Madeline shook her head. “Rachel asked me, but I told her I couldn’t bother.”
Betty laughed. “Junior ushering isn’t generally considered a bother, Miss Ayres. It’s a great honor and a lot of fun.”
“What is honor but an empty bubble?” declaimed Madeline gaily. “And I don’t see where the fun comes in. You have to stand up behind when you usher. I’d rather sit down in front. Besides, most of commencement is deadly dull. While you are hurrying around in the heat spoiling your best clothes and being bored I shall go trolley-riding, or if there’s something I want to see, like the Ivy Day procession, I can hang out of my window in a comfortable kimono——”
“You can’t do that, Madeline,” exclaimed Betty in horror-struck tones, “with the campus full of mothers and men.”
Madeline laughed. “No, strictly speaking I can’t,” she said, “because I don’t own a kimono since I gave my red silk one to the Nassau wash-lady who admired it, and I draw the line at borrowing clothes. I should have to borrow some, though, if I ushered. I haven’t anything that would look even presentable beside the dreams of elegance and beauty that you people are going to wear.”
Betty jumped up with a start. “Good-bye, Madeline,” she said. “I must go and tell the B’s about Ethel’s supper.”
She found Babbie taking the wrappings off of a bulky package that the expressman had just brought.
“I was in my wrapper when he knocked,” explained Babbie cheerfully, “and I thought of course it was Bob, because she walks just like a man, so I said, ‘Come in.’ And all my bureau drawers were tumbled out on Babe’s bed. But I guess he’s seen things like that before, if he’s been in Harding long. It’s my junior usher dress, Betty. How these knots do stick! And since I used my scissors to cut picture wire they won’t cut string.”
With Betty’s help the troublesome knots were all undone at last, and Babbie shook out her new dress with a little sigh of satisfaction.