Betty Wales, Sophomore | Page 6

shouting and laughter, to unload the boughs. Through one window she could see Rachel and Alice Waite stringing incandescent lights into Japanese lanterns. Katherine Kittredge was standing behind them in her gym suit. She had evidently been hanging lanterns along the rafters. It had been bad enough to stay at home and copy her theme. Now the decorating would be finished and the fun almost over, before she could get back. Eleanor shrugged her shoulders and turned resolutely away, trying to remember whether Market Street was just above or just below the station.
Before she had reached the campus gate, she heard some one calling her name. It was Jean Eastman.
"What's your hurry?" panted Jean. "Did you get Polly's note? And why aren't you at the gym?"
"Yes, I got the note," answered Eleanor. "I'm more than sorry for Polly, and for myself, too. I shall get back to the gym as soon as I can, but I have to ask another freshman to the reception first."
"Who?" demanded Jean.
"Miss Carlson," answered Eleanor simply.
"Oh, that! Don't you think, Eleanor, that you're getting a little quixotic in your old age?"
Her scornful tone was very exasperating, and Eleanor straightened haughtily. "I don't think either of us need worry about being too charitable just yet awhile," she began. Then she caught herself up sharply. "Don't let's get to bickering, Jean. You know I ought to ask her, and you know how much I want to. But I'm going to do it, and I expect every girl on my program to help make her have just as good a time as if she were one of us." And Eleanor was off down the hill, leaving Jean gazing amazedly after her.
Jean had no clue to the new Eleanor, whose strange toleration of the world in general annoyed the "Hill girls" (as those who had come from the Hill School were called) more than her high-handed attempts to run her own set, and her eventual wrecking of its influence, had done the year before. But the Hill girls appreciated Eleanor's ability, and they had resolved among themselves to wait a little and see what happened, before declaring open war.
Somebody came to call just before dinner, and Betty was consequently late in dressing for the reception. But in the midst of her frantic efforts to make her own toilette and help Helen with hers, she had time to wonder what Dora Carlson was like and how she and Eleanor would get on together. She knew that Eleanor was equal to any emergency, if she cared to exert herself, but the question was: would Dora Carlson in the concrete arouse the best--or the worst--of her nature? Betty loved Eleanor in spite of everything, but she had to admit to herself that a timid little freshman might infinitely prefer staying at home from the sophomore reception to going in Eleanor's company, if she happened to be in a bad mood. And furthermore, as Betty lost her temper over Helen's girdle, which would go up in front and down behind, completely spoiling the effect of an otherwise pretty evening dress, she was in a position to realize that trying to help is by no means the soul-inspiring thing that it sometimes seems in contemplation.
But she need not have worried about Dora Carlson, who, having lived alone with her father on a farm in the environs of a little village in Ohio, and kept house for him ever since she was twelve years old, was abundantly able to take care of herself. She was not at all timid, though she was not aggressive either, and she had a quaint way of expressing herself that would have interested almost any one. But it was the frank good-nature with which she accepted her eleventh hour invitation that appealed most to Eleanor, newly alive to the charm that lies in courageously making the best of a bad matter. For half an hour Eleanor devoted herself to finding out something about Miss Carlson and to making her feel at ease and happy in her company. Then she went off to order a carriage and twice as many violets as she had sent to Polly Eastman, and to find a maid who would press out her white mull dress,--this in spite of her decision, an hour earlier, that the white mull was much too pretty to waste on a promiscuous crush like the sophomore reception.
As a result of all these preparations, Dora Carlson arrived at the gymnasium in a state of mind that she herself aptly compared to Cinderella's on the night of her first ball. She had a keen appreciation of the beautiful, and she had never seen any one so absolutely lovely as Eleanor in evening dress. It was pleasure enough just to watch her, to hear