“Probably I’d better, too, but we haven’t much time, Betty. I told Julia I’d tell her in the morning. I had to ask what Mother and Father thought. She laughed at me for a goose, then told me that I mustn’t make that an excuse. I told her that I thought they would let me do what I wanted to do, but that I ought to tell them at least. I hope that she didn’t take that as a promise. Away from Julia and talking it over with you makes me not so enthusiastic. Call me up in the morning, Betty, if you’ve decided before you go to school.”
“I will have decided all right,” said Betty. “It’s a thing you can’t put off. I’ll decide, if I have to draw cuts!”
[CHAPTER XIV: THE DECISION]
Carolyn rode home in the Gwynne car with Betty, but they talked of other things, especially the coming season of basketball. Betty declared that she did not play a good game and Carolyn said that she played as well as the other sophomores and that moreover she was swift and graceful about everything just as she was in swimming. “Go in for it, Betty; please do.”
“I’ll think about it,” promised Betty. “It’s so that most of our hockey team want to play basketball, too.”
Taffies, no matter how toothsome, are not the best preparation for a sound night’s sleep; but Betty was too sleepy to give sororities any further thought that night and the only effect of the taffy was in giving her a dream in which she and Carolyn were being initiated into Kappa Upsilon, while Kathryn stood by watching them.
In the morning she woke with a pretty good idea of what she was going to do. It was not necessary to marshal the arguments for and against. “I’m not going into a thing that leaves out a lot of my special friends,” she said to herself as she dressed. “Lyon High is too big for it to make any difference to me. The question of sororities in college can wait. I may go away to school or be in the University here. Carolyn’s so sweet it won’t make any difference if she does go into it; and I like Kathryn so much; and if Peggy changes, I can’t help it.”
Peggy, however, was a big pull toward the sorority for Carolyn, she knew. She almost wished she did not have to call up Carolyn. She didn’t want to use any influence with her. It wouldn’t be fair. Perhaps by this time Carolyn wanted awfully to do it and her decision would be a sort of wet blanket. Still, she had promised to tell her before they went to school.
Betty hurried with her dressing and breakfast, helping a little as usual and to her relief, while she was still at the table, the telephone rang. Carolyn was calling her, she thought.
Doris answered it this time, but she called Betty. “It’s Carolyn,” she said. “It must be something important for her to call you at breakfast time.”