“Oh, dear,” thought Betty, sadly, “I wish I weren’t so stupid and so meek. Madeline can always answer people back when they’re disagreeable, and Rachel is so dignified that Jean wouldn’t think of saying things like that to her.”
Then she smiled in spite of herself. It was all such a stupid tangle. Jean insisted on blaming her, and Roberta and the committee had insisted on praising her for finding 19— a Shylock, when she never intended or expected to do anything of the kind. “It just shows,” thought Betty, “that the things that seem like deep-laid schemes are very often just happenings, and the simple-looking ones are the schemes. Well, I certainly hope Jean will get Bassanio. Eleanor’s window is open. I wonder if she can hear me.”
“Oh, Eleanor,” she called, when the window had been opened wider in response to her trill, “there isn’t any committee meeting this afternoon. Don’t you want to go with me to see Anne Carter? Let’s start early and take a walk first. It’s such a lovely glitter-y day.”
The “glitter-y” day foregathered with a brisk north wind after luncheon, and it was still mid-afternoon when Betty and Eleanor ran up Miss Carter’s front steps, delighted at the prospect of getting in out of the cold. At the door they hesitated.
“It’s so long since I’ve regularly called on anybody in college,” laughed Betty, “that I’ve forgotten how to act. Don’t we go right up to her room, Eleanor?”
“Why yes. That’s certainly what people used to do to us in our freshman year. Don’t you remember how we were always getting caught with our kimonos on and our rooms fixed for sweep-day by girls we’d never seen?”
“I should think so.” Betty smiled reminiscently. “Helen Adams used to get so fussed when she was caught doing her hair. Then let’s go right up. We want to be friendly and informal and make her feel at home. She has the front room on the second floor. Helen spoke of its being so big and pretty. I do hope she’s in.”
She was in, for she called a brisk “come” in answer to Betty’s knock. She was sitting at a table-desk by the window, with her back to her door, and when it opened she did not turn her head. Neither did Jean Eastman who sat beside her, their heads together over the same book. Jean was reading aloud in hesitating, badly accented French, and paid even less attention to the intruders than Miss Carter, who called hastily, “In just one minute, Miss Harrison,” and then cautioned Jean not to forget the elisions.
“But we’re not Miss Harrison,” said Betty laughingly, amazed and embarrassed at the idea of meeting Jean here.
At the sound of her voice both the girls turned quickly and Miss Carter came forward with a hearty apology for her mistake. “I was expecting some one else,” she said, “and I thought of course it was she who came in. It was very stupid of me. Won’t you sit down?”