Betty flew to the privacy of her room. Larry’s letter was brief but very much to the point. “Respected Sister,” he began. “In view of what I said to you on the evening of your party, it might have occurred to you that my question about Betty Lee was important. I enclose addressed envelope with special delivery stamps. Please reply at once. Is Betty sick? Have you seen her? Can you suggest any reason why she should not reply? The first letter was rather important because it explained something. I also wrote a card, inquiring, after I had not heard. Still no reply. Could I have offended her? But it is not like her—not to show the courtesy of a reply.” That was all except his “as ever, Larry.”
Betty looked out of the window over the ravine, straight at a nest which a little bird was building, and she never saw it! Her heart’s impulse was to write to Larry at once. But that would not do at all. Marcella’s letter would carry the news. She had seen some mail in Marcella’s hand. She was, doubtless, going to mail it at the general post office instead of at the nearest station. Larry would know very soon.
Then Betty did a funny thing, “silly,” she told herself. She opened her top drawer and from a box she took the little heart. On it she laid her cheek a moment, then slipped it within the scented sachet cover in which it had been accustomed to rest under her pillow. It was all right. Larry cared. He was true and good. Now she could enjoy the rest of her senior year. It would have been much more comfortable if she had not cared herself; but since she did, it was nice that Larry cared, too—some, at least.
Sedately Betty walked downstairs, but just then Doris sat down at the piano and began a gay, jazzy tune. “See if you could ‘tap’ it off to this, Betty,” cried she. “I’ve got to play for some of them tomorrow in a show we’re getting up—a sophomore jazz-fest.” And Betty’s feet celebrated her restlessness, while Dick came in—to execute a sort of clog dance, and Mr. Lee, just home, stood laughing in the doorway.
“What’s this?” he asked, “my house turned into a vaudeville stage?”
“Don’t worry, Father,” breathlessly replied Betty, stopping to throw herself into a chair. “We’ve only been working off some of our extra steam!”
Betty found it hard to study that evening, but for the next few days she threw herself into school work with great zeal. “When has Betty been so gay?” asked Mary Emma Howland.
“Spring has ‘CAME,’ Mary Emma,” declared Betty, in reply.
Next came the expected note from Larry. Betty found it waiting when she came from school and held it, almost too carelessly, with some other mail, invitations, she thought, from Janet and Sue, to their early Commencement. She visited and chatted with some friends of her sister’s, with whom she and Doris had come from high school. Then they went into the kitchen with Doris to make fudge, and Betty could slip away to her room.
It is needless to say that the mail from Buxton went unopened until she should read the message from New Haven.