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padding-top: 1px } + + .coverpage, .titlepage, + .contents, .foreword, .preface, .introduction, .dedication, .prologue, + .epilogue, .appendix, .glossary, .bibliography, .index, .colophon, + .footnotes, + .cleardoublepage { page-break-before: right; padding-top: 1px } + + .vfill { margin-top: 20% } + h2.title { margin-top: 20% } +} +</style> +<style type="text/css"> +.pageno { position: absolute; right: 95%; font: medium sans-serif; } +.pageno:after { color: gray; content: '[' attr(title) ']' } +.toc-pageref { float: right } +pre { font-family: monospace; font-size: 0.9em; white-space: pre-wrap } +</style> +</head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 35729 ***</div> +<div class="document" id="peggy-parsons-a-hampton-freshman"> +<h1 class="document-title level-1 pfirst title">Peggy Parsons a Hampton Freshman</h1> +</div> +<div class="vspace" style="height: 4em"> +</div> +<div class="container" id="pg-produced-by"> +<p class="noindent pfirst">Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at <a class="reference external" href="http://www.pgdp.net">http://www.pgdp.net</a>.</p> +<div class="vspace" style="height: 1em"> +</div> +</div> +</div> +<div class="center line-block noindent outermost"> +<div class="line"><span class="x-large">PEGGY PARSONS</span></div> +<div class="line"><span class="x-large">A HAMPTON FRESHMAN</span></div> +<div class="line"> </div> +<div class="line">BY</div> +<div class="line">ANNABEL SHARP</div> +<div class="line"> </div> +<div class="line"><span class="smaller">AUTHOR OF “PEGGY PARSONS AT PREP SCHOOL”</span></div> +<div class="line"> </div> +<div class="line">M. A. DONOHUE & COMPANY</div> +<div class="line">CHICAGO—NEW YORK</div> +<div class="line"> </div> +<div class="line"><span class="smaller">MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</span></div> +</div> +<div class="contents level-2 section" id="id1"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title">Contents</h2> +<ul class="toc-list"> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><span class="first"><a class="reference internal pginternal" href="#chapter-imaking-an-impression" id="id2">CHAPTER I—MAKING AN IMPRESSION</a></span></li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><span class="first"><a class="reference internal pginternal" href="#chapter-iisuite-22" id="id3">CHAPTER II—SUITE 22</a></span></li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><span class="first"><a class="reference internal pginternal" href="#chapter-iiipeggys-masterpiece" id="id4">CHAPTER III—PEGGY’S MASTERPIECE</a></span></li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><span class="first"><a class="reference internal pginternal" href="#chapter-ivnew-paint-and-poetry" id="id5">CHAPTER IV—NEW PAINT AND POETRY</a></span></li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><span class="first"><a class="reference internal pginternal" href="#chapter-vmorning-glory" id="id6">CHAPTER V—MORNING GLORY</a></span></li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><span class="first"><a class="reference internal pginternal" href="#chapter-vias-others-see-us" id="id7">CHAPTER VI—AS OTHERS SEE US</a></span></li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><span class="first"><a class="reference internal pginternal" href="#chapter-viicinderella" id="id8">CHAPTER VII—CINDERELLA</a></span></li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><span class="first"><a class="reference internal pginternal" href="#chapter-viiiindian-summer" id="id9">CHAPTER VIII—INDIAN SUMMER</a></span></li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><span class="first"><a class="reference internal pginternal" href="#chapter-ixthe-house-dance" id="id10">CHAPTER IX—THE HOUSE DANCE</a></span></li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><span class="first"><a class="reference internal pginternal" href="#chapter-xtinsel-and-spangles" id="id11">CHAPTER X—TINSEL AND SPANGLES</a></span></li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><span class="first"><a class="reference internal pginternal" href="#chapter-xiithe-auction" id="id12">CHAPTER XII—THE AUCTION</a></span></li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><span class="first"><a class="reference internal pginternal" href="#chapter-xiiifeet-of-clay" id="id13">CHAPTER XIII—FEET OF CLAY</a></span></li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><span class="first"><a class="reference internal pginternal" href="#chapter-xivspring-term" id="id14">CHAPTER XIV—SPRING TERM</a></span></li> +</ul> +</div> +<div class="center line-block noindent outermost"> +<div class="line"> </div> +<div class="line"> </div> +<div class="line"> </div> +<div class="line"> </div> +<div class="line"><span class="larger">INTRODUCTION</span></div> +</div> +<p class="pfirst">Last year Peggy Parsons and Katherine Foster +were room-mates at Andrews Preparatory +School.</p> +<p class="pnext">Their escapades and their hunger for good +times and adventure kept them from being great +favorites of the principal there, but they were +loved by the girls of the school and were soon +invested with a degree of leadership.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Peggy Parsons at Prep School,” the first +book in this series, tells how much happiness +they managed to crowd into a single year.</p> +<p class="pnext">A would-be charitable enterprise of Peggy’s is +recounted, also. And if she had never undertaken +it, mistaken though she was, she could not +have gone to Hampton, and the present volume +would never have been written.</p> +<!-- File: 005.png --> +<p class="pnext">Mr. Huntington, a rich old man, whom people +believed to be poverty-stricken because of the way +he lived, became a great friend of Peggy’s as +the result of a Thanksgiving dinner party she +arranged for the cooking-class of her school to +give him.</p> +<p class="pnext">She and Katherine were instrumental, through +an adventure in playing amateur detectives, in +finding Mr. Huntington’s grandson, of whom he +had lost track.</p> +<p class="pnext">The grandson—the “Jim” of the present book—was +an Amherst student about Peggy’s own +age.</p> +<p class="pnext">Katherine Foster had planned to go to Hampton +College, but Peggy could not see her way +clear. The room-mates were broken-hearted at +the prospect of not being together for another +year. After Katherine had been assigned another +room-mate, Gloria Hazeltine, Peggy gave +up hope of going and could not plan with any +interest for any other kind of year.</p> +<p class="pnext">Mr. Huntington then stepped in and turned +over for Peggy’s use the income from a dear +little group of bungalows which he had named +“Parsons Court.”</p> +<p class="pnext">So Katherine and Peggy were enabled to look +forward to college together just as they had +their prep school.</p> +<div class="center line-block noindent outermost"> +<div class="line"> </div> +<div class="line"> </div> +<div class="line"> </div> +<div class="line"> </div> +<div class="line"><span class="x-large">PEGGY PARSONS</span></div> +<div class="line"><span class="x-large">A HAMPTON FRESHMAN</span></div> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="chapter-imaking-an-impression"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref pginternal" href="#id2">CHAPTER I—MAKING AN IMPRESSION</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst">“Katherine Foster!”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Peggy Parsons!”</p> +<p class="pnext">Two suit-cases went banging down on the +wooden platform and two radiant figures hurled +themselves into each other’s arms, oblivious of +the shriek of departing trains, the rattling of +baggage trucks, and the jostling crowds who +were at liberty to laugh at their impulsiveness.</p> +<p class="pnext">For this was Springfield, where East meets +West on its way to half a dozen New England +colleges, and where every fall the same scenes +of joyous greeting are enacted with the annual +accompaniment of little squeals of delighted welcome +and many glad kisses.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, Peggy, you look just the same as ever!”</p> +<p class="pnext">“It’s been a perfect <em class="italics">century</em>, Katherine! Going +right up to Hampton? Taking the 9:10? +So am I. Oh, so <em class="italics">much</em> to talk about——”</p> +<p class="pnext">Breathlessly chattering all the while, the two +girls in blue serge, who had been room-mates +last year at preparatory school, gathered up their +suit-cases again and crossed the tracks to the +other side of the station to wait for the Hampton +train. Engines steamed along before and behind +them, but neither looked away from the +other’s glowing face during the crossing, nor did +they cease both to talk at once until they were +actually seated in their train some time later, +packed in with a mob of laughing and attractive +girls with suit-cases in the aisles, in the racks +over their heads, and in their laps.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Isn’t it wonderful that we met this way?” +cried Katherine, while Peggy was trying to hand +the remaining untraveled bits of their tickets to +the perspiring conductor. “We’ll see our new +rooms for the first time together, and we’ll make +a very nice impression on the inhabitants of +Ambler House because we can plan out some kind +of grand entry to appeal to them.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy laughed. “It’s an awfully <em class="italics">big</em> place +we’re going to,” she said, looking about at the +swaying crowds of girls. “I’m just beginning to +realize it. It will take more than our planning +to make any impression at all, I think. And +maybe nobody will <em class="italics">ever</em> notice us. It won’t be +like Andrews.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“You’re still Peggy Parsons, aren’t you? And +I’m still your room-mate, Katherine Foster. +<em class="italics">And</em> we’re going to live in one of the grandest +suites on campus—oh, I don’t believe they will +pass us by altogether.” And Katherine gave a +little swaggering motion of her head that sent +Peggy into gales of laughter.</p> +<p class="pnext">“You’re conceited and snobbish, friend room-mate,” +she giggled. “The summer has spoiled +you.”</p> +<p class="pnext">But Katherine smiled back complacently into +her eyes.</p> +<p class="pnext">Suddenly there was a curious stir all about +them. The girls who had been standing in the +aisle were all pushing toward the end of the car, +and those seated were struggling up from under +their luggage, their faces bright with anticipation.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Katherine,” whispered Peggy, “I think we’re +there!”</p> +<p class="pnext">Oh, the world of meaning in that one sentence. +The hopes, the expectations, the pleasures and +good times for four whole years were summed +up in it, and Katherine silently nodded her head, +unable to speak.</p> +<!-- File: 014.png --> +<p class="pnext">The brakeman was already calling out something +that he meant for “Hampton,” and he +rounded out his shout with the long-drawn wail, +“Don’t leave any articles in the car!”</p> +<p class="pnext">As if any of those precious and bulky suit-cases +could be forgotten! The stampede began +in earnest as soon as the train stopped, and +Peggy and Katherine found themselves swept +out to the platform and jostled down the steps +and thrust forward toward the station of their +own college town.</p> +<p class="pnext">The girls from the train rushed this way and +that, and other girls from the college rushed to +meet them. Katherine spied a taxi that had still +two vacant seats.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Come, taxi,—quick,” she gasped in Peggy’s +ear. And the two went running forward, their +suit-cases bumping and thumping against their +knees. Before they reached the machine they +saw that they were racing with a mob of other +girls, all frankly eager to be the first to secure +places in the last cab with a vacancy.</p> +<p class="pnext">In every direction other taxis were whirring +off, filled to overflowing with girls and bags, and +here and there the rumble of hoofs mixed in, as +a pair of horses drawing an old-fashioned cab +likewise laden dashed off.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy and Katherine were panting. It had +become a very exciting race. A taller girl, with +a lighter suit-case, sprinted ahead of them and +reached the taxi first. But she stopped to ask +the driver his price, and while she was doing so +Katherine and Peggy piled in.</p> +<p class="pnext">The taller girl turned to take her rightful +place and saw two hot and beaming young ladies +in the exact corner she had run so hard to claim.</p> +<p class="pnext">She stepped back with a chagrined laugh, and +Peggy and Katherine laughed too, with the utmost +good nature, now that they had attained +what they sought. They heard the other two occupants +of their car murmuring the names of +college houses to the chauffeur, and with a thrill +of pride Peggy said, “Ambler House.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“And you, miss?” the driver asked Katherine.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Why, Ambler House, too, of course,” she +said, and then blushed scarlet for fear the other +girls would think her an idiot, for at the moment +it had indeed seemed to her that even a taxi-cab +driver ought to know that she was going to live +in college wherever Peggy was.