Betty Wales, Sophomore

Betty Wales sat down on the one small bare spot on the floor of her new room at the Belden House, and looked about her with a sigh of mingled relief and weariness.

"Well," she remarked to the little green lizard, who was perched jauntily on a pile of pillows, "anyhow the things are all out of the trunks and boxes, and I suppose after a while they'll get into their right places."

She looked at her watch. Quarter to eight,-that left just about two hours before ten o'clock. Somebody rapped on the door.

"Come in," sang Betty.

It was Eleanor Watson. Betty leaped over a motley collection of cups and saucers, knocked down a Japanese screen-which fortunately landed against a bed, instead of on the cups and saucers-and caught Eleanor in her arms.

"Isn't it great to be back?" she said when she could speak, meanwhile setting up the screen again, and moving trunk-trays so they might sit down on the bed. "Are you settled, Eleanor?"

"A little," said Eleanor, surveying Betty's quarters with amusement. "Quite settled compared to this, I should say. Why do you take everything out at once, Betty?"

"Oh, then they're all right where I can get at them," returned Betty easily. "I hate to keep stopping to fish something out of the bottom of a box that I haven't unpacked."

"I see," laughed Eleanor. "Did you have a lovely summer?"

"Perfectly lovely. I can swim like a fish, Eleanor, and so can Emily

Davis. You don't know her much, do you? But you must. She's lots of fun.

Did you have a good time too?"

"Beautiful," said Eleanor, eagerly. "Father is coming east before long to see Jim and me, and he and Jim are coming on together from Cornell. You'll help me entertain them, won't you, Betty?"

"I should think I would," Betty was saying heartily, when there was another bang on the door and Rachel and Katherine appeared. Then there was more leaping over teacups, more ecstatic greetings, and more readjustment of Betty's belongings to make room for the newcomers.

"Where's Helen?" demanded Rachel, when everybody was seated.

"Coming the first thing to-morrow morning," explained Betty. "You see she lives so near that she can come down at the last minute."

"It's lucky she's not here now," laughed Katherine. "There's no room for her, to say nothing of her things."

"I should think not," agreed Betty, tragically. "Girls, these campus rooms are certainly the smallest places! This isn't half as big as ours at Mrs. Chapin's. And see the closet!" She picked her way across the room, and threw open a door, disclosing a five-by-three cupboard. "I ask you how we're going to get all our clothes into that."

"Helen hasn't many clothes," suggested Katherine, cheerfully.

"She has plenty to put on half those hooks," answered Betty, with finality, closing the door on the subject, and coming back to sit between Eleanor and Rachel.

"Isn't the Chapin house crowd scattered this year?" said Katherine. "Let me see. You and Helen and Mary Brooks are here. Has Mary come yet?"

Betty shook her head. "Her steamer isn't due till to-morrow morning.

Didn't you know she'd been in Ireland all summer?"

"Won't it be fun to hear her tell about it?" put in Rachel.

"You three here," went on Katherine, intent on her census, "and you're at the Hilton, aren't you, Eleanor?"

"Yes," answered Eleanor with a grimace. "I wanted to be here, of course, but Miss Stuart wouldn't manage it. Which house are you in, Rachel?"

"I'm off the campus," answered Rachel, quietly, "at the little white house just outside the gate. It's a dear, quaint place, and delightfully quiet. Of course, I'd rather have been on the campus, but father couldn't afford it this year."

"Make way, make way for us!" sang a noisy chorus out in the hall. There were shouts and shrieks and bangs and more shrieks, and then the din died away suddenly into an ominous stillness that evidently heralded the approach of some dreaded power.

"It's lucky one of us lives in a quiet place, where the rest of us can take refuge occasionally," said Eleanor.

"Isn't it?" chimed in Katherine. "I'm at the Westcott myself, and I never heard anything like the racket there was, when the girls began to come in from the eight o'clock train."

"Our crowd seems to have been on hand early," said Rachel.

"You know Betty's father doesn't like her to travel alone," jeered Katherine, "especially after dark. Did he telegraph the registrar again this year, Betty?"

