“Yes,” said Roberta, “she is. You haven’t written as much as you’ve crossed out since I came, Betty Wales. We shall be late.”
Betty shut her fountain pen with a snap, and tossed the much blotted page on top of a heap of its fellows, which were piled haphazard in a chair beside her desk.
“Who cares for Madeline Ayres?” she said, and arm in arm the two friends started for the back campus, where they found all the rest of the senior “Merry Hearts” waiting for them. Dora Carlson couldn’t come, Eleanor explained; and Anne Carter and Georgia thought that they were too new to membership in the society to have any voice in deciding how it should be perpetuated.
“It’s rather nice being just by ourselves, isn’t it?” said Bob.
“It’s rather nice being all together,” added Babbie in such a significant tone that Babe gave her a withering glance and summarily called the meeting to order.
The discussion that followed was animated, but it didn’t seem to arrive anywhere. There were Lucile and Polly and their friends in the sophomore class who would be proud to receive a legacy from the seniors they admired so much; and there was a junior crowd, who, as K. put it, were a “jolly good sort,” and would understand the “Merry Hearts’” policy and try to keep up its influence in the college. Everybody agreed that, if the society went down at all, it ought to descend to a set of girls who were prominent enough to give a certain prestige to its democratic principles, and who, being intimate friends, would enjoy working and playing together as the first generation of “Merry Hearts” had, and would know how to bring in the “odd ones” like Dora and Anne, when opportunity offered.
“But after all,” said Rachel dejectedly, “it would never be quite the same. We are ‘Merry Hearts’ because we wanted to be. The idea just fitted us.”
“And will look like a rented dress suit on any one else,” added Madeline frivolously. “Of course I’m not a charter member of 19—, and perhaps I ought not to speak. But don’t you think that the younger classes will find their own best ways of keeping up the right spirit at Harding? I vote that the ‘Merry Hearts’ has done its work and had its little fling, and that it would better go out when we do.”
“Then it ought to go out in a regular blaze of glory,” said Bob, when murmurs of approval had greeted Madeline’s opinion.
“I know a way.” Betty spoke out almost before she thought, and then she blushed vividly, fearing that she had been too hasty and that the “Merry Hearts” might not approve of her plan.