“I think not. I’d rather be out of the campus fun altogether than in it on charity.”
Betty explained as tactfully as possible the difference between what she called Mr. Morton’s kindness and what was sometimes meant by charity, and suggested a few of the advantages to be gained from living on the campus for a while.
The Mystery listened apathetically.
“Well, it doesn’t matter much what I do. Perhaps I may as well come. Only is there a room that I can have off by itself somewhere? I couldn’t stand being tumbled in with a stranger, or having my door open right against hers.”
“Then,” said Betty eagerly, “you shall have the tower room. It’s so much by itself that I told Mr. Watson—he’s the architect in charge—that I was afraid no girl would dare to sleep alone there. It’s like an island surrounded by linen closets, and then being in a tower it juts out quite away from everything else. And it’s the very prettiest room in the house,” she added enthusiastically.
Miss Bond didn’t know that she cared much how it looked.
“I’ll let you know in a day or two how I decide,” she said. “I should have to see—there are some things to consider. Do you know if the junior novel course has a written lesson to-morrow?”
Betty didn’t know, and neither did Georgia, whom she applied to for the information; but she promised to find out and let the Mystery know by telephone. Miss Bond thanked her with the first touch of real feeling she had shown that afternoon.
CHAPTER IX
MOVING IN
Betty Wales, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows and her trim little figure enveloped in one of her famous kitchen aprons, stood on a chair in the china closet of Morton Hall, covering the top shelves neatly with sheets of white paper. One of the three richest men in New York, very damp and red in the face from his exertions, was screwing in hooks for pots and pans in the pantry next door. A rising young architect was helping the pretty wife of a distinguished psychology professor wash dishes, ready to put on Betty’s carefully spread papers. A would-be literary light was hanging pictures on the softly-tinted walls of the house parlor. Up-stairs Georgia, Babbie, and Eugenia Ford were superintending the efforts of the night-watchman and a janitor to arrange a bed, a bureau, a wash-stand, a desk, and two chairs to the best advantage in rooms guaranteed by the rising young architect aforesaid to be perfectly capable of holding those articles,—or, in the case of double rooms, twice the number.