Julia’s first year at the University is tumultuous. She enjoys her classes and is excited to hopefully pledge the Epsilon Iota sorority. As always, she attracts the attention of several devoted young men whose hearts she will surely break. But music is Julia’s first love, and alongside her family, her truest. She aspires to be an opera singer like her idol Geraldine Farrar, and knows that while she can pursue it after college, she really should be starting younger than that. And a university is no substitute for study abroad.

When Julia suffers the indignity of being blackballed by the sorority, Mr. and Mrs. Ray plot an alternate path for her musical exploration. They offer to send her abroad to London, Rome, Paris, and Berlin, a year of study with well-renowned singing, acting, and language teachers. She would have to forego a year at the University.

While the relative wealth of the Deep Valley families is not explicitly discussed in the Betsy-Tacy series, the Rays’ offer is a clear indication of a certain financial status. The Kellys would certainly not be able to send their children on such a trip; the Mullers would seem to have the means. But owning his own shoe store, Mr. Ray is able to provide such an arrangement for Julia (and presumably his other daughters as well; we will see Betsy go overseas later in the series). Then, as now, a trip of this magnitude would be a substantial investment. Anything transatlantic would have to be traveled by ocean liner.

For Julia, there is no question but that she will accept her family’s generous offer. Immediately, University life pales into significance. Julia no longer cares about sorority life, will not return to the U, and, in fact, will go on to sing professionally, an uncommon career path at the time, especially for a woman. She will take the family “with her” overseas via a steady stream of letters, gifts, and stories, and will inspire Betsy’s own international travel in Betsy and the Great World.

— For more on Geraldine Farrar, see: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Geraldine-Farrar

— For a brief look at travel throughout the ages, see: https://www.travelandleisure.com/what-travel-looked-like-decades-5439741

Julia has started college at the state university in Minneapolis, and her most cherished goal is to be accepted into the Epsilon Iota sorority. Though only a small fraction of the student body belongs to sororities, and Mr. Ray is unimpressed with them, Julia becomes obsessed with joining one. She shares the glories of sororities with the family: parties, living in the sorority house, sisterhood. She makes sorority life sound so exciting and full of fun that it gives Betsy an idea. She and the girls in the Crowd will start their own Deep Valley High School sorority.

This becomes the primary social preoccupation of Betsy’s junior year in high school, mostly because Joe Willard begun courting Phyllis Brandish. Betsy had planned to go with Joe this year, and is stunned by the news that he is unavailable. A sorority is the perfect antidote, so she, Tacy, and Tib plan rituals and activities to transform the girls in the Crowd into a sorority that they will call Okto Delta (Eight Devils).

Sororities and fraternities developed in the mid-1800s as a way for college students to learn together about a wider range of topics than could be studied in the classroom. Initiation rites were modeled after classic communal groups including the ancient Greeks and Romans. Now called Greek life, many sorority members can live together in chapter houses and their operations include a full slate of philanthropic, social, and recreational activities. Modern sororities use social media and technology to assist with recruitment, share word of their events, and raise money.

Okto Delta inspires the boys in Betsy’s high school Crowd to develop a companion fraternity, Omega Delta, although Tony refuses to join and becomes sidelined a bit from the Crowd this year (taking up with some of his wilder friends and even a “perfectly awful girl” – p. 229, Harper Trophy paperback edition, 1995). The two groups enjoy a full slate of gatherings during the year until it becomes apparent that other high schoolers besides Tony are finding the groups to be exclusionary and a bit snobbish as well. Their members miss out on social invitations and key school committee assignments and Betsy is not asked to compete in the year-end Essay Contest. Lesson learned, everyone is rather relieved when the groups disband.

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On the history of sororities and fraternities, see: https://fsl.appstate.edu/history-of-greek-life

Betsy adores her younger sister, Margaret, but does not really spend much time with her. Margaret is six years younger, quiet and reserved, and tends to keep to herself, preferring the company of her dog, Abie, and her cat, Washington, to a circle of friends like Betsy’s. When Margaret asks Betsy to help her throw a birthday party for the animals, Betsy is delighted to be asked, and Margaret is thrilled that Betsy has agreed.

They decide to hold the party on the Thursday in February between Abrahan Lincoln’s and George Washington’s (the animals’ namesakes) birthdays. Betsy plans decorations and a feast. But then she mostly puts the party out of her mind. When Thursday arrives, she is late coming home, having stopped at Heinz’s after school with Tib, Cab, and Dennie. When she arrives, the house is dark and somber, and Margaret can not be immediately located.

Betsy finds Margaret sobbing in her room. She had begun the party festivities without Betsy, and had attempted to light the gas stove herself. It exploded, burning and curling Margaret’s eyelashes. Luckily, her vision seems unimpaired. Lighting a gas stove of that era was a manual process, one that could be quite dangerous, especially for a ten-year-old girl.

Betsy prepares dinner and bakes a cake for Abie and Washington, but is shaken, “her conscience aching” (p. 189, Harper Trophy paperback edition, 1994). She had intended to step into Julia’s shoes, once Julia left for college, and be the exemplary older sister. She realizes that she has failed, and that Margaret could have paid the price with her vision. On her knees, she promises God that she will never neglect Margaret again.

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On the gas stoves of the early 1900s, see: https://evolutionhomeappliances.weebly.com/kitchen-stoves-1900-1919-steel-gas–electricity.html, especially the units at the bottom of the page