said Betty soberly, "but I think there are a lot of mistakes worse than that. I'm sorry though, if this has spoiled your first year here."

"Oh, it hasn't," said Georgia, eagerly; "it has just spotted it a little. It was a lucky thing, I guess, that I had something to bother me, or I should have been spoiled with all the good times you've given me. I did try to be a good 'Merry Heart,' Betty. Perhaps I shall have better luck next time."

"I'm sure you will," said Betty, heartily, and after they had arranged for the returning of Nita's pin in such a way as not to involve Miss Harrison, they started back to the Belden, Georgia to begin her packing and Betty to join the rest of the "Merry Hearts," who were spending the evening on the piazza.

But after all Betty slipped past them and went on up-stairs. She was in a very serious mood. She realized to-night as she never had before that her college days were over. The talk with Georgia had somehow put a period to a great many things and she wanted to be alone and think them over. Her little room was stiflingly hot and she threw the window wide open and sat down before it in the dark, leaning her elbows on the sill.

The piazza was just below; she could hear the laughter and merriment, and occasionally a broken sentence or two drifted up to her.

"There's nothing left to do now but commence," declared Bob Parker, loudly.

"And when we have commenced we shall be finished," added Babe, and laughed uproariously at her bad joke.

That was just Betty's trouble,--"nothing left to do but commence," which was quite enough if you happened to be a member of the play committee.

But before you "began to commence" all the tangled threads of the four happy years ought to be laid straight, and they weren't, or at least one wasn't. Betty had always felt sure that before Eleanor graduated she would get back her standing with the cla.s.s. But if she had, there was nothing to prove it; the feeling of her cla.s.smates toward her had certainly changed but nothing had happened that would take away the sting of the Blunderbuss's insult last fall and of Jean's taunts at the time of the Toy Shop entertainment. Eleanor would go away feeling that on the whole she had failed. Well, it was too late to do anything now.

Betty lit her gas long enough to hunt up a scarf that would furnish at least a lame apology for her delay, and went down to the gay group on the piazza. When thoughts will only go round in a circle, the best thing to do is to stop thinking them.

"I say, Betty," cried Bob eagerly, "did you know that Christy had gone home? I mean did you know she hasn't come back? She went just for senior week and now her mother is too ill to leave and she's got to stay."

"Poor Chris!" said Betty, suddenly remembering Christy's note which, in the excitement over the Blunderbuss she had forgotten to open. "How lucky that she gave up Antonio."

"Isn't it?" agreed Bob. "She's coming back for Tuesday of course to run the supper and get her precious little sheepskin. Her mother isn't dangerously sick, I guess, but there are lots of children and Christy seems to think she's the only one who can manage them."

"Think of her missing the play!" said Madeline.

"Perhaps she'll get back by Sat.u.r.day night," suggested Eleanor, hopefully.

"I think she's a lot more likely not to come back at all," declared Babe, "but it's no use to worry about that yet. Who's going to meet Mary Brooks?"

"Everybody who isn't a 'star,' or hasn't got to be made up early must go," commanded Madeline. "She comes at four-ten, remember. Babbie and Roberta, go in out of this damp."

Up in her room again Betty closed the window against the invading June-bug and hunted high and low for Christy's note. She hardly expected to find it after so long a time, but it finally turned up hidden in the folds of a crumpled handkerchief which she had stuffed carelessly into her top drawer. And luckily it was not too late to do Christy's commission. She merely told of her hasty departure and wanted Betty to be sure that the supper cards, with the menu and toasts on them, were ready in time. The printer was about as dependable as Billy Henderson, Christy wrote; he needed reminding every morning and watching between times.

Betty dashed off a hasty note of sympathy and apology, promising to make the printer's life a burden until he produced the supper-cards, and went to bed.

Next day commencement began in earnest. Gay young alumnae carrying suit-cases, older alumnae escorting be-ribboned cla.s.s-babies and their anxious nurses, thronged the streets; inconsiderate families began to arrive a whole day before there was anything in particular for them to do. All the afternoon the "mob" people and the other "sups" besieged the stage door of the theatre waiting their turns to be made up, and then, donning heavy veils hurried back up the hill. It was tiresome being made up so early and having to stay indoors all the hot afternoon, but it couldn't be helped, for there was only one make-up man and he must save plenty of time for the princ.i.p.al actors.

So the campus dinner-tables were patronized by young persons with heavily penciled eyebrows and brightly rouged cheeks, who ate cautiously to avoid smearing their paint and powder, and than ran up-stairs to jeer at the masculine contingent whose beards and moustaches had condemned them to privacy and scanty fare.

"I shall die of starvation," wailed Bob Parker, when she reached the theatre, confiding her sad story to Betty. "I said I didn't mind being a Jew and having my toes stepped on when the Christians hustle me out of court. But how can any one eat dinner with a thing like this," and she held up her flowing beard disdainfully.

"I'm sure I don't know," said Betty absently, consulting a messy memorandum as if she expected to find directions for eating with a beard among its items. "Bob, where is Roberta Lewis? The make-up man wants her this minute. It takes ages to fix on her nose."

