Helen flushed and bit her lip. “I shan’t look anyhow in this horrid short dress,” she said.
“Then why don’t you make it longer, and lower in the neck?” inquired Betty impatiently. Helen was as conscientiously slow about making up her mind as she was about learning her Livy. “It’s hemmed, isn’t it? Anyhow you could piece it under the ruffle.”
“Do you suppose mamma would care?” said Helen dubiously. “Anyway I don’t believe I have time–only till to-morrow night.”
“Oh I’ll show you how,” Betty broke in eagerly. “And if your mother should object you could put it back, you know. You begin ripping out the hem, and then we’ll hang it.”
Helen Chase Adams proved to be a pains-taking and extremely slow sewer. Besides, she insisted on taking time off to learn her history and geometry, instead of “risking” them as Betty did and urged her to do. The result was that Betty had to refuse Mary Brooks’s invitation to “come down to the gym and dance the wax into that blooming floor” the next afternoon, and was tired and cross by the time she had done Helen’s hair low, hooked her into the transformed dress, and finished her own toilette. She had never thought to ask the name of Helen’s junior, and was surprised and pleased when Dorothy King appeared at their door. Dorothy’s amazement was undisguised.
“You’ll have to be costumer for our house plays next year, Miss Wales,” she said, while Betty blushed and contradicted all Helen’s explanations. “You’re coming on the campus, of course.”
“So virtue isn’t its only reward after all,” said Eleanor Watson, who had come in just in time to hear Miss King’s remark. “Helen Chase Adams isn’t exactly a vision of loveliness yet. She won’t be mistaken for the college beauty, but she’s vastly improved. I only wish anybody cared to take as much trouble for me.”
“Oh, Eleanor!” said Betty reproachfully. “As if any one could improve you!”
Eleanor’s evening dress was a pale yellow satin that brought out the brown lights in her hair and eyes and the gleaming whiteness of her shoulders. There were violets in her hair, which was piled high on her head, and more violets at her waist; and as she stood full in the light, smiling at Betty’s earnestness, Betty was sure she had never seen any one half so lovely.
“But I wish you wouldn’t be so sarcastic over Helen,” she went on stoutly. “She can’t help being such a freak.”