"He's probably hunting distractedly for you on the hill," said Bob, glad to have something definite to do. "I think he's caught Lady, and I'll go and tell him that we've caught you."

Just then Professor Henderson's surrey drove up. It had come for Billy, and Babbie had thoughtfully sent it on to bring back "whoiver's hurted,"

the groom explained. But he made no objection to taking in Betty, though, rather to Billy's disappointment, she did not come under that category.

"I never saw a broken arm, ner a broken leg, ner a broken anything," he murmured sleepily. "I thought I'd have a chance now. Say, can I please put my head in your lap?"

"My, but your knees wiggle something awful," Billy complained a minute later. "Don't you think they're cracked, maybe?"

So Madeline put the sleepy elves in front with the driver and got in herself beside Betty. Curled up in Madeline's strong arms she cried a little and laughed a good deal, never noticing that Madeline was crying, too. For just beyond the berry-patch there was a heap of big stones, which made everything that Bob and Madeline had feared in that dreadful time of suspense seem very reasonable and Betty's escape from harm little short of a miracle.

It was striking eleven when the riding party and the surrey turned up the campus drive and the B's noticed with dismay that the Westcott was brilliantly lighted.

"I know what's happened," wailed Babe. "Our beloved matron has found us missing and she's hunting for us under the beds and in all the closets, preparatory to calling in the police. Never mind! we've got a good excuse this time."

But the Westcott was not burning its lights to accommodate the matron.

The B's had not even been missed. Katherine met them in the hall and barely listened to their excited accounts of their evening's adventure.

"There's been plenty doing right here, too," she said.

"What?" demanded the three.

"College thief again, but this time it's a regular raid. For some reason nearly everybody was away this evening, and the ones who had anything to lose have lost it--no money, as usual, only jewelry. Fay Ross thinks she saw the thief, but--well, you know how Fay describes people. You'd better go and see what you've lost."

Luckily the thief had neglected the fourth floor this time, so they had lost nothing, but they sat up for an hour longer, consoling their less fortunate friends, and listening to Fay's account of her meeting with the robber.

"I'm pretty sure I should know her again," she declared, "and I'm perfectly sure that I've seen her before. She isn't very tall nor very dark. She's big and she looks stupid and slow, not a bit like a crafty thief, or like a college girl either. She had a silk bag on her arm. I wish I'd asked her what was in it."

But naturally Fay hadn't asked, and she probably wouldn't see the thief soon again. Next morning Emily Lawrence telegraphed her father about her watch with diamonds set in the back, and he sent up two detectives from Boston, who, so everybody supposed, would make short work of finding the robber. They took statements from girls who had lost their valuables during the year and from Fay, prowled about the campus and the town, and finally went back to Boston and presented Emily's father with a long bill and the enlightening information that the case was a puzzling one and if anything more turned up they would communicate it.

Georgia Ames displayed no unusual interest in the robbery. She happened to tell Betty that she had spent the entire evening of the bacon-roast with Roberta, and Betty, watching her keenly, was almost sure that she knew nothing of the excitement at the Westcott until the B's came over before chapel to inquire for "the runaway lady" and brought the news of the robbery with them. The "runaway lady" explained that she wasn't even very lame and should have to go to cla.s.ses just as usual. Then she hid her face for a minute on Bob's broad shoulder,--for though she wasn't lame she had dreamed all night of Lady and stones and briars and broken collar-bones,--and Bob patted her curls and told her that Lady was going to be sold, and that she should have been frightened to pieces in Betty's place. After which Betty covered her scratches with a very bewitching white veil and went to chapel, just as if nothing had happened.

CHAPTER XV

PLANS FOR A COOPERATIVE COMMENCEMENT

It was Sat.u.r.day afternoon and time for the "Merry Hearts'" meeting, which had been postponed for a day to let every one recover from Thursday evening's excitement.

"Come along, Betty," said Roberta Lewis, poking her head in at Betty's half-open door. "We're going to meet out on the back campus, by Nita's hammock."

"Could you wait just a second?" asked Betty absently, looking up from a much crossed and blotted sheet of paper. "If I can only think of a good way to end this sentence, I can inform Madeline Ayres that my 'Novelists'' paper is done. She said I couldn't possibly finish it by five. See my new motto."

"'Do not let study interfere with your regular college career,'" read Roberta slowly. "What a lovely sentiment! Where did you get it?"

"Helen gave it to me for a commencement present," said Betty, drawing a very black line through the words she had written last. "Isn't it just like her?"

"Do you mean that it's like her to give you something for commencement that you won't have much use for afterward?"

