"Bless you, yes," said Miss Davis. "I've wanted to know you for ever so long. I'm sorry you caught me being a goose, though."
"And I'm sorry you felt like crying," said Betty shyly. "Why, Miss Davis, I should want to laugh all the time if I'd done what you did the other day. I should be so proud."
Miss Davis smiled happily down at her small companion. "I was proud," she said simply. "I only hope I can do as well week after next. But Miss Wales, that was the jam of college life. There's the bread and butter too, you know, and sometimes that's a lot harder to earn than the jam."
"Do you mean----" began Betty and stopped, not wanting to risk hurting Miss Davis's feelings.
"Yes, I mean that I'm working my way through. I have a scholarship, but there's still my board and clothes and books."
Miss Davis nodded. "My cousin sends me some clothes."
"Tutor, sort papers and make typewritten copies of things for the faculty, put on dress braids (that's how I met the B's), mend stockings, and wait on table off and on when some one's maid leaves suddenly. We thought it would be cheaper and pleasanter to board ourselves and earn our money in different ways than to take our board in exchange for regular table-waiting; but I don't know. The other way is surer."
Miss Davis nodded. "It takes a good deal," she said apologetically, "and there isn't much tutoring that freshmen can do. After this year it will be easier."
"Dear me," gasped Betty. "Don't you get any--any help from home?"
"Well, they haven't been able to send any yet, but they hope to later," said Miss Davis brightly.
"And does it pay when you have to work so hard for it?"
"Oh, yes," answered Miss Davis promptly. "All three of us are sure that it pays."
"Yes. Of course there are ever so many others in the college, and I'm sure all of them would say the same thing."
"And--I hope I'm not being rude--but do girls--do you advertise things down on that bulletin board? I don't know much about it. I never was there but once till I went to-day on--on an errand for a friend," Betty concluded awkwardly. Perhaps she had been an interloper. Perhaps that bulletin board had not been meant for girls like her.
Miss Davis evidently assumed that she had been to leave an order. "You ought to buy more," she said laughingly. "But you want to know what I was there for, don't you? Why yes, we do make a good deal off that bulletin board. One of the girls paints a little and she advertises picture frames--Yale and Harvard and Pennsylvania ones, you know. I sell blue-prints. A senior lends me her films. She has a lot of the faculty and the campus, and they go pretty well. We use the money we make from those things for little extras--ribbons and note-books and desserts for Sunday. We hoped to make quite a bit on valentines----"