</p> +<p class="pnext">The quaint, prim streets of the New England +town were nothing but so much colored confusion +to the eyes of the four in the cab. Each one +had a consciousness that this perhaps was the +height of life: that they would never touch anything +better than this again. Riding along thus, +packed tight in a taxi, through Hampton, to college +for the first time.</p> +<p class="pnext">They felt as if all previous experiences were +washed away—and all future ones unknown and +unguessed at. Everything was before them—the +glory of being young singing in their hearts +and going to their heads like wine—what wonder +that they felt life had been made just for them +and was already beginning to yield its fruits into +their eager hands!</p> +<p class="pnext">The cab went grating up a hill, and in a moment +there was a bright stretch of green before +them, with any number of red brick buildings on +it, some of them covered with ivy. Hampton +College was spread before their gaze without +any warning to prepare them. But each girl +knew, as if she had seen it often, that this was +really College.</p> +<p class="pnext">Katherine and Peggy craned their necks quite +frankly out of the window, and when they drew +their heads in, the other girls followed their example +shamelessly.</p> +<p class="pnext">“It looks—nice,” ventured Peggy, with a long +sigh of satisfaction.</p> +<!-- File: 018.png --> +<p class="pnext">“It looks just—the way I thought it would,” +answered one of the strangers, and then gave a +little embarrassed laugh because her voice had +sounded so thrilled.</p> +<p class="pnext">The taxi made a sharp turn, and they were +actually inside the sacred precincts of Campus—there +on each side were the rows of college +houses, and in the distance was a magnificent +structure of stone. The morning sun shone over +it all. A sense of homelikeness and a strange +comfortable feeling of love for it came, even at +this first view, into their hearts.</p> +<p class="pnext">“We are to live in one of these houses,” Peggy +rapturously reminded Katherine. “In a moment +the taxi will stop and it will be <em class="italics">our</em> house. Katherine, +pinch my arm. It all seems so queerly +familiar, maybe I’m just dreaming it after all.”</p> +<p class="pnext">But the taxi did stop in a minute or two, and +the driver was opening the door and saying +“Ambler House” in a matter-of-fact tone. The +two other girls nodded good-bye to Peggy and +Katherine. Katherine stepped down and was +handed her bag. Peggy was conscious that the +long porch of the brick house before which they +had drawn up was filled with girls interestedly +watching for freshman newcomers. She thought +of their plan to make a good initial impression, +and descended as gracefully as might be, with a +charming little smile of eagerness and anticipation +that was not assumed at all.</p> +<p class="pnext">The driver was lifting down her heavy suit-case. +And then quite unexpectedly came the fall +that follows pride. Only, while the pride had +been Peggy’s, the fall was her suit-case’s.</p> +<p class="pnext">Thump! Thud! it went smashing down to the +ground, and its bulging sides flew apart, and hair-brushes, +mirrors, nightgown, kimono, and powder +boxes and tooth paste all shot out in every +direction and rolled ignominiously about on the +campus lawn, in full view of the crowded porch +of Ambler House.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy’s crimson ears caught shrieks of +laughter, her tear-filled eyes saw girlish figures +doubling up in mirth—and under her feet +and round about, the ground was white with +powder, redolent with oozing perfume and +strewn with her most intimate belongings.</p> +<p class="pnext">There was something about it all that had the +awful publicity of a nightmare. Such things +couldn’t really happen. Oh, if she could only +melt away—or wake up or even crawl back into +the taxi and hide.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Shall I help you pick the things up?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I’m afraid this powder can never be scraped +up again. I’ve put some back into the box, but +there’s quite a bit of grass and gravel mixed with +it.”</p> +<p class="pnext">She was completely surrounded by helpful +girls, who had flown out from the porch, their +laughter still on their lips, and were now kneeling +and stooping everywhere about the scene of +the catastrophe.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Your clean shirtwaist,” cried one of these +helpers sympathetically, as she pulled a fragile +bit of dimity and Cluny lace from under the taxi-cab +where it had fluttered. “It won’t be good for +very much now until it’s laundered.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Into the suit-case the things were tumbled with +despatch but not neatness. The taxi driver was +contrite, but he did not offer to touch any of the +scattered feminine luggage and insisted quite +audibly that there had been “too many things in +there anyway.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Katherine paid him, eying him reproachfully, +and he chugged away, leaving the two heart-broken +freshmen greatly discomfited by the mishap.</p> +<p class="pnext">Thus it was that the two girls who had hoped +to make so attractive an impression slunk into +Ambler House with a straggling procession of +merry followers behind them carrying odds and +ends that refused to be crammed back into the +damaged suit-case. And thus it came about +also that they looked about Suite 22 with blind +eyes and failed to realize that it was one of “the +grandest suites on Campus” and overlooked +Paradise.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy sat down in a little heap on the window +seat in their living-room and didn’t even appreciate +that it <em class="italics">was</em> a window seat, and one of very, +very few at college.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I’m glad it—didn’t happen in Springfield,” +was the first thing Peggy said.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Ye-es,” admitted Katherine, standing uncertainly +in the middle of the room. And then she +added irrelevantly: “I think there are awfully +nice girls in this house.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy buried her little burning face in the +upholstery of the window seat. “Do—you?” +she asked in muffled tones. “I didn’t dare look +at them.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I thought they seemed a very—<em class="italics">jolly</em> set,” pursued +Katherine tentatively.</p> +<p class="pnext">She was rewarded by a rueful chuckle from +the figure on the window seat.</p> +<p class="pnext">“And anyway,” Katherine followed up her +advantage, “they <em class="italics">did notice</em> us,—more than they +do most freshmen. Paid rather particular attention, +in fact.”</p> +<p class="pnext">That was too much for happy-go-lucky little +Peggy and she laughed until she shook, even +while the contradictory tears ran forth from her +swollen eyes and trickled through her fingers +onto the green leather seat-cushion.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I—I’ll—never go down to luncheon, Kathie,” +she protested between a laugh and a sob. “I’ll +never go outside this room again. I can’t possibly +bear to look them in the face.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Rap-tap-tap!</p> +<!-- File: 024.png --> +<p class="pnext">Katherine whirled toward the door and Peggy +sat up.</p> +<p class="pnext">Rap-tap-<em class="italics">tap</em>! It was more insistent this time, +and the knob of the door turned even as Peggy +called out a none too cordial “Come” that broke +pathetically in the middle.</p> +<p class="pnext">A dark-haired girl entered impetuously, a +sparkle in her friendly eyes. Peggy remembered +her with an inward qualm as one of the most appreciative +spectators on the porch a few moments +ago.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Aren’t you folks <em class="italics">crazy</em> about your rooms? +Have you seen the view over Paradise? It’s +wonderful. I’ve been wondering who would +have these. I live right across the hall—and I—I——”</p> +<p class="pnext">Those sparkling eyes fairly danced now, and +Peggy became aware of a tiny package being +thrust forward by the pretty visitor.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I saw yours was trampled, so I brought you +some tooth-paste!” finished the girl, to their +amazement.</p> +<p class="pnext">She had scarcely left them, swinging mentally +between indignation and bewildered gratitude, +when a pair of girls came unceremoniously in +upon them without knocking at all, and stood +hesitating before them, arms entwined about each +other and holding something half out of sight.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I always think it’s a ghastly thing to be without +powder,” one of them finally mustered the +courage to say, “and I came away with two +boxes. It’s rice powder, flesh tint,—I hope you +like that as well as white; and I brought you +some—and a chamois. Yours was muddy. I +picked it up, but I parted with it again. I knew +you wouldn’t possibly want it,—it couldn’t make +your face anything but <em class="italics">black</em>.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“And here’s a—waist.” The other was speaking +now. “I thought you might be—traveling +light, and—since nobody’s trunks have come, +please wear this down to luncheon. It’s my <em class="italics">best</em> +one, so I won’t deprecate it at all. I think it’s +a darling, and if you’ll give it its first wearing, +I’ll be only too happy.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Katherine glanced across at Peggy and smiled. +Her room-mate was wiping away the last gleam +of moisture from her eyes, and the inner sunlight +of her spirit was beginning to shine through +the gloom.</p> +<p class="pnext">She rose and went toward the girls, but they +laid their offerings on a chair and withdrew. +While Peggy was looking after them appreciatively, +another stranger entered on a similar +mission.</p> +<p class="pnext">For fifteen minutes, while Peggy and Katherine +were making themselves presentable for +luncheon, the gift-bearers kept coming, leaving +their present on the dressing-table in the bedroom +or the window seat in the living-room, +sometimes saying nothing at all, and sometimes +a great deal.</p> +<p class="pnext">“You won’t mind going down now?” Katherine +asked.</p> +<p class="pnext">“N-not so much,” admitted Peggy, putting +dabs of perfume out of various bottles here and +there on her cheered-up countenance, on her +fluffy gold-brown hair, and on the new waist, +contributed.</p> +<p class="pnext">For at least six girls had brought perfume +and loyal Peggy meant to have one represented +just as truly as another, so she followed this +neutral course of using all,—with a resulting +odor that was anything but neutral.</p> +<p class="pnext">As she went into the big dining-room, each +giver could distinctly discern the pervading +sweetness of her own scent bottle and was satisfied.</p> +<p class="pnext">It seemed to Peggy that every face was lifted +and turned toward her as she and Katherine +came in. There was a temptation to walk with +lowered eyes, and sink into the seat the head +waitress might indicate, without meeting a single +person’s gaze.</p> +<p class="pnext">But casting this desire aside, she went in +bravely, her eyes taking in the whole room. And +every girl smiled back at her with the very essence +of friendship and proprietorship, for there +was hardly a girl in the room who had not contributed +something that the radiant freshman +was even then wearing, or had just made use +of.</p> +<p class="pnext">So Peggy did not have to wait until the others +in her house had learned to love her, but she +was taken from the first day into their hearts. +And she felt the warmth of their love around +her even while she went through so prosaic a +ceremony as the partaking of a meager college +luncheon.</p> +<!-- File: 029.png --> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="chapter-iisuite-22"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref pginternal" href="#id3">CHAPTER II—SUITE 22</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst">It was right in the middle of Freshman Rains.</p> +<p class="pnext">The faces of the new girls appeared white and +mournful, pressed against the dormitory windows, +or flushed and laughing from between rubber +helmets and slickers out on the campus, according +to their dispositions.</p> +<p class="pnext">Up and down the second floor corridor of +Ambler House trooped the usual forenoon procession, +umbrella tips clicking on the polished +boards: those who were going out to classes +making a flapping sound with their rubber garments, +those returning giving out a sloshing +noise that advertised the weather outside in an +unfavorable manner.</p> +<p class="pnext">Before several of the doors wet umbrellas were +open on the floor to dry, while tiny rivulets +trickled steadily from the steel prongs. They +looked like big black bats which had flown in +to seek shelter from the outer torrents and might +be expected to take wing again at any minute.</p> +<p class="pnext">It was not a hilarious atmosphere at best, but, +to add to its dripping depression, two wails of a +most long-drawn and lugubrious sort began to be +wafted down the length of the hall over the tops +of the wet umbrellas, drifting in heart-brokenly +through the students’ doors, and dying away in +receding cadences whenever a disconsolate head +lifted itself from a cushion to listen or a helmet +strap was shoved back from a surprised and inquisitive +ear.