Chapter 9 A WEDDING AND A VISIT TO BOHEMIA

Betty and Madeline went to their class meeting on the following afternoon very much as a trembling freshman goes to her first midyears, but nothing disastrous happened.

"I fancy that Jean has taken more than Eleanor and me into her confidence," Madeline whispered. Besides, the Blunderbuss was in her place, her placid but unyielding presence offering an effectual reminder to the girls who had been admiring Eleanor's executive ability and resourcefulness that it would be safer not to mention her name in connection with the play committee.

But before that was elected the preliminary committee, which, to quote Katherine Kittredge, had been hunting down the masterpieces of Willy Shakespeare ever since the middle of junior year, made its report. The members had not been able to agree unanimously on a play, so the chairman read the majority's opinion, in favor of "As You Like It," and then Katherine Kittredge explained the position of the minority, who wanted to be very ambitious indeed and try "The Merchant of Venice." There was a spirited debate between the two sets of partisans, after which, to Katherine's infinite satisfaction, 19- voted to give "The Merchant of Venice" at its commencement.

Then the committee to manage the play was chosen, and Betty Wales was the only person who was much surprised when she was unanimously elected to the post of costume member.

"I on that committee!" she exclaimed in dismay. "Why, I don't know anything about Shakespeare."

"You will before you get through with this business," laughed Barbara Gordon, who had been made chairman. "The course begins to-morrow at two in my room. No cuts allowed."

"I DO CARE ABOUT HAVING FRIENDS LIKE YOU," SHE SAID.

Betty's pleasure in this unexpected honor was rather dampened by the fact that Jean Eastman had proposed her name, making it seem almost as if she were taking sides with Eleanor's enemies. But Madeline only laughed at what she called Jean's neat little scheme for getting the last word.

"Ruth Ford was all ready to nominate you," she said, "but Jean dashed in ahead of her. She wanted to assure me that I hadn't silenced her for long."

So Betty gave herself up to the happy feeling of having shown herself worthy to be trusted with part of 19-'s most momentous undertaking.

"I must write Nan to-night," she said, "but I don't think I shall mention the costume part. She would think I was just as frivolous as ever, and Barbara says that all the committee are expected to help with things in general."

Whereupon she remembered her tea-drinking, and hurried home to find most of the guests already assembled, and Eleanor, who had not gone to the class meeting but who had heard all about it from the others, waiting on the stairs to congratulate her.

"I don't care half as much about being on the committee as I do about having friends like you to say they're glad," declared Betty, hugging Eleanor because there were a great many things that she didn't know how to say to her.

"Yes, friends are what count," said Eleanor earnestly, "and Betty, I think I'm going to leave Harding with a good many. At least I've made some new ones this week."

And that was all the reference that was ever made to the way Eleanor's oldest friend at Harding had treated her.

"Well," said Betty, when everybody had congratulated her and Rachel, whose appointment on all 19-'s important committees had come to be a foregone conclusion, "I hope Nita and Rachel and K. won't be sorry they came. You three aren't so much mixed up in it as the rest of us, but I thought I'd ask you anyway."

"Do you mean that I can't have my usual three slices of lemon?" demanded Katherine indignantly.

"Hush, material-minded one," admonished Nita. "There's more than tea and lemon in this. There's a great secret. Of course we shall be interested in it. Fire away, Betty."

"And everybody stop watching the kettle," commanded Babbie, who had taken it in charge, "and then perhaps it will begin to boil."

"What I wanted to tell you," began Betty, impressively, "is that Miss Hale is going to be married this vacation."

"Good for Miss Hale!" cried Bob, throwing up a pillow. "Did her sister get well?"

"Yes," said Betty. "She was dreadfully ill all summer, and then she had to go away for a change. Ethel wanted to wait until she was perfectly strong, because she had looked forward so to being maid-of-honor."

"I think we ought to send Miss Hale a present," said Babe, decisively. "Madame President, please instruct the secretary-- Why, we haven't any president now," ended Babe in dismay.

"Let's elect Betty," suggested Nita.

"She's too young for such a responsible position," objected Bob. "It's only the dramatics committee that takes infants."

"And besides, her hair curls," added Madeline, reaching out to pull one of the offending ringlets. "Curly-haired people don't deserve to be elected to offices."

"Let's have Babe," suggested Rachel.

