“Bring it up to our room,” said Mrs. Ray. “We’ll all get in bed there.”
Betsy and Margaret went upstairs and piled into bed beside their mother. Julia sat down joyfully, taking off her hat and coat. She was going to stay until Sunday night, she said, pulling pins out of her hair. She hadn’t needed to ask permission to come. At the U you were allowed a certain number of cuts.
“I just don’t want to use all of mine in case I get homesick again.”
Mr. Ray came up, a broad smile on his face, bearing a tray with a pot of steaming coffee, cream, sugar and cups. Anna brought cookies, apples, cold pie, a glass of milk for Margaret.
“Stars in the sky!” she kept saying, shaking her head. “Wait ’til I tell Charlie.”
She went to bed then, but the rest stayed awake a long time, listening while Julia told about life at the University.
8
Those Things Called Sororities
JULIA HAD EXTRAORDINARY things to tell. Immediately upon her arrival at the University various strange girls had begun to deluge her with attentions. They had sent her flowers. They had offered to show her around the campus, to help her register, and to guide her to her classrooms. “Why, how kind of them!” Mrs. Ray cried. She sat upright in bed, the tray on her knees, looking at Julia with alert blue eyes. Her curly red hair fell around her shoulders over her lace-trimmed white night gown.
Betsy and Margaret wore outing flannel night gowns. Betsy, bristling with Magic Wavers, and Margaret, with little braids bereft of ribbons sticking out on either side of her small solemn face, leaned against their mother’s shoulders, right and left.
Betsy cradled a cup of well-creamed and sugared coffee. She liked the warmth of the cup and the coziness of being three in bed; for the room was cool, although Mr. Ray had closed the window and opened the drafts in the furnace. Julia was wrapped in her mother’s bathrobe. Mr. Ray, beaming with pleasure, sat cross-legged in the other easy chair.
“I didn’t realize,” he said, “that our State University was such a friendly place.”
“It isn’t,” Julia answered. “I thought it was at first. Then it dawned on me that not all the new girls were being treated the way I was. Just a few of us were getting all this attention.”
“I’m not surprised that you were one of them,” Mrs. Ray put in. The members of the Ray family never made a secret of their admiration for each other.
“But how did it happen? What was up?” asked Mr. Ray.
“Those girls,” Julia continued, her deep tone emphasizing the gravity of her words, “belonged to sororities. They were rushing me—that’s the word they use. They want me to join, but I can’t do it yet. Freshmen aren’t allowed to join sororities—they can’t even be asked—until spring.”
“What is a sorority?”
“The word means ‘sisterhood.’ Isn’t that nice, Bettina? And men have fraternities, ‘brotherhoods.’ Fraternities and sororities are terribly important. They are absolutely the most important things on the campus.”
“Does everybody belong to one?” asked Mr. Ray.
“Oh, no. Just a fraction of the students.”
“I don’t see how they can be so important then.” Mr. Ray selected an apple and started to peel it neatly with a little pearl-handled penknife.
“Each sorority has its own house,” Julia went on eagerly, shaking back her loose dark hair. “The girls who belong to a sorority live in their house instead of in the dormitory. They have a chaperone and a cook and other servants. They give marvelous parties and invite the fraternity men. And the fraternity men give marvelous parties and invite the sorority girls.”
“How do the people who don’t belong manage to have some fun?” asked Mr. Ray, taking care that the peeling did not break.
“I have no idea,” said Julia. “You simply have to belong to a fraternity or sorority if you want to have any fun.”
“Seems kind of tough on those who don’t.” Mr. Ray laid the peeling carefully in an ash tray and quartered his apple, removing the seeds. He gave a quarter to Margaret who had been watching him expectantly, and he offered one to Betsy, but she shook her head. She was listening in rapt fascination.
“Have you been inside one of those houses?” she demanded.
“Yes,” answered Julia. “To teas at the Epsilon Iota house, and the Alpha Beta house and the Pi Pi Gamma house. They aren’t allowed to entertain freshman at anything but teas until spring. In April there’s a week of rushing. Dinners, luncheons, parties of all kinds are crowded in. Girls who are being rushed by two or three sororities have a simply frantic time.”
