“No fair, running off to talk secrets,” Madeline called after the pair.
“Curiosity killed a cat,” Betty chanted gaily back at her, leading the way to the back campus.
“It’s awfully nice of you to ask me to come, when so many people want you,” said Georgia shyly.
“Oh, no, it’s not,” protested Betty. “I shall have a whole week with the others after you’ve gone. Besides, there’s something I especially want to talk to you about. Let’s go and sit on the bank below the observatory.”
They found comfortable seats among the gnarled roots of an old elm, where they could look across at Paradise and down on a bed of gorgeous rhododendrons, over which great moths, more marvelously colored than the flowers, flitted lazily in the twilight. Then Betty plunged into the thick of things.
“You remember the pendant that you wore on your chain the night of the Glee Club concert. You said it was a present. Would you mind telling me who gave it to you? I have good reason for asking.”
Georgia flushed a little and made the answer that Betty had hoped for. “The senior Miss Harrison gave it to me last Christmas. I know you and Madeline don’t like her, and I don’t like her a bit better. But what can you do, Betty, when some one takes a fancy to you? You can’t snub her just because she happens to be stupid and unpopular—not if you’re a ‘Merry Heart,’ anyway.”
“No,” said Betty, “you can’t. But if you don’t like her you won’t feel so bad about what I’ve got to tell you.”
Georgia listened to the story aghast. “But I’m not so dreadfully surprised,” she said. “It explains so many things. She started to take Caroline’s class-pin one day in our room. I supposed she had picked it up without thinking, so when she went away I asked her for it and she acted so funny when she gave it back. And then the way she happened to give me this pin. I went to call on her once last fall, after she had asked me to dinner, and I noticed it shining under the edge of the carpet. When I called her attention to it she didn’t seem to understand, so I picked it up myself. She acted queer then too, and when I admired it and said what a pretty pendant it would make she fairly insisted on my taking it. Of course I wouldn’t, but she had it fixed to go on a chain and sent it to me for Christmas.” Georgia interrupted herself suddenly. “It was ages after the Glee Club concert before you found out about Miss Harrison. What did you think of me all that time?”
“Why just at first I couldn’t understand it,” said Betty truthfully, “but after I’d thought it over I was sure you weren’t to blame and I’ve been getting surer and surer all the time. But I am awfully glad to know how it all happened.”