"She's older than her name, her hair has always been straight--"

"Except once," put in Katherine, and everybody shrieked with laughter at the recollection of Babe's one disastrous experience with a marcelle wave.

"And then she looked like a wild woman of Borneo," went on Rachel, "so it shouldn't count against her. Furthermore this society was organized to give her a chance."

"All right," agreed Nita. "I withdraw my nomination. Babe, you're elected. Instruct the secretary to cast a unanimous ballot for yourself."

"Very well," said Babe with much dignity. "Please do it, Madeline, and then I appoint you and Betty and Eleanor to choose a present for Miss Hale. I was just going to say, when I interrupted myself to remark upon the extraordinary absence of a presiding officer"-Babe coughed and dropped her presidential manner abruptly-"I was going to say that I'm all for a stuffed turtle, like those we got in Nassau. I think a ripping big one would be the very thing."

"Babe!" said Babbie scornfully. "Imagine how a turtle would look among her wedding presents."

"I think it would look stunning," persisted Babe, "and it would be so appropriate from us."

"Don't be dictatorial, Babe," advised Rachel. "It isn't seemly in a president. Perhaps your committee can think of something appropriate that won't be quite so startling as a turtle. When is the wedding, Betty?"

"The thirty-first of December at half-past eight," explained Betty.

"New Year's eve-what a nice, poetical time," interposed Babbie, thoughtfully. "I think that if I ever marry--"

"Hush, Babbie," commanded Nita. "You probably never will. Do let Betty finish her story."

"Well, it's to be a very small wedding," went on Betty, hastily, "with no cards, but announcements, but Ethel wrote me herself and she wants us all-the Nassau ones, I mean-and Mary Brooks, to come."

"Jolly for Miss Hale!" cried Bob, tossing up two pillows this time.

"How perfectly dear of her!" said Babbie.

"The biggest turtle we can get won't be a bit too good for her," declared Babe.

"But where could we stay over night?" asked Helen, the practical-minded.

"You don't give me a chance to tell you the whole of anything," complained Betty, sadly. "We're invited guests-specially invited, I mean, and it's all arranged where we are to stay. Ethel is going to have her sister and four bridesmaids to walk with her, and she wants us girls to hold a laurel rope along the line of march of the wedding-party, as they go through the rooms."

"Jolly," began Babe, but she was promptly suppressed by Madeline, who tumbled her flat on her back and held her down with a pillow while she ordered Betty to proceed.

"I'll read you what else she says," went on Betty, triumphantly producing Miss Hale's letter. "She says, 'There won't be many people to get in the way of the procession, but the aisle effect will be pretty, and besides I want my match-makers to have a part in the grand dénouement of all their efforts. Will you ask the others and write Mary Brooks, whose address I don't know. My uncle's big house next door to us will have room for you all, and you must come in time for my bridesmaids' luncheon and a little dance, both on the thirtieth.' Now isn't that splendid?"

"Perfectly splendid," echoed her auditors.

"Why, we shall be almost bridesmaids," said Roberta Lewis in awestruck tones. "Does Mary know?"

Betty nodded. "She hasn't had time to answer yet, but she can certainly go, as she lives so near Ethel."

"The only difficulty about our going," said Babe, "is what to do with the few days between the wedding and the opening of college."

"And that's easily settled," said Madeline promptly. "Miss Hale lives just out of New York, doesn't she? Well, you are all to come and stay in the flat with me. Hasn't it just been beautifully cleaned? And aren't you all longing for a glimpse of Bohemia?"

That was the climax of the tea drinking. The Merry Match-Makers spent the evening writing home to their parents for permission to go to the wedding and considering momentous problems of dress. For Roberta's best evening-gown was lavender and Babbie's was pink, and the question was how to distribute Betty, Babe and Helen in white, Bob in blue, Eleanor in her favorite yellow, Madeline in ecru, and Mary in any one of a bewildering number of possible toilettes, so as to justify Ethel's hope that the aisle would be ornamental as well as useful.

How the days flew after that! For besides the wedding there were the luncheon and the dance to anticipate and plan for, as well as the unknown joys of Bohemia, New York, not to mention the regular excitement of going home, the fun of tucking Christmas presents into the corners of half-packed trunks, and the terrors of the written lesson that some inhuman member of the faculty always saves for the crowded last week of the term.

