She and Betsy planned out beforehand just what she was to say.
“You can call for me at Betsy’s. We’ll be going together, I suppose. By the way, who’s taking Betsy?”
“Dave, of course,” Lloyd replied.
Tib hastened to deliver this reassuring news, and during the next few days Betsy flung herself at Dave. She stopped him in the hall and after classes. She manoeuvred to stand beside him in the Social Room. He didn’t speak, and she was in a desperate state when Tib arrived to dress with her for the party.
“I’ll do your hair in puffs,” Tib offered as a gesture of comfort. Puffs were new, and Betsy had not learned to make them. Tib covered Betsy’s head with an airy regiment of puffs but Betsy stared in the mirror glumly.
“If he doesn’t come I’ll stay home.”
“You’ll do no such thing. You’ll go with Lloyd and me.”
“I won’t. I’ll stay home.”
“And waste these magnificent puffs?”
Mrs. Ray poked her head in. “He’ll show up.”
“He’ll show up,” Margaret echoed gleefully.
Promptly at eight the doorbell rang. Anna shouted with a note of triumph, “Bet-see!” Betsy ran downstairs and there was Dave, with his hair brushed to a shine, a new bow tie and a pleased glow on his face.
“The strong silent type!” Betsy raged. She wished she could hurl it reproachfully at Julia, but Julia had gone back to the U where she had been asked to sing the role of Yum Yum in The Mikado. She was rehearsing daily and wrote of little else.
“I won’t put up with it!” Betsy stormed later to Tib. “I just won’t stand it!”
But she did.
The new term brought basketball contests with all the neighboring towns. Who could resist a proprietary stake in the star of the team? Dave could not take her to the games, of course; she went with Tib and her escort, but everybody knew that Dave would join them afterwards. She watched his long legs scissoring and leaping and heard the adoring roar:
“What’s the matter with Hunt?
He’s all right!”
Betsy thought basketball more thrilling even than football and talked knowingly of “those rough Spaulding rules.”
Honeymoon Trail came to the Opera House, and she heard from Tib that Lloyd and Dave were taking them. It proved to be true. They sat in the parquet, and Betsy had the same uncanny feeling of being grown-up she had when she and Tacy and Tib drank their coffee at Heinz’s. It couldn’t be, she thought unbelievingly, that they were sitting in the Opera House at night, downstairs, with boys who had paid for their tickets! But they were.
“Old, old is honeymoon trail….”
That was the hit song of the show. Betsy bought it and picked out the chords on the piano when she was alone. She found she could almost play it, which gave a tremendous impetus to her piano lessons and to the hour of practise she split into two parts and found time for every day.
January had been mild, but February came in cold and snowy. The air was filled continually with a white descending haze. Drifts climbed to the window ledges. The thermometer dropped to twenty, thirty, thirty-five below. Tacy and Tib, stopping to call for Betsy in the morning, wore scarves over their faces.
Tib came early so that she could do Betsy’s hair. Mr. and Mrs. Ray both protested the practise.
“Betsy doesn’t need puffs for school.”
“But I’m coming right past the house, Mrs. Ray. I always stop anyway; and I love to do them.”
She continued to come, and although Betsy felt a little silly she delighted in the puffs. Sustained by them she joined Tacy in singing the “Cat Duet” at Zetamathian Rhetoricals. It was definitely childish but it had to be sung; it had become a tradition in the Deep Valley High. Betsy read an original poem for rhetoricals. It was named “Those Eyes” and sounded a little like Poe. She wrote more poems than stories on Uncle Keith’s trunk this year—when she found time to write at all. This was usually late at night, when she had finished her homework or come in from a party. The house would be quiet; cold, too, sometimes, but she put on a warm bathrobe. She curled up beside the trunk and read poetry and wrote it, and she had an uncanny feeling then, too. This wasn’t Betsy Ray, the “popular” girl. This wasn’t Betsy Ray, the Okto Delta.
The Sistren still met regularly, sometimes with boys, sometimes alone. The girls brought their sewing to the afternoon parties, and Betsy always brought the jabot. She offered to read aloud if someone would work on it for her and the famous piece of neckwear passed from hand to hand.