"Yes," laughed Betty, "and to give it to me because she says I made her see that it's the sensible way of looking at college, although she thinks the person who got up these mottoes probably meant it for a joke.

She wishes she could find out for sure about that. Isn't she comical?"

"Yes," said Roberta, "she is. You haven't written as much as you've crossed out since I came, Betty Wales. We shall be late."

Betty shut her fountain pen with a snap, and tossed the much blotted page on top of a heap of its fellows, which were piled haphazard in a chair beside her desk.

"Who cares for Madeline Ayres?" she said, and arm in arm the two friends started for the back campus, where they found all the rest of the senior "Merry Hearts" waiting for them. Dora Carlson couldn't come, Eleanor explained; and Anne Carter and Georgia thought that they were too new to membership in the society to have any voice in deciding how it should be perpetuated.

"It's rather nice being just by ourselves, isn't it?" said Bob.

"It's rather nice being all together," added Babbie in such a significant tone that Babe gave her a withering glance and summarily called the meeting to order.

The discussion that followed was animated, but it didn't seem to arrive anywhere. There were Lucile and Polly and their friends in the soph.o.m.ore cla.s.s who would be proud to receive a legacy from the seniors they admired so much; and there was a junior crowd, who, as K. put it, were a "jolly good sort," and would understand the "Merry Hearts'" policy and try to keep up its influence in the college. Everybody agreed that, if the society went down at all, it ought to descend to a set of girls who were prominent enough to give a certain prestige to its democratic principles, and who, being intimate friends, would enjoy working and playing together as the first generation of "Merry Hearts" had, and would know how to bring in the "odd ones" like Dora and Anne, when opportunity offered.

"But after all," said Rachel dejectedly, "it would never be quite the same. We are 'Merry Hearts' because we wanted to be. The idea just fitted us."

"And will look like a rented dress suit on any one else," added Madeline frivolously. "Of course I'm not a charter member of 19--, and perhaps I ought not to speak. But don't you think that the younger cla.s.ses will find their own best ways of keeping up the right spirit at Harding? I vote that the 'Merry Hearts' has done its work and had its little fling, and that it would better go out when we do."

"Then it ought to go out in a regular blaze of glory," said Bob, when murmurs of approval had greeted Madeline's opinion.

"I know a way." Betty spoke out almost before she thought, and then she blushed vividly, fearing that she had been too hasty and that the "Merry Hearts" might not approve of her plan.

"Is it one of the things you thought of while you were being run away with?" asked Madeline quizzically.

Betty laughed and nodded. "You'd better make a list of the things I thought of, Miss Ayres, if the subject interests you so much."

"Was there one for every scratch on your face?" asked Katherine.

Betty drew herself up with a comical affectation of offended dignity. "I almost wish I'd broken my collar-bone, as Bob thought I ought to. Then perhaps I should get a little sympathy."

"And where would the costumes for the play have been, with you laid up in the infirmary for a month?" demanded Babbie with a groan.

"Do you know that's the very thing I worried about most when Lady was running," began Betty, so earnestly that everybody laughed again.

"Just the same it wouldn't have been any joke, would it, about those costumes," said Bob, when the mirth had subsided, "nor about all the other committee work that you've done and that n.o.body else knows much about."

"Not even to mention that we should hate to have anything happen to you for purely personal reasons," said Madeline, shivering in the warm sunshine as she remembered how that dreadful pile of white stones had glistened in the moonlight.

"I think this cla.s.s would better pa.s.s a law: No more riding by prominent seniors," declared Katherine Kittredge. "If Emily Davis should get spilled, there would go our good young Gobbo and our Ivy Day orator, besides n.o.body knows how much else."

"Christy is toastmistress and Antonio."

"Kate is chairman of the supper committee and Portia."

"Everybody who's anything is a lot of things, I guess," said little Helen Adams. She herself was in the mob that made the background for the trial scene in "The Merchant of Venice," and she was as elated over her part as any of the chief actors could possibly be over their leading roles. But that wasn't all. She was trying for the Ivy song, which is chosen each year by compet.i.tion. She had been working on her song in secret all through the year, and she felt sure that n.o.body had cared so much or tried so hard as she,--though of course, she reminded herself sternly it took more than that to write the winning song and she didn't mean to be disappointed if she failed.

"Order please, young ladies," commanded Babe, who delighted to exercise her presidential dignities. "We are straying far from the subject in hand--to adapt the words of our beloved Latin professor. Betty Wales was going to tell us how the 'Merry Hearts' could go out with a splurge."