“Oh, and is that what’s to pay?” said Nora, smiling comprehensively at the B. C. A.’s. “Provin’ anything is hard worrk. I could never prove me sums at school. That’s because they was generally wrong. It’s awful hard to prove what ain’t so, ain’t it now, Miss Madeline?” And Nora departed amiably for more muffins, ignoring the bursts of laughter that followed her. Nora had long since ceased to attach any significance to the laughter of the Harding girls. They laughed just as other people breathed. It was as unaccountable as the enormous number of muffins they consumed.
They were still laughing when Nora came back with Mary’s order. They sent her off again for hot tea, and they drank Madeline’s health in it, and Miss Dwight’s, and the health of the Walking Lady who had helped Madeline to play out her trump card. They congratulated Madeline riotously, they made wonderful plans for Miss Dwight’s visit to Harding, and others for seeing the first night of the play.
“We are at last justified in the eyes of the wide, wide world,” declaimed Mary pompously. “We’ve been called the cleverest crowd in college, and now we’ve shown ’em. A well-kept husband like mine and a well-kept tea-room like Betty’s are nice little features, but a play for Agatha Dwight is the real thing. And the moral of that is: Look out for a genius, and the grand-stand play will look out for itself.”
“And the moral of that,” said little Helen Chase Adams primly, “is that it’s time for faculty wives to dress for dinner.”
“Also campus faculty,” added Rachel hastily, and the most exciting B. C. A. tea-drinking of the season reluctantly dispersed.
CHAPTER XIV
AS A BULL PUP ORDAINS
Harding College was almost as excited over Madeline’s play as the B. C. A.’s had been.
“Why, she wrote it in this very town,” wide-eyed freshmen told each other.
“In this very room, maybe,” diners at the Tally-ho added wonderingly.
“And she’s only been out of college a year and a half.”