“I trust it doesn’t come at examination week,” said Mr. Ray. But nobody listened to him.
“What did they do at the teas?” Betsy wanted to know.
“Oh, the food was yummy! The tables were decorated with the sorority colors and the girls stood around the piano and sang their sorority songs. They wear pins and have a grip and a password. Of course, you don’t find out what the grip and the password are until you are initiated.”
“Sounds like a lodge,” said Mr. Ray. “But lodges are open to anyone. It must be the same with those sorority things. It has to be. The University is supported by the taxpayers’ money. Any boy or girl ought to be allowed to join—”
“Oh, but they aren’t!” cried Julia. “The sororities are very, very exclusive. I’m lucky, I can tell you, that three of them are rushing me.”
“Have you any idea which one you want to join?” her mother asked.
“Yes. I knew right away. The Epsilon Iotas. They’re just my kind. I’m going to be an Epsilon Iota. And if I am, Bettina, you will be too, and so will Margaret. Sisters always join their sister’s sorority.”
“Gee!” Betsy cried. “I’d love to be an Epsilon Iota.” The tray made bouncing impractical, but she reached behind her mother’s back to tweak one of Margaret’s braids. “How about being an Epsilon Iota, Margaret?”
“I’m a Baptist,” said Margaret, blinking rapidly to prove that she was wide-awake. Everybody laughed.
“Well, I’d like to find out a little more about these sororities before you join one,” Mrs. Ray said. “I’ll go down to the library tomorrow and look them up. What I can’t make out is how they knew they wanted to rush you. Did they pick you out just because you were attractive?”
“Oh, someone must have recommended me. Someone here in Deep Valley. Perhaps one of the teachers.”
“What about that little Parrott girl who went up to the University last year?” asked Mr. Ray.
“She’s a barb.”
“What’s that?”
“It stands for barbarian. It’s what they call all non-fraternity and non-sorority people. It’s sort of a joke, of course.”
“Not a very funny one,” said Mr. Ray. “The little Parrott girl is a very fine girl. I’ve sold her shoes all her life. She waits and buys them from me now when she’s home for vacation instead of buying them in the Twin Cities.”
Julia jumped up and hugged him, laughing. “She may buy her shoes from you but she isn’t a sorority girl. Probably she doesn’t want to be. I’ve seen her around the campus. She’s awfully wrapped up in her studies.”
“After all, that’s what she’s there for,” grumbled Mr. Ray. He, too, got up and took the tray from Mrs. Ray’s knees. “You all hustle off to bed now. Margaret’s asleep already.”
“No, I’m not.” Margaret opened her eyes wide but she closed them again when her father picked her up and carried her away.
“I’m not sleepy at all,” said Betsy. She was enthralled with Julia’s romantic sisterhoods.
“Don’t you go into Julia’s room and talk,” Mrs. Ray warned. “It’s cold and you both need your sleep. Besides, I don’t want to miss anything.”
“She hasn’t begun on Roger yet.”
“We’ll save him till morning,” Julia said. “I’ll unpack my dream robe and get right in bed.”
“Your dream robe?” asked Betsy. “What’s
that?”
“It’s what we call night gowns up at the U,” Julia said. She kissed everybody and went into her room, tossing her shoes ahead of her and flinging her clothes on a chair. She was singing as she went:
“Howdy Cy,
Morning Cy,
Gosh darn, Cyrus, but I’m
Feeling spry….”
“Gee,” cried Betsy. “It’s grand to have you home!”
True to her word Mrs. Ray went to the library next day. It was hard to tear herself away from Julia but she did. Julia visited school, looking very citified in her brown suit and hat. She went to see Miss O’Rourke, who had always been her favorite teacher and Miss Clarke, whom she called “dear old Clarke!” and Miss Bangeter, who was like everybody’s conscience. Julia had dropped the student-teacher attitude. She treated the teachers as though they were her age or she theirs. She actually joked with them.
