“And I understand from Miss Watson that you people are particularly interested in that play,” he added, “so I’ve corraled some tickets and Mrs. Bob and a bunch of men.”
“And the Carletons will have an early dinner,” put in Mrs. Bob. “Oh, I forgot. You don’t know about that either. Mrs. Carleton won’t be back from the country until four o’clock, so she asked me to give you the invitation to have New Year’s dinner with them.”
“But did she know there were six of us?” asked Betty anxiously, whereupon everybody laughed and Mrs. Bob assured her that Mrs. Carleton had mentioned seven to her, and hadn’t seemed in the least worried.
That was the way things went all through their visit. Mrs. Bob took them shopping, with frequent intermissions for cakes and tea at queer little tea-rooms, with alluring names like “The London Muffin Room,” or the “Yellow Tea-Pot.” Her husband escorted them to the east-side brass-shops, assuring them solemnly that it wasn’t everybody he showed his best finds to, and mourning when their rapturous enthusiasm prevented his getting them a real bargain. The newspaper men gave a “breakfast-luncheon” for them—breakfast for themselves, and luncheon for their guests—which was so successful that it was continued that same evening by a visit to a Russian puppet-show and supper in a Chinese restaurant. The pretty artist sold one of her pictures and invited them to help her celebrate, just as if they were old friends, who knew how hard she had struggled and how often she hadn’t had money enough to buy herself bread and butter, to say nothing of offering jam—in the shape of oysters on the half-shell and lobster Newburg—to other people.
It was all so gay and light-hearted and unexpected—the way things happened in Bohemia. Nobody hurried or worried, though everybody worked hard. It was just as Madeline had told them, only more so. The girls said a sorrowful good-bye to Mrs. Bob, Mrs. McLean and the little black kitten and journeyed back to Harding sure that there never had been and never would be another such vacation for them.
“How can there be?” said Bob dejectedly. “At Easter we shall all have to get clothes, and after that we shan’t know a vacation from mid-year week.”
“Which delightful function begins in exactly fourteen days,” said Katherine Kittredge. “Is there anybody here present whose notes on Hegel have the appearance of making sense?”
19— took its senior midyears gaily and quite as a matter of course, lectured its underclass friends on the evils of cramming, and kept up its spirits by going coasting with Billy Henderson, Professor Henderson’s ten-year-old son, who had admired college girls ever since he found that Bob Parker could beat him at steering a double-runner. Between times they bought up the town’s supply of “The Merchant of Venice,”—“not to learn any part, you know, but because we’re interested in our play,” each purchaser explained to her friends.
For there is no use in proclaiming your aspirations to be a Portia or a Shylock until you are sure that your dramatic talent is going to be appreciated. Of course there were exceptions to this rule, but the girl who said at a campus dinner-table, “If I am Portia, who is there tall enough for Bassanio?” became a college proverb in favor of keeping your hopes to yourself, and everybody was secretly delighted when she decided that she “really didn’t care” to be in the mob.