"Portia is afraid she is going to be hoa.r.s.e," announced another "supe"

importantly.

"Then find the doctor," commanded Barbara Gordon swiftly, as Betty disappeared in search of Roberta. "Be careful, men. Look out for that gondola when you move the flies. Rachel, please keep the maskers off the stage."

"Why don't we begin?"

"Did you ever see such a mess?"

"Oh, it's going to be a horrible fizzle. I told you the scenery was too elaborate."

But two minutes later the "street in Venice" scene was ready and Antonio and "the Sals," as the cla.s.s irreverently styled his friends, were chatting composedly together in front of it.

The house was packed of course and there was almost as much excitement in front as there was behind the scenes. Of course the under cla.s.s girls and alumnae were delighted, but there was a distinguished critic from New York in the fifth row, and when Shylock appeared he was as enthusiastic as Mary Brooks herself. Even the cynical Richard Blake was pleased. He had come up to see the play and also, so he explained, to be a family to the bereft Madeline; but as Madeline was behind the scenes Eleanor Watson was obligingly looking after him. Her father and mother weren't coming until Sat.u.r.day, and Jim could only make a flying trip between two examinations to spend Monday in Harding, so Eleanor had plenty of spare time with which to help out her busier friends.

"I'm going to make out a schedule of my hours," she told Mr. Blake laughingly, "for it would be dreadful if I should forget an engagement and promise to entertain two or three uncongenial people at the same time."

"Indeed it would," agreed Mr. Blake soberly. "To-night, for instance, it would have been fatal. I say, Miss Watson, keep an hour or two open Monday evening. If Madeline should urge me, I believe I'd run up again for that outdoor concert. It must be no end pretty. Ah, the carnival scene. I never saw that put on more effectively, Miss Watson."

The next night the fathers and mothers and cousins and aunts went into ecstasies over "that lovely Portia" and "sweet little Jessica," laughed at young Gobbo's every motion, and declared that Shylock was "just too wonderful for anything." A funny little old lady who sat next to Roberta's father even went so far as to ask him timidly if he didn't agree with her that Shylock was a man. "I've been telling my sister that no college girl could act like that. I guess I know an old man when I see one," she said, and blushed scarlet when he answered in his courtly way, "Pardon me, madam, but Shylock is my daughter. She will appreciate your unstudied compliment."

When the curtain finally went down on the last performance of the play the committee were almost too tired to realize that they were through, and Katherine Kittredge, alias Gratiano, sank down on the nearest gra.s.sy knoll (made of green cambric) and expressed the universal sentiments of the cast.

"Not for all the ducats in Belmont will I call Portia a learned judge again."

"You needn't, K., but please hop up," said Barbara Gordon wearily.

"They're singing to us. Get into the centre, Roberta. We've got to let them see us again; they won't stop clapping till we do."

And then you should have heard the noise!

"Three cheers for good old Shylock," called somebody, and they were given with a will. Then they sang to her.

"Here's to you, Roberta Lewis, Here's to you, our warmest friend!"

Then they sang to Barbara and to Kate Denise, and to both the Gobbos.

"I say, ain't you folks goin' home till mornin'?" shouted a jovial stage-hand, thrusting his head out from the wings.

The crowd laughed and cheered him, then cheered everybody and went home, singing to Roberta all the way up the hill.

"But you can't blame them," said Betty Wales. "They don't realize how tired we are, and it's something pretty exciting to have given the play that Miss Ferris and Mr. Masters both say is the best yet."

"And to have had a perfectly marvelous Shylock," added Kate Denise warmly.

"And a splendid Portia," put in Roberta.

"Oh, wise young judges, please don't forget to mention Gratiano," said Katherine Kittredge, and set them all to laughing.

"It's been splendid fun," said Barbara. "Don't you wish we could give it all over again?"

Then they sat down on the green knolls and the gondolas and Portia's best carved chairs, and talked and talked, until, as Babbie said, they all felt so proud of themselves and each other and 19-- that the stage wouldn't hold them. Whereupon they remembered that to-morrow was Baccalaureate Sunday and that most of their families had inconsiderately invited them out to breakfast,--two facts which made it desirable to go home and to bed as speedily as possible.

It always rains in the morning of Baccalaureate Sunday, but it generally clears up in time for the service, which is in the afternoon; and even if it doesn't the graduating cla.s.s and its friends are willing to make the best of a bad matter because it would have been so much worse if the rain had waited for Ivy Day. 19--'s Baccalaureate was showery in an accommodating fashion that permitted the cla.s.s to sleep late in the morning because their families wouldn't want them to go out in the rain, and cleared off just before and just after the service, so that they didn't need the carriages that they couldn't possibly have gotten, no matter how it poured.

And it cleared off for Ivy Day. Helen Adams was up at five o'clock anxiously inspecting the watery sunshine to see if it would last.

"For they can't plant the ivy in the rain," she thought, "and if they don't plant it how can they sing the song?"