Betty Wales Senior | Page 3

girl was assured. All this flashed through Rachel's
mind much more quickly than it can be written down. Aloud she said
cheerfully, "Well, we have one whole year more of it."
"I should rather think so," declared Betty emphatically, "and we mustn't
waste a single minute of it. I wish it was evening. It seems as if I
couldn't wait to see the other girls."
"Well, there's plenty to do just now," said Rachel briskly, as the
four-ten halted, and the streams of girls, laden with traveling bags,
suit-cases, golf-clubs, tennis-rackets, and queer-shaped bulky parcels
that had obviously refused to go into any trunk, began to descend from
it.
Rachel hurried forward at once, eager to find someone who needed

help or directions or a friendly word of welcome. But Betty stood
where she was, just out of the crowd, watching the old girls' excited
meetings and the new girls' timid progresses, which were sure to be
intercepted before long by some white-gowned, competent senior,
anxious to miss no possible opportunity for helpfulness.
Betty had done her part all day, and in addition had taken Rachel's
place earlier in the afternoon, to give her a free hour for tutoring. She
was tired now and hot, and she had undoubtedly eaten too many ices;
but she was also trying an experiment. Where she stood she could
watch both platforms from which the girls were descending. Her quick
glance shot from one to the other, scanning each figure as it emerged
from the shadowy car and stopped for an instant, hesitating, on the
platform. The train was nearly emptied of its Harding contingent when
all at once Betty gave a little cry and darted forward to meet a girl who
was making an unusually careful and prolonged inspection of the
crowd below her. She was a slender, pretty girl, with yellow hair,
which curled around her face. She carried a trim little hand-bag and a
well-filled bag of golf-clubs.
"Can I help you in any way?" asked Betty, holding out a hand for the
golf-bag.
The pretty freshman turned a puzzled face toward her, and surrendered
the bag. "I don't know," she said doubtfully. "I'm to be a freshman at
Harding. Father telegraphed the registrar to meet me. Could you point
her out, please?"
"I knew it," laughed Betty, gleefully. Then she turned to the girl. "The
registrar is up at the college answering fifty questions a minute, and I'm
here to meet you. Give me your checks, and we'll find an expressman.
Oh, yes, and where do you board?"
The pretty freshman answered her questions with an air of pleased
bewilderment, and later, on the way up the hill, asked questions of her
own, laughed shamefacedly over her misunderstanding about the
registrar, was comforted when Betty had explained that it was not an
original mistake, and invited her new friend to come and see her with

that particular sort of eager shyness that is the greatest compliment one
girl can pay to another.
"Dear old Dorothy," thought Betty, when she had deposited the
freshman, considerably enlightened about college etiquette, at one of
the pleasantest of the off-campus houses, and was speeding to the
Belden for tea. "What a little goose she must have thought me! And
what a dear she was! I wonder if this freshman will ever really care
about me that way. I do mean to try to make her. Oh, what a lot of
things seniors have to think about!"
But the only thing to think about that evening was the arrival of the
eight-fifteen train, which would bring Eleanor, the B's, Nita Reese,
Katherine Kittredge, Roberta Lewis, and Madeline Ayres, together with
two-thirds of the rest of the senior class back to Harding. It was such
fun to saunter down to the station in the warm twilight, to wait, relieved
of all responsibilities concerning cabs, expressmen, and belated trunks,
while the crowded train pulled in, and then to dash frantically about
from one dear friend to another, stopping to shake hands with a
sophomore here, and there to greet a junior, but being gladdest, of
course, to welcome back the members of "the finest class." Betty and
Rachel had arranged not to serve on the reception committee for
freshmen that evening, and it was not long before the reunited "Merry
Hearts" escaped from the pandemonium at the station to reassemble on
the Belden House piazza for what Katherine called a "high old talk."
How the tongues wagged! Eleanor Watson had come straight from her
father's luxurious camp in the Colorado mountains, where she and Jim
had been having a house-party for some of their Denver friends.
"You girls must all come out next summer," she declared
enthusiastically. "Father sent a special invitation to you, Betty, and he
and--and--mother"--Eleanor struggled