When supper was over, Margaret Grant came forward and stood by the little center-table, on which lay the vellum-bound book of the rules of the club. Margaret opened it with great solemnity, and called to Betty Vivian to stand up.
“Betty Vivian,” she said, “we agreed a week ago to-day to admit you to the full membership of a Speciality. According to our usual custom, we sent you a copy of the rules in order that you might study them in their fullness. We now ask you if you have done so?”
“I have,” replied Betty. “I have read them, I should think, thirty or forty times.”
“Are you prepared, Betty Vivian, to accept our rules and become a member of the Specialities, or do you prefer your full liberty and to return to the ordinary routine of the school? We, none of us, wish you to adopt the rules as part of your daily life unless you are prepared to keep them in their entirety.”
“I wish to be a Speciality,” replied Betty. Then she added slowly—and as she spoke she raised her brilliant eyes and fixed them on Fanny Crawford’s face—“I am prepared to keep the rules.”
“Thank you, Betty! Then I think, members, Betty Vivian can be admitted as a member of our little society. Betty, simple as our rules are, they comprise much: openness of heart, sisterly love, converse with great thoughts, pleasure in its truest sense (carrying that pleasure still further by seeing that others enjoy it as well as ourselves), respect to all our teachers, and, above all things, forgetting ourselves and living for others. You see, Betty Vivian, that though the rules are quite simple, they are very comprehensive. You have had a week to study them. Again I ask, are you prepared to accept them?”
“Yes, I am prepared,” said Betty; and again she flashed a glance at Fanny Crawford.
“Then I, as head of this little society for the time being, admit you as a member. Please, Betty, accept this little true-lovers’ knot, and wear it this evening in your dress. Now, girls, let us every one cheer Betty Vivian, and take her to our hearts as our true sister in the highest sense of the word.”
The girls flocked round Betty and shook hands with her. Amongst those who did so was Fanny Crawford. She squeezed Betty’s hand significantly, and at the same moment put her finger to her lips. This action was so quick that only Betty observed it; but it told the girl that, now that she had “crossed the Rubicon,” Fanny would not be the one to betray her.
Betty sank down on a chair. She felt excited, elated, pleased, and horrified. The rest of the evening passed as a sort of dream. She could scarcely comprehend what she had done. She was a Speciality. She was bound by great and holy rules, and yet in reality she was a far lower girl than she had ever been in all her life before.