“There!” exclaimed Mrs. O’Toole triumphantly. “I told you we had ought to have waited for the letter.”
Miss Marie shrugged her shoulders impatiently, and turned to Betty. “President Wallace said that he was willing, under the circumstances——” Marie hesitated. “I suppose he meant my being educated mostly in a convent, where they don’t prepare girls for college, and being so ‘sot’ on coming, and so on. Anyway he said that under the circumstances he was willing for me to enter with one more condition than is strictly according to rules, if you would promise to tutor me as you did another girl once, and to look after me generally, and explain things that I don’t know about. He said he thought I would find a lot of things at college that I didn’t know about.”
There was a long pause. Of all the embarrassing situations, Betty thought, this was the worst. President Wallace was—it would be very disrespectful to say what. Besides, Betty realized in spite of her annoyance that President Wallace undoubtedly had had a good reason for sending the O’Tooles out to spoil her lazy afternoon. Part of the reason was probably because he had had to send them somewhere, or he would have them still pleading with him to reconsider his decision. Betty foresaw that Marie, being “sot,” would not give up easily; while Mrs. O’Toole, wanting Marie to have what she wanted, would be equally persistent. Betty decided that she needed a breathing space.
“I don’t know what to say,” she told them. “To begin with, I haven’t fully decided to go back to Harding this winter. If I do go, I shall be very, very busy with my regular work. I don’t really see how I can do more than I have already arranged for. But before I decide, I must wait for President Wallace’s letter. It may be about you, or it may be partly about Morton Hall—the dormitory that I shall have charge of if I go back. May I have a little time to consider? I really couldn’t say anything but no, if I had to decide to-day.”
Mrs. O’Toole sighed and looked reproachfully at Marie. “I told you so,” she complained. “You’re always in too much of a hurry. We might just as well have taken things easy and enjoyed the ride. We came all the way in our car, Miss Wales.”
“But I like to ride fast,” announced her daughter calmly. “Do you, Miss Wales? Because, if we’re going to wait around here for that letter, I’ll take you for a ride. Do many Harding girls have their own cars?”
Just then Tom Benson appeared on the piazza. Betty presented him, and Marie promptly dazzled him with her smile and bore him off to a distant corner of the piazza.
As soon as she was out of ear-shot, Mrs. O’Toole leaned forward in her chair and addressed Betty earnestly. “Do it if you possibly can,” she begged. “It’s a foolish notion she’s got that she wants to go to college, but there ain’t anything bad about it. It ain’t as if she wanted to go on the stage, or ride bareback in a circus, or marry some good-for-nothing fellow that wants her for her money. So I’m awful anxious for her to have her way. You see, Miss Wales, I know I stand in her light some. I know I ain’t a lady, though I do dress perfect,” she added proudly, “and look so young that people are always asking Marie about her pretty older sister. But looks and money ain’t everything, Miss Wales. And Marie is always so awful nice to me and her Pa, that we aim to suit her as well as we can.”
“Did Mr. O’Toole come to America too?” asked Betty, for want of anything better to say. She couldn’t help being touched by Mrs. O’Toole’s plea, but she didn’t want Mrs. O’Toole to know it yet.
“Oh, he’s always in America,” explained Mrs. O’Toole, “out at the mine, you know. But that’s no place for Marie, and her Pa knows it. He wants her to have all the benefits fits of education and foreign travel. We ought to be going, Miss Wales. Day after to-morrow, did you say? All right. You’ve been awful kind, Miss Wales. Come, Marie, we must be going.”