After dinner Betty was starting up-stairs when Mary Brooks called her back. “Won’t you walk over to the campus with me, little girl?” she asked. “I have one or two errands. Oh no, you don’t need a hat. You never do here.”
So they wandered off bareheaded in the moonlight, which made the elm-shaded streets look prettier than ever. On the dusky campus girls strolled about in devoted pairs and sociable quartettes. On the piazza of one of the dwelling-houses somebody was singing a fascinating little Scotch ballad with a tinkling mandolin accompaniment.
“Must be Dorothy King,” said the sophomore. “I thought she wouldn’t come till eight. Most people don’t.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Betty, “I know her!” And she related her adventure at the station.
“That’s so,” said Miss Brooks. “I’d forgotten. She’s awfully popular, you know, and very prominent,–belongs to no end of societies. But whatever the Young Women’s Christian Association wants of her she does. You know they appoint girls to meet freshmen and help them find boarding-places and so on. She’s evidently on that committee. Let’s stop and say hello to her.”
Betty, hanging behind, was amazed to see the commotion caused by Miss Brooks’s arrival. The song stopped abruptly, the mandolin slammed to the floor, and performers and audience fell as one woman upon the newcomer.
“Why, Mary Brooks! When did you come?”
“Did you get a room, honey?”
“Oh, Mary, where did you put on that lovely tan?”
“Mary, is Sarah coming back, do you know?”