“Gracious!” said Betty. “I wish I hadn’t promised to go to a spread on the campus to-night. I wish— What a nuisance so many reputations are!” And she crumpled the purple cow and the green dragon into a shapeless wad and threw it at Rachel, who was coming up-stairs swinging her gym shoes by their strings.
CHAPTER VI
LETTERS HOME
Betty was cross and “just a tiny speck homesick,” so she confided to the green lizard. Nothing interesting had happened since she could remember, and it had rained steadily for four days. Mr. Parsons, who played right tackle on the Winsted team, had written that he was laid up with a lame shoulder, which, greatly to his regret, would prevent his taking Betty to his fraternity dance. Helen was toiling on a “lit.” paper with a zealous industry which got her up at distressingly early hours in the morning, and was “enough to mad a saint,” according to her exasperated roommate, whose own brief effusion on the same subject had been hastily composed in one evening and lay neatly copied in her desk, ready to be handed in at the proper time. Moreover, “gym” had begun and Betty had had the misfortune to be assigned to a class that came right in the middle of the afternoon.
“It’s a shame,” she grumbled, fishing out her fountain pen which had fallen off her desk and rolled under the bureau. “I shall change my lit. to afternoon–that’s only two afternoons spoiled instead of four–and then tell Miss Andrews that I have a conflict. Haven’t you finished that everlasting paper?”
“No,” said Helen meekly. “I’m sorry that I’m so slow. I’ll go out if you want to have the girls in here.”
“Oh no,” called Betty savagely, dashing out into the hall. Eleanor’s door was ornamented with a large sign which read, “Busy. Don’t disturb.” But the door was half-way open, and in the dusky room, lighted, as Eleanor liked to have it, by candles in old-fashioned brass sticks, Eleanor sat on a pile of cushions in the corner, strumming softly on her guitar.
“Come in,” she called. “I put that up in case I wanted to study later. Finished your lit. paper?”
Betty nodded. “It’s awfully short.”
“I’m going to do mine to-night–that and a little matter of Livy and French and–let me see–Bible–no, elocution.”