</p> +<p class="pnext">“M—MMm-MO-O-Oh,” went the wail, and +then “Moo-oo-oo,” with a pastoral significance +that was particularly mystifying.</p> +<p class="pnext">No use for any girl to tell herself that this +was the wind howling—or the rain dejectedly descending +on a tin roof—for no wind ever howled +so precisely up and down scales with such sobbingly +human and barnyard notes, and no rain +was ever known to be so surprisingly vocal, nor +so loud and threatening one moment and so +tremulously broken and far away the next.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Go! Gug-gug-go! Gug-gug-GO-go-go!” +screamed the dual wail, apparently expressive of +the utmost suffering, and yet, through it all, +maintaining a baffling rhythmical quality and a +monotony of utterance that sent a shuddering +wonder in its wake as it coursed down the hall.</p> +<p class="pnext">But during such a disheartening season as +Freshman Rains the spirit of investigation is not +keen, and the residents on the second floor preferred +to distract their attention by lessons that +must be learned or by long and rambling letters +home that ended with vague hints that somebody +in their house was being killed down the +hall.</p> +<!-- File: 032.png --> +<p class="pnext">It was not until the voices broke out into wild +and mirthless laughter that their apathetic spirits +were aroused to protest.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Goodness, girls, what’s that awful noise?” an +indignant brown head poked itself out from one +of the umbrella-guarded doors and sent its peevish +remonstrance down the corridor. In an instant +every door framed a face—or two faces—and +a babble of questions was echoed back and +forth.</p> +<p class="pnext">But triumphantly right through the shrill notes +of their eager queries rang the weird and displeasing +sound that had so disturbed them.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Ha-HA! Ho-HO! He-HEE! Haw-HAW!”</p> +<p class="pnext">“It’s too much!” averred the girl who had +spoken first. “<em class="italics">Where</em> is that sound being made? +And <em class="italics">what</em> is it? Seems to me as if it were from +Suite 22—do you think somebody is torturing +those freshmen?” It was just what everybody +did think, but they dreaded the admission. +“Let’s go in there,” the girl continued, “and—and +find out.” She ended rather weakly, shrinking +before the task of investigating so unearthly +a sound as that.</p> +<p class="pnext">The girls were flocking forth, some still in +their damp slickers, the rain glistening on them; +others all immaculate just as they were ready +to start out to recitations: and still a lazy third +contingent, who had not yet had any classes or +who were wantonly cutting them, as sweet as +flowers in Japanese silk kimonos and little pattering +slippers.</p> +<p class="pnext">Together they made the charge on Door 22.</p> +<p class="pnext">Crowding in at the breach as it swung open, +they gasped in sudden bewilderment at the sight +that met their eyes.</p> +<p class="pnext">Standing rigidly side by side like two soldiers +on parade, but with their hands solemnly placed +upon their diaphragms while they emitted simultaneously +the weird noises that had alarmed the +house, were Peggy Parsons and Katherine Foster, +the idols of Ambler House!</p> +<p class="pnext">Their eyes widened at the wholesale intrusion +and their hands fell limply to their sides, and +then, as the indignant chorus broke out around +them, they looked at each other in crimson confusion +and burst out laughing.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Why—c-could you h-h-hear us, g-girls?” +cried Katherine incoherently through her shaking +spasms of mirth.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Hear you?” echoed Hazel Pilcher, who had +led the charge upon them. “Hear? Well, my +<em class="italics">dears</em>, did you think you were exactly whispering? +I never listened to so awful a concert in +my life. It’s a wonder I didn’t call the house-matron. +Oh, you incorrigible youngsters, what +in the world was it?”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy’s face assumed an aggrieved expression +immediately.</p> +<!-- File: 035.png --> +<p class="pnext">“It was only our lesson,” she responded somewhat +sulkily.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Lesson! My goodness, what are they giving +the freshmen now that their lessons turn out to +be imitations of a menagerie? Why, when I +was a freshman”—(with a very superior air, for +Hazel Pilcher was now enjoying all the glory of +a sophomore’s exalted position)—“we had Latin +and French and math and history, but I never +heard of a course in ghostly noises. I’m sure +that in my year they at least spared us that.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Just the samey that was our lesson,” Peggy +persisted, “that was our practice work for to-morrow’s +yell.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Do you mean——?” Hazel began to understand, +for one cannot be a sophomore without +knowing most of the abbreviations in which college +terminology abounds.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Elocution, if we have to simplify it,” said +Peggy. “I suppose you girls didn’t take that +course. Well, Katherine and I are just—taking +it for all it’s worth. I guess we want to learn to +speak correctly and place our voices right from +the diaphragm and make full and open +tones——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Spare muh!” interposed a senior who was +known to be already practicing up for dramatics. +“I hear nothing but that sort of thing all day +long these days. I might have guessed what +your vocal gymnastics meant—but they were so +particularly horrible——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, the worse they sound the better they +are,” murmured Peggy, deprecatingly. “And I +thought myself we did it rather well.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Elocution, or, as the girls called it with enthusiasm, +yellocution or yell, was an elective +course that entailed no studying, but a vast deal +of labor along a different line. The victims +who were beguiled into taking it, thinking to gain +an easy course minus mental effort, that would +count nevertheless a perfectly good two hours a +week for their degree, were often mere tearful +wrecks after the first few days when they were +stood up before an enormous, gaping class and +put through test after test to the running accompaniment +of wounding comment on their enunciation, +their manner, their throats, their gestures—everything.</p> +<p class="pnext">They became acquainted for the first time +with all the distressful mystery of larynxes and +pharynxes—which most of them had always supposed +were the names of diseases—they learned +about diaphragms, too, and were forced to +breathe in different ways and shout and cry +“Ha-ha,” all the time feeling for the muscular +hammer stroke at their waist lines. It was so +embarrassing to Peggy at first that she couldn’t +make any sound at all when they told her to say +“Ha-ha,” and it was only after three attempts +that she managed a faint and disheartened +squeak.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Your voice is little and thin,” criticised the +teacher sharply. “I shall give you exercises to +round it out.”</p> +<p class="pnext">And that’s what she had done, and these were +what Peggy and her faithful room-mate were +practicing at the moment of the inrush of +visitors.</p> +<p class="pnext">She explained to her guests how little and thin +her voice was, but they laughed scornfully and +said if she had any more of a one, they’d see that +she was put off campus, that, as far as they were +concerned, they believed she had the biggest and +the fattest voice on record, which seemed to restore +Peggy’s self-respect in a way marvelous +to behold.</p> +<p class="pnext">“A person can be happy,” she assured them +conversationally, “just so long as she doesn’t +know anything about herself—how she talks, how +she looks or how she impresses other people. +But the minute you get her conscious of all these +larynx-pharynx-diaphragm machines inside her +she’ll never know another happy minute until she +conquers them all and can speak just like a Nazimova +with ’em. Though Nazimova is rather +sobby, I’m told—maybe I’d better train myself up +after Blanche Ring instead.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Peggy,” Katherine put in at this point questioningly, +“don’t you think we might set the water +over and give the girls some tea?”</p> +<p class="pnext">At this delightful prospect many of the girls—especially +the little lazy kimonoed ones—sat right +down wherever they happened to be, in a chair or +on the floor, with such looks of blissful anticipation +on their faces that they were a pleasant +sight. It wasn’t often tea was served in the middle +of a rainy forenoon and the two Andrews +freshmen were already so practiced in little parties +before they came to college, that even a cup +of tea served by them had a grace and an added +interest, that it could not have possessed in the +rooms of girls who were just tasting their first +bit of life away from home.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy looked in some consternation at the comfortable +crowd with its expectant and gleeful +expression, and demurred slowly.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I just <em class="italics">have</em> to train my voice,” she said, “but +I suppose, even with them here, I can go right +on?”</p> +<p class="pnext">A groan greeted this proposal that was anything +but complimentary.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy looked hurt. “Oh, you just wait,” she +said vindictively, but with a laugh struggling +for utterance at the same time. “Some day you’ll +pay to hear me—see if you won’t—and I mean to +work at it right along all through four years and +then—and—then——” her voice grew dreamy +and her eyes stared off into a heavenly future, +“and then maybe I can be in the mob at senior +dramatics!”</p> +<p class="pnext">The senior of the party laughed at the pretty +compliment, for she herself was only in the mob, +and her classmates didn’t think she had such a +marvelous success either—so it was pleasant to +have the adoration of a popular freshman.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I’m sure you will be,” she said graciously, +“and with one accord we all accept the future mob +member’s invitation to tea.” And she sat down +with the rest and waited patiently.</p> +<p class="pnext">With a sigh, Peggy lit the little alcohol lamp +under the tea kettle and Katherine dived mysteriously +under the desk to emerge a moment later +with something that sent a general shout of approval +through the entire group.</p> +<p class="pnext">“A box! A box!” they cried, “Katherine has +a box from home!”</p> +<p class="pnext">Nothing else in life possesses quite the wonder +and the satisfying delight of a real box from +home. If the parents at home only knew of the +wide-eyed envy of all the girls as they cluster +around one of these brighteners of college existence +as it is being opened, there would be a +continuous procession of expressmen tramping +in at the back door of all the college houses, week +in and week out, and every single closet shelf +would hold its quota of jam jars, home-made +cookies, and fine large grape-fruit so that the +same glow of satisfaction and sense of being +loved would abide in each girl’s heart all the +time.</p> +<p class="pnext">The tea ball was being daintily dipped in and +out of the steaming cups, the cold chicken was +being eagerly passed down the line of girls, when +the door of suite 22 opened again and a confused +and blushing stranger, tall, with wonderful +reddish hair and baby-blue eyes, stepped inside +and asked in a voice that was so full of +fright that it would never have passed in that +elocution class of Peggy’s, if this was Miss Katherine +Foster’s room.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I’m trying to find Miss Foster,” the scared +voice went on, “because I was to have roomed +with her this year. I’m Gloria——”</p> +<p class="pnext">With a single bound, the impulsive Peggy had +reached the beautiful stranger and had thrown +her arms around her neck. It was all her fault, +she was thinking, all her fault that this nice, +nice girl had been deprived of the finest room-mate +on campus, for while Peggy and Katherine +were at Andrews Preparatory School, Peggy had +not known that she herself could go to college +until the last minute, and Katherine had already +been assigned another room-mate. When Peggy +had been given the money to come, however, by +old Mr. Huntington, her friend, Katherine had +written to Gloria Hazeltine—who stood before +them now—and had explained that she just must +room with her own Peggy, and would Gloria +mind and she could easily find somebody else.</p> +<p class="pnext">Neither of the girls had seen Gloria before, +but at this first glimpse of her, Peggy’s heart +was warm with a sense of wanting to make up +to her for having taken her place, and hence the +smothering arms she wrapped so quickly around +the newcomer’s neck.</p> +<p class="pnext">All the embarrassment of the new guest fled +at this surprisingly eager reception. She drew +back from Peggy’s arms and smiled happily +down into her face.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh, oh,” she cried, “I wish more than ever +that you were my room-mate! Which is Peggy +Parsons that has taken you away from me?”