Once she noticed a hasty twist of the k.n.o.b as if Bea had s.n.a.t.c.hed at it from the other side under the p.r.i.c.k of the comments floating over the transom. As she walked slowly away the smile faded before a shadowing recollection. She was wondering if her own manner had truly been so unpardonable on that autumn morning when Robbie had carried her a baked apple with cream on it and plum bread besides. It had certainly been irritating to be interrupted in the middle of that rondel for the sake of which she had skipped Sunday breakfast. She had not forgotten how amazed and disappointed Robbie had looked with the saucer in one hand, the plate in the other, while the door swung impatiently back to its place. But then, the poem was sufficient excuse for that discourtesy, Berta a.s.sured herself in anxiety to justify her behavior. If she had waited to be polite, the thought and the rhymes would doubtless have scattered beyond recall. n.o.body could condemn her for slamming the door and hurrying again to her desk. She had saved the rondel, and it had been printed in the Monthly. That was worth some sacrifice, even of manners to dear old Robbie. She always understood and forgave such small transgressions of the laws of friendship. Only it certainly looked different when somebody else did it.

An hour or so later while Berta was bending devotedly over her notes in the history alcove of the library, she was vaguely aware of a newcomer sauntering carelessly behind her chair. A heavy book clattered to the floor, and somebody's elbow in stooping to pick it up nudged her arm. Her pen went scratching in a mad zigzag across the neat page and deposited a big tear of red ink where it suddenly stopped.

"Oh, I'm sorry," exclaimed Bea repentantly, for she was indeed the culprit; "it's horrid to be heedless on purpose. I didn't know it would really do any harm."

Berta glanced up quickly from her blotter. So Bea considered a reckless disregard for books and persons also a quality of genius. Berta felt a slow blush creeping up to her brow at the candid memory of her tendency to b.u.mp into things and brush against people when in a dreamy mood--and to pa.s.s on without even a beg pardon.

"You're evidently new to the business, my cautious and calculating young friend," she whispered, "you should have ignored the resultant calamity.

Ah--why, child!" she stared in surprise, "your collar is pinned crooked and your turnover is flying loose at one end, and your hair is coming down. You look scandalous."

Bea looked triumphant also. "It's an artistic disarray," she explained.

"It's hard work because I've slipped into the habit of being prim and precise, and I had to bend a pin intentionally. Four girls already have warned me about my hair falling down. It worries me a lot and yet it doesn't give the same effect as yours. Does yours feel loose and straggly?"

Berta's hand flew to her head. "You sinner! Mine is just as usual."

"Yes, I know it," a.s.sented Bea innocently, "it's a negligee style. I'm being a geni----"

"Go away!" Berta s.n.a.t.c.hed up her bottle of red ink. "Fly, villain, depart, withdraw, retreat, abscond, decamp,--in short, go away!"

Bea went, holding her neck stiffly on one side to balance the sensation of unsteadiness above her ears. Berta watched her with a wavering expression that veered from wrathful amus.e.m.e.nt to uneasy reflectiveness.

Was it really true that she dressed so untidily as this little scamp made out? Perhaps she did slight details once in a while, but though not scrupulously dainty like Lila, still she tried to be neat enough on the whole. Could it be possible that the other girls criticised her so severely as this?

The suspicion bothered her so effectually that she left the library five minutes early and hurried to her room for a few renovating touches before luncheon. Her hair caused her such extraordinary pains that she was late in reaching the table. She found that Bea had usurped her place at the head, but forgot to object in the confusion of being greeted with: "Heigho, Berta, what's happened?" "You're spick and span enough for a party." "Are you going to town this afternoon?"

"Young ladies!" Berta ignored the warm color that she felt rising slowly under her dark skin, "I am astonished at your manners. Don't you know that you should never refer to an individual's personal appearance? I read that in a book on etiquette. You may allude to my money, to my brains, to the beauty of my soul, but you must not remark upon my looks.

I don't understand the principle of the thing, unless it is that compliments on the other three articles fail to injure the character, whereas flattery with regard to my pulchritude----"

Bea's hand shot into the air and waved frantically.

"Please, teacher, what is that funny word?"

"Go to the Latin lexicon, thou ignoramus."

"I can't," said Bea, "you borrowed mine and never brought it back. It's being a----"

"But aren't you going anywhere?" asked Robbie Belle who had been filling Berta's plate and pouring her milk during the discourse.

Bea sent a bewitching smile straight into Berta's eyes. "I'm 'most sure she is going to give me a swimming lesson at half past four. Then if it is still raining this evening, we can all swim over to the chapel for the concert. Please, Berta."

"All right," acquiesced Berta carelessly. "I will do it because I am so n.o.ble and you are a literary person, though how in this world of incomprehensibilities you managed to get elected to that editorial board pa.s.ses my powers of apperception. Robbie, will you be so kind as to reach me that saltcellar?"

