CHAPTER V
GEORGIA BECOMES A “MERRY HEART”
It was a Saturday night in late October, and Madeline Ayres was giving “The Merry Hearts” their long promised and much anticipated mushroom party. Madeline’s room was really no larger than Betty’s, but much experience of living in trunks and tiny apartments had given her a really marvelous skill in the art of making the small appear the larger space. Her wash-stand was hidden in the closet. There also was the steamer-trunk, which, with a bed box that slid neatly under the couch, took the place of a bulky chiffonier. The litter of small bric-a-brac,—of dance and dinner cards and other miscellaneous souvenirs of good times or journeys,—that fill the room of the average college girl to overflowing, had no place at all in Madeline’s scheme of life. There were a few pictures—several small water color landscapes, gifts of her father’s artist friends, a black and white reproduction of a famous painter’s conception of the college girl, with a dainty pen-and-ink sketch done by the great man himself on the wide gold mat, and a little Japanese print of Fuji-yama in a curiously carved sandal-wood frame. The couch cover she had brought from Bagdad herself, and the one tall green vase bore the imprint of a famous French potter. As Betty Wales said once with a sigh, it was easy enough for Madeline to leave out the “footless little things,” when she had such lovely big ones.
So there was plenty of space in Madeline’s room for giving an elaborate spread, and most elaborate was the mushroom party that she had provided for “The Merry Hearts.” Babbie Hildreth’s stunning chafing-dish, with the four copper rabbits standing on their hind legs and looking inquiringly over the edge of the pan, occupied the place of honor on the tea-table. Babbie’s chafing-dish was the envy of the whole college. She had bought it with the money that her mother had sent for the term’s wages of the maid that Babbie was still supposed to be keeping. It represented much self-denial in the matter of riding-horses and suppers at Cuyler’s, which were Babbie’s favorite methods of disposing of the maid’s stipend; but, as Bob said, it was worth a few rides and a good deal of starvation on campus fare to be known as the owner of the swellest chafing-dish in Harding.
Babbie’s chafing-dish was cooking the cream sauce for the “inky drippers,” so Madeline explained to her ignorant guests. “They’re called that because they all turn to ink when they’re old.”
“Not at all pretty of them, I should say,” announced Katherine, surveying the plateful of dainty, gray-brown morsels doubtfully. “I don’t think I shall eat any ‘inky drippers.’”
“Then you’ll miss the very best course,” warned Madeline. “Wait till you see them done in cream, on the toast that Mary-in-the-kitchen is going to bring up for us. They’re much better than creamed oysters. They’re going to be your meat course.”
Madeline’s own chafing-dish, placed on one corner of her desk, was also lighted.
“And is this the first course?” asked Rachel, peeping inquisitively under the cover. “Why, it looks like oyster soup!”