“She told Annette once that she admired you more than any girl in college,” urged Dorothy quietly, “so your opinion ought to have some weight with her.”
“She said that!” gasped Betty in pleased amazement. Then her face fell. “I’m sorry, Miss King, but I’m quite sure she’s changed her mind. I couldn’t speak to her; but would you tell me please just why any one should–why you care?”
“Why, of course, it’s not exactly my business,” said Dorothy, “except that I’m on the Students’ Commission, and so anything that is going wrong is my business. Miss Watson is certainly having a bad influence on the girls she knows in college, and besides, if that sort of talk gets to the ears of the authorities, as it’s perfectly certain to do if she keeps on, she will be very severely reprimanded, and possibly asked to leave, as an insubordinate and revolutionary character. The Students’ Commission aims to avoid all that sort of thing, when a quiet hint will do it. But Miss Watson seems to be unusually difficult to approach; I’m afraid if you can’t help us out, Betty, we shall have to let the matter rest.” She gathered up her caddy-bag. “I must get the next car. Don’t do it unless you think best. Or if you like ask some one else. Annette and I couldn’t think of any one, but you know better who her friends are.” She was off across the green meadow.
Betty half rose to follow, then sank back into her chair. Dorothy had not asked for an answer; she had dropped the matter, had left it in her hands to manage as she thought fit, appealing to her as a friend of Eleanor’s, a girl whom Eleanor admired. “Whom she used to admire,” amended Betty with a sigh. But what could she do? A personal appeal was out of the question; it would effect nothing but a widening of the breach between them. Could Kate Denise help? She never came to see Eleanor now. Neither did Jean Eastman–why almost nobody did; all her really intimate friends seemed to have dropped away from her. And yet she must think of some one, for was not this the opportunity she had so coveted? It might be the very last one too, thought Betty. “If anything happened to hurt Eleanor’s feelings again, she wouldn’t wait till June. She’d go now.” She considered girl after girl, but rejected them all for various reasons. “She wouldn’t take it from any girl,” she decided, and with that decision came an inspiration. Why not ask Ethel Hale? Ethel had tried to help Eleanor before, was interested in her, and understood something of her moody, many-sided temperament. She had put Eleanor in her debt too; she could urge her suggestion on the ground of a return favor.
In an instant Betty’s mind was made up. She looked ruefully at her dusty shoes and mussed shirt-waist. “I can’t go to see Ethel in these,” she decided, “but if I hurry home now I can dress and go right up there after dinner, before she gets off anywhere.” The putting must wait. With one regretful glance out over the green, breezy course Betty started resolutely off toward the dusty highway and the noisy trolleys.
CHAPTER XVII
AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION
“I wish I could do it, Betty, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be the least use for me to try. I thought I had a little hold on her for a while, but I’m afraid I was too sure of her. She avoids me now–goes around corners and into recitation rooms when she sees me coming. You see–I wonder if she told you about our trip to New York?”
Betty nodded, wishing she dared explain the full extent of her information.
“I thought so from your coming up here to-night. Well, as you’ve just said, she’s very reserved, strangely so for a young girl; when she lets out anything about herself she wishes that she hadn’t the next minute.”