On the afternoon of the twenty-ninth the Merry Match-Makers met in New York. Babbie had sent a sad little note to Miss Hale and a tearful one to Betty to say that her mother, who was a good deal of an invalid, had "looked pretty blue over my running off early, and so of course I won't leave her;" and Helen Adams had decided that considering all the extra expenses of senior year she couldn't afford the trip to New York. So there were only seven "almost bridesmaids," as Roberta called them, or "posts," which was Bob's name for them, to fall upon one another as if they had been separated for years, instead of a week, say thank you for the presents that were each "just what I wanted," and exclaim excitedly over Betty's new suit, Mary's fur coat, and the sole-leather kit-bag that Santa Claus had brought Roberta.

"It's queer," said Bob. "I feel as if I'd had one whole vacation already, and ought to be unpacking and digging on psychology 6 and history 10. Whereas in reality I'm just beginning on another whole vacation. It's like having two Thanksgiving dinners in one year."

"Not quite like that, I hope," laughed Eleanor, as they started off to inspect the wedding present, a beautiful pair of tall silver candlesticks. Madeline had ransacked New York to find them, and every one but Babe, who clung to her turtle as far superior to any "musty old antiques," thought them just odd and distinctive enough to please Ethel's fastidious taste. And after that there was barely time to catch the train they had arranged to take out to Ethel's home.

Interest in the bride and in their own part of the wedding ceremony had caused the "Merry Hearts" to forget Dr. Eaton, and they had never once considered that of course his college chum, John Alison, would leave the railroad he was building in Arizona and come east to be Dr. Eaton's best man. And it was Mr. John Alison who had "finished" Georgia Ames. He inquired for her at once and so did his brother Tom, who was an usher, and who explained that he had been invited to keep John in order, and to intercede for him with the "posts."

"And in return for my services as peacemaker," he said solemnly, "I expect to be treated with special consideration by everybody." Subsequent events seemed to show that the special consideration referred to meant a chance to see as much as possible of Betty Wales.

Even more surprising to three of the posts was the presence of Mr. Richard Blake in the wedding-party-Richard Blake, editor of "The Quiver," and one-time lecturer at Harding on the tendencies of modern drama.

Eleanor's face was a study when she recognized him, but before Miss Hale could begin any introductions Madeline greeted him enthusiastically and got him into a corner, where they exchanged low-toned confidences for a moment.

"I'm particularly glad to meet you again, Miss Watson," he said in a tone of unmistakable sincerity, when he was presented. "We had a jolly dinner together once, didn't we?"

"Dick's such an old dear," Madeline whispered to Betty half an hour later. "He confided to me just now that the first evening he saw Eleanor he thought her the most fascinating girl he had ever met, and then he hastened to assure me that that had absolutely nothing to do with his deciding to keep dark about her story. I don't doubt him for a moment-Dick perfectly detests cheating. But he can't make me believe that he's being nice to her now just on my account."

There were plenty of other men at the wedding. "We're the only girls in the whole family," Charlotte, Ethel's younger sister explained, "and we have thirty own cousins, most of them grown-up."

"Was that one of the thirty that you were sitting on the stairs with at the dance?" inquired Mary Brooks sweetly.

Charlotte blushed and Bob flew to her rescue. "We all know why Mary isn't monopolizing any one," she said. "Are you taking notes for future use, Mary?"

Mary shrugged her shoulders loftily. "I scorn to answer such nonsense," she retorted. "I'm going to be an old maid and make matches for all my friends."

"We'll come and be posts for you any time after commencement," Babe assured her amiably. "Did you know, girls, that Mary can't stay over with Madeline because her mother is giving a New Year's dinner-party. Who do you suppose will be there?"

The wedding festivities were over at last. "It was all perfectly scrumptious," Babe wrote Babbie enthusiastically, "and I'm bringing you a little white satin slipper like those we had filled with puffed rice for luncheon favors, and a lovely pin that Miss Hale wants you to have just as if you had come. The nicest thing of all is that vacation isn't over yet. Is it two weeks or two years since I saw you?"

And next came Bohemia. Before they had quite reached Washington Square Madeline tumbled her guests hastily off their car.

"I forgot to tell Mrs. McLean when to expect us," she explained. "She is our cook. So we'll hunt her up now and we might as well buy the luncheon as we go along."

