort. I couldn't stand it to
jump away back into winter again."
"And some time we're all coming back to Nassau," added Mary Brooks.
"How do you know?" asked Betty absently.
"Why, because we drank out of Blackbeard's Well. If you do that you are
perfectly sure to come back."
"Was that the reason you made me drink that horrid water this morning?"
laughed Betty. "I went up-stairs to get something that mother had
forgotten, and when I came back you were all down in a corner of the
garden drinking that warm, sickish water; but I hadn't the least idea
why you were doing it. Who was Blackbeard, and why does drinking out of
his well make you sure to come back?"
"I don't know why," said Mary. "It's some sort of a spell, I suppose.
Your father heard about it and told us. Blackbeard was a pirate who
buried his treasure here and watered his ships at that spring. He must
have been Bluebeard's cousin, because Dr. Eaton said he had fourteen
wives."
"Poor things!" sighed Betty. "Well, I only hope that the spell will
work. And now I must go down-stairs this minute to see if I can do
anything for Ethel or Roberta. I suppose they're getting ready to be
seasick."
"Eleanor Watson has gone," said Mary. "How that girl has changed,
Betty. She never used to be happy unless she was at the centre of the
stage, and now she's as retiring as Helen Chase Adams."
"That reminds me!" announced Madeline oracularly, and went off in
pursuit of the B's, who were seldom far apart.
But to her disappointment the B's frowned upon her plan to hold
a "Merry Heart" meeting on shipboard and elect Eleanor Watson to
membership.
"I'm ready to be nice to her," declared Bob, "but I think that's
enough, for now, any way. She's been a brick on this trip and I'm glad
she came, on her own account as well as on Betty's. But I hate cheats."
"When a person has done a thing like that you can't ever really trust
her," added Babe.
"And so," concluded Babbie, who, being very tender-hearted, would
have yielded but for the support of the other two members of the
triumvirate, "you don't want to be known as her very particular friend,
and 'The Merry Hearts' are all very particular friends, Madeline."
"All right," said Madeline pleasantly. "I only wanted to find out how
you felt. It would be a risk, I know, to take her in. I suppose I'm a
risky person. Just consider that the matter hasn't been mentioned."
"We will," promised Babe, and Madeline strolled back to Betty.
"Mary has gone to begin the novel," Betty told her. "She wants to get
as much done as possible before Ethel comes on deck."
"I suppose," remarked Madeline, irrelevantly, "that if it wasn't a lot
more trouble to find things than to lose them people would be even more
careless than they are now. But it seems a little hard sometimes to
have to hunt so many months for a thing you lost in a minute."
Betty stared at her uncomprehendingly. "What kind of things do you
mean, Madeline?" she asked.
"Oh, all sorts," said Madeline. "Handkerchiefs and fountain pens and
gold beads and reputations."
The novel was the chief excitement during the stormy voyage home.
It was to be a sort of log-book of the journey, with the merry
match-making for its main theme. Mary Brooks, because of her habit
of utilizing local happenings to advantage in her themes, had
been "elected" to write it, the camera fiends were to furnish the
illustrations, and the rest were to give suggestions and act as
advisory committee.
Fortunately Mary belonged to the small minority of the ship's
passengers who were not seasick, and she amused herself and everybody
else in the party but Ethel with the chapters of the novel, or
novelette as she modestly called it. She found her audience interested,
but extremely critical.
"I shall never be an authoress," she declared firmly on the last
afternoon of the voyage, when most of the invalids had come on deck
and sat about warmly wrapped in rugs and golf capes. "I had thought of
devoting myself to literature next year, but I've changed my mind. The
general public is too hard to suit, if you are fair samples. Roberta
thinks I have too much description of Nassau, and now Betty thinks I
haven't enough. Bob says the conversation sounds stilted, and yesterday
Helen Adams told me that it wasn't high-flown enough for college
faculty."
"Then you'll have to be guided by the dictates of your own inborn
genius," said Babbie, grandiloquently. "An 'Argus' editor ought to
know how to write a story without asking advice from all her 'young
friends,' Mary."
"Thank you in the name of the 'Argus' editors," murmured Mary,
recalling a scathing comment to the same effect that Dr. Hinsdale had
put on her last psychology report.
"Somehow," said Helen Adams, tumbling into the conversation in her
funny abrupt fashion, "somehow--Mary's story is interesting--but
it does sound awfully made up. You would never guess it had really
happened, would you?"
"That's because I am a romanticist," said Mary, calmly. "I don't
suppose you little juniors know anything about romanticists, so I will
explain that they are the kind of novelists who use their imaginations.
In this case I really had to depend on my imagination because naturally
I wasn't there when the most exciting things happened. But when I have
been there under somewhat similar circumstances," added Mary, with a
meaning smile, "this was about the way things went."