"You ought to say, 'Salt!' at the beginning, and then while you are putting in the rest of the words, she can be handing it over," advised Bea; "ah, what was the thought I was about to think?"

She paused in dispensing the main dish and rolled up her eyes vacantly for a moment before she dropped the spoon without a glance at the cloth to see if it left a stain and rising walked dreamily out of the dining-room.

The other girls stared. Robbie looked alarmed till Gertrude caught the likeness and explained: "It's 'sincerest flattery' for you, Berta.

Imitation, you understand. When an idea strikes you, you drop everything and wander away while Robbie or Bea picks up the spoon and goes on ladling out the stuff in the dish at your place. What a monkey!"

"No, a missionary," corrected Berta, her eyes and mouth contradicting each other as usual. This time her eyes tried to hide a troubled spark in their depths while her mouth twitched over the joke of it all. "She is posing as an awful example."

"Here I am again!" Bea appeared suddenly in her seat. "I find I'm considerably hungry still," she vouchsafed in response to a chorus of taunts and jeers. "Ideas aren't filling, so to speak. At least, mine aren't--and they most of them belong to other people; hence I infer that other people's aren't either. Is that plain, my dear young and giddy friends? Now, somebody, applesauce!" she called, and added politely, "please pa.s.s it."

Berta regarded her sternly. "Beatrice Leigh, you are running this scheme pretty far into the ground. When you reach bed-rock, something is likely to get a b.u.mp. Take care! Remember!"

"Thank you, yes, Berta. Half-past four at the swimming-tank in the gymnasium. I'll be there. Trust me!"

"Trust you!" echoed Berta in withering scorn.

Bea lifted a face bearing a suitably wounded expression.

"I trust you," she murmured in touchingly plaintive tones. "I shall be in the water at the stroke of the half hour--in the icy water. Promise that you will not fail me."

"All right!" Berta dismissed the engagement from her mind with a heedless a.s.sent. An hour later while she was absorbed in looking over the week's daily themes which she had found in the box, Robbie walked in rather disconsolately.

"Bea's writing a poem, too," she said; "she scowled at me."

Berta frowned in abstraction. "Yes," she muttered, "yes, yes."

Robbie looked at her and then stared out at the steady pall of rain. "I think I shall go swimming with you, if you want me."

"Do come." It was a mechanical response while Berta's eyes narrowed in the intensity of her application. "Now I wonder what that question-mark on the margin can mean. She is the vaguest critic I ever had. Suggestive, I reckon, and nothing else."

Robbie sighed. "Bea always used to be interested in everything. I wish she wouldn't write poems. She walked right past four girls and didn't see them. They were astonished. They asked me if she was sick or anything.

Her eyes were sort of rolled up in her head, as if she were being oblivious on purpose."

"Um-m," replied Berta brilliantly from the depths of her own obliviousness, "quite likely. Alas! there is another questionable question-mark. I do wish she weren't so stingy with her red ink."

Robbie sighed again and looked at the clock. "It will be half past four in two hours," she volunteered.

Berta pushed back her hair with an impatient gesture. "Robbie Belle, the longer it rains, the more loquacious you become. Do go and write a note to Lila, or darn stockings or something. I have a committee meeting at three, and you bother me dreadfully, with your chatter. Do run along, there's a dear."

Robbie rose and wandered away forlornly. Even though she did not feel like studying, she half wished that she had not finished the preparation of Monday's lessons. College on a rainy Sat.u.r.day afternoon, when all your friends are writing poems, is not a very cheerful place.

At half-past four Berta was in the midst of a fiery argument about the program for the Junior Party to the seniors. The dispute concerned some fine point of aesthetic taste in the choice of paper and position of monogram. The stroke of the half hour reminded her of the engagement with Bea, but she lightly pushed aside the thought as of no consequence in comparison with the present emergency.

It was ten minutes to five when she seized an umbrella and scurried across the campus to the gymnasium. There in the dusk of fading light from the clouded sky outside she beheld the swimming-tank deserted, its surface still glinting in soft ripples as if from recent plunging.

At sound of a rustle in one of the dressing-rooms, Berta called Bea's name. It was Robbie's voice that answered her.

"Bea's gone out walking."

"Out walking?" echoed Berta scandalized and incredulous.

"Yes, she was here in the water at half-past four, just as she had said she would be. She waited for you, and tried to swim at the end of a curtain pole. I held it steady for her, but when she was the teacher, she let me duck under. And we weren't sure about the stroke anyhow. And we kept getting colder and colder."

"Oh!" the voice sounded as if suddenly enlightened. "At what time did you go in?"

"It was after three, and she waited for you till twenty minutes to five.

Then she said she thought it would be interesting to go up to the orchard and gather apple-blossoms with rain-drops fresh on the petals. She said it would be poetic and erratic and a lot of fun. So she went. She said it would be more like a real genius if she went alone, and so I didn't go with her. Besides that, she took my umbrella, and it isn't big enough for two."