Betty Wales, Freshman

Left to themselves the four freshmen stared blankly at one another. Finally Katherine broke the mournful silence.

“Girls,” she said solemnly, “it’s utter foolishness to worry about this report. Mary didn’t believe it herself, and why should we?”

“She’s not a freshman,” suggested Alice gloomily.

“There are almost four hundred freshmen. Perhaps the fifty wouldn’t be any of us,” put in Betty.

Miss Madison maintained a despairing silence.

“Well,” said Katherine at last, “if it is true there’s nothing to be done about it now, I suppose; and if it isn’t true, why it isn’t; so I think I’ll go to basket-ball,” and she detached Miss Madison and started off.

Betty gave a prolonged sigh. “I must go too,” she said. “I’ve promised to study Latin. I presume it isn’t any use, but I can’t disappoint Rachel. I wish I was a fine student like Rachel. She won’t be one of the fifty.”

Alice, who had been in a brown study, emerged, just as Betty turned away.

“Wait a minute,” she commanded. “Of course it’s awfully queer up here, but still, if they have exams. I don’t see the use of cooking it all up beforehand. I mean I don’t see the use of exams. if it is all decided.”

Her two friends brightened perceptibly.

“That’s a good idea,” declared Betty. “Every one says the mid-years are so important. Let’s do our best from now on, and perhaps the faculty will change their minds.”

As she walked home, Betty thought of Eleanor. “She’ll be dreadfully worried. I shan’t tell her a word about it,” she resolved. Then she remembered Mary Brooks’s remark. Yes, no doubt some one else would enlighten Eleanor. It was just too bad. But perhaps Mary was right and the story was only a story.

It is hard for freshmen on the eve of their mid-year examinations to be perfectly calm and philosophical. The story of the fifty unfortunates ran like wild-fire through the college, and while upper-class girls sniffed at it as absurd and even freshmen, particularly the clever ones, pooh-poohed it in public, it was the cause of many anxious, and some tearful moments. Betty, after her first fright, had accepted the situation with her usual cheerfulness, and so had Alice and Rachel, who could not help knowing that her work was of exceptionally high grade, while Helen irritated her house-mates by affecting an anxiety which, as Katherine put it, “No dig, who gets ‘good’ on all her written work, can possibly feel.” Katherine was worried about her mathematics, in which she had been warned before Thanksgiving, but she confided to Betty that she had counted them up, and without being a bit conceited she really thought there were fifty stupider girls in the class of 19–. Roberta and the Riches, however, were utterly miserable, and Eleanor wrote to Paul West that she was busy–she had written “ill” first, and then torn up the note–and indulged in another frantic fit of industry, even more violent than its predecessors had been.

“But I thought you wanted to go home,” said Betty curiously one afternoon when Eleanor had come in to borrow a lexicon. “You say you hate it here, and you hate to study. So why do you take so much trouble about staying?”

Eleanor straightened proudly. “Haven’t you observed yet that I have a bad case of the Watson pride?” she asked. “Do you think I’d ever show my face again if I failed?”

“Then why – ” began Betty.

“Oh, that’s the unutterable laziness that I get from my–from the other side of the house,” interrupted Eleanor. “It’s an uncomfortable combination, I assure you,” and taking the book she had come for, she abruptly departed.

Betty realized suddenly that in all the year Eleanor had never once spoken of her mother.

After that she couldn’t help being sorry for Eleanor, but she pitied Miss Madison more. Miss Madison was dull at books and she knew it, and had actually made herself ill with work and worry. Going to see her Hilton House friends on the Friday afternoon after the skating party, Betty found Miss Madison alone and undisguisedly crying.

“I know I’m foolish,” she apologized. “Most people just laugh at that story, but I notice they study harder since they heard it. And I’m such a stupid.”

Betty, who hated tears, had a sudden inspiration. “Why don’t you ask about it at the registrar’s office?” she suggested.

“Oh, I couldn’t,” wailed Miss Madison.

“Then I shall,” returned Betty. “That is, I shall ask one of the faculty.”

“Would you dare?”

“Yes, indeed. They’re human, like other people,” said Betty, quoting Nan. “I don’t see why some one didn’t think of it sooner.”

That night at dinner Betty announced her plan. The freshmen looked relieved and Mary Brooks showed uncalled-for enthusiasm.

