After Christmas there were goodies from home to eat and Christmas-gifts to arrange in their new quarters. Betty’s piêce de resistance was a gorgeous leather sofa pillow stamped with the head of a ferocious Indian chief. Eleanor had a great brass bowl, which in some mysterious fashion was kept constantly full of fresh roses, a shelf full of new books, and more dresses than her closet would hold. Katherine had a chafing-dish, Rachel a Persian rug, and Roberta an illustrated “Alice in Wonderland” of her own. To Betty’s great relief Helen had brought back two small pillows for her couch, all her skirts were lengthened, and the Christmas stock of black silk with its white linen turnovers replaced the clumsy woolen collars that she had worn with her winter shirt-waists. And–she was certainly learning to do her hair more becomingly. There wasn’t a very marked improvement to be sure, but if Betty could have watched Helen’s patient efforts to turn her vacation to account in the matter of hair-dressing, she would have realized how much the little changes meant, and would have been more hopeful about her pupil’s progress. Not until the end of her junior year did Helen Adams reach the point where she could be sure that one’s personal appearance is quite as important a matter as one’s knowledge of calculus or Kantian philosophies; but, thanks largely to Betty, she was beginning to want to look her best, and that was the first step toward the things that she coveted. The next, and one for which Betty, with her open-hearted, free-and-easy fashion of facing life, was not likely to see the need, must be to break down the barriers that Helen’s sensitive shyness had erected between herself and the world around her. The self-confidence that Caroline Barnes had cruelly, if unintentionally wounded, must be restored before Helen could find the place she longed for in the little college world.
No one had had any very exciting vacation adventures except Rachel, who was delayed on her way home by a freight wreck and obliged to spend Christmas eve on a windswept siding with only a ham sandwich between her and starvation, and Eleanor, whose vacation had been one mad whirl of metropolitan gaiety. Her young aunt, who sympathized with her niece’s distaste for college life, and couldn’t imagine why on earth Judge Watson had insisted upon his only daughter’s trying it for a year at least, did her utmost to make Eleanor enjoy her visit. So she had dined at the Waldorf, sat in a box at the theatre and the opera, danced and shopped to her heart’s content, and had seen all the sights of New York. And at all the festivities Paul West, a friend of the family and also of Eleanor’s, was present as Eleanor’s special escort and avowed admirer. Naturally she had come back in an ill humor. Between late hours and excitement she was completely worn out. She wanted to be in New York, and failing that she wanted Paul West to come and talk New York to her, and bring her roses for the big brass bowl that she had found in a dingy little shop in the Russian quarter. She threw her good resolutions to the winds, received Miss Hale’s thanks for the violets very coldly, and begged Betty to forget the sentimental letter that she had written before Christmas.
“But I thought it was a nice letter,” said Betty. “Eleanor, why won’t you give yourself a chance? Go and see Ethel this afternoon, and–and then set to work to show her what you said you would,” she ended lamely.
Eleanor only laughed. “Sorry, Betty, but I’m going to Winsted this afternoon. Paul has taken pity on me; there’s a sleighing party. I thought perhaps you were invited too.”
“No, but I’m going skating with Mary and Katherine,” said Betty cheerfully, “and then at four Rachel and I are going to do Latin.”
“Oh, Latin,” said Eleanor significantly. “Let me think. Is it two or three weeks to mid-years?”
“Two, just.”
“Well, I suppose I shall have to do a little something then myself,” said Eleanor, “but I shan’t bother yet awhile. Here comes the sleigh,” she added, looking out of the window. “Paul’s driving, and your Mr. Parsons has asked Georgie Arnold. What do you think of that?”
“I should certainly hope he wouldn’t ask the same girl to everything, if that’s what you mean,” said Betty calmly, helping Eleanor into her new coat.
Eleanor shrugged her shoulders. “Good-bye,” she said. “For my part, I prefer to be the one and only–while I last,” and snatching up her furs she was off.