Madeline Ayres wondered idly, as she dressed for dinner, how Betty Wales had come into possession of a four months' old magazine which was not to be had at any library or book-store in Harding. Then, being a person born, so she herself asserted, entirely without curiosity, she ceased wondering. By the time dinner was over and she had related a budget of her Napoleonic stories to a delighted group of anxious students, she had actually forgotten all about Eleanor's affairs.
CHAPTER XII
A BRIEF FOR THE DEFENSE
"DEAR DOROTHY— "I have thought and thought all the afternoon and I can't do it. I should only—"
"DEAR DOROTHY—
"If you are perfectly sure that there is nobody else to go—"
"DEAR DOROTHY— "Don't you think that Mary Brooks or Marion Lawrence would be a lot better? Mary can always talk—"
"Oh, Dorothy, I don't know what to say—"
Betty had slipped up-stairs to her room the minute dinner was over. The rest of the Belden House girls still lingered in the parlors, talking or dancing,—enjoying the brief after-dinner respite that is a welcome feature of each busy day at Harding. Ida Ludwig was playing for them. She had a way of dashing off waltzes and two-steps that gave them a perfectly irresistible swing. As Betty wrote, her foot beat time to the music that floated up, faint and sweet and alluring, through her half-open door. The floor around her was strewn with sheets of paper which she had torn, one after another, from her pad, and tossed impatiently out of her way.
"Such a goose as I am, trying to write before I've made up my mind what to say!" she told the green lizard, as she sent the seventh attempt flying after the others. "And I can't make it up," she added despondently, and shut her fountain pen with a vicious little snap. She would go down and have a two-step with Roberta, who had been Mary's guest at dinner. Roberta could lead beautifully—as well as a man—and the music was too good to lose. Besides, Roberta might feel hurt at her having run off the minute dinner was over.
A shadow suddenly darkened the door and Betty turned to find Eleanor
Watson standing there, smiling radiantly down at her.