“Do go,” she urged. “It’s high time such an absurd story was shown up at its real value. It’s absurd. The way we talk and talk about a report like that, and never dare to ask the faculty if it’s true.”

“Do you take any freshman courses?” inquired Eleanor sarcastically.

Mary smiled her “beamish” smile. “No,” she said, “but I’m an interested party nevertheless–quite as much so as any of the famous fifty.”

“Whom shall you ask, Betty?” pursued Katherine, ignoring the digression.

“Miss Mansfield. I have her the first hour, and besides, since she’s been engaged she’s so nice and sympathetic.”

Next day the geometry class dragged unmercifully for three persons. Eleanor beat a nervous tattoo on the seat-arm, Miss Madison stared fixedly at the clock, and Betty blushed and twisted and wished she could have seen Miss Mansfield before class. The delayed interview was beginning to seem very formidable. But it wasn’t, after the first plunge.

“What an absurd story!” laughed Miss Mansfield. “Not a word of truth in it, of course. Why I don’t believe the girl who started it thought it was true. How long has it been in circulation?”

Betty counted the days. “I didn’t really believe it,” she added shyly.

“But you worried,” said Miss Mansfield, smiling down at her. “Next time don’t be taken in one little bit,–or else come to headquarters sooner.”

Eleanor and Miss Madison were waiting outside the door when Betty dashed at them with a little squeal of ecstasy. There was a moment of rapturous congratulation; then Miss Madison picked up the note-book she had dropped and held out her hand solemnly to Betty.

“You’ve–why I think you’ve saved my life,” she said, “and now I must go to my next class.”

“You’re a little hero,” added Eleanor, catching Betty’s arm and rushing her off to a recitation in Science Hall.

Roberta received the joyful news more calmly. “We may any of us flunk our mid-years yet,” she said.

“But we can study for them in peace and comfort,” said Adelaide Rich.

Mary Brooks asked endless questions at luncheon. Did the girls all accept Miss Mansfield’s denial as authoritative? Did it travel as fast as the original story had done? How did people think the rumor had started?

“Why, nobody mentioned that,” said Rachel in surprise. “How odd that we shouldn’t have wondered!”

“Shows your sheep-like natures,” said Mary, rising abruptly. “Well, now I can finish my psychology paper.”

“Haven’t you worked on it any?” inquired Betty.

“Oh, yes, I made an outline and developed some topics last night. But I couldn’t finish until to-day. I was so worried about you children.”

Toward the end of the next week Rachel came in to dinner late and in high spirits. “I’ve had such a fine walk!” she exclaimed. “Hester Gulick and I went to the bridge, and on the way back we overtook a senior named Janet Andrews. She is such fun. She’d walked down-town with Professor Hinsdale. He teaches psychology, doesn’t he? They seem to be very good friends, and he told her such a funny thing about the fifty-freshmen story. How do you suppose it started?”

“Oh, please tell us,” cried everybody at once.

“Why, an awfully clever girl in his sophomore class started it as an experiment, to see how it would take. She told it to some freshmen, saying explicitly that it wasn’t true, and they told their friends, and so it went all over the college until last Saturday Betty got Miss Mansfield to deny it. But no one knew how it started until yesterday when Professor Hinsdale looked over a paper in which the girl had written it all up, as a study in the way rumors spread and grow. This one was so big to begin with that it couldn’t grow much, though it seems, according to the paper, that some people had added to it that half the freshmen would be conditioned in math.”

“How awfully funny!” gurgled Betty. Then she jumped almost out of her chair. “Why, Mary Brooks!” she said.

Everybody looked at Mary, who blushed guiltily and remarked with great dignity that Professor Hinsdale was an old telltale. But when she had assured herself that the freshmen, with the possible exception of Eleanor, were disposed to regard the psychological experiment which had victimized them with perfect good-nature, and herself with considerable admiration, she condescended to accept congratulations and answer questions.

“Seriously, girls,” she said at last, “I hope no one got really scared. I wanted to explain when I heard Betty tell how unhappy Miss Madison was, but I really thought Miss Mansfield’s denial would cheer her up more and reach her almost as quickly, and at the same time it would help me out so beautifully. It made such a grand conclusion!

