“I was right behind her when she and Dr. Eaton met on the stairs yesterday morning,” added Helen, “and they bowed and said good-morning, just as they’d have said it to any one else.”
“She does look awfully happy though,” said Bob, who for a tom-boy had become extremely interested in Ethel’s romance. “When we were having a written lesson the other day she sat there with her eyes just shining.”
“I guess she always was happy enough,” objected matter-of-fact Helen. “Why shouldn’t she be?”
Betty and Madeline exchanged glances. They had never referred to the night when they saw Ethel crying. But in any case her good spirits were very easily explained; the Nassau trip had rested and cheered her up, and that was all she needed.
And so, after two weeks of unrewarded observation, “The Merry Hearts” forgot to speculate about the interesting faculty romance—if romance it was—and plunged whole-heartedly into the gaieties of spring term. First and foremost among them was of course the junior “prom.” For weeks before vacation it had been a topic of absorbing interest, and now most of the juniors thought and talked of little else. Helen Adams begrudged the way the “prom.” monopolized attention, supplanting all the impromptu festivities and throwing the man-less dances in which she delighted quite into the shade. One reason why Helen loved college so was because there were no men to bother about; but now for two weeks man was the sole topic of conversation, and to have a man, safe and sure, for the “prom.” the desideratum of every junior. But Helen Adams was a “freak.” Every other girl in 19— reveled in the situation, though some, like Katherine Kittredge, scoffed unfeelingly at their friends’ predicaments, and others, like Roberta Lewis, who had gathered courage to invite her cousin from Boston, were filled with secret misgivings and devoutly wished that their men would sprain their ankles (not seriously), like Alice Waite’s tenth one, or be asked to go to Europe with a rich uncle, like Rachel Morrison’s brother. For a “prom.” is a great responsibility as well as a great joy.
“I can tell you it’s no laughing matter,” declared little Alice Waite, “when you’ve got your dress and made out your program and are just dying to go, to have the last man you know east of Denver sprain his ankle—it’s heart-breaking.”
“Almost as bad as when you had two men on your hands for the concert and Georgia Ames couldn’t help you out,” jeered Katherine Kittredge. “Isn’t it a pity that Georgia had to miss the prom.? She’d have been in her element when her men disappeared into thin air.”
Nobody took Alice’s troubles very seriously, because Alice was always in trouble and out again. But the whole class of 19— looked sober when it was rumored that Rachel Morrison was actually thinking of staying at home and letting the vice-president take her place. For 19— was very proud of Rachel, and besides a junior “prom.” without the junior president would be Hamlet with Hamlet left out. But Rachel couldn’t be made to feel her own importance.
“I couldn’t get on with a strange man,” she declared, when various of her friends generously offered their guests for the president’s use. “Christy will lead the march a lot better than I, and you must let her do it.”
And so 19— was duly grateful to Eleanor Watson when she overruled all Rachel’s objections, after Betty and Nita had both tried to and failed, and insisted that she should take Jim to the “prom.”