CHAPTER VII
FUN AT FAIRFIELDS
The long platform was crowded. Betty followed Bob, who carried theirbags. She tried to peer ahead, but the moving forms blocked her view.Just after they passed through the gate, some one caught her.
"Betty, you lamb! I never was so glad to see any one in my life!"cried a gay voice, and Bobby Littell hugged her close in one of herrare caresses.
Bob Henderson held out his hand as soon as Bobby released Betty. He likedthis straightforward, brusque girl who so evidently adored Betty.
"Why, Bob, you've grown a foot!" was Bobby Littell's greeting to him.
Bob modestly disclaimed any such record, and then Louise and Esther, whohad swooped upon Betty, turned to shake hands with him.
"The rest of the crowd is out in the car," said Bobby carelessly.
Outside the station, in the open plaza, a handsome closed car awaitedthem. The gray-haired chauffeur, cap in hand, stood back as a processionof boys and girls advanced upon Bob and Betty and their escort.
"Oh, Betty, dear!" Short, plump Libbie Littell, who had relinquishedher claim to the name of "Betty" in Betty Gordon's favor some timeago, hurled herself upon her friend. "To think we're going to thesame school!"
"Well, Frances is going, too," said Bobby practically. "She might like tobe introduced, you know. Betty, this is Frances Martin, a Vermont girlwho is out after all the Latin prizes."
Frances smiled a slow, sweet smile, and, behind thick glasses, her darknear-sighted eyes said that she was very glad to know Betty Gordon.
"Now the boys!" announced the irrepressible Bobby, apparently takingBob's introduction to Frances for granted. "The boys will please line upand I'll indicate them."
The five lads obediently came forward and ranged themselves in a row.
"From left to right," chanted Bobby, "we have the Tucker twins, Tommy andTeddy, W. M. Brown, who asks his friends to use his initials and punchesthose who refuse, Timothy Derby who reads poetry and Sydney Cooke whoought to--" and Bobby completed her speech with a wicked grin, for shehad managed to hit several weaknesses.
"As an introducer," she announced calmly to Carter, the personificationof propriety's horror, "I think I do rather well."
They stowed themselves into the limousine somehow, the girls settled moreor less comfortably on the seats, the boys squeezed in between, hangingon the running board, and spilling over into Carter's domain.
Bob liked the five boys at once, and they seemed to accept him as one ofthem. If he had had a little fear that he would feel diffident andunboyish among lads of his own age, it vanished at the first contact.
"Betty, you sweet child, how we have missed you!" cried Mrs. Littell,standing on the lowest step under the porte-cochere as the car swept upthe drive of Fairfields, as the Littell's home was called.
Behind her waited Mr. Littell, fully recovered from the injury to hisfoot which had made him an invalid during Betty's previous visit.
From Carter, who had beamingly greeted her at the station, to the prettyparlor maid who smiled as Betty entered her room to find her turning downthe bed covers, there was not a servant who did not remember Betty andseem glad to see her.
"It is so good to have you two here again," Mr. Littell had said.
"I never knew such people," Betty repeated to herself twenty times thatevening. "How lovely they are to Bob and me!"
Mrs. Littell, who was happiest when entertaining young people, had putthe six boys on the third floor in three connecting rooms. The girls wereon the second floor, and Esther, the youngest, who had strenuously foughtto be allowed to go to Shadyside with her two sisters, was almost besideherself with the effort to be in all the rooms at once and hear whatevery one was saying.
"I'm so glad your uncle let you come," said Bobby, as they waited forBetty to change into a light house frock for dinner. "I don't know muchabout this school, except that mother went to school with the principal."
That was a characteristic Bobby Littell remark, and the othergirls laughed.
"I had a letter from a girl who lives in Glenside," confided Betty,re-braiding her hair. "She and her sister are going--Norma and AliceGuerin. I know you'll like them. Norma wrote her mother went to Shadysidewhen it was a day school."
"Yes, I believe it was, years and years ago," returned Louise Littell."The aristocratic families who lived on large estates used to sendtheir daughters to Mrs. Warde. Her daughter, Mrs. Eustice, is theprincipal now."
