“No, Chet, unless with the games. I’m going to help with the Christmas music and the tree and the Sunday school doings and I told them I couldn’t do anything more this time. Is Ted coming tonight?”
“Yes. He’s bringing his latest girl. She’s a freshman, too, at the University.”
Betty made a little sound that might have been termed a giggle. Attractive Ted, Chet’s brother, the first boy who had claimed Betty’s admiring attention on her entrance to Lyon High, was probably not any more given to social relations with the girls than many of the other older boys they knew; but as he had a way of charming courtesy toward a young lady and a frank form of speech about her, always complimentary, he was considered as being in love with one and another in rather rapid succession, a very foolish proceeding, as some of the girls said. Betty reserved her opinion. Ted was a “nice boy” and was doing well at the university.
“Does Ted keep up his music?” asked Betty.
“No. He hasn’t any time for it with his freshman work.”
“Would you believe, Chet, that I could be as dumb as I was about thinking that I couldn’t join the orchestra until I was a junior?”
“Why? Did you think that, Betty? I could have told you.”
“Well, little country girl that I was, I believed everything that was told me, of course——”
“I haven’t any such impression,” laughed Chet, who thought Betty quite capable of looking after her rights and privileges. He often told her that she was “little Miss Independence.”
“I almost did, anyhow, Chet; and the summer after my freshman year, when I was taking up violin, you know, someone told me that—perhaps just to joke me—and while I thought that some of the boys and girls I saw in it were freshmen and sophomores, I supposed it was just because they were specially gifted that they were allowed to play. I wasn’t especially gifted and as I was paying attention to all sorts of other things, I never found out till the middle of my sophomore year that junior orchestra only meant second to the senior orchestra, sort of a preparation for it! It was just as well, for I needed more lessons and practice.”