Long they tarried in the empty house and about the yard. There were flowers and shrubs and some pretty trees, beside those of the ravine, with its thickets and the one long track or path to the bottom. “May I have a party right away?” asked Betty, looking around at the large front room whose hall was almost a part of it, and the room which Doris said should be a library widely opening behind it. Doris and Amy Lou immediately asked the same question, till Mrs. Lee suggested that they move in first.
“Yes,” said she. “That is one pleasure for us in this roomy house. I plan some entertaining myself. You shall have your turn all of you, Dick, too.”
It was dark when at last the Lees reached home; and Betty, though called by lessons to prepare, remembered one more responsibility and ran to call up Marcella Waite.
“Oh, but I’m glad to have found you in, Marcella. Why, they’ve made me chairman of the committee for the A-D party, Marcella, and I thought I’d better ask you what you did. I missed the party when I was a freshman myself and now that we give it, I ought to know a few details. I asked one of the teachers about it after assembly this morning, and she said, ‘Oh, yes, one of those A-D parties,’ with such a bored air that I thought I’d better ask somebody who might have a speck of enthusiasm. I suppose they do get tired of some things, though.”
Betty could hear Marcella’s low laugh. Then her friends briefly outlined the usual A-D program and wound up her remarks by saying that Larry would make a flying visit home before ‘college began.’ “I’ll have him drive over for you and bring you over for dinner,” said Marcella, “and then we can discuss A-D parties and other things. Will you come?”
“Will I? How soon does the university start, Marcella? All right. It will seem good to see Larry. What fun we all had this summer! ’Bye.”
CHAPTER IX
THE SENIORS ENTERTAIN
The A-D party was probably the first “official” senior duty, or pleasure, said Betty. It was the entertainment of the D class, or freshmen, by the A class, or seniors. By long custom it was celebrated at the beginning of the year and constituted a sort of initiation or adoption of the freshman class into Lyon High. There was nothing difficult about it and much that was sheer fun, including the refreshments. Oh, yes, it might be mentioned that it was confined entirely to the senior and freshman girls. No masculine member of the freshman class was ever asked to dress in more or less infantile fashion and so appear, at a party and even in some fashion that marked them, at least, during the day at school which preceded the party.
One morning, as Betty was getting her locker open, a shy, attractive little freshman girl came up to her. “Please, Miss—Betty Lee, are you too busy to tell me something?”
“Always ready to impart knowledge,” jokingly Betty replied, putting a book on the shelf of her locker and taking another out. “What can I do for you, Eileen? Did you get my invitation to the A-D party?”