“I wonder whether I’ll be like that my first year out of high school,” Betsy thought.
After school the house was crowded. The Kellys dropped in, and Tib and Tony and a host of Julia’s friends. At supper Mrs. Ray told the family about her research.
“I explained to Miss Sparrow that Julia was going to join a sorority,” she said, “and that I wanted to make sure she joined a good one. Miss Sparrow brought out the encyclopedia and the University catalogue and some other books, and I copied down the dates and places where the different sororities were founded. But I couldn’t find out what the names meant.”
“They’re Greek letters, of course.”
“I know, and they all stand for something, but the books don’t say what. Do you know, Julia? It would help to get a line on them if we knew what their names meant. It would show us their ideals—”
“Mamma,” said Julia, “you don’t need to bother looking up anything more about sororities. I know which one I want to join. I want to join the Epsilon Iotas. I don’t give a hoot what the name means. The girls just suit me. My idea of heaven is to be an Epsilon Iota and live at the Epsilon Iota house.”
“Well,” said Mr. Ray, “That settles that!”
Julia’s visit was almost swallowed up by talk of sororities. There was a stream of company, of course; there were Julia’s favorite things to eat; and there was music. Sisterhoods or no, Julia must show her mother and Betsy how her voice had improved, how the high tones were coming out and about the new idea in breath control. Her teacher was German, Fraulein Hertha von Blatz. She was very fine, Mrs. Poppy said. Julia talked about Roger, too, and other college men. She never said “college boys” any more; it was always “college men.”
But they talked sororities at every spare moment, especially when Tacy and Tib were around. Julia was given to enthusiasms and she knew how to communicate them. The Epsilon Iota house became in her description an enchanted domicile. The various Epsilon Iotas—the dark, queenly one, the red-headed one, the twins, the stunning blonde—moved through Betsy’s head like characters in a romance.
In Julia’s window seat at night, Betsy plied her sister with questions. She learned that a sorority had a ritual which members went through at every meeting. She learned that initiations were mystical secret affairs. Secrecy, in fact, was the core of the fruit. The girls were bound together by secret vows.
“How can they be sure they like each other?”
“No girl can get in unless everyone wants her. There has to be a unanimous vote,” Julia explained.
“But don’t they ever have fights?”
“Probably not. It’s all on a pretty high plane.”
Sunday evening Julia went back to the University, and Betsy slept that night with sororities rolling about in her head like billiard balls.
She woke early, suddenly, as she often did when she had great ideas. The sky was stained dark red and gold, as though the trees on Deep Valley’s circling hills had pushed their autumn colors up into the sky, but all were dull yet, unburnished by the sun.
Why not start a sorority, Betsy thought? She and Tacy and Tib. They had been friends so long. What could be more fitting than that they should be founders of a sorority?
A sorority was just what she needed to fill her winter. That had seemed empty somehow, since Joe Willard upset her plans by starting to go with Phyllis. She did not admit it often, but she felt hollow inside whenever she thought of that. None of her resolutions seemed important any more, except for the piano study, which gave her a healthy satisfaction. Her morale needed bolstering, and a sorority was so new, so dramatic.
“Of course,” she thought, a smile playing around her lips as she lay in bed looking at the sunrise, “we couldn’t have ours quite so serious as the real ones. Winona would never take any highfalutin’ vows, and Irma and Tib are such gigglers. But we could have pins. We could have grips and passwords and a ritual—I could write it myself.”
She jumped out of bed smiling, and going to the bathroom she took the cold bath she reserved for moments of decision. She took her curls down, with even more care than usual, and put on her most becoming dress.
At school she wrote notes to Tacy and Tib.
“I have something terribly secret and important to talk over. Can’t we shake the others after school?”
9
Okto Delta
ON A GOLDEN HILLTOP overlooking Deep Valley, Betsy, Tacy and Tib founded their sorority. They sat in a grove of small maples, all the same color and ridiculously bright. Below them autumn flowed like spilled wine. Not only the trees, but the bushes, the vines, even the grasses were ruddy. Descending rows of rooftops glittered in the sun.
