Part 23 (2/2)
GEORGIA'S AMETHYST PENDANT
”Has your man come yet, Lucy?”
”Mine hasn't, thank goodness! He couldn't get off for the afternoon.”
”Mine thought he couldn't and then he changed his mind after I'd refused all the teas.”
”Oh, I wouldn't miss the teas for anything. They're more fun than the concert.”
”Of course she wouldn't miss them, the dressy lady, with violets to wear and a new white hat with plumes.”
”The Hilton is going to have an orchestra to play for dancing. Isn't that pretty cute?”
”But did you hear about Sara Allen's men? They both telegraphed her last evening that they could come,--both, please note. And now she hasn't any seats.”
So the talk ran among the merry crowd of girls who jostled one another in the narrow halls after morning chapel. For it was the day of the Glee Club concert. The first installment of men and flowers was already beginning to arrive, giving to the Harding campus that air of festive expectancy which it wears on the rare occasions when the Harding girl's highest ambition is not to s.h.i.+ne in her cla.s.ses or star in the basket-ball game or the senior play, but only to own a ”man.”
Tom Alison and his junior roommate arrived at the Belden soon after luncheon. Tom looked so distinguished in a frock coat and high hat that Betty hoped her pride and satisfaction in taking him around the campus weren't too dreadfully evident.
Ashley Dwight was tall, round-shouldered, and homely, except when he smiled, which he did very seldom because he was generally too busy making every one within hearing of his low voice hysterical with laughter over his funny stories. He took an instant fancy to Georgia, and of course Georgia liked him--everybody liked Ashley, Tom explained.
So Betty's last worriment vanished, leaving nothing to mar the perfection of her afternoon.
The Hilton girls' brilliant idea of turning their tea into a dance had been speedily copied by the Westcott and the Belden, and the other houses ”came in strong on refreshments, cozy-corners, and conversation,”
as Ashley put it. So it was six o'clock before any one dreamed that it could be so late, and the men went off to their hotels for dinner, leaving the girls to gloat over the flower-boxes piled high on the hall-table, to gossip over the afternoon's adventures, and then hurry off to dress, dinner being a superfluity to them after so many salads and sandwiches, ices and macaroons, all far more appetizing than a campus dinner menu.
”I'll come down to your room in time to help you finish dressing,” Betty promised Georgia. ”My things slip on in a minute.”
But she had reckoned without a loose nail in the stair-carpet, which, apparently resenting her hasty progress past it, had torn a yard of filmy ruching off her skirt before she realized what was happening.
”Oh, dear!” she mourned, ”now I shall have to rush just as usual. Helen Chase Adams, the gathering-string is broken. Have you any pink silk? I haven't a thing but black myself. Then would you try to borrow some? And please ask Madeline to go down and help Georgia. Her roommate is going rush to the concert, so she had to start early.”
Helen had just taken the last st.i.tches in the ruffle and Betty was putting on her skirt again, when Tom's card came up to her. By the time she got down-stairs they were all waiting in the reception-room and Mr.
Dwight was helping Georgia into her coat and laughing at the chiffon scarf that she a.s.sured him was a great protection, so that Betty didn't see Georgia in her hated evening gown until they took off their wraps at the theatre.
”Awfully sorry I couldn't come to help you,” she whispered, as they went out to the carriage, ”but I know you're all right.”
”I did my little best not to disgrace you,” Georgia whispered back. ”My neck is horribly bony, no matter what mother thinks; but I covered some of it up with a chain.”
When they got to the theatre, almost every seat was filled and a pretty little usher hurried them through the crowd at the door, a.s.suring them importantly over her shoulder that the concert would begin in one minute and she couldn't seat even box-holders during a number. Sure enough, before they had fairly gotten into their places, the Glee Club girls began to come out and arrange themselves in a rainbow-tinted semicircle for the first number. They sang beautifully and looked so pretty that Tom gallantly declared they deserved to be encored on that account alone; and he led the applause so vigorously that everybody looked up at their box and laughed. Alice Waite had the other seats in it, and as the three men were friends and all in the highest spirits, it was a gay party.
”There's Jerry Holt,” Tom would say, ”see him stare at our elegance.”
”Oh, we're making the rest of the fellows envious all right,” Ashley would answer. ”Who's the stunning girl in the second row, next the aisle? We don't miss a thing from here, do we?”
”Prettiest lay-out I've ever seen, this concert is,” Alice's escort would declare fervently. ”Sh, Tommie, the banjo club's going to play.”
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