“You certainly didn’t encourage me at all,” Mr. Morton told her, “so you needn’t feel in the least responsible. By the way, send me a sample of that plasher-thing that you’re having made in plaster. If those fool images sell here, I don’t see why they shouldn’t make good in New York. And tell the president what we’ve decided about the dormitory. Tell him to write me if he favors the idea, and I’ll send a check. Good-bye.”
“You must wait till I’ve thanked——” began Betty.
“Miss B. A.,” broke in Mr. Morton sternly, “don’t you know me well enough yet to know that the thing I detest most in this world is to be thanked?”
CHAPTER XVIII
A ROMANCE AND A BURGLARY
“Goodness, but I’m glad I haven’t got to break the news to you that I thought I must,” Betty told Emily, when she appeared late in the afternoon. And then she broke the good news instead, and incidentally, now that the danger was all over, explained how nearly the tea-room had come to ruin. She was bursting to tell Emily, who would especially appreciate the idea, about the new dormitory; but the president of Harding must be the first one to hear that news. Betty left Emily in charge of the desk and hurried up to the campus. When she got back, after an altogether satisfactory interview, she found Nora watching in rapt admiration while Emily deftly mended a three-cornered tear in the new blue silk skirt that had been the pride of Nora’s heart.
“Shure an’ she’s a wonder with her needle,” Nora informed Betty, and never a word more did she say about her “notice.” It would indeed have been a callous person who could bring herself to leave the Tally-ho Tea-Shop just when something exciting was brewing there all the time. First there was the news of Jasper J. Morton’s munificent gift to the college. The president passed it on at once, so that almost before Betty was back at her desk Lucile Merrifield rushed in to ask for all the details.
“I hear you planned the whole thing,” she said, “and we all think it’s perfectly splendid. Why didn’t any one ever think of it before?”
Of course Betty disclaimed all credit for Mr. Morton’s gift, but it was no use, especially when his letter to the president was printed in the local newspapers. He referred that gentleman to Miss Wales “for any further ideas and for detailed suggestions, since it was she who first interested me in Harding College and who originated this particular form of benefaction.” Her real friends loved and respected her more than ever for her power to bring such good fortune to pass, and girls like Eugenia Ford were immensely impressed by her evident intimacy with the Mortons and her influence over a man who was noted for never taking advice from anybody.
“It just happened that I got mixed up in it,” Betty told Miss Ferris humbly. “But I am glad that now, when I have the least to give myself, some one that I know can do so much. I’ve remembered all this year what you told me last fall about helping in one way if you can’t in another. It’s worked pretty well.”
Just as the excitement about the dormitory was subsiding, Madeline stirred things up with a succinct telegram to Betty: “Arrived at last.”