The girls had escaped from the Crowd by a series of manoeuvres. They left school by a side door, walked to the street below High Street, walked along that for two blocks, and entered the Ray house at the back. Anna was up in her room, and they foraged for food with muffled laughter which brought Margaret into the kitchen.
“We’re going for a ride,” Betsy explained. “A very mysterious, important ride.”
A sympathetic smile quivered across Margaret’s little face.
“Can I go, too? I’m all alone. Mamma’s gone out.”
“I’m sorry,” Betsy said, “but this is something secret, Margaret.” She felt a little wrench of guilt as Margaret’s smile died away. “Will you help us, dear? We don’t want anyone to know where we are, so if the doorbell rings don’t answer until we’re gone.”
“All right,” Margaret agreed. She went slowly back to the parlor, with her erect, dignified tread.
The girls found grapes and crackers. The front doorbell started to ring and they slipped out the back door. They dashed across lots to the barn, hitched up Old Mag and climbed into the surrey.
“Let’s go up Agency Hill,” Tacy suggested. “There’s such a beautiful view.”
This steep road had led to an Indian Agency back in pioneer days. Tom’s Grandmother Slade told stories about it. Old Mag dragged the surrey patiently to the summit, where the girls turned off on a shoulder of the hill. At the maple grove they loosened Old Mag’s checkrein and left her under a pink-gold tree.
“Now, what’s it all about?” asked Tib, throwing off her hat. Tacy tossed off her hat, too. The yellow head and the auburn one looked like bright leaves drifting down as the girls sank to the ground.
Betsy added her hat to the pile. But she didn’t sit down. Hazel eyes glowing, she swayed on her toes.
“Let’s us—the three of us—start a sorority.”
Tacy and Tib were stunned for a moment by the magnificence of the concept.
“Do you mean a real one?” Tacy asked.
“Just like they have at the U. Greek letters and all.”
“What would they stand for, the letters?”
“Gosh, I don’t know! We’d have to make something up.” Betsy sat down in front of them, looking earnestly into their faces. “We’re good ones to start a sorority. You know what the word means—sisterhood—and we’ve been friends so long. A thing like this would hold us together always.” r />
“We’d hold together anyway, I imagine,” said Tib. “We held together all the time I was in Milwaukee.”
“But Tib! If we made vows of friendship….”
“We don’t really need any.”
“Well, it certainly couldn’t hurt to make them,” replied Tacy. “I can’t think of anyone I’d feel safer about promising to like.” This struck her so funny that she burst out laughing. “Wilt thou, Betsy Ray, take me, Tacy Kelly, in holy bonds of friendship?”
“I wilt,” chanted Betsy.
“Me, too!” shouted Tib, and began to fling leaves with such vigor that presently Tacy was gasping in the grass and Betsy’s hair had fallen down.
She twisted it up determinedly.
“Stop acting like five-year-olds! Seriously, isn’t it a grand idea?”
“It’s a marvelous idea.”
“It’s a swell idea. Especially,” added Tib, reaching for a grape, “if we give lots of parties.”
“Oh, yes, we’ll give parties and invite the fraternity men.”
“What fraternity men?”
“Why, the boys.” Betsy opened the box of crackers and they all began to munch. “We three will write the constitution and the ritual. And then we’ll send invitations to the girls and ask them to join, and we’ll have a meeting and initiate them.”
“Who shall we ask?”
“Just the Crowd. Sororities are terribly exclusive. Let’s see, there are three of us. Carney, Alice, Winona and Irma make seven. It would be nice to have eight, to make two tables of cards.”
“Katie is pretty lonesome now that Julia’s gone away. If you don’t think she’s too old…” Tacy hesitated.
“I’d love to have Katie. She’s such a good sport.”
“And we wouldn’t always have to have a chaperone if she was along,” Tib pointed out.
“That’s right. Now we have to think of a name.”
Betsy stretched out on her back. Tib sat with her face in her hands. Tacy dropped her head into crossed arms. There was silence in the grove, except for the rustling made by an exploring squirrel.