Those are the good-byes that count—the ones you must say to the seniors. Dorothy would come back to visit the college, of course, and to attend class reunions, but that would not be the same thing as living next door to her all through the year. Betty was not going to stay to Commencement. Sophomores were only in everybody's way then, she thought, and she preferred to say good-bye to Dorothy before the onslaught of families, alumnae and friends should have upset the regular routine of life and made the seniors seem already lost to the college world. Packing was worse than ever this year, and examinations could not have been more inconveniently arranged, but in spite of everything Betty slipped off on her last evening for a few minutes with Dorothy.
The Belden House was a pandemonium, the piazzas deserted, the hot rooms ablaze with lights, the halls noisy with the banging of trunk-lids and the cries of distracted damsels; but the Hilton, either because it had more upper-class girls who were staying to Commencement, or because its freshmen and sophomores were of a serener temperament, showed few signs of "last days." The piazza was full, as it always was on warm nights, and a soft little crooning song was wafted across the lawn to Betty's ears. Dorothy was singing. Her voice was not highly cultivated, but it was the kind of voice that has a soul in it—which is better than much training. As Betty stole softly up to the piazza, so as not to interrupt the song, and found a place on the railing, she remembered her first evening in Harding. How forlorn and frightened she had been, and how lovely Dorothy was to her. Well, she had been just as lovely ever since.
Dorothy's song stopped suddenly. "Girls, I can't sing to-night," she said. "It's—so—warm. And besides, Betty Wales has come to see me on a very particular errand, haven't you, Betty, dear?"
Up in Dorothy's room, in the dusk, nobody said much of anything. There is never much left to say at the last. But Dorothy had a way of putting things and of looking at things that was like nobody's else, Betty thought; and when she said, "I know I can trust you to work for the democratic, helpful spirit and to keep down cliques and snobbishness and see that everybody has a fair chance and a good time," Betty felt more pleased than she had about her election to Dramatic Club. She had been Dorothy's lieutenant. Now she must be Dorothy's successor, and it was a great honor and a greater responsibility—but first she must pack her trunks.
On the way home she overtook Roberta. "I'm in the Belden, Betty," she announced, breathlessly, "and there are a lot of things I want to ask you and Mary about, but I can't stay long, because those dear little freshmen are going to give me a good-bye spread."
"Those snippy freshmen?" laughed Betty.
"Oh, but they came around after the Jabberwock party, just as you said they would. It was an impromptu party, Betty. I did it the night Sara Westervelt was there, and somebody stole the ice cream. That's why you weren't invited."
Up-stairs the rest of the "old guard" were sitting on boxes, trunks and the floor, waiting to say good-bye to Betty and meanwhile being entertained by Madeline Ayres, who was giving a lively account of her experience with a washwoman.
"She said, 'It's twinty white skirruts Oi have to do up now, me dear,' and I said, 'But I can't go without a skirt, Mrs. Mulvaney, and everybody who doesn't wear white to chapel will be expelled, and then where will your goose that lays the golden eggs be?' 'Shure, I kape no geese, me dear,' said she, and—oh, here's Betty."
"Finish up," demanded Katherine.