After Mr. Morton’s performance had been duly applauded, the night-watchman sang to the Beneficent Benefactor, and Madeline sang to the Courageous Captain, meaning Mrs. Post herself. The Daring Defender was of course the night-watchman, glorified by Babbie as worthy of a gift of “salad and ice and all things nice”—in memory of the supper the three B’s had spilled on his head when they were freshmen. Madeline was the Esthetic Elevator because she hung pictures and planned entertainments in a way to elevate the taste of the inmates, and Betty was the Flossy Furbelow, who sat and watched other people work. The alphabet ended with F, the chorus explained,
“For Settlers must work
While others may rhyme.
We’d have gone farther
If there had been time.”
But they had gone far enough to put Mrs. Post at her ease with everybody. While fresh tea was being made by the contrite Jonas, the Settlers escorted her triumphantly over her domain, and she praised everything and thanked everybody and seemed to fit so beautifully into the niche she had come to fill that Betty fairly danced with relief and excitement. If only the girls caught the right spirit as easily!
But of course some of them didn’t. There was the Thorn, who roomed on the ground floor next to Betty, and who ran in twenty times during the first week to make an absurd complaint or ask an impossible favor. There was the Mystery up in her tower; she locked herself in so ostentatiously that she offended her next door neighbor, who promptly announced her intention of leaving such a “cliquey” house. There was the Goop, whose table manners were only equaled by the fine disorder of her apartment. She had been assigned to a double room, but she had to be tactfully transferred to a single, on the tearful complaint of her roommate; and more tactfully urged to pick up her possessions, and not to eat with her knife. Then there were the Twin Digs, to whom the ten o’clock rule was as if it had never been, and the Romantic Miss, who professed bland and giggling innocence in regard to campus rules about gentlemen callers. Jim named them all, except the Mystery, in the last confidential chat that he and Betty had together, and he made her promise solemnly to keep him informed of their escapades.
“For I feel like a sort of Dutch uncle to all the Morton Hall-ites,” he explained. “May I run up once in a while to see how you are getting on?”
“May you? Will you?” was Betty’s enthusiastic response.
“There might be some little changes,” went on Jim boldly. “The only real test of a house is to live in it a while. If there is anything that doesn’t suit, you’ll let me know?”