"It is queer that she did not wait longer," commented Berta wonderingly.

"She said it would be more whimsical and unexpected to stroll off in that eccentric way. She explained how she is being made over, Mother April, from the rag-bag of the world; and so she has to be different."

"I hope that she gets very wet indeed," said Berta, "and I don't see why I should worry."

Robbie's voice answered, "Bea worried about you that day last fall when you went off alone in that storm to find fringed gentians. The branches were crashing down in the wind, and one girl had seen a tramp out on that lonely road. You said you could take care of yourself, but we worried."

"Oh, that was different," exclaimed Berta. "I am perfectly capable of judging for myself. But Bea is such a scatterbrain that I can't help feeling"--she hesitated, then added as if to herself, "There isn't any sense in feeling responsible. She is old enough----"

"I can't hear when you mumble," called Robbie.

"Bea is an awful idiot," replied Berta in a louder key. "Did you catch that valuable bit of information, Robbie Belle?"

"It sounds," spoke Robbie with unexpected astuteness, "as if you are really worrying after all."

"Does it?" groaned Berta; "well, then I am an idiot too."

She sternly refused to look anxious even when the dressing-gong found the wanderer still absent in the rain. At six Berta started for the dining-room, leaving Robbie hovering at Bea's open door with a supply of hot water, rough towels, dry stockings, and spirits of camphor. In the leaden twilight of the lower corridor a draggled figure pa.s.sed with a sodden drip of heavy skirts and the dull squashing of water in soaked shoes.

"Where are the apple-blossoms?" asked Berta in polite greeting as they met at the elevator.

"I've b-b-b-been studying b-b-b-bobolinks," Bea's teeth chattered. "It's original to follow birds in the rain."

"But"--Berta's eyes snapped, "I myself when I did it I wore a gym suit and a mackintosh and rubber boots. Of all the idiots!"

"'O wad some power the giftie gie us,'" chanted Bea's tongue between clicks,

"'To see oursels as ithers see us, It wad fra mony a blunder free us, And foolish notion.'"

Then as Berta took a threatening step in her direction, she broke into a run. "I think I'll take some exercise now," she called back mockingly as she fled up the stairs.

At midnight Berta was roused wide awake by an insistent rapping on the wall between her room and Bea's. Startled at last wide awake, she asked what was the trouble. Upon receiving no audible reply, she hurried around through the corridor to the door. She heard the key turned as she grasped the k.n.o.b. An instant later she felt Bea sway against her and stand choking for breath, her hands to her chest.

"It's croup," she gasped. "The doctor! Run!"

Berta ran. She ran as she had never run before. Down the endless corridor and up the stairs, two steps at a time. Then a hail of frantic knocks on the doctor's door brought her rushing to answer. In four minutes they were back beside Bea's bed, and the doctor's orders kept Berta flying, till after a limitless s.p.a.ce of horror and struggle she heard dimly from the distance: "She'll do now." Whereupon Berta sat down quietly in a chair and fainted.

The next day was Sunday. Berta carried Bea her breakfast.

"Good-morning, Beatrice," she said. "I've decided that I am tired of being a genius."

"So am I," said Bea.

"No more poems!" cried Robbie Belle and clapped her hands. "Oh, goodie!"

CHAPTER VI

A WAVE OF REFORM

Bea did her hair high for the first time in public on the evening of the Philalethean Reception in her soph.o.m.ore year. As was to have been expected, this event of vital importance demanded such careful preparation that she missed the address in chapel altogether and was late for the first dance. When at last she really put in an appearance--and a radiant appearance it was, with cheeks flushed from the ardor of her artistic labors, she found the revelry in full swing, so to speak. The corridors and drawing-rooms were thronged with fair daughters and brave sons. Naturally the daughters were in the majority, most of them fair with the beauty of youth. The sons were necessarily brave to face the cohorts of critical eyes that watched them from all sides.

Two of the critical eyes belonged to Bea as she stood on the stairs for a few minutes and mourned that her handsomest cousin was not there to admire her new white crepe, and also to be admired of the myriad guestless girls. She caught a glimpse of Lila in rose-colored mull as she promenaded past with a cadet all to herself. Berta and Robbie were walking together in the ceaseless procession from end to end of the second floor corridor, while the orchestra played and the couples whirled in the big dining-room. They were talking just as earnestly as if they had not seen each other every day for a year. Bea's dimple twinkled and she took a step forward under the impulse to join them for the fun of chaffing them about such polite devotion.

At that moment Gertrude touched her shoulder.

