[Illustration: “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”]
BETTY WALES
& CO.
A STORY FOR GIRLS
_by_
MARGARET WARDE
AUTHOR OF
BETTY WALES FRESHMAN
BETTY WALES SOPHOMORE
BETTY WALES JUNIOR
BETTY WALES SENIOR
BETTY WALES B.A.
ILLUSTRATED BY
EVA M NAGEL
THE PENN
PUBLISHING COMPANY
PHILADELPHIA
MCMIX
COPYRIGHT
1909 BY
THE PENN
PUBLISHING
COMPANY
INTRODUCTION
MANY of the girls who will read this book have already made the
acquaintance of Betty Wales, and know all about her adventures at
Harding College, from her rollicking freshman days to the time when
she was a “grave and reverend senior”--and was always being mistaken
for a freshman, nevertheless. Mary Brooks graduated from Harding a
year before Betty, and she always considered that this gave her the
privilege of patronizing her friends in 19--, Betty’s class. Madeline
joined 19-- in its sophomore year, and Babbie Hildreth (she and her
friends Babe and Bob were known collectively as the three B’s) was
another of the shining lights of that famous class. She and Madeline
and Betty planned the tea-room, though only in fun, during a trip
abroad that came as a grand finale to their college days. You can read
all about that in “Betty Wales, B. A.,” which also tells about Mary
Brooks’s “impromptu” wedding. But you will have to go back to “Betty
Wales, Senior,” to find out how Mary’s “little friends” discovered
that she was interested in Professor Hinsdale. There are a lot of other
things that you will want to know about Betty and her friends--if you
like them--in “Betty Wales, Freshman,” “Betty Wales, Sophomore,” and
“Betty Wales, Junior.”
MARGARET WARDE.
CONTENTS
I. UNPLEASANT DISCOVERIES 9
II. BETTY WALES, “M. A.” 24
III. THAT TEA-ROOM AGAIN 39
IV. PLANS AND PARTIES 56
V. THE REAL THING 74
VI. EUGENIA FORD’S LUNCHEON 97
VII. MARY, THE PERFECT PATRON 113
VIII. YOUNG-MAN-OVER-THE-FENCE 128
IX. AN ORDER FOR A PARTY 145
X. UNEXPECTED VISITORS 162
XI. THE ADVENT OF THE PLOSHKIN 181
XII. A TRAGIC DISAPPEARANCE 198
XIII. MORE “SIDE-LINES” 221
XIV. THE REVOLT OF THE “WHY-GET-UPS” 236
XV. A SEA OF TROUBLES 252
XVI. THE MYSTERY SOLVED 270
XVII. A MAGNATE TO THE RESCUE 291
XVIII. A ROMANCE AND A BURGLARY 307
XIX. THE AMAZING MR. SMITH AND OTHER AMAZEMENTS 329
XX. A FINAL EXCITEMENT 346
Illustrations
PAGE
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” _Frontispiece_
“HOW ARE WE GOING TO WORK?” 62
SHE STOPPED THE GIRLS AS THEY WENT OUT 117
“THIS TEA-SHOP CLOSES AT SIX” 148
TRUE STORIES OF DOLLS 190
THEY INTERCEPTED THE PRESIDENT 303
“COME ALONG NOW” 325
Betty Wales & Co.
Betty Wales & Co.
CHAPTER I
UNPLEASANT DISCOVERIES
“THE very loveliest part of going abroad is coming home again!” laughed
Betty Wales, trying to kiss her mother, hug the smallest sister, and
rush into her father’s outstretched arms all at one and the same
minute. Fortunately Will and Nan had had their turns at the station,
and the smallest sister’s kitten had run away at the critical moment;
otherwise matters would have been hopelessly complicated.
“I hope you’ll always feel just that way, dear,” said Mrs. Wales.
“We’re mighty glad to have you back, child,” added father, with a queer
little catch in his merry voice.
“Have you got anything for me in your trunk, Betty?” demanded the
smallest sister, who was a very practical young person.
“Lots of things, dear,” Betty assured her gaily, “and something for the
kitten, even if she isn’t here to say ‘how do you do’ to me.”
“We’ll have dinner first,” mother insisted laughingly.
“And then we’ll all sit around in an expectant circle and watch Betty
unpack,” added Nan.
