“Kate is chairman of the supper committee and Portia.”
“Everybody who’s anything is a lot of things, I guess,” said little Helen Adams. She herself was in the mob that made the background for the trial scene in “The Merchant of Venice,” and she was as elated over her part as any of the chief actors could possibly be over their leading rôles. But that wasn’t all. She was trying for the Ivy song, which is chosen each year by competition. She had been working on her song in secret all through the year, and she felt sure that nobody had cared so much or tried so hard as she,—though of course, she reminded herself sternly it took more than that to write the winning song and she didn’t mean to be disappointed if she failed.
“Order please, young ladies,” commanded Babe, who delighted to exercise her presidential dignities. “We are straying far from the subject in hand—to adapt the words of our beloved Latin professor. Betty Wales was going to tell us how the ‘Merry Hearts’ could go out with a splurge.”
“I object to the president’s English,” interrupted Madeline. “The connotation of the term splurge is unpleasant. We don’t wish to splurge. Now go ahead, Betty.”
“Why, it’s nothing much,” said Betty modestly, “and probably it’s not at all what Bob is thinking of. It’s just that, as Helen says, everybody who is in anything is in a lot of things and most of the class are being left out of the commencement plans. I thought of it first that day we had a lecture on monopolies in sociology. Don’t you remember Miss Norris’s saying that there were classes and masses and excellent examples of monopolies right here in college, and that we needn’t wait until we were out to have a chance to fight trusts and equalize wages.”
“Oh, that was just an illustration,” objected Bob blandly. “Miss Norris didn’t mean anything by it.”
“She’s a Harding girl herself,” Betty went on, “and it’s certainly true, even if she didn’t intend it to be acted on. Thursday night when I went over the things I had to do about commencement and thought I couldn’t do any of them I felt dreadfully greedy.”
“But Betty,” Rachel took her up, “don’t you think it takes executive ability to be on committees and plan things? Commencement would be at sixes and sevens if the wrong girls had charge of it.”
“Yes, of course it would,” agreed Betty. “Only I wondered if all the left-out people are the wrong kind.”
“Of course they’re not,” said Madeline Ayres with decision. “What is executive ability, anyway?”