“Hush up, girls, and let her tell us!”
It was like the station, only more so, and oh, it was nice–if you were in it. Mary answered some of their questions and then looked around for Betty. “I’ve lost a freshman,” she said, “Here, Miss Wales, come up and sit on the railing. She knows you, Dottie, and she wants to hear you sing. These others are some of the Hilton House, Miss Wales. Please consider yourselves introduced. Now, Dottie.”
So the little Scotch ballad began again. Presently some one else came up, there were more effusive greetings, and then another song or two, after which Miss King and “some of the Hilton House” declared that they simply must go and unpack. Betty, suddenly remembering her trunk and her sister, decided to let Miss Brooks do her other “errands” alone, and found her way back to Mrs. Chapin’s. Sure enough, Nan was sitting on the piazza.
“Hello, little sister,” she called gaily as Betty hurried up the walk. “Don’t say you’re sorry to be late. It’s the worst possible thing for little freshmen to mope round waiting for people, and I’m glad you had the sense not to. Your trunk’s come, but if you’re not too tired let’s go up and see Ethel Hale before we unpack it.”
Ethel Hale had spent a whole summer with Nan, and Betty beat her at tennis and called her Ethel, and she called Betty little sister, just as Nan did. But here she was a member of the faculty. “I shall never dare come near her after you leave,” said Betty. Just as she said it the door of the room opened–Nan had explained that it was a freshman trick to ring front door-bells–and Ethel rushed out and dragged them in.
“Miss Blaine and Miss Mills are here,” she said.
Betty gathered from the subsequent conversation that Miss Blaine and Miss Mills were also members of the faculty; and they were. But they had just come in from a horseback ride, and they sat in rather disheveled attitudes, eating taffy out of a paper bag, and their conversation was very amusing and perfectly intelligible, even to a freshman who had still an examination to pass.
“I didn’t suppose the faculty ever acted like that. Why, they’re just like other people,” declared Betty, as she tumbled into bed a little later.
“They’re exactly like other people,” returned Nan sagely, from the closet where she was hanging up skirts. “Just remember that and you’ll have a lot nicer time with them.”
So ended Betty’s first day at college. Nan finished unpacking, and then sat for a long time by the window. Betty loved Nan, but Nan in return worshiped Betty. They might call her the clever Miss Wales if they liked; she would gladly have given all her vaunted brains for the fascinating little ways that made Betty friends so quickly and for the power to take life in Betty’s free-and-easy fashion. “Oh, I hope she’ll like it!” she thought. “I hope she’ll be popular with the girls. I don’t want her to have to work so hard for all she gets. I wouldn’t exchange my course for hers, but I want hers to be the other kind.”