CHAPTER X
THE UNDOING OF GEORGIA
All Christmas vacations are alike. Just as you are beginning to realize that Christmas is really coming, and that it is almost time to pack to go home, the faculty make a unanimous decision to give papers or written lessons to all their classes. This seems to be their idea of making the holiday pleasant, by making the week before the holidays particularly full of agonies. And no matter what courses you are taking, the written lesson in the one you know least about is sure to come on the last day of the term. When it is over, you rush back to your room, tuck the Christmas packages that you have strict injunctions not to open until the right day comes into your trunk, shut the lid—with the assistance of several friends—sweep the débris that litters your dresser into a suit case, and run for your train. Probably you think you have failed in your test, but you have no time to worry about that now. You are going home for Christmas! If you are lucky enough to live on one of the main-traveled roads you will have plenty of company on the journey, and you will slip from your friends’ clamorous good-byes straight into the waiting arms of your family. And before you have settled down to the joyful fact that you are at home, Christmas is over, everything you wanted most is packed in your trunk—but with mother’s packing there is somehow room enough—and you are speeding back to college. Glad? Yes—and sorry. But how much sorrier you would be if the rest were going back without you.
Betty’s Christmas was “just perfectly lovely”—so she told her father, who always sympathized with Betty’s raptures. It brought her the furs she had wanted, and the Temple Shakespeares, and the snow-shoes, and a copper chafing-dish as nearly like Babbie’s as Will had been able to buy.
“Oh, you extravagant boy!” cried Betty when she saw it. “When I have a perfectly good nickel one now. But things will taste twice as good in this! Let’s make a rabbit this minute!”
And they did—at ten o’clock on Christmas morning, and the Wales family unanimously declared that they had never tasted such a rabbit before, and unanimously laid the credit at the door of Harding College, which had taught them all that the most impossible things are often the most amusing.
One thing that made this Christmas vacation seem particularly precious was because father and mother would not be at home for the Easter one. Betty’s father had overworked, so the doctor said, and must take a long, restful vacation. So he and Mrs. Wales were going to spend the remainder of the winter in the West Indies. They had not decided just when or where they would go.
“We’ll attend to all that when we get rid of you, young lady,” said Mr. Wales, playfully pinching Betty’s ear. “Don’t those look interesting?” He pointed to a great pile of steamship and railway folders on the library table. “And if you weren’t in college we’d take you along.”
“Oh, dear!” sighed Betty. “But I don’t believe you would. You and mother are such old lovers You’d rather go alone.”