Betty Wales, Senior Part 34

"I think you ought to have given this toast to somebody else," she began innocently. "I can't act, and I can't speak either, as it happens.

Besides words speak louder than actions. No, I mean actions speak louder than words, so I will let the cast toast themselves."

"Roast themselves, you mean," said Katherine, pushing back her chair.

And then began a clever burlesque of the casket scene in which Gratiano played Portia's part, Shylock was Nerissa, Gobbo Ba.s.sanio, and Jessica the Prince of Morocco. Next Alice called for the Gobbos and Portia and the Prince of Morocco "stood forth" and went through a solemn travesty of the scene between the father and son that left the cla.s.s faint and speechless with laughter.

Then there were more toasts and when the coffee had been served they made the engaged girls run around the table. Betty was sorry then that she wasn't in her own place, to help get Babbie Hildreth started. Her friends were all sure that she was engaged and she had hinted that she might tell them more about it at cla.s.s-supper, but now she denied it as stoutly as ever. Finally Bob settled the question by getting up and running in her place,--a non-committal proceeding that delighted everybody.

After that came the last toast, "Our esprit de corps." Kate Denise had it, for no reason that Betty could see unless Christy had wanted to show Kate that the cla.s.s understood the difference between her and the other Hill girls. And then Kate was one of 19--'s best speakers and so could do justice to the subject.

"I think we ought to drink this toast standing," she began. "We've drunk to the cast and the team, to our presidents, our engaged girls, our faculty. Now I ask you to drink to the very greatest pride and honor of this cla.s.s,--to the way we've always stood together, to the way we stand together to-night, to the way we shall stand together in the future, no matter where we go or what we do. It's not every cla.s.s that can put this toast on its supper-card. Not every cla.s.s knows what it means to be run, not in the interest of a clique or by a few leading spirits, but by the good-feeling of the whole big cla.s.s. And so I ask you to drink one more toast--to the girl who started this feeling of good-fellowship at a certain cla.s.s-meeting that some of us remember, and who has kept it up by being a friend to everybody and making us all want to be friends.

Here's to Betty Wales."

When Betty heard her name she almost jumped out of her chair with amazement. She had been listening admiringly to Kate's eloquent little speech, never dreaming how it would end and now they were all clapping and pushing back their chairs again, and Clara Madison was trying to make her stand up in hers.

"Speech!" shouted the irrepressible Bob and the girls sat down again and the big table grew still, while Betty twisted her napkin into a knot and smiled bravely into all the welcoming faces.

"I'm sure Kate is mistaken," she said at last in a shaky little voice.

"I'm sure every girl in 19-- wanted every other girl to have her share of the fun just as much as I did. The cla.s.s cup, that we won at tennis in our soph.o.m.ore year is on the table somewhere. Let's fill it with lemonade and sing to everybody right down the line. And while they're filling the cup let's sing to Harding College."

It took a long time to sing to everybody, but not a minute too long.

Betty watched the faces of the girls when their turns came--the girls who were always sung to, like Emily Davis, and the girls who had never been sung to in all the four years and who flushed with pride and pleasure to hear their names ring out and to feel that they too belonged to the finest, dearest cla.s.s that ever left Harding.

"Now we must have the regular stunts," said Eleanor. There was a shuffling of chairs and she and Betty and the people who had had toasts slipped back to their own particular crowds, leaving the top of the table for the stunt-doers. It was shockingly late, but they wanted all the old favorites. Who knew when Emily Davis would be back to do her temperance lecture or how long it would be before they could hear Madame Patti sing "Home, Sweet Home" through a wheezy gramophone?

"Was it all right?" Eleanor whispered to Betty as they hunted up their wraps a little later.

"Perfectly splendid," said Betty with shining eyes. "The loveliest end-up to the loveliest commencement that ever was."

"We haven't got to say good-bye yet," said somebody. "There's a cla.s.s meeting to-morrow at nine, you know."