"Oh, Beatrice Leigh, have you anybody engaged for this number and the next? My brother has turned up unexpectedly, and I haven't a single partner for him. Won't you take care of him while I rush around to fill his program? Do! There's a dear!"

"All right," said Bea, "can he talk?"

"N-no, not much, but you can, and he's awfully easy to entertain. Tell him about the girls or college life or anything. He's interested in it all. Will you? Oh, please! There goes Sara now. I've got to catch her first thing."

"Bring on the brother," exclaimed Bea magnanimously, "I'll talk to him."

And she did. Twenty minutes later, when Gertrude in her frantic search through the shifting crowds explored the farthest group of easy chairs in senior corridor, she discovered Miss Bea still chattering vivaciously to a rapt audience of one.

"I've been telling him about our playing at politics last month," she paused to explain; "he was interested."

The brother smiled down at her. "It is certainly a most entertaining story," he said.

"Things generally are when Bea tells them," commented Gertrude, "that is one of her gifts."

"Oh, thank you!" Bea swept her a curtsey. "But don't hurry. Didn't you know that I promised him a dance as a reward for listening to my dissertation on reform. Some day I'll maybe tell you the story."

This is the story:

Did Gertrude ever tell you about our playing at politics when we were soph.o.m.ores? Possibly you have heard politics defined as present history, and history as past politics. On that understanding, this tale is a history. It is the history of a great reform. When I sit down to reflect, a luxury for which I seldom have time even in vacation, it really seems to me that I have been reforming all my life. Lila has reformed a good deal since she entered college, and Berta has been almost as bad as I.

Robbie Belle is the best one among us, but she does not realize it. That is the reason why she is such a dear. She never preaches--that is, never unless it is her plain duty as at that time in the north tower, when we were freshmen, you remember. If she disapproves of any of our schemes, she simply says she doesn't want to do it. That was what she said when the rest of us proposed to masquerade as a gang of wardheelers on election day.

You know what wardheelers are, I suppose. They are politicians who hang around the polls and watch the voting and see that people vote for the right party, or the wrong party, for the matter of that. It all depends on which side they belong. When they notice anybody going to vote for the other side, they sort of intimidate him, tell him to get away, or else push him out of line or punch him in the head or something like that.

Sometimes they stuff the ballot-boxes, too, or go from one poll to another, voting over and over.

Now Robbie Belle had joined in with all the other fun that autumn. There were imitation rallies and parades and receptions to candidates and mock banquets with real speeches and fudges and crackers to eat. She made a perfectly splendid presidential candidate at one of the meetings. She looked ever so much like him too as she sat gravely on the platform with her hair parted on one side, and a borrowed silk hat clasped to the bosom of her brother's dress suit. When all at once her face crinkled in a sudden irresistible smile, even the seniors said she was dear. But this time she said she'd rather not be a wardheeler. She wouldn't come to a banquet of the gang the night before election day either. She said she guessed she didn't want to.

Berta and Lila and I collected b.u.t.ter and sugar and milk at the dinner table that evening. In our dormitory we are allowed to carry away bread and milk to our rooms, but we are not supposed to take sugar or b.u.t.ter for fudges. That seemed awfully stingy to us then; for in the pantry there were barrels of sugar, great cans of milk, hundreds and thousands of little yellow b.u.t.terb.a.l.l.s piled on big platters. We thought it wouldn't do any harm to use a tiny bit of it all for our banquet.

At dinner I slid two b.u.t.terb.a.l.l.s into my gla.s.s of milk, and Lila filled her gla.s.s with sugar from the bowl and then poured enough milk over it to hide the grainy look. Robbie Belle kept her eyes in another direction, but Berta said we had a right to one of the b.a.l.l.s anyhow, because she had not eaten b.u.t.ter all day. Berta is the brightest girl in the cla.s.s and she can argue about everything, and let the other person choose her side of the question first too. It was not until later that she reformed from that tendency to juggle with her intellect, as Prexie calls it.

Well, Lila and I marched down the long dining-room, past the seniors and the faculty table, with our gla.s.ses held up in plain sight. As soon as we reached the corridor in unmolested safety, Lila gave a skip so joyous that some drops spattered on the floor.

She said, "n.o.body caught us that time."

"Hush!" I jogged her elbow so that unluckily more milk splashed on the rubber matting, "there's Martha."

Martha, you know--or probably you don't know until I tell you--was a freshman who roomed with Lila and me that year. She was the dearest little conscientious child with big eyes that were always staring at us solemnly and giving me the shivers. She appeared to think so much more than she spoke that we respected her a lot and tried to set her a good example.