“What a souvenir for college!” Carney said. “Samples of everybody’s sewing, as well as all these choice knots and spots.”
“Those spots you refer to so lightly,” said Betsy, “are where I was pricked by a needle. You’re taking my heart’s blood to Vassar.”
Carney was looking ahead to the Vassar entrance exams and working harder all the time. Tacy was sobered by a growing interest in music, but Betsy and Tib continued irrepressible.
Madame DuBarry and Madame Pompadour revived their soirees. These were hilarious affairs, for Cab and Dennie were irrepressible, too. Fast friends, the same age and about the same height, they were a carefree pair. They were, Betsy admitted, more fun than Dave.
But he was fun, too, on outdoor excursions. Groups of four, six, eight Okto and Omega Deltas often braved the cold for moonlight strolls. One night for a lark boys and girls exchanged wraps. Dave was as comical as Dennie, parading in Betsy’s furs. He was always the first to sight a pan of fudge set to cool on a doorstep—lawful booty, whether the doorstep belonged to friend or stranger.
In recompense for stolen fudge, perhaps, the groups went serenading. They sang in parts underneath lighted windows, their breath congealing into silver notes.
“Old, old is honeymoon trail….”
“You are my rose of Mexico…”
“My wild Irish rose….”
The Crowd, Julia often said, sang like a trained chorus. But the Okto and Omega Deltas were not quite the Crowd. They missed Tony’s rolling bass.
As Betsy had feared, they saw Tony less and less. He still came to the Rays’ now and then but he had dropped the Crowd and what he had put in its place was not good. He skipped school, hung around a pool hall which had a bad reputation in Deep Valley. He went with that fast clique of older boys he had been drifting toward early in the winter. Tony had always had a zest for new experiences whether good or bad. But he had been restrained before by his scornful, indulgent, deeply loyal fondness for the Crowd.
Betsy felt pricked all the time by worry about Tony. She wouldn’t give in to it; she was having too much fun. But she looked for a chance to say a restraining word and one Sunday night she thought she saw it.
Sometime before she had revived her last year’s successful experiment in “reforming.” Phil’s pipe still hung beside her dressing table. She discovered that Dave had a pipe and secured it to hang beside Phil’s. Dennie gave her a sack of tobacco and some cigarette papers. Cab contributed a cigar.
Betsy had protested that. “You don’t smoke! You’re giving me one of your father’s cigars.”
“Well, gosh, Betsy!” Cab grinned. “If everyone else is going to be reformed, I want to be reformed, too.”
Her father teased her about this enterprise and he brought up the subject as Tony and Betsy stood out in the kitchen watching him make his inimitable sandwiches. He always sat down to make them for he was growing heavier and his feet tired easily. There was often an admiring circle around his chair.
“Have you heard about Betsy turning Carrie Nation?” he asked, spreading slices of bread with butter which he had set out to soften earlier. A cold loin of pork and a jar of mustard stood alongside. “I can’t make out why she doesn’t object to my cigars.”
“You’re too old to reform,” said Betsy, smoothing his silky dark hair.
Tony searched through his pockets and found a piece of billiard chalk.
“Here,” he said. “Add thi
s to your collection. You ought to try to keep boys away from the pool hall, Betsy. It’s a den of iniquity, Miss Bangeter says.”
Betsy said she would tie the chalk on a ribbon and hang it over her mirror. She laughed into Tony’s black eyes which looked hurt, although he was smiling. A new group of guests came to watch Mr. Ray and Betsy went back to the fire. Tony followed with his lazy saunter.
They sat down and looked into the flames, and Betsy said, imitating a grave tone of Julia’s, “There was truth in what Miss Bangeter said about that pool hall, Tony. I wish you’d spend less time there and more time—well, at the Rays’, or out serenading with the Crowd.”
“What Crowd?” asked Tony. His face looked a little bitter. “There isn’t any Crowd any more, just a couple of frats. I’m a barb. You don’t want me around.”
“Tony!” said Betsy. “Don’t be ridiculous!”
“Ridiculous, am I?”
