“Of course,” the supper committee chanted, besieging Madeline while she ate, “of course we want it repeated with the class supper stunts.”
Madeline waved them away with a spoonful of strawberry ice.
“Talk to the cast. This is one piece of idiocy that I’m not responsible for. Oh, I helped plan it, and I wrote the moral. That’s positively all I did. Congratulate K. and Roberta, not me. And have it again for class supper if you really want it. Couldn’t we run in the class animals for a sort of chorus—‘Beware the Love Germ, 19—ers,’ and so on. Ploshkins and Red Lions, and Jabberwocks and Ritherums would make a lovely Moralizing Chorus. Yes, I’ll write it, but I won’t make wings for any more animals. I’ve decided that I’m too old and too distinguished to make any more animals’ wings.”
19—’s class supper was at the Tally-ho—of course. T. Reed had brought little T. to the reunion, and little T. had brought his big ploshkin mascot to the supper. The undistinguished Mary Jones and her plain, frizzle-haired little girl were there with the class loving-cup. All the old cliques and crowds were there, sitting as they used to sit, but fused, by the esprit de corps that no class had quite so strongly as 19—, into a big, splendid, happy whole. Eleanor was toast-mistress again. It was once toast-mistress, toast-mistress forever, with 19—. Jean Eastman had a speech called “Over the Wide, Wide World,” all about wintering in Egypt and buying rugs in Persia and yachting in the strange South Seas. T. Reed had one on “Such is Life,” all about raising babies and mushrooms and woolly lambs on a ranch in Arizona. Nita’s was called, on the menu-card, “Keep your eye on the Ball,” and it was a funny muddle of all the finest things that 19—ers had done by everlasting keeping at it. Roberta’s degree was one of the fine things, and Christy’s fellowship; and Madeline’s play was the grand climax, only Madeline spoiled the rhetorical effect by calling out, “Nita, you know I always do things by not keeping at them. I hereby refuse to point your moral and adorn your tale.”
In the midst of Nita’s speech Betty Wales disappeared. The few girls who saw her go thought that she was modestly trying to escape hearing her praises sounded by Nita, as one of the people 19— was proudest of. Helen Adams, who had noticed Nora come in and speak to Betty, thought that some domestic crisis demanded her attention, and hoped she wouldn’t have to stay in the kitchen very long. For Helen had a speech herself by and by, and she had planned to get through it by looking right into Betty’s intent, encouraging little face. But Betty didn’t get back in time for Helen’s toast nor for the two that came after it. The stunt-doers were gathering in Flying Hoof’s stall to put on their costumes, and the rest of the girls were pushing back their chairs to face the platform that Thomas the door-boy had built in front of the fireplace, when Betty Wales got back. She looked as if the domestic crisis had been of a strenuous sort, but at last happily terminated. Her face was flushed, and her hair curled in little damp rings on her forehead. But her expression was as serene as possible, her eyes sparkled with fun, and her dimples just wouldn’t stay in, though she tried to be duly serious over having lost half the toasts—and half the supper too.
“But the stunts haven’t begun, have they? Does ours come first? Did any engaged girls run around the table that we don’t know about already? Little Alice Waite! Oh, how nice! Don’t begin our stunt just yet. I want to speak to Madeline a minute. Oh, well, never mind, if they’re all waiting.”
So the “College Girl and the Modern Microbes, with a Moralizing Chorus of Class Beasts,” went at once on the boards. Betty Wales was no actress; not even her warmest admirers had ever imagined that she possessed histrionic ability, and it was only to satisfy a whim of Madeline’s that she had taken what she laughingly dubbed “a regular stick part” in the Germ play. But at the class supper performance she surprised everybody by her vivacity. She informed the Ph. D. Germ that she’d better take a course in doing her hair becomingly. She mocked the Pedagogic Germ with the hated epithet “Schoolma’am! schoolma’am!” She caught the Love Germ by an insecure white wing, and assured it that nobody fell in love with girls who were just pinned together. All through the contest of the Germs for her she kept interjecting remarks in a disconcertingly unexpected fashion. And at last the time came for the moral. Betty hesitated just a minute, and then began her one regular speech. She began it just as usual, and she went on just as usual until she came almost to the end: “So the thing to do is to shut your eyes and decide which one you can’t do without.” At this point she shut her eyes for an impressive moment. Then she opened them, and, with a half-frightened, half-merry look at Madeline, she walked up to the Love Germ and the Wedding Bells Germ, and dragged them, one on each side of her, to the front of the platform.
“I’VE SHUT MY EYES AND I’VE CHOSEN”
“And so I’ve shut my eyes and I’ve chosen, and—please everybody congratulate me quick! Eleanor Watson first, please, Eleanor dear.”