“I’ve stopped being expectant since I’ve heard the news,” put in Will.
“She’s brought back money. How’s that, dad, for one of the Wales
family?”
“Well, there weren’t any emergencies,” Betty explained earnestly. “So
of course I could save my emergency fund.”
“Seeing something that she wants in a store-window is Nan’s definition
of an emergency,” declared Will.
“What’s yours?” retorted Nan. “Besides, haven’t I turned over a new
leaf this month, and isn’t it this very next week that I’m to begin
earning my own bread and butter and jam?”
“What do you mean, Nan?” demanded Betty in amazement.
“Oh, your college course and your trip abroad have bankrupted father,”
laughed Nan; and then, seeing Betty’s expression of genuine distress,
“No, dear, only we are an expensive family and hopelessly extravagant,
as Will says, and times are bad. Anyway I’m tired of rushing around,
studying and traveling and amusing myself. So when two of the girls in
my class, who have a school in Boston, offered me a job, I jumped at
it. Don’t you think I’m likely to make a stunning school-ma’am?”
“Of course,” Betty assured her promptly. “You’re so bright. But I
thought you hated Boston, and you always said that Ethel was so silly
to drudge at teaching when she didn’t need to.”
“But can’t I change my mind?” asked Nan gaily.
“I suppose so.” Betty looked in a puzzled way around the family group.
“Only----”
“Only dinner is ready,” suggested mother again; and all through the
meal the talk was about Betty’s voyage home, with its exciting storm,
and her visit to Harding, with Georgia’s gargoyle party and Mary
Brooks’s absurd methods of housekeeping as main features of interest.
The minute dinner was over the smallest sister caught Betty around the
waist, and whispered something in her ear.
“All right, dear,” Betty promised. “You shan’t have to wait another
minute to see what I’ve brought you.” And they all, except Will and Mr.
Wales, who preferred the library and the evening papers, adjourned to
Betty’s room to help unpack.
“Such a mess!” she sighed, as she uncovered the top tray. “You see I
took out some things on shipboard, and then Mary and Roberta and Bob
and Georgia all wanted to see what we’d brought home, and of course
I was in too much of a rush to put things back straight. Besides, it
wasn’t worth while to be particular, when all my clothes need mending
or pressing or something. Move back, little sister, so I can have room
for the Katie pile. It’s going to be about all Katie pile, I’m afraid.”
“Is the Katie pile what you want Katie to fix in the sewing-room?”
inquired the smallest sister. “Because we haven’t got Katie any more,
so you’ll have to call it something else.”
“Haven’t got Katie any more!” Betty’s face wore an expression of blank
amazement. “Has Katie left?”
“I thought we could get on without her,” Mrs. Wales explained hastily.
“I have so little to do, now that my girls are all grown up. Dorothy is
going to help me mend stockings this winter, aren’t you, dear?”
The smallest sister nodded impressively. “I’ll help you mend your Katie
pile too, Betty. Katie has gone to the Elingwoods’ to live, and she
likes it, but she says it’s not the same thing, and when times are
better she’ll be glad of it, because then she’ll come right back here.”
“You see it’s this queer horrid panic, Betty,” Nan explained. “Father
hasn’t actually lost much, I imagine; but business is bad, and so we’re
trying to economize.”
“And you never told me!” Betty looked reproachfully at her mother.
Mrs. Wales laughed. “No, dear. Why should we? Anyway it’s all come up
lately, since we got back from the shore. Even now there’s really
nothing to tell, except that everybody is talking hard times and
father’s business is dull. I’m very sorry it happened this season,
because I meant you to be very gay your first winter at home, and now
we can’t do much formal entertaining.”
Betty’s face clouded as she remembered a house-party she had planned
for the “Merry Hearts.” Luckily, she hadn’t mentioned it; it was to
have been a grand surprise to everybody. Then a horrible thought swept
everything else out of her head.
“Oh, mother dear,” she began, “perhaps I ought to teach too, like Nan.
I don’t believe I could, ever in the world, but I suppose every college
girl ought to be able to, and I could try.”
“Betty Wales,” mother ordered solemnly, “unpack your trunk just enough
to satisfy Dorothy’s curiosity, and then go to bed. You’re worn out,
and as nervous as a witch. Just because I’ve decided not to keep a
seamstress in the house this winter, and Nan is tired of society and
jumps at an excuse to do a little teaching, you decide that the family
is on the way to the poorhouse.”