“Everybody misses you. The Crowd, Papa, Mamma, Margaret.”
“You said one true thing. Margaret does.” Tony called out to Margaret, who was reading the funny papers in her father’s big chair. “Margaret, I’ll beat you a game of parchesi.”
Margaret’s face lighted and she ran to get the board. Betsy felt snubbed.
Dave came in just then, followed shortly by Squirrelly, and Tib, and Winona. Winona went to the piano and when the parchesi game ended Tony lifted his voice in song. But after the sandwiches were eaten he quickly said good-by.
He shrugged into his overcoat, set his cap at a rakish angle on his bushy curly hair.
“I’ll see you when I need some more reforming,” he said to Betsy and went out.
16
Margaret’s Party
MRS. RAY GAVE A SERIES of three parties on three successive days. It was a common practice to give parties by threes, and practical as well. The same flowers could be used; the chicken salad could be made in bulk; above all the house needed to be disturbed only once. It was certainly disturbed. For three days the Rays ate in the kitchen. Anna was cross, Mr. Ray was moody, Mrs. Ray was glowing and abstracted, and the girls bursting with excitement.
Margaret, excused from school early, ushered the guests upstairs and showed them where to lay their wraps. She wore her party dress, a soft blue silk with invisible stripes, piped in pink. Stiff pink hair ribbons stood out on either side of her small, intent face.
Betsy, Tacy and Tib hurried in after school to put on their party dresses and serve. Balancing plates full of chicken salad, hot rolls, World’s Fair pickles and coffee, and second plates with ice cream and angel food cake, they nevertheless found time to smile at the mothers of their friends. Boys’ mothers were particularly fascinating.
On the first day Mrs. Ray entertained the church ladies and the wives of her husband’s business friends. On the second day Deep Valley’s fashionable and wealthy drove to her door. For these two parties her closest friends assisted merely, “assisted throughout the rooms,” according to the Deep Valley Sun. Such intimates—the High Fly Whist Club crowd, the neighbors—came to the third party which was a more relaxed affair than the two preceding. It simmered down to a chosen few who ’phoned for their husbands and stayed to supper, eating up the last of the food and thoroughly discussing all three events.
They were still busy with this when Betsy went up to do homework. Margaret had already gone to bed but she called out, “Come here, Betsy,” and Betsy went into her room.
It was a small room at the end of the hall. It didn’t look like a child’s room somehow, in spite of a doll bed with a doll tucked in for the night. It looked like Margaret, neat, grave, full of quiet resources.
The bureau was very precisely arranged, with the pincushion Tony had brought her from Chicago in the center. There was a low rocker where Washington loved to sleep, a low well-ordered bookcase, a sewing basket Mrs. Wheat had given her for Christmas. Framed photographs of members of her family, a Perry print of the Stuart Baby and a colored picture of a collie dog were symmetrically spaced on the walls. Everything was so fastidiously neat that Betsy was surprised to see a doll dress hanging on the bedpost.
She started to remove it but Margaret said, “No. Leave it there.”
“Does it belong here?”
“You and Julia keep something hanging on your beds,” said Margaret, referring, of course, to the combing jackets.
Betsy, sitting down beside her, took care not to smile. Margaret didn’t like being smiled at.
She was sitting up in bed wearing a warm flannel night gown. Without hair ribbons, her braids betrayed their brevity but they were glossy and her face was freshly scrubbed. As always when looking at her younger sister, Betsy admired the long dark lashes. They emphasized the beauty of her wide shining eyes.
“I’ve been thinking,” Margaret said, “that I’d like to give a party.”
“Why, that’s fine!” Betsy replied. “Mamma is always trying to make you give a party.” Which was true. Margaret did not care much for juvenile festivities, nor for children her own age. Urged by Mrs. Ray, they came to play now and then, and Margaret treated them with scrupulous politeness, but she greatly preferred the company of a book, or Washington and Abie.
“Mamma will be delighted,” Betsy said. “Who shall we ask?”
“That’s just it,” Margaret cried. “I don’t want to invite a lot of children. I’ve been lying here thinking about it, Betsy.”
