Betty Lee, Senior

by Harriet Pyne Grove

“This is like old days at the farm,” remarked Betty, rather jerkily, as her horse picked up his pace and stride and jolted her. One of the girls that Betty had recently met at camp passed now with a clatter of horse’s hoofs and a flapping of girl elbows.

“She can’t ride any better than we can,” cried Kathryn, grinning. “It’s us for riding lessons this fall, isn’t it Betty?”

Betty only nodded. This was great fun, riding up hill and down dale in the country-side near the camp to which Betty had duly come, although all that they had planned had not been carried out. Mr. Lee had not brought Mrs. Lee and Amy Lou to New England, since business in New York held him there. But the Penroses, driving up to the Maine village to investigate all its delights, of which they were hearing in letters from Gwen and cards from their sons, left at the psychological moment, Gwen said, to take Kathryn and Betty with them.

It was a little hard to leave Carolyn behind. She had given up all idea of camp and Betty really did not see how any one could leave the ocean unless she had to. But the restless boys had been making ready to leave on some other trip, by boat, if Larry Waite had his way. There would be some scattering.

Betty and Kathryn were taken by car to Boston, where they embarked for New York, going on a “delirious” jaunt by a coast steamer to New York. There they joined the Lees, Amy Lou doing the honors of the city with great dignity and telling the girls where to see different things of importance. Betty would not spoil Amy Lou’s enthusiasm by reminding her that she had been there before. That was one pleasant custom in the Lee family, to give each member a fair chance with enthusiasms or accomplishments. To take the wind out of anybody’s sails—well, that was too deadly!

But Betty and Kathryn had a gay time for a a week. They ate lobster in one delightful place and had French dainties in another. And both agreed that no summer which they ever should have could come up to this one. Here they were now in this wonderful camp; and Betty declared that having seen her father and mother and Amy Lou had been quite enough to stave off any homesickness. She never would want to go home now. Imagine! School!

This was more like school in numbers, this Indiana camp of Girl Reserves. The group in the Maine village had been more or less an exclusive, or small one. Here were about sixty girls, only a few of whom Betty knew, though there were some from other high schools in her home city. And were they friendly—and noisy, at certain times? So Betty queried in her home letter written the day after arrival. But it was only the camp freedom, supervised, to be sure, that found expression here as in all camps.

Betty and Kathryn, rather expecting this to be something of an anti-climax after Maine, were pleasantly disappointed. Why, it was “gorgeous!” And it may be that the extravagant expressions of youth were justified. It was “like being away to school—and without lessons!” Betty’s only other camp experience had been a week-end attendance upon a Fall Retreat. That she had “loved” and it had made her happy in her interest in Lyon “T,” but it did not last long enough. By arrangement she was here for three weeks and would see some changes in the personnel of the girls. Many of them came for only a week; some, for two weeks.

The camp had been a gift to the Y. W. C. A., and consisted of the buildings and grounds of a country resort, close to a tiny country town. The main building, originally a country hotel or club house, was a three-story structure and had been adapted to its present use, very much like a girls’ dormitory. Wide porches, a large room with a fireplace for the open fires they sometimes had in cool evenings, an immense dining room, a big “back porch” which was practically a large room and now glassed in and screened, to be thrown open often—all these were prominent features.

There were several small cottages and because the next group of Girl Reserves was a large one, Kathryn and Betty had been placed in one of these, as they were to stay over into the next period. The girls were at first a trifle disappointed, but when they found that a phoebe was nesting on the ledge above their very door, undisturbed with their passing in and out, they were quite delighted.