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy at once saw the other’s mistake and +flushed. “I’m the guilty party,” she admitted. +“I’m Peggy. But I want you please to like me +a little—anyway. And now——” suddenly +changing to a business-like tone of hospitality, +“sit right down and have some tea. Girls, this +is Morning Glory, Katherine’s and my best +friend. You don’t mind my calling you that?” +she inquired anxiously. “That’s the way Katherine +and I spoke of you to ourselves and you—your +looks bear it out so well,” she faltered.</p> +<p class="pnext">Gloria, very much taken into the Ambler +House set, and already being plied with tea and +wonderful beaten biscuit, didn’t mind anything, +and in a few minutes the whole room seemed to +glow with a pervading happiness and content +that took no account of the gloomy weather outside, +and for this season at least the bugaboo +ghost of the Freshman Rains was laid.</p> +<!-- File: 046.png --> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="chapter-iiipeggys-masterpiece"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref pginternal" href="#id4">CHAPTER III—PEGGY’S MASTERPIECE</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst">Peggy was bending absorbedly over her desk +one evening biting her pen and then writing a +bit and now and then crossing out part of what +she had written, all with a kind of seraphic smile +that puzzled Katherine more and more until she +finally just had to speak about it.</p> +<p class="pnext">“What are you doing, room-mate?” she demanded; +“that look is so—so awfully unlike your +usual expression.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Hush,” said Peggy, glancing up and waving +her pen solemnly toward the other. “It’s a poet’s +look.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“A——? Peggy Parsons, you’re rooming +with me under false pretenses. If you’re going +to turn into a genius I’m going home. You +know I perfectly hate geniuses and there are so +many funny ones around college. I always +thought that at least you——” her tone was +scathing and beseeching at the same time, “at +least you were immune.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Maybe I am,” said Peggy speculatively. +“What is it?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“What’s what?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Immune. Could a person be it without knowing +it, do you suppose?”</p> +<p class="pnext">Katherine had thrown herself across the room +and had kissed Peggy fervently and repentantly +at this remark. “Oh, I take it all back, Peggy,” +she cried, “you’re not a genius. They always understand +every word in the dictionary and you +are—you are just a dear little dunce, after all!”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, I like that!” exclaimed the injured +young poet. “Let me read you this, Katherine,” +she continued with shining eyes, “and then you’ll +see—oh, Katherinekins, Katherinekins, what a +bright room-mate you have, and how proud you’ll +be of me to-morrow when Miss Tillotson reads +this out in English 13.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Katherine glanced toward the inky manuscript +suspiciously.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Is it very long?” she inquired.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy only shot her a reproachful glance and +began to read in a sweet, thrilly voice, that already +showed the effects of strenuous elocution +training and would have made the veriest nonsense +in the world seem beautiful by reason of +its triumphant youth and its perfect conviction.</p> +<blockquote><div> +<div class="line-block outermost"> +<div class="line">“Dreams that are dear—of night—of day—</div> +<div class="line">All I could think or hope or plan:</div> +<div class="line">Naught is so sweet in that dream world’s sway</div> +<div class="line">As this wonderful hour of the Present’s span.</div> +</div> +</div></blockquote> +<p class="pfirst">There was a silence in the room when she had +finished, and Peggy folded her manuscript up +tenderly and laid it away on her desk with an air +that was little short of reverent.</p> +<p class="pnext">“How did you do it?” breathed Katherine, carried +away by the magic of the voice rather than +by any clear idea of what the voice had read. +But she had a great deal of faith in Peggy, and +anything she would read like that must be very +fine. So Katherine passed her judgment on it +immediately.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Do you like it?” Peggy pleaded, “oh, do you? +Oh, I’m so glad. It’s—it’s just a piece of my +soul, Katherine.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Katherine accompanied her room-mate to English +13 next day with a pleasant sense of exhilaration +in her heart, for wasn’t this the day Peggy +was to be praised before them all—freshmen, +sophomores, juniors and seniors alike—for her +wonderful poem?</p> +<p class="pnext">There was a little stir and flutter through Recitation +room 27 as the bright-eyed young literary +lights of the college trooped in.</p> +<p class="pnext">English 13 had to be held in the largest recitation +room on campus, for it was the one class that +everybody would rather go to than not. It was +purely elective with a number of divisions and +you could walk by and decide whether or not you +wanted to go in—and you always decided to go +in.</p> +<p class="pnext">Grey sweaters over the backs of chairs, a blur +of black furs, youthful heads with hair all done +alike, lolling arms along the chair-tops, slim +white hands toying with pencils or sweater buttons—a +gigantic, lazy, comfortable, enjoying-life +sort of a class when you came in from the +back of the room, but as you went down toward +the front and glanced back, there was a light of +eager anticipation shining in every face, a universal +expression of intelligent interest such as +it is the fortune of few college professors, alas, +to behold in this world.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy and Katherine had dropped the wonderful +poem in the 13 box outside the door—it being +written on pale-blue paper so that Peggy would +recognize it at once in the bundle that would soon +be brought in, in Miss Tillotson’s arms.</p> +<p class="pnext">They sat as near the front as they could get, +and that queer, unaccountable, crimson uneasiness +that affects authors when their work is +about to be read in public—part pleasurable but +mostly agony—swept Peggy in a miserable flood +and she sat deaf, dumb and blind to all that was +going on around her until she heard the bell +strike that announced the opening of class.</p> +<p class="pnext">Miss Tillotson at this minute came in, her +arms full of manuscript, as usual, her glance +moving lightly over the rustling audience of girls, +who were beginning to sit up straight with that +eager interest flaming. Miss Tillotson was always sure +of a response. From the moment she +fingered the first manuscript and began to read +in her wonderful voice that made the good things +seem so much better than they were and the bad +things so much worse, every pause she made, +every raised-eye-brow query, every slight little +twist of amused smile was received with a collective +long-drawn breath, a murmur of appreciation +or a small, sudden sweeping storm of laughter +that convulsed the entire giant class at once, +only to drop away suddenly to still attention as +her voice again picked up the thread of narrative +or resumed the verse.</p> +<p class="pnext">It is a pity but true that Peggy heard absolutely +nothing of her adored 13 to-day until her +own blue-folded poem was lifted up. She had +gone through a hundred different emotions in +the few minutes that she had already spent in +this classroom. Every time Miss Tillotson’s +fingers lingered near her manuscript in selecting +what next to read, a shiver of despair went up +and down her spine. Oh, why had she done such +a thing? She, only a freshman, to have had the +effrontery to write a poem when all these upper-classmen—and +even the Monthly board members—were +in the class—and had written such +wonderful things! Of course there was the approval +of Katherine by which she had set so +much store a short few hours ago. But—she +glanced at Katherine now sitting so tranquilly +beside her. Katherine was only a freshman herself! +What did her approval mean? She hated +herself for the disloyalty of the thought, but still +she could not help wishing that she had never +shown the poem to Katherine and then she could +make out it was some one else’s and not have to +suffer the awful humiliation——</p> +<p class="pnext">Miss Tillotson was reading! Oh, it had actually +come—this horrible calamity! Nothing could +happen to save her now. Her poor little blue +poem was being read out to all these wonderful +girls of Hampton and she could not prevent it. +Drowning, drowning in a sea of confusion, there +drifted hazily through Peggy’s mind a pathetic +story she had once read in a newspaper about a +man whose ship was sinking and who had put a +note in a bottle, “All hope gone. Good-bye forever.”</p> +<p class="pnext">When the smooth voice of Miss Tillotson +stopped there was a slight rustle over the class, +and then with one accord the girls burst out into +a laugh.</p> +<p class="pnext">It was the merest ripple of enjoying titter, but +in Peggy’s crimson ears it roared and echoed until +the mocking sound of it was the one thing in +the world. She lifted her swimming eyes and +kept them on Miss Tillotson’s face and even +achieved a somewhat ghastly smile on her own +account, believing, poor child, that she could thus +keep secret the awful fact of her identity as the +writer of that “thing”—the poem had already +descended to this title in her mind—and that +neither Miss Tillotson nor the girls need ever +know.</p> +<p class="pnext">“If all that the writer could ‘think or hope or +plan’ is expressed in this particular—flight,” +smiled Miss Tillotson, with that dear little quirk +to her mouth that Peggy had loved so many times +but which hurt now, oh, beyond words to tell, +“I should think that dream world of hers would +resemble a nightmare.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Another gale of laughter swept the class, fluffy +heads leaned back against the chairs in abandon +and shirt-waisted shoulders shook.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy felt that if Katherine looked at her or +ventured a pat of sympathy she would die. But +Katherine, when Peggy’s miserable glance sought +her face, was gazing interestedly around the room +from literary light to literary light as if to determine +which could have been guilty of the blue +manuscript. It certainly was a brilliant way to +ward off detection from her room-mate and +Peggy was grateful.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy hardly knew how she got home that day. +She and Katherine did not speak until they had +gained the safety of their own suite and then +they put a “Busy” sign on the door, and sat down +on their couch.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Katherine,” said Peggy at last, “one of two +things must happen now. Either I shall never +touch pen to paper again or I’ll keep at writing +until I make a success of it and show Miss Tillotson +that I can after all.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Yes, room-mate,” agreed Katherine solemnly, +“that’s the only alternative open to you now.”</p> +<p class="pnext">The tragic whiteness of Peggy’s face deepened.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Never again, or—never give it <em class="italics">up</em> until I’ve +made good,” she murmured. “It might mean—more +times like this, Katherine, if I kept on,” +she reminded tentatively.</p> +<!-- File: 057.png --> +<p class="pnext">“Yes, Peggy,” Katherine answered slowly, “I +think it <em class="italics">would</em> mean more times like this.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“And nothing but my own determination to go +on,—no reason to think I have any particular +talent or ability—she has already taken away all +that notion. Just the will to do it whether I can +or not—to show her that I can.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Yes,” agreed Katherine once more, “that’s +all you’d have to go on. <em class="italics">I</em> think you are good at +writing, but then I think you can do anything. +I can’t write myself, so my opinion really isn’t +so very valuable. You’d have to do it without encouragement.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I want her respect, Katherine; I want to have +her think in the end that I’m the best writer that +ever took Thirteen, but—it would mean giving +most of my time and all my energies to my English—and +I might not turn out any good in the +end.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“True,” Katherine again attacked her room-mate’s problem, +“and if you never touch pen to +paper again” (the phrase had them both) “you +can soon forget this hurt to-day and you need +not put yourself in a similar position again, and +your main work can go to—well, to math or anything +else.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy paced up and down the room and Katherine, +never doubting but that this was the most +serious problem that had ever been fought out in +college, followed her room-mate’s figure with eyes +that brimmed with sympathy and a heartful of +affectionate loyalty that longed to be of help and +could not.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Say, Peggy,” she said suddenly, “I want to +take a note over to the note-room for one of the +girls in my Latin class. Don’t you want to come +along? This doesn’t have to be decided all at +once, does it?”