"Half of us will probably sleep over," said Babe in a queer, supercilious tone. Not for all the morning naps in the world would Babe have missed that good-bye meeting.

CHAPTER XIX

"GOOD-BYE!"

"And after commencement packing," said Madeline Ayres sadly, "and that's no joke either, I can tell you."

"Oh, I don't know," said Babe airily. "Give away everything that you can't sell, and you won't be troubled. That's what I've done."

"I couldn't give up my dear old desk," said Rachel soberly, "nor my books and pictures."

"Oh, I've kept a few little things myself," explained Babe hastily, "just to remember the place by."

"My mother wanted to stay and help me," laughed Nita. "She thought if we both worked hard we might get through in a day."

"Mary Brooks did hers in two hours," announced Katherine, "and I guess I'm as bright as little Mary about most things, so I'm not worrying."

"Isn't it time to start for cla.s.s-meeting?" asked Betty, coming out on the piazza with Roberta.

"See them walk off together arm in arm," chuckled Bob softly, "just as if they knew they were going to be elected our alumnae president and secretary respectfully."

"Don't you mean respectively, Bob?" asked Helen Adams.

"Of course I do," retorted Bob, "but I'm not obliged to say what I mean now. I'm an alum. I can use as bad diction as I please and the long arm of the English department can't reach out and spatter my mistakes with red ink."

The election of officers didn't take long. It had all been cut and dried the night before, and the nominating committee named Betty for president and Shylock for secretary without even going through the formality of retiring to deliberate. Then Katherine moved that the surplus in the treasury be turned over to "our pet philanthropy, the Students' Aid,"

and Carlotta Young inquired anxiously whether the first reunion was to be in one or two years.

"In one," shouted the a.s.sembly to a woman, and the meeting adjourned tumultuously. But n.o.body went home, in spite of the packing that clamored for attention.

"Good-bye, you dear old thing!"

"See you next June for sure. I'm coming back then, if I do live away out in Seattle."

"You're going to study art in New York, you say? Oh, I'm there very often. Here, let me copy that address."

"Going abroad for the summer, you lucky girl? Well, rather not! I'm going to tutor six young wigglers into a prep. school."

"Wasn't last night fun? Don't you wish we could have it all over again,--except the midyears and the papers for English novelists."

"Good-bye!"

"Good-bye!"

"Good-bye!"

But these weren't the good-byes that came hardest; those would be said later in the dear, dismantled rooms or at the station, for very close friends would arrange to meet again there. But the close friendships would be kept up in letters and visits, whereas these casual acquaintances might never again be renewed.

"I've seen you nearly every day for three years," Madeline Ayres told little Miss Avery, whose name came next to hers on the cla.s.s-list, "and now you're going to live in Iowa and I'm going to Italy. The world is a big place, isn't it?"

But Nita Reese thought it was surprisingly small when she found that Emily Davis was going to teach French in the little town where she lived, and Betty got a great deal of comfort from the fact that four other 19-- girls lived in Cleveland.

"Though I can't believe it's really over," Betty confided to Bob. "I don't feel a bit like an alum."

"That's because you still look just like a freshman," returned Bob, unfeelingly. "I'll bet you a trolley-ride to any place you choose that you'll be taken for one before you leave Harding."

Sure enough Betty, hurrying across the campus a moment later to intercept the man who had promised to crate her desk and then never come for it, was stopped by a timid little sub-freshman with her hair in a braid, who inquired if she was going to take the "major French"

examination, and did she know whether it came at eleven or twelve o'clock?

"So we're all got to go off on a trolley-ride," shouted Bob jubilantly, and though Betty protested and called Helen to witness that she hadn't promised Bob any trolley-ride whatever, everybody agreed that they ought to have one last picnic somewhere before they separated. So they all hurried home to do what Katherine called "tall strides of work," and at four o'clock they were waiting, with tempting-looking bags and bundles tucked under their arms, for a car.

"We'll take the first one that comes," Bob decided, "and go until we see a nice picnic-y place."