Carolyn nodded her approval and Kathryn said that they would stand shoulder to shoulder and “eye to eye!” “By the way, Betty, Chauncey said that he would drive us wherever we have to take that basket. He said we oughtn’t to go to some places without a ‘guard’ and that he would be it.”
“That takes a load off my shoulders,” replied the new president. “Father can’t do it and I thought I’d find out from Miss Street how they managed it. I wasn’t on the committee last year. Miss Hogarth is the one who tells us about the families, you know, but Miss Street will consult her. Mary Emma, may I appoint you a committee of one to see every girl and tell her to be sure to bring what she promised—sugar, flour—I have the list somewhere—on Wednesday I’ll announce it at the meeting but not everybody will be there.”
Mary Emma promised and then some one mentioned the other sad omission that made it a “blue Monday,” the fact that there had been no celebration of their victory. “They might have had a nice assembly this morning to celebrate,” said Dotty.
“Miss Orme said that it was bad enough to have ordinary ‘Monday’ lessons,” chuckled Peggy, “without an assembly to ball up the program and make things worse; and the principal must have agreed with her. Miss Heath said that it would have been pleasant, but she didn’t seem enthusiastic either.”
“We celebrated on the spot,” said Kathryn, with a picture of the rejoicing stadium in her mind.
Betty said nothing. She was tired. She would have welcomed an assembly, but it did not matter. The morning was over. But Mary Emma brought up one incident as they left the lunch room side by side. “I thought it was funny that you were rejoicing about having your Cicero out ahead; but I knew you kept ahead on your schedule whenever possible, so it never occurred to me to remind you of prose-comp on Monday!”
Betty gave Mary Emma a comical look, but they hurried on to the next duty.
At the Lyon “Y” meeting after school, Betty was relieved to find that only the chairman of the committee had resigned. She promptly appointed the proper one of the committee to take her place and filled the vacancy by appointing Kathryn, for the very good reason that Chauncey would then be properly available as chauffeur and guard. Mary Emma was duly appointed as a special committee of one to take charge of reminding and notifying and to help with gathering in.
On Wednesday afternoon there was great activity about the room in which the committee met. Chauncey, looking like a larger edition of Kathryn, stuck his head inside of the door to call to Betty. “Be back in a minute, Betty. I’ve got to get the car, you know. If it isn’t out there, I’ll have to go home for it. Tried to arrange to have it brought, but ‘Ah dunno!’”
Betty ran from a confusion of girls and bundles to speak to him and Kathryn, bending over a basket, looked up to nod brightly at her brother. “There isn’t the least hurry, Chauncey,” said Betty. “You’ll have plenty of time to go home by street car if you have to. So much has been brought in, more than we asked for, that I think we’ll fix two baskets. We can stop to buy two or three things that weren’t duplicated.”