Robbie Belle knew that Berta was afraid of caring too much. She had listened once in twilight confidence under the pines to the story of how Berta had been all ready to start for college three years before, when a sudden family misfortune changed her plans and condemned her to immediate teaching. In the bitterness of her disappointment she had vowed never to set her heart on any plan again.
Walking over to Berta’s side Robbie Belle took the listless hand in both her comforting ones.
“Even if we shouldn’t manage it this year, you know, we could try again next year. We might earn something extra during the summer.”
“Next year!” echoed Berta under her breath. “I can’t count on next year—I dare not. You do not understand, for your scholarship is certain through the course, while mine depends on what Prexie thinks I am worth. I am under the eye of the faculty. Don’t talk about next year. I am pretending that this is the last time I shall be here in October, then in November, then in December. I look at everything—the lake, the trees, the girls, the teachers, the dear, dear library, and say, ‘Good-bye! Good-bye, my college year.’ They may not help me to come back, you know. If I really try not to expect it, I will not be disappointed in any case. Of course, I am not worth four hundred dollars to them. I am afraid to hope for it.”
“Why, you are the brightest student here. Bea says so and you know it!” exclaimed Robbie Belle indignantly; “there isn’t any question about your being granted another scholarship when you apply for it next spring. They weigh everything—intellect, personality, character, conduct. Never you fear. If they give only one scholarship in the whole college, it shall be to you. You are superstitious: you fancy that if you do your best to expect the worst, the best will happen, because it is always the unexpected that happens. Only of course, that isn’t true at all.”
Berta was smiling mistily around into the fair face. “Dear old Robbie Belle! Will Shakespeare was right—‘there’s flattery in friendship’—it makes me rejoice. The trouble, you see, sweetheart, lies in my character. I misdoubt me that Prexie will spurn my plea if he hears how often we have a meeting of the fudge club at a tax of two cents per head. Let’s save up that two cents for the Opera fund.”
Robbie Belle drew a deep sigh. “All right,” she agreed with a doleful glance toward the particular blue plate in which she was accustomed to pour her share of the delicacy. “Anyway the doctor calls fudge an ‘abomination.’ Bea will scold because she hates scrimping. But then she doesn’t care so much as we do for music unless it is convenient.”
Berta’s contributions were the result of more active exertions than the other’s passive self-denial. She sat up one night till two o’clock to dress a doll. Every fall a few hundred dolls were distributed to be dressed by the girls for the Christmas tree at the Settlement House in the city. Some of the students took dolls and paid other girls to make the clothes. Berta earned a dollar by helping Bea with the three which that impulsive young woman had rashly undertaken. In February she composed valentines and sold them to over-busy maidens who felt unequal to rhyming in the reaction after the midyear examinations. In March she painted Easter eggs and in April she arranged pots of growing ferns and flowers from the woods. By May the fund was complete and the tickets were bought.
As the longed-for event drew nearer, Berta made a string of paper dolls and joyfully tore off one for each passing day.
At last the morning dawned. Robbie Belle was dreaming that she had fallen asleep in fifth hour Latin. It seemed as if the instructor called her name and then came walking down from the platform, thump, thump, thump, in her broad-soled shoes. It was unladylike to thump so heavily, thought Robbie Belle in the midst of her confused dismay over having lost the place in the text as well as forgotten the translation. The thumping sharpened to a rat-tat-tat upon the bedroom door.