"The chapter about Betty's drowning is the worst of all," declared
Bob, "and it ought to be the best. It seemed exciting enough at the
time, but when you think it over there's nothing to it. Betty ought to
have been out in water over her head, and Dr. Eaton ought to have sunk
once or twice trying to bring her in, and really risked his life to
save her. Then it would sound like something, and there would be some
reason in the silly way you made the heroine act afterward."
"I know it," said Mary, doubtfully. "It would be a great deal more
artistic that way. Shall I change it?"
"Oh, no," objected Roberta. "That would spoil the whole idea of the
novel's being true and the merry match-making being ours."
"Oh, well, perhaps it will seem all right when the pictures are put
in," suggested Mary, hopefully. "Lots of novels wouldn't amount to
anything without the illustrations."
"Did Bob tell you what she thought of?" asked Babbie. "She suggested
that the novel would make the best kind of wedding present for Miss
Hale."
"Goodness no!" exclaimed Mary. "I'm not going to be a laughing-stock
for the faculty!"
"But think of all the tender memories it would evoke," said Bob,
grinning broadly at her own sentimentality.
"And how well it will prove that things are not what they seem to the
fine imagination of a budding young authoress," added Madeline Ayres,
who had been conspicuously silent during the discussion.
"What do you mean, Madeline?" asked Mary, suspiciously.
"I mean," said Madeline, "that your novel is a fairy-tale--every word
of the match-making part, except a few unimportant facts that you saw
but misinterpreted."
"I told you so!" cried Betty, in triumph. "Oh, Madeline, how did you
find out?"
But Madeline only shrugged her shoulders. "No matter how," she said.
"I thought I'd better warn them, so that they wouldn't be too much
disappointed later on."
"Do you mean that Dr. Eaton and Miss Hale haven't fallen in love?"
demanded Mary.
"Oh, I shouldn't go as far as that."
"I don't believe you know any more about it than Betty does. You're
both guessing," declared Mary indignantly.
Madeline smiled her slow, provoking smile. "Wait and see," she said,
and even to Betty she confided little more. "I've talked to Dr. Eaton,"
she admitted. "That is, I happened to ask him one question, and you're
right, Betty. Mary's scheming was as much use as most match-making is.
"But the book will be a good wedding present all the same," she assured
Mary. "It's a very ingenious fairy-tale, and I'm sure they'll enjoy
seeing themselves as others saw them."
"How do you suppose they will act when they get back to Harding?"
Roberta wondered.
"They'll certainly make some bad breaks if they try to deceive the
girls," declared Bob.
"Well," Mary warned them all, "we mustn't make any breaks. We must
remember that it's the business of the merry match-makers not to
breathe a word of what we've noticed, but to be very discreet and
dignified." Mary drew herself up proudly in her steamer chair.
Everybody got down to the last dinner on shipboard, even to Ethel, who
came in leaning on Mr. Wales's arm, and looking very pale through her
Nassau tan. To the surprise of the match-makers she merely nodded to
Dr. Eaton, and his nod in return was just as casual as hers. And the
next morning when he bade the girls good-bye on the wharf,--for he
was taking an early train to Harding,--he shook hands with Ethel in
the same hearty, offhand way in which he had just shaken hands with
Eleanor, and did not so much as try for a last word with the heroine.
It was astonishing and disappointing enough!
Mr. Wales took the party in charge for the afternoon, and they did New
York with a vengeance, but neither luncheon at the Waldorf nor the
marvels of the circus at the Hippodrome sufficed to cheer Mary Brooks,
whose lively spirits were completely dampened by the failure of her pet
scheme.
"To think," she sighed to Roberta, "that it's all gone for
nothing--that mad dash that Madeline and I made home from Grant's
Town, when it's a wonder we didn't die of sun-stroke, and Betty's
drowning, and the novel, and all the films that Eleanor and Roberta
wasted getting snap-shots of the hero and heroine, not to mention the
able assistance of Mr. Wales. Betty, mayn't I ask your father what he
thinks now?"
But Mr. Wales was as much in the dark as the girls. "I thought for
a while that we had it all fixed," he said with a twinkle, "but I'm
afraid Ethel was playing summer girl down there in the tropics. I
should like to tell her what a fine fellow Eaton is, and give her some
good advice about marrying and settling down before she's worn herself
out teaching troublesome young things like you, but Mrs. Wales says I'd
better not."
On the way up to Harding nobody had much time to devote to the subject
of match-making. The train was full of Harding girls. Nita got on at
the junction and Katherine and Rachel were at the station to greet the
southern tourists. There were regular volleys of questions to answer,
and it was great fun telling all about the queer things they had seen
and done.
"You didn't find out everything from the guide-books, Katherine," Betty
told her, "and you were wrong about the sidewalks. They weren't narrow,
because generally there weren't any at all."
A day or two later the college discovered where Dr. Eaton had spent his
vacation, and there were more questions: Had they seen much of him?
What was he like out of class? How did he and Miss Hale get on together?
The last question the girls parried as well as they could. "And I
guess," said Mary, "that our different versions are about as much alike
as black and white."