So first they found Mrs. McLean, a placid old Scotch woman who was not at all surprised when Madeline announced that she was giving a house-party for five and had forgotten to mention it sooner. She had a delicious Scotch burr and an irresistible way of standing in the dining-room door and saying, "Come awa', my dears," when she had served a meal. Like everything else connected with the Ayres establishment, she was always there when you wanted her; between times she disappeared mysteriously, leaving the kitchen quite clear for Madeline and her guests, and always turning up in time to wash the fudge-pan or the chafing-dishes.

From Mrs. McLean's they went down a dirty, narrow street, stopping at a number of funny, foreign-looking fruit and grocery shops, where they bought whatever anybody wanted.

"Though it doesn't matter what you have to eat," said Roberta later, pouring cream into her coffee from an adorable little Spanish jug, "as long as you have it on this lovely old china."

They had their coffee in the studio, sitting around the open fire, and while they were drinking it people began to drop in-Mr. Blake, who roomed just across the Square, a pretty, pale girl, who was evidently an artist because every one congratulated her on having some things "on the line" somewhere, three newspaper men from the flat above, who being on a morning daily had just gotten up and stopped in to say "Happy New Year" on their way down to Park Row, and a jolly little woman whom the others called Mrs. Bob.

"She's promised to chaperon us," Madeline explained to her guests. "She lives down-stairs, so we can't go in or out without falling into her terrible clutches."

Mrs. Bob, who was in a corner playing with the little black kitten that seemed to belong with the house, like Mrs. McLean, stopped long enough to ask if they had heard about the theatre party. They had not, so Mr. Blake explained that by a sudden change of bill at one of the theatres Mr. Sothern and Miss Marlowe were to give "The Merchant of Venice" that evening.

"And I understand from Miss Watson that you people are particularly interested in that play," he added, "so I've corraled some tickets and Mrs. Bob and a bunch of men."

"And the Carletons will have an early dinner," put in Mrs. Bob. "Oh, I forgot. You don't know about that either. Mrs. Carleton won't be back from the country until four o'clock, so she asked me to give you the invitation to have New Year's dinner with them."

"But did she know there were six of us?" asked Betty anxiously, whereupon everybody laughed and Mrs. Bob assured her that Mrs. Carleton had mentioned seven to her, and hadn't seemed in the least worried.

That was the way things went all through their visit. Mrs. Bob took them shopping, with frequent intermissions for cakes and tea at queer little tea-rooms, with alluring names like "The London Muffin Room," or the "Yellow Tea-Pot." Her husband escorted them to the east-side brass-shops, assuring them solemnly that it wasn't everybody he showed his best finds to, and mourning when their rapturous enthusiasm prevented his getting them a real bargain. The newspaper men gave a "breakfast-luncheon" for them-breakfast for themselves, and luncheon for their guests-which was so successful that it was continued that same evening by a visit to a Russian puppet-show and supper in a Chinese restaurant. The pretty artist sold one of her pictures and invited them to help her celebrate, just as if they were old friends, who knew how hard she had struggled and how often she hadn't had money enough to buy herself bread and butter, to say nothing of offering jam-in the shape of oysters on the half-shell and lobster Newburg-to other people.

It was all so gay and light-hearted and unexpected-the way things happened in Bohemia. Nobody hurried or worried, though everybody worked hard. It was just as Madeline had told them, only more so. The girls said a sorrowful good-bye to Mrs. Bob, Mrs. McLean and the little black kitten and journeyed back to Harding sure that there never had been and never would be another such vacation for them.

"How can there be?" said Bob dejectedly. "At Easter we shall all have to get clothes, and after that we shan't know a vacation from mid-year week."

"Which delightful function begins in exactly fourteen days," said Katherine Kittredge. "Is there anybody here present whose notes on Hegel have the appearance of making sense?"

19- took its senior midyears gaily and quite as a matter of course, lectured its underclass friends on the evils of cramming, and kept up its spirits by going coasting with Billy Henderson, Professor Henderson's ten-year-old son, who had admired college girls ever since he found that Bob Parker could beat him at steering a double-runner. Between times they bought up the town's supply of "The Merchant of Venice,"-"not to learn any part, you know, but because we're interested in our play," each purchaser explained to her friends.

For there is no use in proclaiming your aspirations to be a Portia or a Shylock until you are sure that your dramatic talent is going to be appreciated. Of course there were exceptions to this rule, but the girl who said at a campus dinner-table, "If I am Portia, who is there tall enough for Bassanio?" became a college proverb in favor of keeping your hopes to yourself, and everybody was secretly delighted when she decided that she "really didn't care" to be in the mob.

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