“You’re right, Betty,” said Mary soberly, looking really troubled and reaching for the manuscript. “It was very thoughtless of me to consent to such a thing, and I’m heartily ashamed. Girls, will you please promise not to mention this to any one? And Betty, this isn’t the way the editors treat the unsolicited contributions. Nora Carleton is lovely about them, trying to see good in them all, going to call on some of the girls, and asking Miss Mills and Miss Raymond to try to give them a start. Oh, it’s not the ‘Argus’ editors who act this way; it’s just horrid, thoughtless me.” Mary’s rare fit of contrition had taken a serious hold upon her.
But Madeline had suffered too much from Mary to have any mercy upon her now.
“Don’t be sentimental, Mary,” she said, “and give me back that paper. I won’t read it aloud—honor bright.”
Mary shook her head. “No, and”—her voice quivered—“I don’t think you ought to have asked, Madeline.”
“Don’t you?” asked Madeline coolly. “Well, I presume I haven’t a very high code of honor, but, leaving that aside for the moment, I know Georgia, and I’m sure that she’d be pleased and proud to have one of her stories read aloud at a select gathering of juniors like this. And as for my seeing it, I’ve seen every word that Georgia has written this year excepting this story and the poem she sent you before.”
“Well then,” began Mary, obviously weakened by Madeline’s calm argument, “I suppose there wouldn’t be any great harm in your reading it. But you’d better wait and let her show it to you herself.”
“Yes, indeed,” agreed Roberta, finding her voice again. She would almost as soon have had her story read aloud as subjected to Madeline’s cool, merciless laughter. “I think the meanest thing of all is to show a girl’s best friends how silly she is,” concluded Roberta fiercely.
“Roberta,” said Madeline with mock solemnity, “aren’t you forgetting what Georgia owes to me?”
Roberta’s sense of justice was very strong. She hesitated an instant, then submitted to the propriety of Madeline’s claim. “Yes, Madeline,” she said, “I forgot. I know—that is, it’s all right for Madeline to see it, Mary. I shouldn’t say so if I weren’t sure.”
Madeline retired triumphantly to a corner with the manuscript, of which she meant to read just enough to tease Roberta about later; and Betty, who felt that the presidential spread was being too much engrossed with the affairs of an obscure freshman, turned the thoughts of “The Merry Hearts” into safer channels.