“You see,” she went on, “Professor Hinsdale put the idea into my head when he assigned the subjects away back last month. He said he was giving them out early so we would have time to make original observations. When he mentioned ‘Rumor,’ he spoke of village gossip, and the faked stories that are circulated on Wall Street to make stocks go up or down, and then of the wild way we girls take up absurd reports. The last suggestion appealed to me, but I couldn’t remember anything definite enough, so I decided to invent a rumor. Then I forgot all about it till that Saturday that I went skating, and ‘you know the rest,’ as our friend Mr. Longfellow aptly remarks. When I get my chef-d’œuvre back you may have a private view, in return for which I hope you’ll encourage your friends not to hate me.”

“Isn’t she fun?” said Betty a little later, when she and Helen were alone together. “Do you know, I think this rumor business has been a good thing. It’s made a lot of us work hard, and only seriously frightened three or four.”

“Yes,” said Helen primly. “I think so too. The girls here are inclined to be very frivolous.”

“Who?” demanded Betty.

Helen hesitated. “Oh, the girls as a whole.”

“That doesn’t count,” objected Betty. “Give me a name.”

“Well, Barbara Gordon.”

“Takes sixteen hours, has her themes read in Mary’s class, and in her spare moments paints water colors that are exhibited in Boston,” said Betty promptly.

“Really?” gasped Helen.

“Really,” repeated Betty. “Of course she was very well prepared, and so her work here seems easy to her. Next year I hope that you and I won’t have to plod along so.”

Helen said nothing, but she was deeply grateful to Betty for that last sentence. “You and I”–as if there was something in common between them. The other girls set her apart in a class by herself and labeled her “dig.” If one was born slow and conscientious and plodding, was there any hope for one,–any place among these pretty girls who worked so easily and idled so gracefully? Helen shut her lips firmly and resolved to keep on hunting.

CHAPTER XI

MID-YEARS AND A DUST-PAN

Viewed in retrospect the tragic experiences of one’s freshman year seem often the most insignificant of trifles; but that does not prevent their being at the time momentous as the fate of empires. There are mid-year examinations, for instance; after one has survived them a few times she knows that being “flunked out” is not so common an experience as report represents it to be, and as for “low grades” and “conditions,” if one has “cut” or been too often unprepared she deserves and expects them, and if she has done her best and still finds an unwelcome note or two on the official bulletin board, why, she must remember that accidents will happen, and are generally quite endurable when viewed philosophically. But in freshman year one is inexperienced and easily the dupe of mischievous sophomores. Then how is one to prepare for the dreadful ordeal? The distinction is not at all clear between the intelligent review that the faculty recommend and the cramming that they abhor. There is a disconcerting little rhyme on this subject that has been handed down from generation to generation for so long that it has lost most of its form and comeliness; but the point is still sharp. It is about a girl who followed the faculty’s advice on the subject of cramming, took her exercise as usual, and went to bed each night at ten o’clock, as all good children should. The last stanza still rhymes, thus:

“And so she did not hurry,Nor sit up late to cram,Nor have the blues and worry,But–she failed in her exam.”

Mary Brooks took pains that all her “young friends,” as she called them, should hear of this instructive little poem.

“I really thought,” said Betty on the first evening of the examination week, “when that hateful rumor was contradicted, that I should never be scared again, but I am.”

“There’s unfortunately nothing rumorous about these exams.,” muttered Katherine wrathfully. “The one I had to-day was the real article, all right.”

“And I have my three worst to-morrow and next day,” mourned Betty, “so I’ve got permission to sit up after ten to-night. Don’t all the rest of you want to come in here and work? Then some one else can ask Mrs. Chapin for the other nights.”

“But we must all attend strictly to business,” said Mary Rich, whereat Helen Adams looked relieved.

And business was the order of the week. An unwonted stillness reigned over the Chapin house, broken occasionally by wild outbursts of hilarity, which meant that some examination or other was over and had not been so bad after all. Every evening at ten the girls who felt it necessary to sit up later assembled in one room, comfortably attired in kimonos–all except Roberta, who had never been seen without her collar–and armed with formidable piles of books; and presently work began in earnest. There was really no reason, as Rachel observed, why they should not stay in their own rooms, if they were going to sit up at all. This wasn’t the campus, where there was a night-watchman to report lights, and Mrs. Chapin was very accommodating about giving permission.

“This method benefits her gas bill though,” said Katherine, “and therefore keeps her accommodating. Besides, it’s much easier to stick to it in a crowd.”

