“Hear! hear!” cried Katherine, who was dining at the Belden with Betty. “She’s much too nice to turn into a prim, old-maidish blue-stocking. Don’t you think so, Betty Wales?”
Betty laughed and blushed. “I’m awfully fond of her, and I think she’s nice enough for anything, but I think we must be very careful not to embarrass her or make it uncomfortable for her in any way.”
“Of course we’ll be careful,” promised Mary easily. “We’ll give her the time of her gay young life. ‘Merry Hearts’—match-makers—doesn’t that sound well? Betty, do you agree not to tell Miss Hale that Dr. Eaton is coming? We’d better surprise her too.”
And Betty, who had an uncomfortable suspicion that if Ethel knew about Dr. Eaton, the Nassau party would be straightway minus a chaperon, gladly promised. “For we’re not to blame,” she thought, “as long as we didn’t tell him we were going. And if she should back out now——” Betty’s expression indicated the depths of gloom into which such a calamity would plunge her.
As if the southern voyagers had not already had sufficient unexpected and exciting blessings showered upon them by a kindly providence, something else had to happen at the very last moment. The something else was not on the face of it a blessing. It was a fire.
Bob Parker discovered it. Coming up to her room on the fourth floor two full hours later than any Harding damsel is supposed to be awake, she happened to look out the window at the head of the stairs, and saw a strange light in the Main Building, which was just across the lawn from the Westcott. Bob was an extremely clear-headed young person. She rushed into Babbie’s room and then into Babe’s, commanding them to rouse the house and dress, so as to be ready in case there was anything girls could do to help. Then she fled down-stairs and out of the house in pursuit of her sworn enemy, the night-watchman, who cast one doubting glance in the direction she indicated, and ran for the nearest alarm box. Then he and Bob went together to the burning building, and Bob guarded the outer door, while he pushed up through the smoke to find out where the fire was and how big it had grown before Bob noticed it. A minute later the fire company arrived and the fight began.
It wasn’t much of a fire, as fires go, but it had started—nobody ever knew how—in the library, the very worst place it could have chosen; for every stream of water that the firemen played meant the destruction of shelvesful of valuable books. But Bob had an idea.
“The Westcott girls are dressed,” she said to the fire chief. “Let them make a line and pass out the books by armfuls.”