“I guess our little Catherine will be heard from some day. Miss Ayres was the leading literary light of her class, just like Cath. I can tell you these college reputations mean something!”
“Did you hear how she got Miss Dwight to read her play?”
“What’s it about, anyway?”
“Nobody knows—it’s a dead secret. But college girls come into it, I guess, because Miss Dwight is going to visit Miss Ayres up here—to study the atmosphere, I suppose.”
“I’m going in for elocution this next semester. If I get a good part in the senior play, I shall seriously consider going on the stage. Miss Dwight encourages college girls to do that. She thinks it offers a splendid field for educated women.”
So was Harding College once more stage-struck, and Miss Dick’s school as well. The Smallest Sister carried the great news there, and Frisky Fenton and her crowd bought Miss Dwight’s pictures to adorn their dressers, and bribed the Smallest Sister, by the subtlest arts known to the big girl for beguiling the little one, to arrange a dinner-party for them at the Tally-ho on the night when Miss Dwight was to be there.
“You promised me a spread down there long ago,” the Smallest Sister urged Betty.
“But I shall be so very busy that night,” Betty objected. “Couldn’t you come by yourself then, and have the party later?”
“But the others want to see her just as much as I do,” Dorothy urged. “Frisky said she would about die of joy if she could see her, and so will all of them. And they’ve been awfully nice to me.”
“All right,” said Betty resignedly, “only I can’t sit with you and you’ll probably have a very poor dinner, because the tea-shop will be so crowded.”