“Of course she wouldn’t miss them, the dressy lady, with violets to wear and a new white hat with plumes.”
“The Hilton is going to have an orchestra to play for dancing. Isn’t that pretty cute?”
“But did you hear about Sara Allen’s men? They both telegraphed her last evening that they could come,—both, please note. And now she hasn’t any seats.”
So the talk ran among the merry crowd of girls who jostled one another in the narrow halls after morning chapel. For it was the day of the Glee Club concert. The first installment of men and flowers was already beginning to arrive, giving to the Harding campus that air of festive expectancy which it wears on the rare occasions when the Harding girl’s highest ambition is not to shine in her classes or star in the basket-ball game or the senior play, but only to own a “man.”
Tom Alison and his junior roommate arrived at the Belden soon after luncheon. Tom looked so distinguished in a frock coat and high hat that Betty hoped her pride and satisfaction in taking him around the campus weren’t too dreadfully evident.
Ashley Dwight was tall, round-shouldered, and homely, except when he smiled, which he did very seldom because he was generally too busy making every one within hearing of his low voice hysterical with laughter over his funny stories. He took an instant fancy to Georgia, and of course Georgia liked him—everybody liked Ashley, Tom explained. So Betty’s last worriment vanished, leaving nothing to mar the perfection of her afternoon.
The Hilton girls’ brilliant idea of turning their tea into a dance had been speedily copied by the Westcott and the Belden, and the other houses “came in strong on refreshments, cozy-corners, and conversation,” as Ashley put it. So it was six o’clock before any one dreamed that it could be so late, and the men went off to their hotels for dinner, leaving the girls to gloat over the flower-boxes piled high on the hall-table, to gossip over the afternoon’s adventures, and then hurry off to dress, dinner being a superfluity to them after so many salads and sandwiches, ices and macaroons, all far more appetizing than a campus dinner menu.
“I’ll come down to your room in time to help you finish dressing,” Betty promised Georgia. “My things slip on in a minute.”
But she had reckoned without a loose nail in the stair-carpet, which, apparently resenting her hasty progress past it, had torn a yard of filmy ruching off her skirt before she realized what was happening.
“Oh, dear!” she mourned, “now I shall have to rush just as usual. Helen Chase Adams, the gathering-string is broken. Have you any pink silk? I haven’t a thing but black myself. Then would you try to borrow some? And please ask Madeline to go down and help Georgia. Her roommate is going rush to the concert, so she had to start early.”