Betty Wales Senior | Page 4

with the new name for the
judge's young wife--"are coming on to commencement, and then of
course you'll all meet them. Mother is so jolly--she knows just what
girls like, and she enters into all the fun, just like one of us. Of course
she is absurdly young," laughed Eleanor, as if the stepmother's youth
had never been her most intolerable failing in her daughter's eyes.

Babbie had been abroad, on an automobile trip through France. She
looked more elegant than ever in a chic little suit from Paris, with a
toque to match, and heavy gloves that she had bought in London.
"I've got a pair for each of you in my trunk," she announced, "and
here's hoping I didn't mix up the sizes."
"Sixes for me," cried Bob.
"Five and a-half," shrieked Babe.
"Six and a-half," announced Katherine, "and you ought to have brought
me two pairs, because I wear mine out more than twice as fast as
anybody else."
"What kind of a summer have you had, K?" asked Babe, who never
wrote letters, and therefore seldom received any.
"Same old kind," answered Katherine cheerfully. "Mended twenty
dozen stockings, got breakfast for seven hungry mouths every morning,
played tennis with the boys and Polly, tutored all I could, sent out
father's bills,--oh, being the oldest of eight is no snap, I can tell you,
but," Katherine added with a chuckle, "it's lots of fun. Boys do like you
so if you're rather decent to them."
"I just hate being an only child," declared Bob hotly. "What's the use of
a place in the country unless there are children to wade in the brook,
and chase the chickens and ride the horses? Next summer I'm going to
have fresh-air children up there all summer, and you two"--indicating
the other B's--"have got to come and help save them from early deaths."
"All right," said Babe easily, "only I shall wade too."
"And you've got to wash them up before I can touch them," stipulated
the fastidious Babbie. "Where have you been all summer, Rachel?"
"Right at home, helping in an office during the day and tutoring
evenings. And I've saved enough so that I shan't have to worry one

single bit about money this year," announced Rachel triumphantly.
"Good for old Rachel!" cried Madeline Ayres, who had spent the
summer nursing her mother through a severe illness and looked worn
and thin in consequence. "Then you're as glad to get back to the grind
as I am. Betty here, with her summer on an island in Lake Michigan,
and Eleanor, and these lucky B's with their childless farms, and their
Parisian raiment, don't know what it's like to be back in the arms of
one's friends."
"Don't we!" cried a protesting chorus.
"Don't you what?" called a voice out of the darkness, and the real
Georgia Ames, cheerful and sunburned and self-possessed shook hands
all around, and found a seat behind Madeline on the piazza railing.
"You were all so busy talking that you didn't see me at the train," she
explained coolly. "A tall girl with glasses asked if there was anything
she could do for me, and I said oh, no, that I'd been here before. Then
she asked me my name, and when I said Georgia Ames, I thought she
was going to faint."
"She took you for a ghost, my dear," said Madeline, patting her
double's shoulder affectionately. "You must get used to being treated
that way, you know. You're billed to make a sensation in spite of
yourself."
"But we're going to make it up to you all we can," chirped Babbie.
"And you bet we can," added Bob decisively.
"Let's begin by escorting her home," suggested Babe. "There's just
about time before ten."
"I saw Miss Stuart yesterday about her coming into the Belden,"
explained Betty, after they had left Georgia at her temporary
off-campus boarding place. "She was awfully nice and amused about it
all, and she thinks she can get her in right away, in Natalie Smith's

place. Natalie's father has been elected senator, you know, and she's
going to come out this winter in Washington."
"Fancy that now!" said Madeline resignedly. "There's certainly no
accounting for tastes."
"I should think not," declared Katherine hotly. "If my father was
elected President, I'd stay on and graduate with 19-- just the same."
"Of course you would," agreed Babbie. "You can come out in
Washington any time--or if you can't, it doesn't matter much. But
there's only one 19--."
"And yet when we go we shan't be missed," said Katherine sadly. "The
college will go on just the same."
"Oh, and I've found out the reason why," cried Betty eagerly. "It's
because all college girls are alike. Miss Ferris said so once. She said if
you