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy silently slipped on her sweater again +and the girls ran across the campus to the big +recitation hall and thence down the basement +steps to the note-room. Crowds of girls were +swarming into and out of this place where, on +little boards—one to each class—the girls left +their communications for each other under the +proper initials. In so large a college it was +necessary to have some easy and direct means +of reaching each other without delay or the expense +of telephone or postage. Every girl went +to the note-room once every day—and a particularly +popular one ran down after each class to +gather in the sheaves of invitations, business +notes, and club meeting announcements that were +sure to be hers.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy and Katherine squeezed through the +crowds, greeting many other freshmen as they +were suddenly brought face to face, and at length +they stood before the freshman bulletin and Katherine +stuck her note in the rack at the letter R, +while Peggy glanced, from habit, back to her own +initial. There were many little important-looking +notes stuck upright over the letter P, and +Peggy fingered them over listlessly. Delia Porter, +Helen Pearson, Margaret Perry and so on, +until all at once from the most inviting looking of +all leaped her own name, Peggy Parsons, in perfectly +unfamiliar writing—writing almost too assured +to be that of a freshman at all.</p> +<p class="pnext">Wonderingly she unfolded the little square, +and then, jammed in by the other girls as she +was, she flung her arms around Katherine’s neck +and cried out with a sob of joy, “Oh, kiss me, +Katherine!—they want my poem for the <em class="italics">Monthly</em>!”</p> +<p class="pnext">From dull gray the world leaped to glowing +radiance. For a freshman to be invited to give +a poem to the <em class="italics">Monthly</em>! Her great problem was +solved automatically, and Peggy would be an +author from that time forth until she should be +graduated.</p> +<!-- File: 061.png --> +<p class="pnext">“Let’s see your note,” urged Katherine, when +they were out of the crowd once more. “I want +to look at it myself.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy eagerly unfolded the precious thing +again and read, while Katherine looked over her +shoulder:</p> +<blockquote><div> +<p class="pfirst">“<em class="italics">My dear Miss Parsons</em>—or wouldn’t it be +more like college to say Peggy?—I’m writing to +ask you if we may not have for the <em class="italics">Monthly</em> that +little poem of yours that was read in Thirteen +to-day? There are some changes in four of the +lines, and if you’ll come over to my room this +afternoon, I want you to make them yourself so +that there will be as little as possible of my scribbling +in it. Hoping to see you,</p> +<div class="line-block noindent outermost right"> +<div class="line"><span class="small-caps">Ditto Armandale</span>, <em class="italics">Monthly Board</em>,</div> +<div class="line"><span class="small-caps">Room 11, Macefield House</span>.”</div> +</div> +</div></blockquote> +<p class="pfirst">“Why, Peggy, do you remember that Ditto +Armandale we met that day last year while you +were standing under the waterfalls? And it was +the sight of her and all those other Hampton +girls that first made you want to come here! +Miss Armandale invited me to come and see her +that day, when I should get to Hamp, and she +said you were just the sort that ought to come +here—oh, isn’t it <em class="italics">fine</em>, Peggy!”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Yes, but look here,” said Peggy, who was still +reading over her note, “she says ‘changes in four +of the lines.’ There were only four lines <em class="italics">in</em> it, +Katherine, you remember.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“That’s queer. But I’d go anyway.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Of course I will,—I don’t suppose she’ll remember +me, but I’m glad she’s the one, she looked +so nice and considerate that day.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“What are you going to wear?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“It’s an invitation house. I suppose a person +ought to be awfully dressy,” Peggy said doubtfully.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I don’t know,” murmured Katherine. “I +shouldn’t think it would be necessary to dress +much if you were just one of the multitude like +me. But being one of the youngest authors in +college, it’s different with you.”</p> +<p class="pnext">With arms around each other’s shoulders, the +room-mates strolled back across the campus toward +Ambler House. The sunlight shone over +the campus and over the moving army of girls +going in every direction across it, for it was just +at the end of recitation hour. None of them +wore hats, so that the light gleamed down on +their hair. Most of them wore white sweaters +or sport coats, and under the arm of each was +tucked a notebook or a stack of study volumes.</p> +<p class="pnext">All of them walked in pairs, as Katherine and +Peggy were doing, or in laughing groups that +gathered numbers as they went on.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy and Katherine began to have an intimate +sense of belonging to it all. Hampton was +becoming <em class="italics">their</em> college in a way it had not been +before. This campus and those red brick buildings, +those laughing crowds of girls, their hair +blowing in the wind—these things were to represent +their whole world for four years, and, +tightening their hands on each other’s shoulders, +they were glad it was to be so.</p> +<p class="pnext">And Peggy held crushed in her free hand a +tiny wad of paper, the tangible evidence that this +first year promised success to her.</p> +<!-- File: 065.png --> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="chapter-ivnew-paint-and-poetry"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref pginternal" href="#id5">CHAPTER IV—NEW PAINT AND POETRY</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst">A summons to visit an invitation house!</p> +<p class="pnext">And on such a gratifying mission! Peggy +smiled as she slipped into her rose-colored taffeta, +and Katherine, watching her with pride, decided +that “the poet’s look” had come back.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, good luck, room-mate,” she called as +Peggy went out the door, and she received one +radiant glance in answer from the departing +young bard.</p> +<p class="pnext">The pleasantly warm tone of the rose-colored +taffeta buoyed up the new genius’ spirit all across +the campus until she came out into Green Street +and beheld the imposing reality of Macefield +House directly before her.</p> +<p class="pnext">She had the fleeting and snobbish wish that +all the girls of her class could see her turning +thus assuredly up the walk to the famous senior +house. To be sure, she couldn’t help casting a +cold look of disapproval at the porch—it was the +messiest porch she had seen anywhere in Hampton, +but she supposed the celebrity inhabitants +of Macefield were all too busy with their dinners +and dances and social duties generally to notice +how careless and extremely—impromptu—the +approach to their home appeared.</p> +<p class="pnext">The campus house porches all had chairs out +on them and comfortable magazine tables—there +were still a lot of hot fall days to look forward +to—but on the Macefield House porch there was +nothing. And somebody had carelessly left an +old ladder lying down right in front of the steps! +Peggy had a very hard time scrambling over it. +Perhaps it was just as well the other Freshman +girls weren’t there to see her after all. She must +admit there was considerable loss of dignity involved +in scrambling over an old paint-specked +ladder that was so completely in her way.</p> +<p class="pnext">Her face was flushed to the color of her dress +when she finally climbed the steps. Even in her +confusion she noticed that the porch floor looked +strangely <em class="italics">new</em> and that it seemed to have a tendency +to cling a little and impede her footsteps.</p> +<p class="pnext">“It’s probably because I’m getting scared that +I imagine my feet stick to the boards,” she mused +uncomfortably. “I don’t know how a person +should act at an invitation house. Whether +you’re supposed to walk right in or——”</p> +<p class="pnext">That part of her problem was settled immediately, +for she found the door locked. Gathering +what self-confidence she could, she pressed the +bell.</p> +<p class="pnext">Uneasily she shifted from one to the other of +the sticking feet. No one came. She knew it +was rude to ring twice, but she felt she would +never have the heart to come again if she didn’t +see the great editor of the Monthly now and get +everything arranged. So she pressed a shaking +finger nervously against the bell, and held it so +until she heard a rustling inside the house. The +door opened—just a crack—and a surprised head +poked itself into view. Peggy had a jumbled +and confused impression all at once. She was +aware of the speechless amazement in the eyes, +also that the face was not that of a girl at all, +but belonged to a rather severe looking and decidedly +middle-aged woman.</p> +<p class="pnext">With a little jump of her heart she realized +that she was meeting the gaze of the matron of +Macefield House. Campus house matrons were +regarded in the light either of common enemies +or motherly souls, whose hearts responded to all +college-girls’ troubles. But what might the matron +of an invitation house be like? Peggy +thought she must be something incomparably +greater.</p> +<!-- File: 069.png --> +<p class="pnext">“Is Miss Armandale in?” she asked weakly.</p> +<p class="pnext">“She may be, but she’d be up in her room,” +answered the head ungraciously enough, while +its owner apparently did not intend to admit the +enemy within the fortifications, since no move +was made to open the door wider.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well——” murmured Peggy, with a sudden +realization that she was standing in wet paint,—“shall +I—go up—and—and find out?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“By the back door if you wish,” said the head +witheringly. “If you came in this way, you’d +<span class="small-caps">Track in the Paint</span>.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy’s heart leaped. A crimson tide went +over her. She shut her eyes before the accusing +and indignant gaze of the matron.</p> +<p class="pnext">So that was what the ladder had been for, +and any stupid but she would have known! With +dread she looked back along the porch the way +she had come and there, sure enough, was a procession +of marring footprints in the new grey +of the flooring!</p> +<p class="pnext">She had climbed with great difficulty over the +barrier that had been deliberately placed there +to prevent such a thing.</p> +<p class="pnext">And Ditto and the other girls of the house +would have to have the porch all done over on +account of a silly freshman. For the girls in the +invitation houses carried their own expenses, +leasing their houses and then conducting them +like any tenants.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I will go ’round the back way, then,” she +gasped to the glowering matron. Her one thought +was to escape the baneful glare of those eyes.</p> +<p class="pnext">Her feet stuck firmly when she tried to go and +as she was lifting them up with a generous accompaniment +of Macefield House paint, the door +banged behind her and she was left to make her +humiliating way back as she had come, with the +ladder to be surmounted again, and her eyes so +full of tears of embarrassment that she could +hardly see to walk.</p> +<p class="pnext">She had no intention of going around the back +way. Her only desire was to get home.</p> +<p class="pnext">She must face again the guns of the enemy—for +that wonderful poem mustn’t be lost to the +<em class="italics">Monthly</em>—but she would make her charge after +she had rested once more in the trenches of Suite +22, and had equipped her army of one with a new +uniform.</p> +<p class="pnext">For that was the plan that was already taking +shape in her mind. She would return in disguise. +She had sallied forth in her brightest and best. +Well, she would go back as meek as a freshman +should, in plain clothes—and who would know +she was the young stupid who had scaled the step-ladder +and marred the new grey paint of the invitation +house?</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well,” said Katherine, yawning up at her +lazily from the couch, when she was once more +within the home walls, “how did it go, room-mate?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“How did what go?” inquired Peggy, kicking +off her pumps hastily and sliding them out of +sight, under the dressing table.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Why, the interview with the great Ditto. You +make me tired, Peggy—acting just as though you +were bored by the best thing that’s happened to +either of us yet. And really and truly, you’re +just as glad as I am for you. Admit that you +are.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Not—so wildly,” Peggy made a little grimace, +as she flung the rose-colored silk dress into a corner. +A moment later her muffled voice came +from the bed room, where she was fumbling +among her dresses. “I never can find anything +I want.