Eleanor never went through the formality of asking Mrs. Chapin’s permission to do anything, and she did not care for the moral support of numbers. She was never sleepy, she said, pointing significantly to her brass samovar, and she could work best alone in her own room. She held aloof, too, from the discussions about the examinations which were the burden of the week’s table-talk, only once in a while volunteering a suggestion about the possible answer to an obscure or ambiguous question. Her ideas invariably astonished the other freshmen by their depth and originality, but when any one exclaimed, Eleanor would say, sharply, “Why, it’s all in the text-book!” and then relapse into gloomy silence.

“I suppose she talks more to her friends outside,” suggested Rachel, after an encounter of this sort.

“Not on your life,” retorted Katherine. “She’s one of the kind that keeps herself to herself. She hates us because we have to know as much about her as we do, living here in the house with her. I hope she gets through all right.”

“She’s awfully clever,” said Mary Rich admiringly. “She’d never have said that a leviathan was some kind of a church creed, as I did in English.”

“Yes, she’s a clever–blunderer, but she’s also a sadly mistaken young person,” amended Katherine.

It was convenient to have one’s examinations scattered evenly through the week with time for study between them, but pleasanter on the whole to be through by Thursday or Friday, with several days of delicious idleness before the new semester began. And as a certain faction of the college always manages to suit its own convenience in such matters, the campus, which is the unfailing index of college sentiment, began to wear a leisurely, holiday air some time before the dreaded week was over.

The ground was covered deeply with snow which a sudden thaw and as sudden a freeze had coated with a thick, hard crust. This put a stop to snow-shoeing and delayed the work of clearing the ice off Paradise pond, where there was to be a moonlight carnival on the evening of the holiday that follows mid-year week. But it made splendid coasting. Toboggans, “bobs” and hand sleds appeared mysteriously in various quarters, and the pasture hills north of the town swarmed with Harding girls out for fresh air, exercise and fun.

On Friday afternoon an ingenious damsel who had no sled conceived the idea of substituting a dust-pan. So she borrowed one of an obliging chambermaid and went out to the little slope which divides the front from the back campus to try her experiment. In twenty minutes the hill was alive with girls, all the available dust-pans had been pressed into service, and large tin pans were found to do nearly as well. Envious groups of girls who could get neither the one nor the other watched the absurd spectacle from the windows of the nearest campus houses or hurried down-town to buy tinware. Sleds were neglected, toboggans despised; the dust-pan fad had taken possession of the college.

Betty, who had the happy faculty of being on hand at interesting moments, was crossing the campus on her way home from the Hilton House. She had taken her last examination, had helped Alice Waite finish up a box of candy, and now had nothing to do until dinner time, so she stopped to watch the novel coasting, and even had one delicious ride herself on Dorothy King’s dust-pan.

Near the gate she met Mary Brooks and Roberta and asked them if they had been through the campus.

“No,” said Mary, “we’ve been having chocolate at Cuyler’s.” And she dragged her companions back to within sight of the hill. Then she abruptly turned them about and hurried them off in the other direction.

“Let’s go straight down and buy some dust-pans,” she began enthusiastically. “We have just time before dinner, and we can slide all to-morrow afternoon.”

“Oh, no,” demurred Roberta. “I couldn’t.”

Betty laughed at her expression of alarm, and Mary demanded, “Why not?”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” repeated Roberta. “It looks dangerous, and, besides, I have to dress for dinner.”

“Dangerous nothing!” jeered Mary. “Don’t be so everlastingly neat and lady-like, child. What’s the use? Well,” as Roberta still hung back, “carry my fountain pen home, then, and don’t spill it. Come on, Betty,” and the two raced off down the hill.

Roberta looked after them admiringly, wishing she were not such a “muff” at outdoor sports.

The next afternoon Betty and Mary hurried over to the campus directly after luncheon to try their new toys. The crust was still firm and the new sport popular as ever.

“You see it’s much more exciting than a ‘bob,’” a tall senior was explaining to a group of on-lookers. “You can’t steer, so you’re just as likely to go down backward as frontward; and being so near the ground gives you a lovely creepy sensation.”

“The point is, it’s such a splendid antidote for overstudying. It just satisfies that absolutely idiotic feeling that every one has after mid-years,” added an athletic young woman in a gray sweater, as she joined the group with her dust-pan tucked scientifically under her arm.

