After that came the last toast, “Our esprit de corps.” Kate Denise had it, for no reason that Betty could see unless Christy had wanted to show Kate that the class understood the difference between her and the other Hill girls. And then Kate was one of 19—’s best speakers and so could do justice to the subject.
“I think we ought to drink this toast standing,” she began. “We’ve drunk to the cast and the team, to our presidents, our engaged girls, our faculty. Now I ask you to drink to the very greatest pride and honor of this class,—to the way we’ve always stood together, to the way we stand together to-night, to the way we shall stand together in the future, no matter where we go or what we do. It’s not every class that can put this toast on its supper-card. Not every class knows what it means to be run, not in the interest of a clique or by a few leading spirits, but by the good-feeling of the whole big class. And so I ask you to drink one more toast—to the girl who started this feeling of good-fellowship at a certain class-meeting that some of us remember, and who has kept it up by being a friend to everybody and making us all want to be friends. Here’s to Betty Wales.”
When Betty heard her name she almost jumped out of her chair with amazement. She had been listening admiringly to Kate’s eloquent little speech, never dreaming how it would end and now they were all clapping and pushing back their chairs again, and Clara Madison was trying to make her stand up in hers.
“Speech!” shouted the irrepressible Bob and the girls sat down again and the big table grew still, while Betty twisted her napkin into a knot and smiled bravely into all the welcoming faces.
“I’m sure Kate is mistaken,” she said at last in a shaky little voice. “I’m sure every girl in 19— wanted every other girl to have her share of the fun just as much as I did. The class cup, that we won at tennis in our sophomore year is on the table somewhere. Let’s fill it with lemonade and sing to everybody right down the line. And while they’re filling the cup let’s sing to Harding College.”
It took a long time to sing to everybody, but not a minute too long. Betty watched the faces of the girls when their turns came—the girls who were always sung to, like Emily Davis, and the girls who had never been sung to in all the four years and who flushed with pride and pleasure to hear their names ring out and to feel that they too belonged to the finest, dearest class that ever left Harding.
“Now we must have the regular stunts,” said Eleanor. There was a shuffling of chairs and she and Betty and the people who had had toasts slipped back to their own particular crowds, leaving the top of the table for the stunt-doers. It was shockingly late, but they wanted all the old favorites. Who knew when Emily Davis would be back to do her temperance lecture or how long it would be before they could hear Madame Patti sing “Home, Sweet Home” through a wheezy gramophone?
“Was it all right?” Eleanor whispered to Betty as they hunted up their wraps a little later.
“Perfectly splendid,” said Betty with shining eyes. “The loveliest end-up to the loveliest commencement that ever was.”
“We haven’t got to say good-bye yet,” said somebody. “There’s a class meeting to-morrow at nine, you know.”