Meanwhile the novel and the illustrations for it lay unheeded in the
depths of Mary's desk drawer, for the author declared that she should
not copy it into the beautiful gilt edge, morocco-covered blank-book
which the club had provided until she knew exactly how things were
going to end. This there seemed to be no immediate prospect of finding
out. "The Merry Hearts" watched Ethel and Dr. Eaton as closely as they
could without appearing intrusive, but they discovered absolutely
nothing.
"She asked Betty to go walking with her just as she always did,"
announced Babbie.
"And he goes off horseback riding with Professor Hinsdale," contributed
Roberta.
"I was right behind her when she and Dr. Eaton met on the stairs
yesterday morning," added Helen, "and they bowed and said good-morning,
just as they'd have said it to any one else."
"She does look awfully happy though," said Bob, who for a tom-boy had
become extremely interested in Ethel's romance. "When we were having a
written lesson the other day she sat there with her eyes just shining."
"I guess she always was happy enough," objected matter-of-fact Helen.
"Why shouldn't she be?"
Betty and Madeline exchanged glances. They had never referred to the
night when they saw Ethel crying. But in any case her good spirits were
very easily explained; the Nassau trip had rested and cheered her up,
and that was all she needed.
And so, after two weeks of unrewarded observation, "The Merry Hearts"
forgot to speculate about the interesting faculty romance--if romance
it was--and plunged whole-heartedly into the gaieties of spring term.
First and foremost among them was of course the junior "prom." For
weeks before vacation it had been a topic of absorbing interest, and
now most of the juniors thought and talked of little else. Helen Adams
begrudged the way the "prom." monopolized attention, supplanting all
the impromptu festivities and throwing the man-less dances in which she
delighted quite into the shade. One reason why Helen loved college so
was because there were no men to bother about; but now for two weeks
man was the sole topic of conversation, and to have a man, safe and
sure, for the "prom." the desideratum of every junior. But Helen Adams
was a "freak." Every other girl in 19-- reveled in the situation,
though some, like Katherine Kittredge, scoffed unfeelingly at their
friends' predicaments, and others, like Roberta Lewis, who had gathered
courage to invite her cousin from Boston, were filled with secret
misgivings and devoutly wished that their men would sprain their ankles
(not seriously), like Alice Waite's tenth one, or be asked to go to
Europe with a rich uncle, like Rachel Morrison's brother. For a "prom."
is a great responsibility as well as a great joy.
"I can tell you it's no laughing matter," declared little Alice Waite,
"when you've got your dress and made out your program and are just
dying to go, to have the last man you know east of Denver sprain his
ankle--it's heart-breaking."
"Almost as bad as when you had two men on your hands for the concert
and Georgia Ames couldn't help you out," jeered Katherine Kittredge.
"Isn't it a pity that Georgia had to miss the prom.? She'd have been in
her element when her men disappeared into thin air."
Nobody took Alice's troubles very seriously, because Alice was always
in trouble and out again. But the whole class of 19-- looked sober when
it was rumored that Rachel Morrison was actually thinking of staying
at home and letting the vice-president take her place. For 19-- was
very proud of Rachel, and besides a junior "prom." without the junior
president would be Hamlet with Hamlet left out. But Rachel couldn't be
made to feel her own importance.
"I couldn't get on with a strange man," she declared, when various of
her friends generously offered their guests for the president's use.
"Christy will lead the march a lot better than I, and you must let her
do it."
And so 19-- was duly grateful to Eleanor Watson when she overruled all
Rachel's objections, after Betty and Nita had both tried to and failed,
and insisted that she should take Jim to the "prom."
"What an honor for Jim!" she put it. "He'll be so set up. He's looking
forward to a calm, brotherly evening with me, and now he'll find
himself up in the receiving line, jollying the patronesses and the
class officers. And I--oh, it doesn't matter. I know plenty of other
men. But I do want Jim to have a good time."
In the end Eleanor watched the prom. from the gallery, except during
three dances that Rachel insisted upon her having with Jim. She had
looked forward to taking Jim to her prom. too eagerly to care to put
up with any second-best escort, and besides the men she had cultivated
in her first two years at Harding--Paul West and his set--were utterly
distasteful to her now.
Jean Eastman had her characteristic comment to make on Eleanor's
sacrifice. "Bidding for popularity with the class, I suppose," she
said. "A very pretty play to the gallery it is, and just before she
comes up at Dramatic Club, too. I wonder if it will work."
So it was somewhat of a surprise to her when she discovered at the
next Dramatic Club meeting that Eleanor had asked to have her name
definitely withdrawn.
"I can't feel that it would be right for me to go in," she explained to
Miss Ferris and to Betty Wales, the two who had seen her through that
trying sophomore spring term. "A Dramatic Club election is an official
honor, and it ought never to go to any one who doesn't thoroughly
deserve it. I got it under false pretenses and I should never feel as
if it really belonged to me."