The little freshman, whose name was Ruth Howard, pinched herself softly, when no one was looking, to make sure that she was awake. Like Mother Hubbard she felt a little doubtful of her ident.i.ty, as she noticed the admiring glances cast upon her by even the haughtiest of the freshmen.

She had been rather lonely during these first weeks, and it was very pleasant now to find that the things she could do were going to make a place for her in this big, busy college world.

"A hazing party isn't a half-bad idea, is it?" said Georgia Ames, reflectively. "It's got us all acquainted a lot faster than anything else would, I guess,--even if there wasn't any food."

"Considering that we've done everything else, you children might find the food----" began one of the ghosts, but a bell in the corridor interrupted her.

"Is that the twenty-minutes-to or the ten o'clock?" asked another ghost anxiously.

"Ten," said a freshman. "The other rang while we were chasing smiles."

"Then we're locked out," cried a small ghost tragically, and three sheeted figures rushed down the hall, tripping over their flowing robes and struggling with their masks as they ran.

"My light is on. Will they report it?" asked little Ruth Howard shyly of Georgia Ames.

"Mine will be reported all right before I've done with it," declared a ghost gloomily. "I've got to study for a physics review. I oughtn't to have come near this festive function."

"Same here."

"Come on, Carline. Don't you know the action of going home?"

"Jolly fun though, wasn't it?"

The initiation party dissolved noisily down the dusky corridors.

Next day the college rang with the report that hazing was now practiced at Harding. Strange accounts of the Belden House party were pa.s.sed from group to group of excited freshmen who declared that they were "just scared to death" of the soph.o.m.ores and wouldn't for the world be out alone after dark, and of amused upper-cla.s.smen who allowed for exaggerations and considered the whole episode in the light of a good joke. But a particularly susceptible Burton House freshman, who sat at Miss Stuart's table and burned to make a favorable impression upon that august lady, repeated the story to her at luncheon. Miss Stuart received it in silence, wondered what the truth of it was, and asked some of her friends about it that afternoon at a faculty meeting. Of course some of the wrong people heard about it and took it up officially, as a matter calculated to ruin the spirit of the college. The result was that Miss Ferris and Dr. Hinsdale were furnished with the names of some of the offenders and requested to interview them on the subject of their misdemeanors. Miss Ferris unerringly selected Madeline Ayres as the ring-leader of the affair and Betty Wales as the best person to make an appeal to, if any appeal was needed, and set an hour for them to come and see her.

Madeline, who never looked at bulletin-boards, did not get her note of summons, and Betty, who had taken hers as a friendly invitation to have tea with her friend, went over to the Hilton House alone and in the highest spirits. But Miss Ferris was not serving tea, and Dr. Hinsdale showed no intention of leaving them in peace to indulge in one of those long and delightful talks that Betty had so antic.i.p.ated. Indeed it was he, with his coldest expression and his dryest tone, who introduced the subject of the initiation party and demanded to know why Madeline Ayres had neglected Miss Ferris's summons. Betty had no trouble in explaining that to everybody's satisfaction, but she longed desperately for Madeline's support, as she listened to Dr. Hinsdale's stern arraignment of the innocent little gathering.

"It's not lady-like," he a.s.serted. "It's aping the men. Hazing is a discredited practice anyhow. All decent colleges are dropping it. We certainly don't want it here, where the aim of the faculty has always been to encourage the friendliest relations between cla.s.ses. The members of the entering cla.s.s always find the college life difficult at first.

It's quite unnecessary to add to their troubles."

Betty listened with growing horror. What dreadful thing had she unwittingly been a party to? And yet, after all, could it have been so very dreadful? If Dr. Hinsdale had been there, would he have felt this way about it? A smile wavered on Betty's lips at this thought. She looked at Miss Ferris, who smiled back at her.

"Say it, Betty," encouraged Miss Ferris, and Betty began, explaining how Madeline had happened to think of the hazing, relating the absurdities that she and the rest had devised, dwelling on Ruth Howard's clever impersonation and Josephine Boyd's effective egg-scrambling. Gradually Dr. Hinsdale's expression softened, and when she repeated Carline Dodge's absurd retort, he laughed like a boy.

"Do you think it was so very dreadful?" Betty inquired anxiously, whereupon her judges exchanged glances and laughed again.

"There's another thing," Betty began timidly after a moment. "I don't know as I should ever have thought of it myself, but it did certainly work that way." And Betty explained Georgia Ames's idea of the hazing-party as a promoter of good-fellowship. "It's awfully hard to get acquainted with freshmen, you see," she went on. "We have our own friends and we are all busy with our own affairs. But since that night we've been just as friendly. That one evening took the place of lots of calls and formal parties. We know now what the different ones can do. Of course," Betty admitted truthfully, "it didn't help Miss b.u.t.ts any, unless it showed her that at Harding you've got to do your part, if you want a good time. She's certainly been a little more agreeable since.

But Ruth Howard now--why it would have been ages--oh, I mean months,"

amended Betty blushingly, "before we should have known about her, unless Madeline had called for that speech."

Again the judges exchanged amused glances, and Dr. Hinsdale cleared his throat. "Well, Miss Wales," he said, "you've made your point, I think.

You've found the legitimate purpose for a legitimate and distinctly feminine kind of hazing. And now, if Miss Ferris will excuse me, I have an engagement at my rooms."

So Betty had her talk and her tea, after all, and went away loving Miss Ferris harder than ever. For Miss Ferris, by the mysterious process that brought all college news to her ken, had heard about Eleanor Watson and the Champion Blunderbuss, and she was looking out for Eleanor, who, she was sure from a number of little things she had noticed and pieced together, was now quite capable of looking out for herself. This confirmation of her own theory encouraged Betty vastly, and she was able to feel a little more charitable toward the Champion, who, as Miss Ferris had pointed out, was really the one most to be pitied.

