“Living up to the ideals will be the worst for me, I’m sure,” laughed Lucia. But the last gong rang and the girls were obliged to take their own seats, Betty thinking as she often did, how soon Lucia had slipped into the ways and spirit of the other girls. She was different, too; yet considering how very unlike the life of American girls Lucia’s had been, it showed “great adaptability,” as Mrs. Lee had called it, for her to enter into the school life as she had.
The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas flew as it always does. Betty found that it was not such a task to be a president as she had thought. The other officers and committees took an interest and programs were easy to plan with all the people they knew who could talk to them or “do things.” The leader from the “Y. W.” and Miss Street, the leader of the group, were behind them and had ideas. The membership drive was inaugurated and went over well. The girls were interested in the doll dressing and when Lucia invited the entire group to meet at “her house” one Saturday afternoon, there were several more members at once. Mathilde Finn and “her crowd,” as Carolyn put it, joined at once.
“Finny,” said Dotty Bradshaw, “will not be much good to us, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, yes she will,” answered Selma Rardon. “She’ll copy Lucia, and it will do her good to be in it, Finny, I mean.”
“It does all of us good, Selma,” said the young president, “and I think it is wonderful of Lucia to think of the very thing she can do to help us most right now.”
In consequence of this plan, two weeks before Christmas or about that time, Betty found herself going home with Lucia on Friday afternoon. Her father had delivered her at school that morning with her over-night bag, which reposed in her locker all day. The Murchison car was waiting at the curb when the girls left the school grounds and Betty tried hard not to feel any importance as she entered it. It was rather pleasant to have Lucia choose her from all of her friends for the week-end. But she had been the first friend, after all.
Among the crowds of departing pupils, one of the senior girls said to Clara Lovel, “If Betty Lee hadn’t stuck herself in to be elected president of Lyon ‘Y,’ you would be going home with Lucia, Clara!”
But Marcella Waite, who happened to be with the girls, knew the folly of such a statement. “It isn’t just a Lyon ‘Y’ affair, Bess,” she said. “Betty’s going to stay the week-end. Her father is in the Murchison business and he and Betty met the boat the countess came in on at New York. Besides, Lucia doesn’t need any one to help her get ready to entertain. They have all the help they want, butler, maids and all the rest of it.”
“Well, you may be glad you aren’t in the group this year, Marcella,” said Clara, “with a junior for president!”
Of this interchange Betty was blissfully unconscious as she was whirled away in the same dark crimson or wine-colored car that Betty had first entered on the morning when she accompanied the countess and her daughter to school, at Lucia’s entrance there. Leaning back luxuriously in the soft seat, by Lucia, Betty dismissed all cares of school and lessons for the time being. It was all planned. She and Lucia would finish getting Monday’s lesson that night. On Saturday morning they would be driven down town for shopping and have lunch. They would get anything necessary for the afternoon’s meeting and return in time for the arrival of the girls.