“But the rest of us can easily imagine you as the first secretary of the Student’s Aid,” Prexy told her kindly. “We considered several others, but none of them quite fitted. We are all sure that you will fit. The board of directors wished you to understand that the choice was unanimous. As for me, I’ve always meant to get you on the Harding faculty some way or other, because the Harding spirit is the most important thing that any of us has to teach, and you know how to teach it. This position will enable you to specialize on the Harding spirit without bothering your head about logarithms or the principles of exposition or cuneiform inscriptions or Spanish verbs. It seems like a real opportunity, and I hope you can take it.”
“Oh, I hope so, too!” exclaimed Betty eagerly. “But the trouble is, President Wallace, the world seems to be just crammed with opportunities, and they conflict. One that conflicts with this is the opportunity to stay at home with my family. I hadn’t decided, when I got your letter, whether I ought to come back to the tea-shop, or be with mother and father this winter. But living here and looking out for the Morton Hall girls does sound just splendid. Please, what would be the duties of the secretary, President Wallace?”
The President smiled. “Whatever you made them, I think. Perhaps the Student’s Aid directors may want to offer a few suggestions, but in the main I guarantee you a perfectly free hand.”
“Isn’t that even worse than to be told just what to do—harder, I mean?” demanded Betty, so despairingly that Prexy threw back his head and laughed.
“Think it over,” he advised. “Talk it over with Mr. Morton and your family. Write to your friends about it. By the way, I suppose you know that Miss Morrison and Miss Adams are to be members of our faculty next year.”
Betty knew about Rachael’s appointment, but not about Helen’s.
“Oh, it would be great to be back,” she declared. “There’s no question of what I want to do,—only of what I ought to do, and what I can do. It would be terrible if I should start and then have to give up because I didn’t know how to go on. It would be worse than being ‘flunked out’—I mean than failing to pass your examinations,” added Betty hastily.
“I understand the expression ‘flunked out,’” Prexy assured her gaily, “but I never noticed any of your kind of girl in the ‘flunked out’ ranks. Well, think it all over. Mr. Morton will dance with impatience when he finds that everything can’t be decided in a breath, and just as he wants it, but we’ll let him dance a little; and if he uses too persuasive powers on you in the meantime I should not be unwarrantably interfering if I objected.”
“He can’t object to you dictating in his private affairs a little,” quoted Betty gaily, as they went back to join the other Giants, who were sitting on a pile of lumber, animatedly discussing the relative merits of different makes of typewriters.
“Sewing-machines we leave entirely to you, Miss B. A.,” Mr. Morton told her, with a keen glance that tried to guess at her reception of Prexy’s offer. “Just let me know the kind you want and the number. No hurry.”