“Dangerous nothing!” jeered Mary. “Don’t be so everlastingly neat and lady-like, child. What’s the use? Well,” as Roberta still hung back, “carry my fountain pen home, then, and don’t spill it. Come on, Betty,” and the two raced off down the hill.
Roberta looked after them admiringly, wishing she were not such a “muff” at outdoor sports.
The next afternoon Betty and Mary hurried over to the campus directly after luncheon to try their new toys. The crust was still firm and the new sport popular as ever.
“You see it’s much more exciting than a ‘bob,’” a tall senior was explaining to a group of on-lookers. “You can’t steer, so you’re just as likely to go down backward as frontward; and being so near the ground gives you a lovely creepy sensation.”
“The point is, it’s such a splendid antidote for overstudying. It just satisfies that absolutely idiotic feeling that every one has after mid-years,” added an athletic young woman in a gray sweater, as she joined the group with her dust-pan tucked scientifically under her arm.
She was Marion Lawrence, sophomore vice-president, and Mary Brooks’s best friend. Betty, fearing to be in the way, joined another lone freshman from the Belden House.
“Do you suppose you could sit up to study to-night if you had to?” inquired the freshman as they stood waiting their turns to go down.
“No, only it seems as if you always could do what you have to,” answered Betty, starting off.
She decided presently that dust-pan coasting was not so much fun as it looked. Mary Brooks, coming to find her and ask her to join a racing tournament captained by herself and Marion Lawrence, declared noisily that she was having “the time of her gay young life,” but Betty after the first coast or two began to think of going home. Perhaps it was because she was so tired. It seemed so much trouble to walk up on the slippery crust and such a long way round by the path. So she refused to enter the tournament. “I’m not going to stay long enough,” she explained. “I shall just have two more slides. Then I’m going home to take a nap. That’s my best antidote for overstudy.”
The next coast was nicer. Perhaps the dust-pan had been too new. The Belden House freshman said that hers went better since her roommate had used it and scraped off all the paint in a collision.