“This is your office hour, isn’t it?” she asked doubtfully, as Dr. Eaton pulled forward a chair for her in silence.
“It is, Miss Wales. What can I do for you?” asked Dr. Eaton in his turn; and Betty, blushing furiously, plunged straight into the midst of things.
“You know Georgia Ames isn’t anybody,” she began. “We made her all up, you know,—but your friend Mr. Alison wrote that dreadful note.”
Dr. Eaton knit his brows and stared. “I—I beg your pardon,” he said at last, “but will you please say that again?”
“Why, she’s just an imaginary person,” explained Betty. “Madeline Ayres thought of her first, but she let us use her and we’ve had lots of fun fooling people with her. Madeline wrote those themes that you liked so much, and Helen Adams wrote the Mrs. Erasmus J. Ames part, and we all helped with the other things. But that dreadful letter from Tombstone wasn’t ours at all—or Georgia’s. Your friend, Mr. Alison, sent it and the picture. So please don’t mind. And—and isn’t it one bit amusing?”
Dr. John Elliot Eaton still knit his fine brows and stared at Betty as if she had been a ghost—or a double. “Miss Wales,” he said, “I’ve no doubt I seem awfully dense, but I don’t understand yet. I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about. Will you please begin at the beginning and go on very slowly indeed? And—I promise to find it amusing.”
There was a reassuring twinkle in his eyes now, and Betty breathed a sigh of deep relief and began again at the beginning, stopping often to let Dr. Eaton ask questions. When at last he comprehended the first chapter of Georgia’s experiences, he threw back his head and laughed till he cried. He repeated this performance several times during the rest of the story. Before it was finished, Betty had the feeling that she was talking to an old friend. She liked Dr. Eaton better than ever, because he liked Georgia, even though she had completely taken him in; and she was secretly glad that “The Merry Hearts” had “elected” her to explain.
When she had arrived once more at Mr. John Alison’s unauthorized “touch” of sentimentality, Dr. Eaton interrupted again.
“Alison’s a trump,” he said. “I must write and thank him for forcing your hand. As far as I can see you might have gone on fooling me till June, if he hadn’t interfered.”
“Oh, no,” said Betty solemnly. “We wanted to keep Georgia till spring term, but Bob—I mean Miss Marie Parker—suggested to-day that we couldn’t have done it, even by having Georgia leave college. You would have handed in a report of her unfinished work to Miss Stuart, and then everything would have come out.”