Father smiled at her indulgently. “If girls learned to write a copper-plate hand nowadays as they did when you were young, we shouldn’t be so dependent on typewriters. Betty’s scrawl is no worse than the rest. Well, now that this matter is settled and off our minds, let’s walk out to the big bluff before dark.”
So the discussion was closed, the “if” dwindled to nothingness once more, and two weeks after Jim Watson had assisted Mr. Morton to see Betty off in a fashion befitting that gentleman’s idea of her importance, he was at the Harding station to meet her—quite without assistance.
“Was I the last straw?” he inquired gaily, as they walked down the long platform toward Main Street.
“The last straw?” repeated Betty absently. She was wondering whether the Student’s Aid seniors would expect her to help meet the freshmen at their trains.
“Well, the last figure in the column that you added up in order to estimate the possibilities of Harding as a mission field,” amended Jim. “Because if I helped to turn the scales in favor of your coming here I can at last consider myself a useful member of society.”
“Now don’t be absurd, Jim,” Betty ordered sternly. “Whatever else you do, I’m sure you’ll never succeed in being a brilliant object of charity.”
“Unappreciated, as usual,” sighed Jim. “Nevertheless I invite you to have an ice at Cuyler’s. It’s going to be very awkward, Betty—your being proprietress of the Tally-ho. I can never ask you to feed there.”
“But you can ask all the pretty girls I’m going to introduce you to,” Betty suggested, but Jim only shrugged his shoulders sceptically.
“Pretty girls are all right,” he said, “but I already know as many girls here as I can manage—or I shall when they all arrive. Don’t forget that I’m to help you meet Miss Helen Chase Adams to-night, and Miss Morrison to-morrow, and Miss Ayres whenever she telegraphs.”
“You mustn’t neglect your work,” Betty warned him.