“I saw that play acted in French, in dear old Paree. Did Miss Leavitt see it there too? Did she make up that take-off herself? Oh, my, I feel so perfectly at home here now!” Montana Marie rocked back and forth in an ecstasy of mirth and satisfaction.
“The world is such a small place,” she added with much originality, and smiled impartially on all classes present.
Then they turned out the lights and had the “weird eats”—the largest raw oysters to be bought in Harding, dipped in very thick, very hot chocolate sauce. And then they had “real food,” namely: Cousin Kate’s cookies and pineapple ice. Eugenia had requisitioned the “real food” of Betty Wales, at Straight’s instigation.
“If we gallantly rescue her freshman, she certainly ought to do something nice for us,” Straight had declared. “Tell her that we prefer ice to ice-cream, because we—I—have recently had a headache, and I feel for ice. Tell her she will be an angel to send the things because we haven’t had a dessert that I like this whole long week.”
And Betty, who understood all about campus fare, smilingly promised, and was better than her word to the extent of a huge pitcher of lemonade.
Montana Marie was proving rather an amusing protégée, she reflected that evening, after Thomas, the new door and errand boy, had been dispatched to the Belden with the “real eats.” The girls liked her, in spite of her queerness, and so did the faculty; at least several of them had spoken of her to Betty in very friendly terms. College had been open nearly a month now, but Montana Marie had not asked for any help from her official tutor except with her entrance conditions. The one in history she was almost ready to pass off, Betty thought. She made a note on her engagement pad: “Ask M. M. how freshman work is going, specially math.” Betty smiled to herself, as she remembered how scared all the Chapin House crowd had been over their freshman math. And then in the end nobody had been even warned except Roberta, and that was because she was always too frightened that first year to try to recite; Roberta was labeled a “math. shark” before she graduated.
Betty wondered how the Rescue party was progressing. She wished she were not a “near-faculty,” with faculty dignity to sustain. She longed to borrow a black domino and a mask and join the Rescue party incognito. She thought of a deliciously funny “stunt” to suggest as Susanna Hart’s penalty for having instigated Montana Marie’s hazing party. She hoped her freshman would be game—would make them keep on liking her—now that they had begun.
She stayed late at the Tally-ho working on her accounts, and reached the campus just in time to run into Montana Marie O’Toole being escorted home,—at top speed, owing to the exigencies of the ten o’clock rule,—by Eugenia, the Dutton twins, reunited without loss of time, and Susanna Hart.
Straight detached herself from escort duty to tell Betty all about the party. “Part two, the Rescue, was a grand, extra-special success,” she explained, “and the sophs say that part one was just as good. I say, Betty, did you give us away? Did you tell Montana Marie about the Rescue?”
Betty hadn’t even seen her freshman for two days, until to-night’s brief encounter.