"Oh, I couldn't," wailed Miss Madison.

"Then I shall," returned Betty. "That is, I shall ask one of the faculty."

"Would you dare?"

"Yes, indeed. They're human, like other people," said Betty, quoting Nan. "I don't see why some one didn't think of it sooner."

That night at dinner Betty announced her plan. The freshmen looked relieved and Mary Brooks showed uncalled-for enthusiasm.

"Do go," she urged. "It's high time such an absurd story was shown up at its real value. It's absurd. The way we talk and talk about a report like that, and never dare to ask the faculty if it's true."

"Do you take any freshman courses?" inquired Eleanor sarcastically.

Mary smiled her "beamish" smile. "No," she said, "but I'm an interested party nevertheless--quite as much so as any of the famous fifty."

"Whom shall you ask, Betty?" pursued Katherine, ignoring the digression.

"Miss Mansfield. I have her the first hour, and besides, since she's been engaged she's so nice and sympathetic."

Next day the geometry cla.s.s dragged unmercifully for three persons.

Eleanor beat a nervous tattoo on the seat-arm, Miss Madison stared fixedly at the clock, and Betty blushed and twisted and wished she could have seen Miss Mansfield before cla.s.s. The delayed interview was beginning to seem very formidable. But it wasn't, after the first plunge.

"What an absurd story!" laughed Miss Mansfield. "Not a word of truth in it, of course. Why I don't believe the girl who started it thought it was true. How long has it been in circulation?"

Betty counted the days. "I didn't really believe it," she added shyly.

"But you worried," said Miss Mansfield, smiling down at her. "Next time don't be taken in one little bit,--or else come to headquarters sooner."

Eleanor and Miss Madison were waiting outside the door when Betty dashed at them with a little squeal of ecstasy. There was a moment of rapturous congratulation; then Miss Madison picked up the note-book she had dropped and held out her hand solemnly to Betty.

"You've--why I think you've saved my life," she said, "and now I must go to my next cla.s.s."

"You're a little hero," added Eleanor, catching Betty's arm and rushing her off to a recitation in Science Hall.

Roberta received the joyful news more calmly. "We may any of us flunk our mid-years yet," she said.

"But we can study for them in peace and comfort," said Adelaide Rich.

Mary Brooks asked endless questions at luncheon. Did the girls all accept Miss Mansfield's denial as authoritative? Did it travel as fast as the original story had done? How did people think the rumor had started?

"Why, n.o.body mentioned that," said Rachel in surprise. "How odd that we shouldn't have wondered!"

"Shows your sheep-like natures," said Mary, rising abruptly. "Well, now I can finish my psychology paper."

"Haven't you worked on it any?" inquired Betty.

"Oh, yes, I made an outline and developed some topics last night. But I couldn't finish until to-day. I was so worried about you children."

Toward the end of the next week Rachel came in to dinner late and in high spirits. "I've had such a fine walk!" she exclaimed. "Hester Gulick and I went to the bridge, and on the way back we overtook a senior named Janet Andrews. She is such fun. She'd walked down-town with Professor Hinsdale. He teaches psychology, doesn't he? They seem to be very good friends, and he told her such a funny thing about the fifty-freshmen story. How do you suppose it started?"

"Oh, please tell us," cried everybody at once.

"Why, an awfully clever girl in his soph.o.m.ore cla.s.s started it as an experiment, to see how it would take. She told it to some freshmen, saying explicitly that it wasn't true, and they told their friends, and so it went all over the college until last Sat.u.r.day Betty got Miss Mansfield to deny it. But no one knew how it started until yesterday when Professor Hinsdale looked over a paper in which the girl had written it all up, as a study in the way rumors spread and grow. This one was so big to begin with that it couldn't grow much, though it seems, according to the paper, that some people had added to it that half the freshmen would be conditioned in math."

"How awfully funny!" gurgled Betty. Then she jumped almost out of her chair. "Why, Mary Brooks!" she said.

Everybody looked at Mary, who blushed guiltily and remarked with great dignity that Professor Hinsdale was an old telltale. But when she had a.s.sured herself that the freshmen, with the possible exception of Eleanor, were disposed to regard the psychological experiment which had victimized them with perfect good-nature, and herself with considerable admiration, she condescended to accept congratulations and answer questions.

"Seriously, girls," she said at last, "I hope no one got really scared.

I wanted to explain when I heard Betty tell how unhappy Miss Madison was, but I really thought Miss Mansfield's denial would cheer her up more and reach her almost as quickly, and at the same time it would help me out so beautifully. It made such a grand conclusion!

"You see," she went on, "Professor Hinsdale put the idea into my head when he a.s.signed the subjects away back last month. He said he was giving them out early so we would have time to make original observations. When he mentioned 'Rumor,' he spoke of village gossip, and the faked stories that are circulated on Wall Street to make stocks go up or down, and then of the wild way we girls take up absurd reports.

The last suggestion appealed to me, but I couldn't remember anything definite enough, so I decided to invent a rumor. Then I forgot all about it till that Sat.u.r.day that I went skating, and 'you know the rest,' as our friend Mr. Longfellow aptly remarks. When I get my chef-d'oeuvre back you may have a private view, in return for which I hope you'll encourage your friends not to hate me."

"Isn't she fun?" said Betty a little later, when she and Helen were alone together. "Do you know, I think this rumor business has been a good thing. It's made a lot of us work hard, and only seriously frightened three or four."

"Yes," said Helen primly. "I think so too. The girls here are inclined to be very frivolous."

"Who?" demanded Betty.

Helen hesitated. "Oh, the girls as a whole."

"That doesn't count," objected Betty. "Give me a name."

"Well, Barbara Gordon."

"Takes sixteen hours, has her themes read in Mary's cla.s.s, and in her spare moments paints water colors that are exhibited in Boston," said Betty promptly.

"Really?" gasped Helen.

"Really," repeated Betty. "Of course she was very well prepared, and so her work here seems easy to her. Next year I hope that you and I won't have to plod along so."

Helen said nothing, but she was deeply grateful to Betty for that last sentence. "You and I"--as if there was something in common between them.

The other girls set her apart in a cla.s.s by herself and labeled her "dig." If one was born slow and conscientious and plodding, was there any hope for one,--any place among these pretty girls who worked so easily and idled so gracefully? Helen shut her lips firmly and resolved to keep on hunting.

CHAPTER XI

MID-YEARS AND A DUST-PAN

Viewed in retrospect the tragic experiences of one's freshman year seem often the most insignificant of trifles; but that does not prevent their being at the time momentous as the fate of empires. There are mid-year examinations, for instance; after one has survived them a few times she knows that being "flunked out" is not so common an experience as report represents it to be, and as for "low grades" and "conditions," if one has "cut" or been too often unprepared she deserves and expects them, and if she has done her best and still finds an unwelcome note or two on the official bulletin board, why, she must remember that accidents will happen, and are generally quite endurable when viewed philosophically.

But in freshman year one is inexperienced and easily the dupe of mischievous soph.o.m.ores. Then how is one to prepare for the dreadful ordeal? The distinction is not at all clear between the intelligent review that the faculty recommend and the cramming that they abhor.

There is a disconcerting little rhyme on this subject that has been handed down from generation to generation for so long that it has lost most of its form and comeliness; but the point is still sharp. It is about a girl who followed the faculty's advice on the subject of cramming, took her exercise as usual, and went to bed each night at ten o'clock, as all good children should. The last stanza still rhymes, thus:

"And so she did not hurry, Nor sit up late to cram, Nor have the blues and worry, But--she failed in her exam."