“I thought perhaps you’d like to know, since you’re so fond of Eleanor Watson. More or less about that affair of hers last year has leaked out during the summer.”
“You mean——” faltered Betty.
“I mean about the story she signed her name to in the ‘Argus’ and didn’t exactly write. I don’t know the details, except that you were mixed up in it somehow; but I think she did the very square thing when she resigned from Dramatic Club, and I mean to stand by her, and so does Laurie. Eleanor was on the train to-night, and some of the girls rather turned the cold shoulder. I thought—you might like to know right away how matters stood.”
“Thank you,” said Betty soberly, “but I don’t believe she’ll need me much now, Mary. I think she’s learned how to help herself.”
“That’s lucky,” said Mary easily. “Now Roberta Lewis doesn’t seem to get one bit more independent. I’m afraid she’s never going to be very happy here. She ought to go in hard for writing; I know she’d make a success of it.”
“Tell her so,” advised Betty. “She adores you, and now that you’re on the ‘Argus’ staff you certainly ought to be able to influence her.”
“I suppose I ought,” conceded Mary. “The trouble is I’ve never really seen much that she wrote except those valentine verses that she did for us in her freshman year, and she says those were mostly French translations. So when I tell her that I know she can write, she says I’m prejudiced and haven’t any good reason for thinking so. She hasn’t one bit of self-confidence.”
There was a thump and then a thud in the hall. A door banged, somebody shrieked, “Oh, Polly, you darling child!” and then Katherine Kittredge burst into Betty’s room like a whirlwind, dragging Roberta Lewis after her.
“We’re just this minute in,” she panted, “on a special that they sent up from the junction, because they couldn’t bear to have us sitting around the waiting-room down there breaking the ten o’clock rule. Roberta fairly insisted that I should come here first. How’s everything starting off?”
“I insisted!” repeated Roberta indignantly. “K. was in such a hurry to get here that she wouldn’t wait for a car, and there wasn’t any carriage, and my suit case weighs a ton.”