And she’ll do it—that is all.
She’ll rip the old braid, sew on new,
And prompt return your skirt to you.”
So read the rhyming notice, and below it was printed in large letters, “Lowest Prices for all Repairing, Mending, and Plain Sewing (including Gym Suits).”
When the strip of braid got back to Fluffy it looked like the tail of a kite, with its collection of orders scattered artistically up and down its length.
“Yes, I wrote the rhyme,” Fluffy admitted modestly, when the class was dismissed. “Wrote it between breakfast and chapel. What made me late to Psych. was buying the braid. Georgia wrote one too, and we are racing each other to see who gets the largest number of orders. Oh, yes, I suppose they do need the work—or the money rather. But the thing that appeals to me is the impression I shall make on my mother when I go home all neat and tidy and mended up for once. Haven’t you a freshman sister? Well, put her down for a gym suit, that’s a dear! Georgia’s going to catch me a dozen grasshoppers if I win. I hate catching things so—my hair always blows in my eyes.”
“And what if Georgia wins?”
“Oh, then I’ve got to catch her a dozen grasshoppers,” said Fluffy resignedly. “But I don’t care much, because I shall hire it done, and that will be all for the good of the cause. But I can’t believe that she will win, because gym suits count as three skirt braids, and positions for waitresses count as five. I’m going to get a lot of those from eleven to twelve. Georgia is furious because this is her lab. morning, and she can’t get a good start.” And Fluffy trailed her skirt braid over to Junior Lit. where she got so many orders that she had to unpin them, place them on file, so to speak, in the front of her shirt-waist, and start over.
It may be reprehensible to wager grasshoppers; but, as Fluffy pointed out to some humane friend, they were doomed in any case, and there was a piquant flavor of adventure about the whole proceeding that appealed strongly to one type of the Harding mind. The committee on the Encouragement (and discovery) of the Timid Poor convened hastily that same evening in Betty’s shiny new office, and discovered that while their day’s work had necessarily been less spectacular than their rivals’, it had been equally effective. There would be no trouble in matching workers to skirt braids.
“But there’ll be all kinds of trouble about flunked courses,” announced Eugenia Ford solemnly, “unless we remember to pay better attention in ‘Psych. 6.’ He gave out a written lesson for to-morrow on purpose, because there was so much whispering and rustling around to-day.”