She sat up very straight and her eyes glowed.
“You see, Washington and Abie are named for George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and they have their birthdays this month. So I’d like to give a party for Washington and Abie. I don’t want a lot of people. I’d like to have just you and me give a party for Washington and Abie.”
Betsy was touched and complimented.
“Why, that’s a fine plan! When shall we have it?”
“Lincoln’s birthday or Washington’s birthday?”
“Maybe it would be safer to pick a day in between. Then neither one’s feelings would be hurt.”
“That’s right. We’ll pick a day right in the middle.”
“Say, the eighteenth. I think that’s Thursday. It’s just as well to have it on a Thursday. Anna won’t be around to mind our messing up the kitchen.”
Betsy leaned back and began to plan. And Margaret hugged her knees in delight, for Betsy knew how to make beautiful plans. She always had and she told them as though she were telling a story.
“We’ll have place cards,” she said, “like we have at the Okto Delta parties. You and I will make them. We’ll draw pictures of cats and dogs or we can cut them out of magazines and paste them on cards.”
“I like to paste,” said Margaret.
“We mustn’t let Abie and Washington see us making them, though.”
“Mustn’t we?”
“No. We want them for a surprise. And when the day comes we’ll brush Washington and Abie and tie ribbons into their collars.”
“Washington looks best in pink and Abie in blue….”
“What shall we give them to eat?”
“Something you’ve learned to make in your Domestic Science class.”
“Creamed salmon on toast,” said Betsy. She got up and kissed Margaret goodnight. “Go to sleep now, baby. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”
Margaret snuggled down with an ecstatic sigh.
“Oh, Betsy! It’s going to be such fun.”
They talked about it the next day and the next, but then came a diversion. Julia’s letters about The Mikado had grown more and more feverishly excited, and Mr. Ray decided to send Mrs. Ray up to the Cities for the event.
“Julia would probably like her Mamma around to tie her sash and paint her face,” he said. “It’s a pretty big thing for a freshman girl to have the leading part in an opera.”
Mrs. Ray thought so, too, and was very glad to go. In fact, she couldn’t imagine Julia getting through it without her. Anna said she could run the house alone and the girls urged th
eir mother to go.
“Now watch out for Margaret!” Mrs. Ray said to Betsy and went off on the four-forty-five. Her letters were even more feverish than Julia’s, raving not only about The Mikado but also about sorority affairs.
Sororities were still not allowed to rush the freshmen much. Parties were reserved for the now impending Rush Week, which would lead up to Pledge Day and the Great Decision. There was no rule, however, against rushing mothers and the Epsilon Iotas, the Alpha Betas, the Pi Pi Gammas and the rest were certainly rushing Mrs. Ray. They were taking her to matinees, to teas, to luncheons, and Mrs. Ray knew, she wrote, why they were so nice to her. It was because Julia, a freshman, had been chosen to sing Yum Yum. And she was the most adorable Yum Yum!
Mr. Ray chuckled when he read the letters.
“Jule thinks we have a wonderful child.”
“You think so yourself,” Betsy retorted.
“We know darn well we have three of them,” said Mr. Ray. “I’m certainly glad I made Jule go. She’s having a big time.”
Betsy enjoyed being lady of the house, planning meals, tying Margaret’s hair ribbons. She brought friends in every day after school and she and Margaret didn’t get around to making place cards. Betsy wasn’t too troubled by this. She was accustomed to making extravagant plans which she didn’t carry out. Margaret mentioned the party just once, as Betsy was hurrying off to school one morning.
“Shall I tell Washington and Abie about—you know what?”
“Oh, yes. Invite them.”
“Will it be on Thursday?”
“Probably. After school.”
Thursday noon Anna said, “I’ll be gone when you get home from school, lovey. I’ll have everything ready for supper, though.”
“You don’t need to,” said Betsy. “I’ll make a Domestic Science supper.”
“Well, I hope it turns out,” said Anna who didn’t think too highly of Domestic Science since a recent day when cream puffs, tried at home, had failed lamentably to live up to their name.
Betsy Was a Junior / Betsy and Joe Page 13