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Are you looking for your kimono? Going to +rest a while, before we get dressed for dinner? +Your kimono’s under the bed, Peggy; I saw the +blue edge sticking out. Hurry back in here and +tell me the news; I’m consumed with curiosity.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy came back into the study, wearing a +blue serge skirt, her head lost to view in a middy +blouse in the process of being slipped on. She +struggled to the top at last and peered out with +pleading eyes.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Will you go over there with me, Katherine?” +she said in a tone she strove to make indifferent.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Go over there with you? Haven’t you been?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I want your company,” Peggy stammered with +difficulty, unable to tell the fib that would have +been a direct answer to her room-mate’s question.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well,” said Katherine, getting up slowly and +stretching her arms, “I should say I will.”</p> +<p class="pnext">And so Peggy, her army reinforced, began her +march on Macefield House a second time.</p> +<p class="pnext">If Katherine was surprised at her simplified +costume, she made no comment, but held her arm +chummily all the way over, and Peggy felt that +victory was in sight.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Look, they’ve painted their porch,” she said +in assumed surprise, when they came in sight +of the fateful ladder.</p> +<p class="pnext">“So they have,” cried Katherine, “and we can’t +get up <em class="italics">that</em> way.”</p> +<p class="pnext">And then she began to titter.</p> +<p class="pnext">“What’s the matter?” demanded Peggy +quickly.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Somebody—somebody—<em class="italics">did</em> go up anyway,” +Katherine laughed delightedly. “There are footprints +all over it! Oh, mustn’t the Macefield +House girls be furious?”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy was silent.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Don’t you think that’s funny?” her room-mate +insisted, still laughing.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Perfectly <em class="italics">simple</em>,” returned Peggy. “Some +people haven’t a bit of sense. I imagine it was +some—some delivery boy, don’t you?”</p> +<!-- File: 075.png --> +<p class="pnext">“More likely a freshman. Delivery boy with +those little feet? How ridiculous—as if he’d +wear high heels!”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Katherine, you’re a regular Sherlock +Holmes,” Peggy protested.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I believe I could ferret out the criminal,” persisted +Katherine. “I’ve thought of a good clue.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“How would you do it?” Peggy’s voice was +little more than a whisper.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Look on the bottoms of all the freshmen’s +shoes for paint,” announced her friend.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Katherine!”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Yes?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Last year you and I were detectives and we +found out things together, which did people good. +But do you think—after our partnership then, +it is right for you to go—looking things up all +by yourself without me, now?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“How perfectly silly of you,” laughed Katherine; +“of course you’d have to help. You could +look at the shoes of the girls on one side of the +campus, and I’d take our side. Anyway it’s all +in fun. I suppose we’d better go around the back +way, don’t you think so?”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy thought so, decidedly. In a few moments +they were climbing the dark back stairs +to the room of the great <em class="italics">Monthly</em> editor on the +second floor.</p> +<p class="pnext">The door of Number 11 stood part way open +and showed a delightful and luxurious confusion +within. Peggy and Katherine got a glimpse +of tall red roses, Oriental couch cover, and a profusion +of pillows, old bronze bric-a-brac, green +leather banners, scattered books and manuscripts, +with the inevitable Mona Lisa enigmatically smiling +down at it all from the opposite wall of the +room.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy and Katherine, after a light knock, advanced +into the room and seated themselves on +the inviting couch.</p> +<!-- File: 077.png --> +<p class="pnext">“A book-case and a dictionary,” murmured +Peggy. “Such funny things to have at college.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“But there’s a tea table, too,” reminded Katherine. +“In fact, I never saw a room that had such +a varied assortment of things—and all in harmony.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I like that leather peacock screen,” Peggy +went on.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh, I love it all—but don’t you think it’s the +least bit oppressive? That incense smell lulls my +senses to sleep. I don’t see how Ditto can be the +fresh, breezy sort she is,—perfectly matter-of-fact +and everydayish,—and live in an opium den +of a room like this.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“It isn’t just what her character would lead +you to expect,” admitted Peggy.</p> +<p class="pnext">Just then, a girl drifting aimlessly by in the hall +paused at the door, and glanced in curiously at +the two freshmen sitting so stiffly, toes out, hands +clasped in their laps, awaiting the all-important +Ditto.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Dit know you’re here?” she asked, with +friendly brevity.</p> +<p class="pnext">Both girls shook their heads.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I’ll get her,” said the other, disappearing, and +an instant later they heard, up and down the hall, +the loud cry, “<span class="small-caps">Dit-to! Di-i-t Armandale</span>! +Somebody to see you!”</p> +<p class="pnext">From the third floor came a scrambling noise, +then the sound of light feet tapping on the stairs.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, you really did come, you children,” +gasped the owner of the room, coming in flushed +from her hasty descent and blowing a wavy +strand of golden hair from her face.</p> +<p class="pnext">She plumped down between them on the couch +and looked from one to the other with an air of +delighted proprietorship.</p> +<p class="pnext">“And you’re beginning just right, too, as +I knew you would. Thirteen is the open road to +glory, here, and you certainly were courageous, +handing in a poem first thing.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Her hand reached for Peggy’s knee. “How do +you like everything, now you’re here, and why +haven’t you been over before?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“We didn’t think you’d remember us,” said +Peggy.</p> +<p class="pnext">“There was so much water that day you saw +us, at the picnic last year——”</p> +<p class="pnext">Ditto threw back her head and laughed. “Yes, +there was plenty of that,” she agreed. “I never +saw anything so moist as you were. And you—Katherine +Foster—yes, I remember your names, +too,—I chose you for a friend of mine that day. +And I’m positively insulted that neither of you +accepted my invitation to come to see me, until +I dragged you here on business. Your poem, +Peggy,—here it is, I kept it out for you——”</p> +<p class="pnext">She had risen and lifted the blue-folded paper +from a pile of thick stories and “heavies” on the +table. And Peggy, watching the nonchalant way +she handled the sacred <em class="italics">Monthly</em> material, felt her +admiration increasing.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Now,” said Ditto, bending over the page with +complete concentration, “let’s see just what we +want to do—I thought that possibly——”</p> +<p class="pnext">And her sturdy little blue pencil crept mercilessly +through word after word, while Peggy felt +the blood pounding into her face and tried not +to mind the kindly criticism of her effort.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy was consulted tactfully about each +change and asked for suggestions, until, under the +skilful guidance of the more experienced writer, +the fledgling really developed a verse that would +not mar the <em class="italics">Monthly</em> pages. Then Ditto gave her +a pen and some paper to write it all out again, in +the copy that was actually to go to the printer.</p> +<p class="pnext">Katherine talked to Ditto about her room-mate, +while the latter was carefully rewriting her masterpiece.</p> +<!-- File: 081.png --> +<p class="pnext">“You know you’ve got good material for freshman +president, there,” said Ditto with something +of senior condescension. “An Andrews girl usually +has it, and she’s the right type. She isn’t +very self-conscious, she’s lots of fun and ready +for anything. You can tell that. Why don’t you +put her up? Your elections are this week, aren’t +they? Honestly, I’ve heard of nothing but Peggy +Parsons, Peggy Parsons, from all the freshmen +protégées of the girls in this house.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Katherine caught fire. “It would be great,” +she said. “Think of rooming with the class president. +Oh, I did a clever thing in bringing her to +Hampton. I can shine in reflected glory through +the whole four years.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“You do it,” urged Ditto, “get her elected, I +mean. I’ll help.”</p> +<p class="pnext">She nodded carelessly toward the huge vase +of roses. “I have quite a few little freshmen +friends whom I’ll—tell about Peggy.”</p> +<!-- File: 082.png --> +<p class="pnext">When Peggy handed back the poem with a rueful +smile at its many changes, Katherine got up +from the couch and took her room-mate’s arm. +It would never do to linger, though it was hard +to leave the great Presence.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy’s look as they left the house held simply +pleasure and gratitude, but Katherine’s brimmed +with meaning.</p> +<p class="pnext">“You don’t know what I know,” she hummed.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Then why not tell me?” laughed Peggy.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I know who’s going to be freshman president!”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Who?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Shan’t tell you—but I suppose you’ll find out +when it happens.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well,” retorted Peggy unexpectedly, “I know +already.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“What’s—her—name?” gasped Katherine.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Gloria Hazeltine,” answered Peggy.</p> +<p class="pnext">Katherine stopped and caught her shoulders. +Facing her, she studied her calm expression of +certainty.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Why, Peggy,” she couldn’t help saying, “it +was going to be _you_, and I was going to start +this very day to campaign for you.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Me!” scoffed Peggy. “I couldn’t even <em class="italics">look</em> +like a president. The freshman president stands +for the whole class, and the sophs and juniors +and seniors are apt to judge us a good deal by +the one we choose for that office. They’d think +what flyaways the freshmen are if you had any +one like me. Or rather they’d never notice us +at all, but would sever diplomatic relations. But +Gloria now——”</p> +<p class="pnext">The vision of the tall, radiant young Westerner, +with her red-gold hair and her wide, laughing, +blue eyes—the way she talked, the way she +wore her clothes, her charm and sincerity of manner—rose +vividly in Katherine’s mind. She compared +this vision with the actual striking little +figure of her room-mate, with the flickering dimples +showing and disappearing and the warm light +that always lay in the depths of her black eyes.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I—don’t—know,” she said honestly. “Gloria +is wonderful—but you, Peggy, you’re so dear.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I’ll give all I have to the class,” cried Peggy, +opening her arms, as if to embrace every girl of +the four hundred and fifty freshmen, “but I don’t +have to be set up in the post of honor to do it.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“But Andrews usually has the presidency,” +ventured Katherine in a troubled tone. “Ditto +Armandale reminded me that our school has always +carried off everything, Freshman year. It’s +<em class="italics">expected</em>.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“We’re not Andrews now, we’re Hampton,” +said Peggy gravely. “Don’t you remember the +signs in the moving picture shows, from Wilson’s +proclamation? Something about ‘whatever country +you came from, you are an American now.’”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, the president-elect is dead, long live the +president-elect,” capitulated Katherine reluctantly.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Good. I really feel that I owe her an awful +lot for taking you away from her,” smiled Peggy, +grown light-hearted once more. “Being president +wouldn’t half make up.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Katherine laughed her gratified surprise and +began to plan how to draw the solid Andrews +vote, in favor of a girl who was not from Andrews.