CHAPTER XVIII
INTO PARADISE–AND OUT
It was a glorious summer twilight. The air was sweet with the odor of lilacs and honeysuckle. One by one the stars shone softly out in the velvet sky, across which troops of swallows swooped and darted, twittering softly on the wing. Near the western horizon the golden glow of sunset still lingered. It was a night for poets to sing of, a night to revel in and to remember; but it was assuredly not a night for study. Gaslight heated one’s room to the boiling point. Closed windows meant suffocation; open ones–since there are no screens in the Harding boarding house–let in troops of fluttering moths and burly June-bugs.
“And the moral of that is, work while it is yet light,” proclaimed Mary Brooks, ringing her bicycle bell suggestively.
There was a sudden commotion on the piazza and then Betty’s clear voice rose above the tumult. “We won it, one up! Isn’t that fine? Oh no, not the singles; we go on with them to-morrow, but I can’t possibly win. Oh, I’m so hot!”
Eleanor Watson smiled grimly as these speeches floated up to her from below. She had been lounging all the breathless afternoon, trying vainly to get rid of a headache; and the next day’s lessons were still to be learned.
“Ouch, how I hate June-bugs,” she muttered, stopping for the fifth time in as many minutes to drive out a buzzing intruder. She had just gotten one out when another flew straight at her unperceived and tangled himself in her hair. That was the limit of endurance. With one swift movement Eleanor turned off the gas, with another she pulled down her hair and released the prisoned beetle. Then she twisted up the soft coil again in the dark and went out into the sweet spring dusk.
At the next corner she gave an angry little exclamation and turned back toward the house. The girls had deserted the piazza before she came down, and now the only light seemed to be in Betty’s room. Every window there was shut, so it was no use to call. Eleanor climbed the stairs and knocked. Katherine and Betty were just starting for a trolley ride, to cool off the champion, Katherine explained; but Helen was going to be in all the evening.
“I pity you from the bottom of my heart,” said Eleanor, “but if you are really going to be here would you tell Lil Day when she comes that I have an awful headache and have gone off–that I’ll see her to-morrow. I could go down there, but if she’s in, her room will be fuller of June-bugs than mine. Hear them slam against that glass!” She turned to Betty stiffly. “I congratulate you on your victory,” she said.
“Oh thank you!” answered Betty eagerly. “Christy did most of it. Would–won’t you come out with us?”