CHAPTER IV

AN ADVENTUROUS MOUNTAIN DAY

"The 19-- scholarships, providing aid to the approximate sum of one hundred dollars for each of four students, preferably members of an upper cla.s.s"--thus the announcement was to appear formally in the college catalogue. The president and the donor had both heartily approved of Betty's scheme, and the scholarships were an accomplished fact. It had been the donor's pleasant suggestion that 19-- should keep in perpetual touch with its gift to the college by appointing a committee to act with one from the faculty in disposing of the scholarships. Betty Wales was chairman, of course. 19-- did not intend that she should forget her connection with those scholarships. Betty took her duties very seriously. She watched the girls at chapel, in the recitation halls, on the campus, noted those with shabby clothes and worried faces, found out their names and their boarding-places, and set tactful investigations on foot about their needs. The enormous number of her "speaking acquaintances" became a college joke.

"Bow, Betty," Katherine would whisper, whenever on their long country walks, they met a group of girls who looked as if they might belong to the college. And then, "Is it possible I've found somebody you don't know? Better look them up right away."

"It's splendid training for your memory," Betty declared, and it was, and splendid training besides in helpfulness and social service, though Betty did not put it so grandly. To her it was just trying to take Dorothy King's place, and not succeeding very well either.

In looking up strangers, Betty did not forget her friends. n.o.body could be more deserving of help than Rachel Morrison. Her hard summer's work had worn on her and made the busy round of tutoring and study seem particularly irksome. But Rachel, while she was pleased to think that she had been the joint committee's first choice, refused the money.

"I could only take it as a loan," she said, "and I don't want to have a debt hanging over my head next year. I'm not so tired now as I was when I first got back, and I can rest all next summer. Did I tell you that Babbie Hildreth's uncle has offered me a position in his school for next fall?"

Emily Davis, on the other hand, was very glad to accept a scholarship,--"As a loan of course," she stipulated. She had practically supported herself for the whole four years at Harding, and the strain and worry had begun to tell on her. A little easier time this year would mean better fitness for the necessarily hard year of teaching that was to follow, without the interval of rest that Rachel counted upon.

Emily's mother was dead now, and her father made no effort to help his ambitious daughter. She might have had a place in the woolen mills, where he worked years before, he argued; since she had not taken it, she must look out for herself.

But with the serious side of life was mixed, for Betty and the rest, plenty of gaiety. 19-- might not be greatly missed after they had gone out into the wide, wide world, but while they stayed at Harding everybody seemed bent on treating them royally.

"You know this is the last fall you'll have here," Polly Eastman would say, pleading with Betty to come for a drive. "There's no such beautiful autumn foliage near Cleveland."

Or, "You must come to our house dance," Babbie Hildreth would declare.

"Just think how few Harding dances there are left for us to go to!"

Even the most commonplace events, such as reading aloud in the parlors after dinner, going down to Cuyler's for an ice, or canoeing in Paradise at sunset took on a new interest. Seniors who had felt themselves superior to the material joys of fudge-parties and scorned the crudities of amateur plays and "girl-dances," eagerly accepted invitations to either sort of festivity.

"And the moral of that, as our dear departed Mary Brooks would say,"

declared Katherine, "is: Blessings brighten as diplomas come on apace.

Between trying not to miss any fun and doing my best to distinguish myself in the scholarly pursuits that my soul loves, I am well nigh distraught. Don't mind my Shakespearean English, please. I'm on the senior play committee, and I recite Shakespeare in my sleep."

Dearest of all festivities to the Harding girl is Mountain Day, and there were all sorts of schemes afoot among 19--'s members for making their last Mountain Day the best of the four they had enjoyed so much.

Horseback riding was the prevailing fad at Harding that fall, and every girl who could sit in a saddle was making frantic efforts to get a horse for an all-day ride among the hills. Betty was a beginner, but she had been persuaded to join a large party that included Eleanor, Christy, Madeline, Nita, and the B's. They were going to take a man to look after the horses, and they had planned their ride so that the less experienced equestrians could have a long rest after luncheon, and taking a cross-cut through the woods, could join the others, who would leave the picnic-place earlier and make a long detour, so as to have their gallop out in peace.

It was a sunny, sultry Indian summer day,--a perfect day to ride, drive or walk, or just to sit outdoors in the sunshine, as Roberta Lewis announced her intention of doing. She helped the horseback riders to adjust their little packages of luncheon, and looked longingly after them, as they went cantering down the street, waving noisy farewells to their friends.

"I wish I weren't such a coward," she confided to Helen Adams, who was starting to join Rachel and Katherine for a long walk. "I love horses, but I should die of fright if I tried to ride one."

"Oh, they have a man with them," said Helen easily, "and it's a perfect day for a ride."

Roberta, who almost lived outdoors, and was weatherwise in consequence, looked critically at the western horizon. "I shouldn't be a bit surprised if it rained before night," she said. "You'd better decide to laze around in Paradise with me."

But Helen only laughed at Roberta's caution and went on, whereat Roberta Lewis was very nearly the only Harding girl who was not drenched to the skin before Mountain Day was over.

The riding-party galloped through the town and stopped at the edge of the meadows for consultation.

"Let's go by the bridge and come back by the ferry," suggested Madeline.

"Then we shall have the prettiest part of the ride saved for sunset."

"And you'll have a better road both ways, miss," put in the groom practically.