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I’m going to have a party for Gloria,” Peggy +mused, “and invite every single freshman in the +catalogue. You’ll have to help me write the notes +to stick up on the bulletin board. And we’ll say, +‘To meet the freshman class president,’ and freshmen +are such sheep, they’ll think she’s as good as +elected.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Sheep yourself,” flared Katherine. “I think +putting anything like that in would be terribly +crude. But the rest of the plan I like.”</p> +<!-- File: 086.png --> +<p class="pnext">“And I’ll dress in my very best and make an +impression for her sake,” Peggy went on, thinking +aloud.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Wear that rose-colored dress and those cute +pumps,” suggested Katherine, interestedly.</p> +<p class="pnext">“No, <em class="italics">not</em> the rose-colored dress, and <em class="italics">not</em> the +pumps,” Peggy returned with a slight shiver.</p> +<p class="pnext">The first thing she did, when they reached their +room, was to drag the pumps from their hiding +place and wrap them carefully in a sheet of newspaper.</p> +<p class="pnext">“What in the world——?” began Katherine.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I’m—I’m going to take them to be resoled,” +murmured Peggy hastily.</p> +<!-- File: 087.png --> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="chapter-vmorning-glory"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref pginternal" href="#id6">CHAPTER V—MORNING GLORY</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst">Freshman elections began with a babble.</p> +<p class="pnext">Everywhere the insistent voices of the lobbyists +were heard. Upper-class girls had come in to +impress the freshmen as to the proper name to +write on the voting slips.</p> +<p class="pnext">“She’s a <em class="italics">dandy</em> girl,” was shouted confidentially +into Peggy’s ears so many times, while she +didn’t know <em class="italics">who</em> was nor <em class="italics">why</em> she was, that she +couldn’t help having a high opinion of her class +altogether. Every girl in it seemed to be “dandy” +in somebody’s judgment.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Will you vote for Myra Whitewell?” some +friend was imploring.</p> +<p class="pnext">“No,” said Peggy, suddenly, “let me alone. +Every one is after me so hard to vote for other +people that I haven’t had any time to work for +my own candidate.”</p> +<p class="pnext">And she forced her way through the throng, +shouting into each bewildered and crimson ear, +“Vote for Gloria Hazeltine! She’s a <em class="italics">dandy</em> girl.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Peggy, <em class="italics">Peggy</em>, listen a moment,” said Katherine’s +agonized voice. “What do you think the +Andrews girls are doing? Going back on us at +the last minute. They say they will put up Florence +Thomas for president if neither of us will +run, and that you and I are traitors to try to elect +some one not from our own prep school.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well,” said Peggy, gritting her teeth, “we +can elect Gloria without Andrews.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh, but, Peggy, we will be voting against our +own school! If they insist on putting her up this +way, won’t we have to vote for Florence?”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy shook her head and went on through the +thick crowds of freshmen. “She’s a <em class="italics">dandy</em> girl,” +Katherine heard in Peggy’s clear tones.</p> +<!-- File: 089.png --> +<p class="pnext">Here in this giant recitation room was assembled +a class in the process of being welded together +into an organization having one heart and +one mind. It was a conglomeration of more or +less uncertain and dazed girls now. Some were +actively working up sentiment, but for the most +part they stood in groups, each group a stranger +to the others, four hundred and fifty girls, many +of whom had never seen each other before this +day, trying to realize that they were of one college +flesh and that out of this roomful must be +made the dearest friendships of a lifetime.</p> +<p class="pnext">There was nothing coherent about them as yet. +They held aloof from each other, partly in timidity +and partly in pride, and their interests were in +conflict rather than in unison.</p> +<p class="pnext">Once pledged to a name for president, they +clung to it desperately as if that particular girl +had been their best and oldest friend. And they +hated all the other girls who had been put up.</p> +<!-- File: 090.png --> +<p class="pnext">Slips of paper were passed around and, with +a feeling of deep importance, each freshman +wrote the name of the girl she wanted for her +president.</p> +<p class="pnext">With much rustling the slips were collected in +hats by freshmen appointed by the pretty Junior +who presided.</p> +<p class="pnext">Then with more rustling they were counted, +while the freshmen’s eyes popped out of their +heads in eagerness to learn how good a showing +their favorite was making.</p> +<p class="pnext">The silence was most respectful when the pretty +Junior took up the counts the freshmen had made +and read in her sweet, serious voice, “Myra +Whitewell 200, Gloria Hazeltine 101, Florence +Thomas 99, Corinne Adams 50.”</p> +<p class="pnext">The ignorant freshmen remained breathless, +waiting to be told whether any one was yet their +president or not.</p> +<p class="pnext">“It is necessary, according to the by-laws, to +have a two-thirds majority for a candidate before +she can receive office,” the presiding Junior informed +them in those dainty and precise tones of +hers. “Therefore another vote will be cast, in +the hope of bringing about more unanimity.”</p> +<p class="pnext">With joy the freshmen wrote again on slips of +paper. But the vote came in again identically +the same! The pretty Junior, whose name was +Alta Perry, raised her eye-brows in surprise. +Tirelessly the appointed freshmen passed out new +voting slips.</p> +<p class="pnext">“When a candidate has too few votes to be +really in the running,” protested the Junior mildly, +“the voting would get on faster to give those +votes elsewhere. The idea is not to show your +loyalty to any one girl, but to elect a president +for the freshman class.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy took council with her henchman, Katherine.</p> +<p class="pnext">“If those Adams votes go to Florence Thomas, +I suppose Gloria will be sacrificed sooner or later,” +she said. “If they go to Myra Whitewell—I +think she’s the haughty little thing yonder wearing +the Mrs. Castle head-ache band,—why, then +Gloria’s out, too. The only thing to do is to get +them for Gloria.”</p> +<p class="pnext">She sped away to the Andrews group, where +Florence Thomas, who had always taken life +pleasantly and coolly, was the flushed and eager +center of ninety-nine supporters, both those from +her own school and the others who had rallied to +her cause.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Girls,” said Peggy, “we’re two ahead of you. +Please be reasonable——”</p> +<p class="pnext">But she saw the curious star-like quality of +Florence’s eyes. And she hadn’t the heart to +go on.</p> +<p class="pnext">The plain, kindly, everyday, comfy Florence to +light up and shine like that! Well, if she had +known in time how honors could bring that girl +out, perhaps Peggy would have considered her +a perfectly suitable president from the beginning.</p> +<p class="pnext">“If <em class="italics">you</em> had wanted it, Peggy, I wouldn’t have +stood a chance,” Florence breathed down to her +from the window seat on which she was perched +so as to overlook her adherents. “The girls only +put me up because you and Katherine failed +them.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Failed them! Peggy’s heart skipped a beat. +The cold glances of the other girls let her guess +only too plainly how she was viewed by the Andrews +contingent, the members of her own school.</p> +<p class="pnext">“If you give up something that most anybody +would want and feel just right about it, then +somebody comes and takes the joy out of life by +seeing you as a villain still,” mused Peggy aloud.</p> +<p class="pnext">She didn’t try to get the Corinne Adams votes +for Gloria, she didn’t argue with a single Myra +Whitewell enthusiast.</p> +<p class="pnext">And the vote came in again so nearly the same +that the pretty Junior was vexed, and looked at +her wrist watch and thence out to the waning +sunlight over the campus. Really an afternoon +spent with her own somewhat intelligent juniors +would be greatly preferable to this monotonous +and stubborn concourse of freshmen who seemed +to have set their hearts on making an election +impossible. Corinne Adams had lost seven votes +to Myra, and now tragically arose and announced +her withdrawal from the contest. Many +voices murmured protestingly “no, no,” as she +came forward and went toward the door, but +these sympathizers had not voted for her when +they had the chance.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I never knew anything so heart-breakingly +mixed up,” said Peggy. “That Junior’s mad, the +freshmen are near to tears and the candidates are +all wobbly.”</p> +<p class="pnext">And then suddenly an idea lifted her right +up out of the depression and doubt that was settling +over the room. She stepped over to the desk +and held a confab with the Junior and the freshmen +vote-collectors.</p> +<p class="pnext">Alta Perry snatched eagerly at the chance to +bring order out of chaos.</p> +<p class="pnext">She arose and rapped for attention. Immediately +all the despairing whispers ceased.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Some one has suggested that the girls would +like to see the candidates,” she said, “so that +they’d know who they’re voting for.”</p> +<p class="pnext">A wave of approval swept her audience.</p> +<p class="pnext">“So I’ll ask the girls who are still up to come +forward to the platform so that—everybody may +see them.”</p> +<p class="pnext">The crowd parted, while from three corners +of the room the candidates came.</p> +<p class="pnext">The Junior smiled apologetically as she ranged +them before the class. This was vastly amusing +to her, but she realized that all the voters were +staring forward with hero-worship in their eyes +waiting to see which was the girl for whom each +had been so religiously voting, ballot after ballot.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Myra Whitewell,” introduced Alta Perry, +nodding toward the first girl.</p> +<p class="pnext">The girl acknowledged the introduction with +an abrupt lifting of her chin. She was small and +dark, with snapping brown eyes and a fine, +slender, somewhat selfish face with no color in it. +Her lips were full and red.</p> +<p class="pnext">A pretty, wilful, egotistical picture this first +candidate presented to the freshman class. Myra +was the sort of girl who would always have +blindly devoted followers willing to put up with +her whims and ill-tempers because they believed +her to be of finer clay than the rest of the world.</p> +<p class="pnext">She herself was superbly conscious of this extra +fineness. She scanned the eager faces of the +crowd with quick glances, haughty, like a young +princess reviewing her humble but faithful subjects.</p> +<!-- File: 097.png --> +<p class="pnext">“And this is Florence Thomas,” continued the +Junior, her eyes sparkling just a bit with the fun +of the little drama.</p> +<p class="pnext">And the class saw Florence Thomas for just +what she was—a nice, ordinary, typical girl like +most of them; possessed of a good deal of executive +ability if it was forced into action, neither +markedly self-centered nor self-sacrificing.</p> +<p class="pnext">She had a little round face, with wavy dark-brown +hair around it. They got no very distinct +impression of the second candidate further than +this. She was without the rare gift of personality +that “gets across,” and hence her undoubted, +sterling qualities had little opportunity for appeal.</p> +<p class="pnext">Her face was flushed with her sudden prominence, +and there was a trace of embarrassment in +her smile.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy’s thought raced back over Florence’s +characteristics while at Andrews. Florence was +just the type to have an important place in a small +school, where each individual girl could get to +know her and love her. But here among these +hundreds there was nothing about her striking +enough to hold their attention at first glance.</p> +<p class="pnext">A warm feeling of affection surged up in +Peggy’s heart for her last year’s comrade.</p> +<p class="pnext">Just for a moment she would have forced +Florence down their throats whether or not, if +she could, without regard for the fact that she +believed another girl was infinitely better fitted +for the post.</p> +<p class="pnext">That other girl’s name was now being spoken +by the Junior.</p> +<p class="pnext">“This is Gloria Hazeltine,” she announced to +the monster class.</p> +<p class="pnext">And just as the moon and stars fade out of +view when the sun comes up, so the less vivid attraction +of Myra and Florence dimmed into insignificance +beside the appealing radiance that +was Gloria’s.</p> +<!-- File: 099.png --> +<p class="pnext">“O-oh, isn’t she sweet!” breathed a girl near +Peggy. “I never saw anything like that hair in +my life. For goodness’ sake, somebody lend me +a knife to sharpen my pencil so that I can vote all +over again for her!”