CHAPTER X
HER SEVENTEENTH BIRTHDAY
"Please, Miss Lewis, please do," came in a chorus of pleading voices, as half a dozen Freshmen surrounded Betty in the lower hall, one snowy morning late in January. "I think you might consent when we all want one so tremendously."
"Come on down, Mary Ware," called A.O., catching sight of a wondering face peering over the bannister, curious to see the cause of the commotion. "Come down here and help us beg Miss Lewis to be photographed. There's a man coming out from town this morning to take some snow scenes of the place, and we want her to pose for him. Sitting at the desk, you know, where she wrote her stories, with the editor's letter of acceptance in her hand. Some day when her fame is world-wide a picture of her wearing her first laurels will be worth a fortune."
"Oh, Betty! Have they really been accepted?" cried Mary, almost tumbling down the stairs in her excitement, and forgetting the respectful "Miss" with which she always prefaced her name when with the other girls.
Betty waved a letter which she had just received. "Yes, the editor took them both, and wants more—a series of boarding-school stories. One of these girls heard me telling Miss Chilton about it," she added, laughing, "and to hear them you would think it is an event of national importance."
"It is to us," insisted A.O. "We are so proud to think it is our teacher, our special favourite one, who's turned out to be a sure-enough author, and we aren't going to let you go until you promise to sit for a picture for us."
"Then I suppose I shall be forced to promise," said Betty, smiling down into the eager faces which surrounded her, and breaking away from the encircling arms which held her determinedly. It was good to feel that she had the ardent admiration of her pupils, though it was burdensome sometimes to contemplate that so many of them took her as a model.
"I'm going to write too, some day," she overheard one of them say as she made her laughing escape. "I'd rather be an author than anything else in the world. It's so nice to dash off a new book every year or so and have a fortune come rolling in, and everybody praising you and trying to make your acquaintance and begging for your autograph."