one really beautiful girl at the table was Miss Eleanor Watson. Her complexion was the daintiest pink and white, her black hair waved softly under the big hat which she had not stopped to take off, and her hazel eyes were plaintive one moment and sparkling the next, as her mood changed. She talked a good deal and very well, and it was hard to realize that she was only sixteen and a freshman. She had fitted for college at a big preparatory school in the east, and so, although she happened to be the only Denver girl in college, she had a great many friends in the upper classes and appeared to know quite as much about college customs as Miss Brooks. All this impressed Betty, who admired beauty and pretty clothes immensely. She resolved to have Eleanor Watson for a friend if she could, and was pleased when Miss Watson inquired how many examinations she had, and suggested that they would probably be in the same divisions, since their names both began with W.
The remaining girl at Mrs. Chapin’s table was not particularly striking. She had a great mass of golden brown hair, which she wore coiled loosely in her neck. Her keen grey eyes looked the world straight in the face, and her turned-up nose and the dimple in her chin gave her a merry, cheerful air. She did not talk much, and not at all about herself, but she gave the impression of being a thoroughly nice, bright, capable girl. Her name was Rachel Morrison.
After dinner Betty was starting up-stairs when Mary Brooks called her back. “Won’t you walk over to the campus with me, little girl?” she asked. “I have one or two errands. Oh no, you don’t need a hat. You never do here.”
So they wandered off bareheaded in the moonlight, which made the elm-shaded streets look prettier than ever. On the dusky campus girls strolled about in devoted pairs and sociable quartettes. On the piazza of one of the dwelling-houses somebody was singing a fascinating little Scotch ballad with a tinkling mandolin accompaniment.
“Must be Dorothy King,” said the sophomore. “I thought she wouldn’t come till eight. Most people don’t.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Betty, “I know her!” And she related her adventure at the station.
“That’s so,” said Miss Brooks. “I’d forgotten. She’s awfully popular, you know, and very prominent,–belongs to no end of societies. But whatever the Young Women’s Christian Association wants of her she does. You know they appoint girls to meet freshmen and help them find boarding-places and so on. She’s evidently on that committee. Let’s stop and say hello to her.”
Betty, hanging behind, was amazed to see the commotion caused by Miss Brooks’s arrival. The song stopped abruptly, the mandolin slammed to the floor, and performers and audience fell as one woman upon the newcomer.
“Why, Mary Brooks! When did you come?”
“Did you get a room, honey?”
“Oh, Mary, where did you put on that lovely tan?”
“Mary, is Sarah coming back, do you know?”
“Hush up, girls, and let her tell us!”
It was like the station, only more so, and oh, it was nice–if you were in it. Mary answered some of their questions and then looked around for Betty. “I’ve lost a freshman,” she said, “Here, Miss Wales, come up and sit on the railing. She knows you, Dottie, and she wants to hear you sing. These others are some of the Hilton House, Miss Wales. Please consider yourselves introduced. Now, Dottie.”
So the little Scotch ballad began again. Presently some one else came up, there were more effusive greetings, and then another song or two, after which Miss King and “some of the Hilton House” declared that they simply must go and unpack. Betty, suddenly remembering her trunk and her sister, decided to let Miss Brooks do her other “errands” alone, and found her way back to Mrs. Chapin’s. Sure enough, Nan was sitting on the piazza.
“Hello, little sister,” she called gaily as Betty hurried up the walk. “Don’t say you’re sorry to be late. It’s the worst possible thing for little freshmen to mope round waiting for people, and I’m glad you had the sense not to. Your trunk’s come, but if you’re not too tired let’s go up and see Ethel Hale before we unpack it.”
Ethel Hale had spent a whole summer with Nan, and Betty beat her at tennis and called her Ethel, and she called Betty little sister, just as Nan did. But here she was a member of the faculty. “I shall never dare come near her after you leave,” said Betty. Just as she said it the door of the room opened–Nan had explained that it was a freshman trick to ring front door-bells–and Ethel rushed out and dragged them in.
“Miss Blaine and Miss Mills are here,” she said.
Betty gathered from the subsequent conversation that Miss Blaine and Miss Mills were also members of the faculty; and they were. But they had just come in from a horseback ride, and they sat in rather disheveled attitudes, eating taffy out of a paper bag, and their conversation was very amusing and perfectly intelligible, even to a freshman who had still an examination to pass.
“I didn’t suppose the faculty ever acted like that. Why, they’re just like other people,” declared Betty, as she tumbled into bed a little later.
“They’re exactly like other people,” returned Nan sagely, from the closet where she was hanging up skirts. “Just remember that and you’ll have a lot nicer time with them.”
So ended Betty’s first day at college. Nan finished unpacking, and then sat for a long time by the window. Betty loved Nan, but Nan in return worshiped Betty. They might call her the clever Miss Wales if they liked; she would gladly have given all her vaunted brains for the fascinating little ways that made Betty friends so quickly and for the power to take life in Betty’s free-and-easy fashion. “Oh, I hope she’ll like it!” she thought. “I hope she’ll be popular with the girls. I don’t want her to have to work so hard for all she gets. I wouldn’t exchange my course for hers, but I want hers to be the other kind.”
Betty was sound asleep.
CHAPTER II
BEGINNINGS
The next morning it poured.
“Of course,” said Eleanor Watson impressively at breakfast. “It always does the first day of college. They call it the freshman rain.”
“Let’s all go down to chapel together,” suggested Rachel Morrison.
“You’re going to order carriages, of course?” inquired Roberta Lewis stiffly.
“Hurrah! Another joke for the grind-book,” shrieked Mary Brooks. Then she noticed Roberta’s expression of abject terror. “Never mind, Miss Lewis,” she said kindly. “It’s really an honor to be in the grind-book, but I promise not to tell if you’d rather I wouldn’t. Won’t you show that you forgive me by coming down to college under my umbrella?”
“She can’t. She’s coming with me,” answered Nan promptly. “I demand the right to first choice.”
“Very well, I yield,” said Mary, “because when you go my sovereignty will be undisputed. You’ll have to hurry, children.”
So the little procession of rain-coats flapping out from under dripping umbrellas started briskly off to join the longer procession that was converging from every direction toward College Hall. Roberta and Nan were ahead under one umbrella, chatting like old friends.
“I suppose she doesn’t think we’re worth talking to,” said Rachel Morrison, who came next with Betty.
“Probably
