“Yes, indeed,” agreed Betty enthusiastically. “But she’s very bright too. She’s done a lot of extra work lately and so quickly and well. She’s very nice to me always, but she dislikes my roommate and she and I are always disagreeing about that or something else. I don’t think–you know she wouldn’t do a dishonorable thing for the world, but I don’t approve of some of her ideas; they don’t seem quite fair and square, Ethel.”
“Um,” assented Ethel absently. “I’m glad you could tell me all this, Betty. I shouldn’t have asked you, perhaps; it’s rather taking advantage of our private friendship. But I really needed to know. Ah, here we are!”
As she spoke, the train slowed down and a gay party of Winsted men sprang on to the platform, and jostled one another down the aisles, noisily greeting the girls they knew and each one hunting for his particular guest of the afternoon. They had brought a barge down to take the girls to the college, and in the confusion of crowding into it Betty found herself separated from Ethel. “I wish I’d asked her why she wanted to know all that,” she thought, and then she forgot everything but the delicious excitement of actually being on the way to a dance at Winsted.
Most of the fraternity house was thrown open to the visitors, and between the dances in the library, which was big enough to make an excellent ball-room also, they wandered through it, finding all sorts of interesting things to admire, and pleasantly retired nooks and corners to rest in. Mr. Parsons was a very attentive host, providing partners in plenty; and Betty, who was passionately fond of dancing and had been to only one “truly grown-up” dance before, was in her element. But every once in awhile she forgot her own pleasure to notice Eleanor and to wonder at her beauty and vivacity. She was easily belle of the ball. She seemed to know all the men, and they crowded eagerly around her, begging for dances and hanging on her every word. Eleanor’s usually listless face was radiant. She had a smile and a gay sally for every one; there was never a hint of the studied coldness with which she received any advances from Helen or the Riches, nor of the scornful ennui with which she faced the social life of her own college.
“Aren’t you glad you came?” said Betty, when they met at the frappé table.
“Rather,” said Eleanor laconically. “This is life, and I’ve only existed for months and months. What would the world be like without men and music?”
“Goodness! what a wise-sounding remark,” laughed Betty.
Just then Miss Hale came up in charge of a very young and callow freshman.
“Please lend me your fan, Betty,” she said. “I was afraid it would look forward for a chaperon to bring one, and I’m desperately warm.”
Eleanor, who had turned aside to speak to her partner, looked up quickly as Ethel spoke, and meeting Miss Hale’s gray eyes she flushed suddenly and moved away.