“Well, Severn, old boy, have you done your duty among the ‘overlooked ladies’ this evening?” asked a masculine voice.
“I should hope so,” was Roland’s reply. “And twice with Miss Rice.”
“You’ve nothing on me there,” said Larry Haven. “I shouldn’t want to displease Beth, but sometimes it’s a bore to dance with these wallflowers.”
“Now you’ve said it!” young Severn agreed, with feeling.
“But Beth says I can’t come at all to these ‘shindigs’ if I don’t help give the unpopular girls a good time. And she picks the ones I must dance with, too,” and Larry chuckled rather ruefully.
“She said as much to me,” Roland Severn acknowledged. “She’s an awfully thoughtful, kind-hearted girl.”
“She’s a dear,” agreed Larry, warmly. “Beth was always just the best ever. Thinks about others more than she does of herself.”
The two young men walked away. Miss Rice remained in the semi-darkness of the madam’s room for some time—long enough to feel that her cheeks were cool again and that the tears were gone from her eyes.
The thoughtless words of the two careless young men served an unexpected purpose. For once good grew from evil—sweet from the bitter. Ill-tempered as Miss Rice had shown herself to be, she was not shallow like Laura Hedden and some of the others who were opposed to Beth Baldwin in school affairs.
She saw at once that Beth, without suspecting that Miss Rice or the other wallflowers would ever know about it, had used her influence with the two most popular young men attending the school dances to insure the neglected members of the senior class the pleasure of having male partners.