“It isn’t only that----” Betty stopped. She had started to say that
father looked worried, and didn’t joke back at all when you teased
him; but perhaps that only seemed so to-night because she was fatigued
herself from too much gaiety at Harding.
So she hunted out six assorted neck-bows for the gray kitten, six hair
ribbons from Paris for the kitten’s small mistress, a Dutch doll, and
a long chain strung with tiny silver charms, each with a story of
its own; and having assured the smallest sister that this was only a
beginning of the treasures she might expect, Betty went to bed and
dreamed that she had lost her emergency fund under the teacher’s desk
in Nan’s schoolroom, and had to teach a class in senior “English
Lit.” before she could get it back. But she couldn’t remember when
Shakespeare was born, and the girls stood up on their desks and waved
their handkerchiefs and screamed, and she waved too, because it was
the Harvard-Cambridge boat race on the Thames. No, it was brother Will
calling her to breakfast, and little Dorothy saying in a sepulchral
whisper, “Oh, hush, Will! Mother said Betty was to sleep over.”
“Coming! Wouldn’t sleep over for anything!” Betty called back, making a
rush for her bath.
It was such a jolly day. People kept dropping in to say welcome home,
and to tease Nan about her “latest fad,” as everybody called it. In the
evening there was a regular party of Betty’s and Will’s friends on the
big piazza, and before it was over Betty had promised to help at six
“coming-out” teas, take part in one play, be on the committee to get up
another, join a morning French class and a reading-club, and consider
taking a cross-country ride every Saturday afternoon as long as the
good weather lasted.
Up-stairs in her room she took down the rose-colored satin dress she
had bought in Paris, and examined it approvingly. But one simply
couldn’t wear the same thing at six receptions. There was her
graduating dress, of course, but styles had changed frightfully since
spring. If only Katie were here to use her magic touch on the pink lace
evening gown that Bob had stepped on at class-supper!
“I never can mend it myself!” sighed Betty. “I shall need another
afternoon dress anyway, and a suit, and I did want a new riding habit.
Mine is horribly rusty. I wonder how careful about money we’ve got to
be. And I wonder if Will thought to bolt the piazza door.”
She slipped on a kimono and crept softly down the stairs, a slim,
golden-haired ghost in a trailing robe of silk and lace. Will hadn’t
locked the door. And there was a light in the library, though it was
long after midnight.
“It’s Nan, probably, reading up things to teach. I’ll go in and bother
her and make her come to bed.”
But it wasn’t Nan. It was father, poring over a big sheet of paper
scrawled full of tiny figures. Betty closed the door after her, crept
quietly across the room, and descended precipitately upon the arm of
her father’s chair.
“What in the world are you doing here all by yourself at this time of
night, Father Wales?” she demanded gaily.
Mr. Wales looked up at her, still frowning absently, with a finger on
his place among the figures. “Nothing, daughter; just looking over a
contract that I wanted to do a little estimating on before to-morrow.”
“But it’s horribly late,” objected Betty. “Think how sleepy you’ll be
in the morning.”
Mr. Wales smiled faintly. “Shall I? Well, run along to bed, so you
won’t be sleepy too.” And he was back at his figures again.
Betty watched him for a minute, dropped a kiss on his puckered
forehead, and slipped softly away without a word.
“He’s just awfully worried,” she reflected, as she went up-stairs. “Nan
and mummy and Will don’t realize how changed he is, because they’ve
been here right along. Why, in these three months he’s a different
person!” She put the rose-colored satin dress carefully back in its
cheese-cloth covering. “I wonder if we’re really going to be poor. Why,
this may be the first and the last Paris gown I shall ever have! I know
one thing. I’m going to talk to father, and make him tell me just how
poor we are now. You can go ahead so much better when you understand
things.”
But it was such a busy week, what with catching up the threads of
the home life that had been dropped for so long, helping Nan off, and
getting Dorothy started in school, that it slipped by without the talk
that Betty had promised herself. On the evening of Nan’s departure,
however, her opportunity came. Will had an engagement, mother was
tired, and Dorothy very sleepy; so only Mr. Wales and Betty went with
Nan to her train.