Betty wondered if Norma Guerin's mother had belonged to one of thefamilies who owned large estates, but they went down to dinner presentlyand she forgot the Guerins for the time being.
That was a busy week for the school boys and girls.
The beautiful house and grounds of Fairfields were at their disposal, andthe gallant host and gentle hostess gave themselves up to the whims andwishes of the houseful of young people.
"Racket while you may, for school-room discipline is coming," laughed Mr.Littell, when he went upstairs unexpectedly early one night and caughtthe abashed Tucker twins sliding down the banisters.
Both Bob and Betty had wired Mr. Gordon of their safe arrival inWashington, and Bob had also telegraphed his aunts. While they were atFairfields a letter reached them from Miss Hope and Miss Charity,describing in glowing terms the boarding house in which they wereliving and the California climate which, the writers declared, madethem feel "twenty years younger." So Bob was assured that the elderlyladies were neither homesick nor unhappy and that added appreciably tohis peace of mind.
He and Betty found time, too, to slip away from their gay companions andgo to the old second-hand bookshop where Lockwood Hale browsed among hisdusty volumes. He had set Bob upon the trail that led him West andbrought him finally to his surviving kin, and the boy felt warm gratitudeto the absent-minded old man.
Mr. and Mrs. Littell rigidly insisted that the last night before theyoung folks started for Shadyside must be reserved for final packing andearly retirement so that the gay band might begin their journeyauspiciously. The Tuesday evening before the Thursday they were to leavefor school, the host and hostess gave a dance for their young people.
"I'm glad to have at least one chance to wear this dress," observedBobby, smoothing down the folds of her rose-colored frock withsatisfaction. "The only thing I don't like about Shadyside, so far, isthat restriction about party clothes."
"I imagine it is a wise rule in many ways," said Betty sagely, thinkingparticularly of the Guerin girls, who would probably be hard-pressed toget even the one evening frock allowed. "You know how some girls are,Bobby; they'd come with a dozen crepe de chine and georgette dresses andabout three clean blouses for school-room wear."
"Like Ruth Gladys Royal," giggled Bobby. "I remember her at MissGraham's last year. Goodness, the clothes that girl would wear! The restof us didn't even try to compete. And, by the way, girls, Ruth Gladys isgoing to Shadyside. Her aunt telephoned mother last night while we wereat the movies."
"That's the girl we went to call on that day we saw Mr. Peabody tackleBob in the hotel," Louise explained in an aside to Betty. "I wonder whyevery one seems bent and determined to go to Shadyside this year."
"Because it is a fine school with a half-century reputation," Bobby, whohad studied the catalogue, informed her sister primly.
"I'm not going," objected Esther. "I think it's mean."
"Mother and dad need one girl at home, dearest," her mother reminded her,as she came in looking very handsome and kindly in a black spangled netgown. "All ready, girls? Then suppose we go down."
It was a simple and informal dance, as befitted the ages of the guests,but Mr. and Mrs. Littell knew to perfection the secret of making each oneenjoy himself. There were a handful of outside friends invited, andBetty, to whom a party was a never-failing source of delight, felt, asshe confided to Bob, as though she were "walking on air."
"You look awfully nice in that white stuff," he said frankly, and Bettyliked the comment on her pretty ruffled white frock
which she haddubiously decided a moment before was too plain.
Betty was what country folk call a "natural-born dancer," and shequickly learned the new steps she had had no opportunity to practicesince going West. All the girls and most of the boys were excellentdancers, too, and Bob was not allowed to beg off. Frances Martin, thelast girl one would have named, had taught a dancing class in her hometown with great success and she volunteered to lead Bob. To his surprise,the boy found he liked the music and movement and before the evening wasover he was in a fair way to become a good dancer.
The party broke up promptly at eleven o'clock, and a few minutes laterthe whir of the last motor bearing home the departing guests died away.There was a natural lingering to "talk things over," but by twelve thehouse was silent and dark.
Betty had just fairly dozed off when some one woke her by shakingher gently.
"Betty! Betty, please wake up!" whispered a frightened little voice.