"Please don't," begged Betty, blushing prettily. "Weren't we green little freshmen though, at this time last fall?"

"And isn't it fun to be coming back as sophomores?" asked Rachel.

"We haven't quite finished with the residences of the Chapin house girls," said Eleanor. "How about Roberta?"

"She's going to stay on at Mrs. Chapin's, I think," answered Katherine. "She couldn't get in here at the Belden, and she and Mary want to be together."

"And the Riches aren't coming back, I believe," added Rachel. "And now I, for one, must go back and finish unpacking."

Katherine and Eleanor rose too, astonished to find how fast the evening had slipped away, and how little time there was left in which to get ready for the busy "first day" ahead of them. When they had all three gone, Betty lay back on the bed, her head pillowed on her arms, to rest for a moment longer. She was tired. The journey from Rockport had been hot and disagreeable, and some of her box covers had been nailed on with disheartening thoroughness. But besides being tired, she was also very happy-too happy to turn her attention again at once to the trying business of getting settled. In spite of the "perfectly lovely" summer at the seashore, she was glad to be back at Harding. She was passionately fond of the life there. There had been only one little blot to mar her perfect enjoyment of freshman year, and that was Eleanor's unexplainable defection. And now Eleanor had come back, fascinating as ever, but wonderfully softened and sweetened. The old hauteur had not left her face, but it was in the background, veiled, as it were, by a determination to be different,-to meet life in a more friendly spirit, and to make the most of it and of herself. Betty could have hugged her for her cordial greetings to Katherine and Rachel, and for the kindly little speech about Rachel's boarding-place. The other girls had been tactful too, ready to meet Eleanor half-way and to let bygones be bygones. It was all "just lovely."

Betty was picking herself up, intent upon clearing Helen's half of the room at least, before she went to bed, when another tap sounded on the door. "Come in," she called eagerly, expecting to see Roberta, or perhaps Alice Waite, or even Dorothy King. Instead, a tall, stately stranger opened the door, and entering, closed it again after her.

"May I come in and talk to you?" she asked. "I live next door-that is, my trunks aren't here, so I haven't begun living there to any great extent as yet. Don't stop working. I'll sit and watch; or I'll help, if I can. There seems to be plenty doing."

And she sat down calmly in the place that Betty had just vacated.

Betty was not easily embarrassed, but the strange girl's perfect composure and ease of manner disconcerted her. She did not know many upper classmen in the Belden House, and she could not remember ever having seen this one before. And yet she surely was not a freshman.

"Yes, I-I am busy," she stammered. "I mean, I ought to be. But I've had callers all the evening long. Oh, dear! I didn't mean that. I'm truly glad to have you come, and I will keep on working, if you don't mind."

The stranger's eyes twinkled. "Which class are you?" she asked.

"Sophomore," answered Betty promptly. "And you're an upper-class girl, aren't you?"

The stranger shook her head.

"No?" questioned Betty in bewilderment. "Why, I'm sure you're not a sophomore-I know all the girls in my class at least by sight,-and of course you're not a freshman."

"Why not?" demanded the new girl gaily.

Betty laughed. "I know," she said, "but I don't believe I can explain. You seem too much at home, and too sure of yourself somehow. Now, are you a freshman?"

The stranger laughed in her turn. "Technically, yes," she said, "really, no. This is my first year here, but I've passed up all the French and Spanish and Italian that the institution offers, and some of the German. I think myself that I ought to rank as a graduate student, but it seems there are some little preliminaries in the way of Math, and Latin and Logic that I have to take before I can have my sheepskin, and there's also some history and some English literature which the family demand that I take. So I don't know just how long I may hang on here."

"How-how funny!" gasped Betty. "Where do you live?"

"Bohemia, New York," answered the new girl promptly.

Betty looked puzzled.

"Why, you see," explained her mysterious friend, "it's no use saying one lives in New York. Everybody-all sorts and conditions of people-live in New York. So I always add Bohemia."

"Bohemia?" repeated Betty helplessly.

