Betty was glad that there was opportunity for no more questioning, such as “where did the match come from?” Why, what a funny time! The Pirate of Penzance was nobody she had ever seen before. He must be some friend of Marcella’s who knew all about the place, basement and all. And wasn’t it nice of him to do that? He was quite clear that he wasn’t her “true love,” though he looked older, older than Ted even, and perhaps he was engaged to somebody. Of course! He was some University student, engaged to some senior who was here. No, if she had been here, he wouldn’t have paid so much attention to Betty and danced with her so much. Well, then, he was just helping Marcella with her party and having a lot of fun on the side.
By this time Betty was used to mingling with the unknown, guessing at who they were and joking with any one at all as it happened. She thought she knew a few of the juniors, whom she had known as sophomores last year. Then there was some of her own class she was pretty sure, boys that would be invited to equalize the numbers of boys and girls, and she knew what girls of her class had been invited. Size, however, was no help, for even if juniors were supposed to be older and to be still “growing,” some of the juniors were shorter than some of the sophomores.
Carolyn Gwynne was going up from the basement as Betty reached the stairs. “Oh, Betty, I mean Titania,” she cried, lowering her voice. “I guess nobody heard that. Excuse me. Did you go in to look in the mirror and did they have the big mirror up then?”
“No. I mean I went in to see my true love in a glass, but I was given a little hand mirror.”
“Well, when I went in they had a square mirror propped on a sort of ledge in front of me. But the next girl had just gotten inside when she dropped her candle and squealed terribly and I suppose she reached out to grab something and down came the mirror and smashed like everything!
“She came out all scared to pieces and the witch started to tell her it was bad luck all in fun, but the girl cried and Marcella came running to tell her that the mirror didn’t matter and there wasn’t any such thing as good and bad luck really.”
“Which girl was it?”
“She took off her mask, but I didn’t know her. It was some junior girl, I think. Marcella took her upstairs. Why, she is in a colonial costume, Martha Washington or Dolly Madison or something like that.”
“I don’t believe Martha and Dolly would dress alike, Carolyn,” laughed Betty. “Let’s go and sit down somewhere. I think the orchestra’s going to play again. So many of the crowd have come up from ‘witchdom’ now. It was sort of spooky downstairs, but such fun.”
“Wasn’t it. Did you see anything in your mirror, Betty?”