She was Marion Lawrence, sophomore vice-president, and Mary Brooks’s best friend. Betty, fearing to be in the way, joined another lone freshman from the Belden House.

“Do you suppose you could sit up to study to-night if you had to?” inquired the freshman as they stood waiting their turns to go down.

“No, only it seems as if you always could do what you have to,” answered Betty, starting off.

She decided presently that dust-pan coasting was not so much fun as it looked. Mary Brooks, coming to find her and ask her to join a racing tournament captained by herself and Marion Lawrence, declared noisily that she was having “the time of her gay young life,” but Betty after the first coast or two began to think of going home. Perhaps it was because she was so tired. It seemed so much trouble to walk up on the slippery crust and such a long way round by the path. So she refused to enter the tournament. “I’m not going to stay long enough,” she explained. “I shall just have two more slides. Then I’m going home to take a nap. That’s my best antidote for overstudy.”

The next coast was nicer. Perhaps the dust-pan had been too new. The Belden House freshman said that hers went better since her roommate had used it and scraped off all the paint in a collision.

“I wonder there aren’t more collisions,” said Betty, preparing for her last slide.

Half-way down she discovered that the other freshman and the rest hadn’t started–that the hill was almost clear. Then somebody called shrilly, “Look out, Miss Wales.” She turned her head back toward the voice, the dust-pan swirled, and she turned back again to find herself slipping rapidly sidewise straight toward a little lady who was walking serenely along the path that cut the coast at right angles. She was a faculty–Betty hadn’t the least idea what her name was, but she had noticed her on the “faculty row” at chapel. In an instant more she was certainly going to run into her. Betty dug her heels frantically into the crust. It would not break.

“Oh, I beg your pardon, but I can’t stop!” she called.

At that the little lady, who was walking rapidly with her head bent against the wind, looked up and apparently for the first time noticed the dust-pan coasters. Mirth and confusion overcame her. She stopped an instant to laugh, then started back, then changed her mind and dashed wildly forward, with the inevitable result that she fell in an undignified heap on top of Betty and the dust-pan. The accident took place on the edge of the path where the crust was jagged and icy. Betty, who had gone head-first through it, emerged with a bleeding scratch on one cheek and a stinging, throbbing wrist. Fortunately her companion was not hurt.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” sighed Betty, trying to brush the snow off her victim with one hand. “I do hope you’ll forgive me for being so careless.” Then she sat down suddenly on the broken crust. “It’s only that my wrist hurts a little,” she finished abruptly.

The girls had gathered around them by this time, sympathizing and lamenting that they had not warned Betty in time. “But we thought of course you saw Miss Ferris,” said the tall senior, “and we supposed she was looking out for you.”

So this was Miss Ferris–the great Miss Ferris. Rachel had sophomore zoology with her and Mary Brooks had said that she was considered the most brilliant woman on the faculty. She was “house-teacher” at the Hilton, and Alice Waite and Miss Madison were always singing her praises.

She cut Betty’s apologies and the girls’ inquiries short. “My dear child, it was all my fault, and you’re the one who’s hurt. Why didn’t you girls stop me sooner–call to me to go round the other way? I was in a hurry and didn’t see or hear you up there.” Then she sat down on the crust beside Betty. “Forgive me for laughing,” she said, “but you did look so exactly like a giant crab sidling along on that ridiculous dust-pan. Have you sprained your wrist? Then you must come straight over to my room and wait for a carriage.”

Betty’s feeble protests were promptly overruled, and supported by Mary Brooks on one side and Miss Ferris on the other she was hurried over to the Hilton House and tucked up in Miss Ferris’s Morris chair by her open fire, to await the arrival of the college doctor and a carriage. In spite of her embarrassment at having upset so important a personage, and the sharp pains that went shooting up and down her arm, she was almost sorry when doctor and carriage arrived together. Miss Ferris was even nicer than the girls had said. Somehow she made one feel at home immediately as she bustled about bringing a towel and a lotion for Betty’s face, hot water for her wrist, and “butter-thins” spread with delicious strawberry jam to keep her courage up. Before she knew it, Betty was telling her all about her direful experiences during examination week, how frightened she had been, and how sleepy she was now,–“not just now of course”–and how she had been all ready to go home when the spill came. And Miss Ferris nodded knowingly at Mary and laughed her little rippling laugh.