CHAPTER XVI
A PAUSE IN ROMANCE
A healthy body and plenty of wholesome activities, with books and sane thinking at home, kept Betty Lee from any morbid ideas or tendencies in regard to early love affairs. She was romantic, to be sure, having had Larry in mind as her Prince Charming for some time. But with the pushing lessons and performances of her senior year there was not much time for dwelling upon “Love and Larry,” an expression of her own and held in her young heart in connection with that evening of Valentine’s day. It was “Eros, god of Love,” that she remembered, not St. Valentine. Now that she had a room of her own, she could sleep every night with Larry’s little valentine heart under her pillow, and his writing on the place card with its astonishingly revealing verses was equally cherished. Not every girl had a lover who was a poet.
And Larry had said that he loved her! She always came back to that. It was a little harder to get lessons now, for her thoughts had a trick of wandering off and even in study hall she could sometimes see in her mind’s eye that half embarrassed but very earnest young man who had bid her goodbye.
“What are you smiling about?” somebody would ask her, perhaps.
“Oh, just a pleasant thought,” she would reply. “I occasionally have one!”
G. A. A. affairs took much of her extra time. The Girl Reserves were having a banquet. Fortunately she was not on one of the committees. She hoped to have a Girl Reserve ring at the spring ceremonial, when they had a beautiful service at one of the churches and the girls would be in full white uniform to march in. That ring, given not for advance in scholarship but in recognition of development in character, would mean something to Betty. She had tried, not only to meet the various demands, but to be fair and just and kind and lend an ear to the various ideals suggested as graces in the well-rounded character. Betty loved the Girl Reserves and all that they stood for. And what fun they could have, too, just like the scouts and camp-fire girls. If “nothing happened” she would be allowed to go to camp again during some period after school was out. Yet she could not plan beyond her diploma, for receiving that would mark one “jumping off place.” Would there be anything left of her by that time?
Her “grand rush” was occasionally recognized by her mother with a formal welcome when she came home late. “Miss Lee, I believe?” her mother would inquire, offering her the tips of her fingers from a hand held high.
“Yes,” Betty would reply, extending her own fingers, “glad to meet you.” Then she usually received an embrace and a motherly kiss with a searching look into what was usually a blooming face. Sometimes she would be tired out and then she was promptly told to stretch out for half an hour and “think of nothing.” In the pleasant process of thinking of—Larry Waite—she usually dropped to sleep, waking refreshed for dinner and the evening.
The inner hiking club of the G. A. A.’s had one winter hike, almost a spring hike, indeed, for a few birds were back in warm late February days before March winds began. But pussy willows were in bud. Betty saw a bluebird, several robins, some downy and hairy woodpeckers, a whisking titmouse and two of his cousins, the black-capped titmice, or chickadees. But they were Carolina chickadees Betty thought, though they did not make identification sure by singing. Only “chickadee-dee-dee,” they said. The hike was almost a committee meeting of those prominent seniors, for there was so much to plan. Betty was selling tickets already for the orchestra concert. She was in the “senior” orchestra indeed, in these days. Ted Dorrance and she had always that in common, love for the violin.
“It’s a pity that Ted doesn’t see more of you, Betty,” said Doris, one time when she had been unusually thoughtful, sitting in Betty’s room to hear all about an orchestra practice when three boys had been sent to “D. T.,” otherwise known as “detention,” by a leader whose patience was exhausted in enduring various capers.