There was another dead silence, but this one was less oppressive. As long as Madeline had not proposed Eleanor Watson, they all felt less embarrassed. As for Georgia Ames, nobody but Roberta and Mary remembered anything about her, and Mary’s recollection was only a vague feeling that she had heard the name before. As soon as she had found out that “Georgia Ames” was Roberta, she had lost all interest in the name; and the rest had not noticed it at all, supposing naturally that it had no significance except as Roberta’s nom de plume. Roberta and Madeline had observed this indifference to Georgia’s personality, and had agreed between themselves to keep silent until the right time came for Georgia’s introduction to “The Merry Hearts.”
It was Betty who finally ended the second long pause.
“What a nice name!” she said, with a glad little sigh of relief. “I don’t know her even by sight, Madeline. Tell us all about her.”
“Haven’t any of you heard of her?” asked Madeline, with an effective stare of surprise.
“I have,” answered Roberta solemnly. “She is a very remarkable freshman, Betty, and I don’t see why you shouldn’t have met her, for she takes a good deal of upper-class work,—‘English Essayists’ for one thing. Dr. Eaton says that her written work is fine. I saw one of her ten-minute tests, and the comment——”
There was a shout of laughter from Mary, in which the rest of “The Merry Hearts” joined, one after another, as each saw the joke, or thought she saw it. Roberta stared at them in what seemed to be wondering, reproachful silence.
“Roberta,” said Mary, when she could speak for laughing, “how many mysterious freshmen do you and Madeline know, who take ‘English Essayists’ and get fulsome compliments from Dr. Eaton? This is the second one we’ve heard of lately. Is this one a joke too?”
“Why, Mary Brooks,” cried Helen all at once, “this isn’t the second one we’ve heard of. It’s the first. That is, I mean they are both the same. Don’t you remember that Roberta signed ‘Georgia Ames’ to those things she sent to the ‘Argus’?”
There was a hubbub of exclamations and questions, and it was some time before Madeline could tell the story of how Georgia began in Dr. Eaton’s class, and of her subsequent career there and as contributor to the “Argus.”