Meanwhile Betty, propped up among her pillows, was trying to answer Nan’s last letter.
“You seem to be interested in so many other people’s affairs,” Nan had written, “that you haven’t any time for your own. Don’t make the mistake of being a hanger-on.”
“You see, Nan,” wrote Betty, “I am at last a heroine, an interesting invalid, with scars, and five bouquets of flowers on my table. I am sorry that I don’t amount to more usually. The trouble is that the other people here are so clever or so something-or-other that I can’t help being more interested in them. I’m afraid I am only an average girl, but I do seem to have a lot of friends and Miss Ferris, whom you are always admiring, has asked me to five o’clock tea. Perhaps, some day—”
Writing with one’s left hand was too laborious, so Betty put the letter in a pigeon-hole of her desk to be finished later. As she slipped the sheets in, Miss Ferris’s note dropped out. “I wonder if I shall ever want to ask her anything,” thought Betty, as she put it carefully away in the small drawer of her desk that held her dearest treasures.
CHAPTER XII
A TRIUMPH FOR DEMOCRACY
By Wednesday Betty was well enough to go to classes, though she felt very conspicuous with her scratched face and her wrist in a sling. And so when early Wednesday afternoon Eleanor pounced on her and Katherine and demanded why they were not starting to class-meeting, she replied that she at least was not going.
“Nor I,” said Katherine decidedly. “It’s sure to be stupid.”
“I’m sorry,” said Eleanor. “We may need you badly; every one is so busy this week. Perhaps you’ll change your minds before two-thirty, and if you do, please bring all the other girls that you can along. You know the notice was marked important.”
“Evidently all arranged beforehand,” sniffed Katherine, as Eleanor departed, explaining that she had promised to be on hand early, ready to drum up a quorum if necessary.