It was a fine September evening, and Betty craftily suggested that
they walk home. The down-town streets were too noisy for serious
conversation, but out on the avenue Betty plunged in at once.
“Father, you’re awfully worried. Please tell me why.”
Mr. Wales threw back his head and laughed. “Goodness, Betty, but you
come right to the point! Suppose I deny that ‘awfully.’”
“You mean because it’s slang?” asked Betty anxiously. “And isn’t it a
good thing to come right to the point?”
“Wouldn’t that depend on the point, little girl? Suppose it was a point
you had never expected to come to, and didn’t want to come to,--what
then?”
Betty’s face wore its most intent expression. “But if you had come to
it all the same, father----”
“Then you’d better get away again as fast as possible, and ask little
girls not to bother their heads about you in the meantime.” Father’s
tone was very brusque and final--the one he used when he meant “no” and
was not going to change his mind, no matter how much you teased.
“All right, father.” Betty tried not to show that she felt hurt. “I
won’t bother you again. Only I thought that if I understood perhaps
I could help a little. I don’t think mother really knows how much we
ought to try to save this winter, and I’m sure Nan and Will don’t.
You’ve always been so generous and let us have just whatever we wanted.
I want lots of things just now, but I can be happy without them.” Betty
stopped suddenly, not quite sure where she had meant to come out.
There was a long pause. “Are you quite sure of that--quite sure you can
be happy without them, little girl?” father asked at last.
“Perfectly sure, if I know I’m helping you out, daddy.”
“Well, then---- But I can’t have your mother worried, not any more than
she is now at least.”
“Oh, but I won’t worry her!” Betty promised eagerly. “It will just be a
secret between us two.”
Mr. Wales smiled at her eagerness. “Not a very agreeable secret, I’m
afraid. Well, then, Betty, if you insist, here it is. My business has
scarcely paid expenses for three months, and a big investment I made
in June is going all wrong. By Christmas time I shall probably know
where I stand. Until then I need every cent of ready money that I can
get hold of, and the more things you can be happy without, the better.
That’s all, I guess.”
“Th-thank you.” Betty felt as if she had suddenly been plunged up to
her neck in a blinding fog that made all the old familiar landmarks of
life look queer and far away. “It’s rather bad, isn’t it? But I’ll be
very economical, and I’ll think up ways of making the others economical
without their knowing it. And you can have my emergency fund this very
night. That’s ready money. I meant to give it to you before, but----”
There was no use explaining that Nan had said it was foolish to give
the check back, when she would need all of it and more so soon for her
fall wardrobe.
“Keep it and make it go as far as you can,” father told her. “And don’t
think too much about these business troubles, or I shall be sorry I
confided in you.”
They were turning in at their own door. “No, you won’t be sorry,” Betty
assured him proudly. “I won’t let you be sorry. Goodness! I see one way
to economize this very minute. Mother’s got dozens of lights turned
on that she doesn’t need.” And she flitted gaily ahead to begin her
economy program. But before she had reached the door, she rushed back
to whisper a last word in her father’s ear.
“It’s mean not to tell mother too, daddy. We could have so much more
fun over it if we all knew.”
“Fun over it!” repeated Mr. Wales slowly. “Fun over it!” Then he
reached out and caught Betty in a big hug. “You’re the right sort,
little girl. You stand up and face life with a smile. Keep it up just
as long as you can, child.”
Betty considered, frowning in her earnestness. “I’ve always had the
smiling kind of life so far, father, haven’t I? But I’ve wished
sometimes that I had to get things for myself, like Helen Adams and
Rachel and K. You know I’ve told you about them, and about K.’s brother
who wants to go to college, and she’s going to help. I shan’t mind a
bit being rather poor--till Christmas,” she added prudently. “Now I’ll
go and turn out the lights and see that Dorothy is all right, and you
be telling mother.”
But father shook his head. “Not to-night, anyway. You don’t realize the
meaning of all this yet, Betty. When you do, I’m afraid it will look
very different to you.”
“I won’t let it,” declared Betty eagerly. “I said I’d help, and I will.
Just try me.”
Betty went to bed with her pretty head in a whirl. This was what they
called being “out in the wide, wide world.” “The real business of life”
that she had talked about so glibly with the B’s and Roberta was going
to begin at last.