"Yes, Bohemia-the artistic New York. We have a studio and some other rooms up at the top of one of those queer old houses on Washington Square-you know it,-funny, ramshackle old place. Father has afternoons, and mother and I feed the lions and the lesser animals with tea and strawberry jam. It's very good fun, living in Bohemia."

"And how did you learn so many languages?"

"Oh, a little from tutors, but mostly from living abroad. We're not in Bohemia, New York, very much. We have a villa near Sorrento-awfully out- at-elbows, but still a villa; and we've been in Spain a good deal, and once father illustrated a book on Vienna-that was where I learned my German. Let me see-oh, it's French that I haven't accounted for. Well, we have some French relatives. They love to have us visit them at their funny old chateau, because mother mends their moth-eaten tapestries beautifully, and father paints the family portraits."

"And what do you do?" inquired Betty, much impressed.

"I? Oh, I teach the girls American slang. It doesn't amount to much, teaching French girls slang, because they never have any chance to get it off on the men. But they always like it."

"Don't you know any other languages?"

"No-why, yes I do, too. I know Bengali. When Mademoiselle asked me that very question this noon I forgot Bengali. I learned one winter in India. I guess I'll telephone her-or no-I'd rather see her august face when I remind her of my humble linguistic existence. My name is Madeline Ayres. Now it's your turn," ended the new girl suddenly.

"But I haven't anything to tell," objected Betty, "except that I'm Betty Wales, in the sophomore class, and live in Cleveland. Please go on. It sounds exactly like a fairy tale."

Madeline Ayres shook her head. "It may now," she said, "but when you come to think it over, you'll decide that I talk too much. Don't put that green vase there. It belongs on the bookcase. It just litters your desk and spoils the effect of that lovely water-color. Do you mind my telling you?"

It was ten o'clock when Miss Ayres took her departure. Between them, she and Betty had made astonishing progress toward bringing order out of the chaos that had reigned supreme an hour earlier.

"It's so pretty, too," declared Betty, alone once more with the little green lizard. "Whatever she touches goes right into place. I suppose that's because she's always lived with artists. Oh, dear, I wish I could do something interesting!"

There was a tap on the door, and Betty sprang for her light, for she had the new girl's terror of breaking the ten-o'clock rule, which is supposed by outsiders to be kept to the letter on the campus. However, it wasn't the matron, but only Nita Reese, who had a single room on the fourth floor and had come to say that the three B's were spending the night with her, and that they wished Betty to hurry right along and help eat up the food.

[Illustration: "Don't put that green vase there."]

"Lights don't count on the first night, they say," explained Nita, who, like Betty, had spent her freshman year off the campus. "So we've got to make the most of it."

"But what are the B's doing over here?" demanded Betty in perplexity.

"Have they moved away from the Westcott?"

Nita laughed. "No indeed, but the rest of their floor hadn't come, and they felt lonely and came over to see me. They say their matron won't miss them the first night, and I'm sure I hope ours won't find them here. They seem to think it's all right."

Betty pulled on her gray kimono, brushed the hair out of her eyes, and followed Nita through the hall and up-stairs to the fourth floor. There was a wilderness of trunks in the narrow passages. Every girl must have three at least, Betty thought. And their owners appeared to be in no haste about unpacking; the serious business of the hour was conversation. They stopped to talk with their neighbors to greet newcomers, to help or hinder other workers with questions and suggestions. Betty and Nita felt lost and rather friendless in the big house, and were strangely glad to see one familiar face down the corridor and to get a brisk little nod from a senior hurrying past them on the stairs. But on the fourth floor the B's pranced gaily out to meet them.

"Poor little lambs, just come on the campus," sang Babe.

"'Fraid to death of the matron," jeered Bob.

"We've come to cheer you up," ended Babbie.

"Girls," said Betty, when the five-pound box of chocolates that Bob's father had thoughtfully provided was nearly empty, "wouldn't it be dreadful if we didn't know each other or anybody? How did we ever manage last fall?"

"Oh, you can always do what you have to," returned Bob practically.

"One mattress is too narrow for four, though," announced Babbie, somewhat irrelevantly. "I'm going down to sleep with you, Betty. Come along."

Thus ended Betty's first evening on the campus.