“But I promised Binks I’d bring you. You can at least cheer up the other one, and if you funk on asking her then you can send a faculty later.”
“That reminds me that there isn’t going to be any too much ‘later.’” Betty told them the great news, ending with, “So please plan a scrumptious housewarming right away, Madeline.”
And Madeline promised, grumbling, however, about the constant interruptions to which her aspiring genius was subject.
“You want a housewarming,” she wailed. “Eleanor wants a masque for the Terrible Ten. Mary wants an alumnæ stunt for Dramatic Club’s June meeting. Dick Blake wants a pantomime for the Vagabonds’ ladies’ night. So it goes! And the worst of it is that the editors sternly refuse to want anything of me—except the Sunday Supplement people, and they want nothing but Vapor for the Vacant-Minded. I’m losing my mind—what little I have—trying to make the articles sound silly enough.”
Betty went next day with Georgia to see Binks Ames, who proved to be a thin, brown little freshman, with wonderful gray eyes and a friendly, impulsive manner.
“It’s queer about me,” she told them. “I seem to attract freaks. All my friends at school were queer unfortunates that my brothers fussed at having to take around when they came to visit me. And now the first thing I’ve done at Harding is to have mumps at the same time with Miss Ellison, who writes poems——”
“Technically known as the C. P., or College Poet,” Georgia interrupted.
“And a queer scientific person with a bulging forehead and a squint, named Jones. We weren’t any of us very sick, and we sat and talked by the hour, and hit it off beautifully. And now they’ve gone”—she lowered her voice—“there’s the Mystery. We named her that because she spooked around and never came near us, except by mistake. But the last two days, since we’ve been here alone, we’ve become quite dangerously chummy, and she’s told me things to make your heart ache.”
The sympathetic thrill in Binks’ voice explained sufficiently why unfortunates always sought her out, and her next remark gave further testimony to her real genius for friendship. “I never let them see that I understand. It would scare them off. I act as if they were like everybody else. Seeing that people know you’re a freak or an unfortunate only makes you more of a one, don’t you think? But Georgia has told me that you are the kind that can straighten things out—not just let the poor things stick to you like burrs and try to make up to them, the silly way I do. Now, Georgia, you’d better wait here. I’ll take Miss Wales in to her myself, and then you’ll be an excuse for me to get away and leave her there.”
The Mystery was crouching by a west window, looking out at Paradise, with the low sun tangled in the yellow elms on the hill beyond. She was tall and slight and stooped, with a muddy complexion and a dull, expressionless face. She flushed uncomfortably when she saw them, and received Binks’ stammered explanation about wanting to share her callers with stolid indifference. Left alone with her, Betty remembered Anne Carter, the girl with the scar, and wished she had made Binks tell her what in this girl’s life had left her so frightened and hopeless and so bitterly reticent. She was a junior. She lived on Porter Hill—about a mile from the campus. She didn’t mind the walk; you could count it in your exercise hours. She was not particularly interested in any study; she just took what seemed best. If you meant to teach it wasn’t wise to specialize too much; you might have to take a position for Latin or Algebra when you had applied for History. She would prefer to teach English herself. Betty had brought Binks a new “Argus” to read. She asked the Mystery—her name was Esther Bond—if she had seen Helena Mason’s new story.