</p> +<p class="pnext">If she were nothing besides sweet, argued +Peggy to herself, she would never have been put +up. Most of the girls were that. But she understood +that the rapturous tribute of her neighbor +meant far more than the words she had chosen.</p> +<p class="pnext">The quality of graceful and unconscious leadership +seemed stamped in Gloria’s face, as she +smiled out on the freshmen, who were all beginning +to go wild over her at once.</p> +<p class="pnext">The slips were passed again while the three +candidates faced their different constituents.</p> +<p class="pnext">All anxiety had passed from Peggy’s mind. +She was <em class="italics">sure</em> who had won.</p> +<p class="pnext">The slips rustled triumphantly when they had +been sorted after the voting and were passed +up to the Junior again.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Twenty for Florence Thomas,” she read aloud +without raising her eyes from the papers. “Fifty +for Myra Whitewell, and—all the rest for Gloria +Hazeltine—Miss Hazeltine is elected president +of your class!”</p> +<p class="pnext">With that announcement something happened +to the class. Instantaneously the fusion took +place.</p> +<p class="pnext">There were no longer separate groups, shy and +a little suspicious of each other: they were one +class. They had elected a president. She was +the president of all alike.</p> +<p class="pnext">At the same instant they all burst forth into +the same song:</p> +<blockquote><div> +<div class="line-block outermost"> +<div class="line">“Oh, here’s to Morning Glory,</div> +<div class="line">Drink her down!</div> +<div class="line">Oh, here’s to Morning Glory,</div> +<div class="line">Drink her down!</div> +<div class="line">Oh, here’s to Morning Glory,</div> +<div class="line">Whom we’ll love till we are hoary;</div> +<div class="line">Drink her down, drink her down,</div> +<div class="line">Drink her down, DOWN, down!</div> +<div class="line">Balm of Gilead, Gilead,</div> +<div class="line">Balm—<span class="small-caps">Of—Gilead</span>—</div> +<div class="line">Way down on the Bingo Farm!”</div> +</div> +</div></blockquote> +<p class="pfirst">And then they turned and looked at each other +with wonder, for the little rhyme in the middle +had come with unanimous harmony to all, and +each had sung this cheer song just as loudly as +she could, although a few minutes before many +would have said they didn’t even know the tune.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy was thrilled to her finger tips. She +squeezed Katherine’s arm. Gloria’s beauty and +ability had been enhanced twenty fold, for every +girl present, by this spontaneous tribute. And +Peggy could think of nothing more desirable in +the world than that she should some time hear +this song laden with her own name.</p> +<p class="pnext">The other officers were elected with expedition, +the vice-presidency being offered to Myra Whitewell, +who indignantly refused it, declaring she +would be first or nothing—thus maintaining a +single discordant note in the general happiness +and good humor. The despised office was then +hesitatingly tendered to Florence Thomas, who +was almost too pleased to speak, but made the +remark in acceptance that this office, while still +too big for her, was nearer her size and she’d do +just everything she could to deserve their trust +and faith in her.</p> +<p class="pnext">Myra Whitewell edged her way out of the +room, with a slight sneer distorting her pretty +lips.</p> +<p class="pnext">But Florence shook hands with all who came +forward and received their kisses with pleasure +that made every one love her.</p> +<p class="pnext">The class went singing home in every direction +from its election. An enormous hysterically +happy crowd flocked in the wake of Gloria. +Peggy and Katherine were in the outskirts of this +crowd, and they looked from the heroine of their +making into each other’s radiant faces.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, thank goodness, her looks elected her,” +sighed Peggy thankfully. “As soon as I thought +of a ‘seeing is believing’ test, I knew we’d won.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“All the girls are saying she’s the prettiest +president a freshman class ever had,” laughed +Katherine, “and the joke on them is that they +have a regular person as well as just a beauty.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“We’ve certainly done our duty by the class,” +agreed Peggy.</p> +<p class="pnext">Katherine turned and looked consideringly at +her room-mate.</p> +<p class="pnext">“You <em class="italics">know</em>, Peggy, that you could have been +the center of that crowd this minute, if you had +wanted to. Dit Armandale did a good deal to +work up sentiment and—you are the best known +freshman of any—or were an hour or so ago. I +think you’d have been just as good a president +as Gloria,—and if I do say it myself, a lot better +even—and—and just as pretty——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“No matter who you room with,” trilled Peggy +remindingly and ungrammatically, “you’re for +Hampton now.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“That Wilson idea again?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“The very same.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“<span class="small-caps">Well</span>, anyway, Peggy, you <em class="italics">could</em>——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Don’t!” said Peggy suddenly and almost +sharply. “Do you think I am some kind of +<em class="italics">angel</em>?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Ye-es,” drawled Katherine affectionately +with a slow smile, “sort of.”</p> +<p class="pnext">But Peggy looked away from her laughing +eyes, and shook her head quickly as if she expected +to shake out of it some unwelcome thought.</p> +<p class="pnext">Later in the day—just before dinner time, she +and Katherine gathered in the quantities of notes +and invitations that had come to Gloria and Florence +Thomas. It seemed that every girl in college, no matter +what class she was in, had taken +immediate occasion to sit down and write her +congratulations to the freshman president.</p> +<p class="pnext">When they stopped to deliver their burden at +Gloria’s door, they found her room fragrant with +American beauty roses, and sweet with violets +and spicy with pink carnations. A huge orchid +nodded coolly in a Japanese vase which the girls +had never seen before, and an array of dainty +little leather-covered books on every subject from +“Friendship” to “Ibsen” were strewn on the table +by the window.</p> +<p class="pnext">Three new pictures in black walnut frames +stood leaning against the couch with the waiting +picture wire beside them.</p> +<p class="pnext">Gloria came to meet them, flushed with pleasure.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh, I never knew it would be like this,” she +exclaimed, quite frank in her delight. “And +what have you brought me? Oh, so many notes—aren’t +they all <em class="italics">dear</em>? I didn’t imagine college—or +anything—could be so nice.”</p> +<p class="pnext">She sat down on the couch while Katherine and +Peggy poured their harvest of congratulations +into her lap. Her fingers felt them over and +sifted them before she unfolded any, and she +looked up to laugh her happiness into her friends’ +eyes.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Your room looks wonderful,” breathed Katherine, +looking around, “just like a senior’s, all of +a sudden.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Doesn’t it?” echoed Gloria. “I’ve solved the +mystery of Ditto Armandale’s room seeming so +unlike her, as you said it did,—her furnishings +are all gifts from people for getting elected to +things.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Two dimples of satisfaction dented Peggy’s +piquant little face. She ached from head to foot +from the hours of standing and of forcing her +way back and forth through the crowds while +she made her brief campaign appeals. But it had +turned out wonderfully. Her candidate had won, +and was this same radiant and beautiful Gloria +looking so joyously at her now.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Listen to this,” Gloria was saying, reading +one of the tributes from the note-room; “this is a +darling one:</p> +<blockquote><div> +<p class="pfirst">“‘<em class="italics">Dear First Lady of the Freshmen</em>:</p> +<p class="pnext">“‘Please allow an old, old Junior to express +her joy over you and her envy of you. Once a +long time ago—two whole years—she herself +heard the Balm of Gilead song in honor of her +own election to the heights you have attained to-day.</p> +<p class="pnext">“‘I don’t think I ever felt so lofty over anything. +And all the college experiences that have +come since have never dimmed the thrilling feeling +of that day or made it seem one bit less the +best thing that ever happened to me.</p> +<p class="pnext">“‘But I was afraid as well as glad: afraid that +maybe I wouldn’t know how to do everything just +as I should and that I might in some way disappoint +the girls who were mentally carrying me +about on their shoulders. In case you ever feel +that way, little First Lady—and this is the +reason for my note being written—I want you to +know that you’ll be very welcome to come to the +veteran—and get the advice or bolstering up she +may be able to give you as a result of having +learned from her own mistakes.</p> +<p class="pnext">“‘Remember the juniors are just in college +to be big sisters to the freshmen, and I hope you +will come and claim the relationship the first free +minute you have.</p> +<div class="line-block noindent outermost right"> +<div class="line">“‘Love and congratulations,</div> +<div class="line">“‘<span class="small-caps">Mary Marvington</span>.’”</div> +</div> +</div></blockquote> +<p class="pfirst">“Oh,” said Peggy, clasping her knees, “isn’t +that a lovely one?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, it’s hard to realize that you are one of +the great ones, now, Morning Glory,” sighed +Katherine whimsically, “so that even ex-presidents +will be flattered when you go to see them. +And the condescension is all yours! Because a +brand new freshman president is more in the college +public eye than an ‘old’ junior who used to +be once what you are now.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Great ones,” Gloria was repeating to herself.</p> +<!-- File: 109.png --> +<p class="pnext">“Do you suppose I really am?” she asked artlessly.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Yes, you are,” Katherine said. “A few hours +ago you weren’t half as much as Peggy—and +didn’t have the outlook she had, but now——”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy and Gloria simultaneously clapped their +hands over Katherine’s mouth, and in her quick +movement Gloria’s mass of folded notes scattered +over the floor like a sudden storm of Luther Burbank +snow-flakes.</p> +<p class="pnext">When they had gathered these together +again and had helped Gloria sort out the most +interesting-looking ones to read first, they each +kissed her and went home, leaving her well absorbed +in her overwhelming correspondence before +they were even out of sight.</p> +<p class="pnext">There was a reception in honor of the officers +that evening in the Students’ building. The +freshmen were tired from their strenuous day, +but they looked charming, nevertheless, in their +soft silks and batistes as they drifted down the +walk to the scene of festivities.</p> +<p class="pnext">“There’s Peggy Parsons!” a cry went up as +soon as the pair from Suite 22, Ambler House, +entered the building.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy was immediately surrounded and borne +off toward the receiving line, down which she was +marched with nearly all the Andrews crowd and +ever so many others in her wake. It did her heart +good to hear every Andrews girl telling Gloria +Hazeltine that each had voted for her from the +beginning—and they believed it, the happy enthusiasts, +Peggy could see that.</p> +<p class="pnext">Then Peggy was swept on by the mob and was +soon in the middle of a seethe of dancers, all girls, +fox-trotting, one-stepping, waltzing and bumping +into each other in brilliant lavender, pink, blue +and white confusion. How many dances she +danced, nor what they were, she never could remember +afterwards. For as soon as one girl left +her another carried her off; juniors, seniors, +sophomores and freshmen, she couldn’t tell +which. But every one knew her name and hailed +her as Peggy as if they had known her all their +lives.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I never knew anything so funny,” she said, +when she was limping home later, with Katherine +in the moonlight. “It was just all a kaleidoscope. +I feel a good deal like a moving-picture that has +been run too fast.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I think you were the director of the picture,” +smiled Katherine, glancing affectionately at her +dishevelled room-mate. “You wrote the scenario +for the election, and directed it, even if you did +have to be in the picture yourself.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Katherine, you’ve got an awfully horrid +room-mate,” mused Peggy in answer to this +eulogy.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I’ve got Peggy Parsons,” Katherine refuted.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, she’s the one I mean,” Peggy laughed.</p> +<!-- File: 112.png --> +<p class="pnext">“You’d be ashamed of her if you knew. Katherine, +what do you think I almost wished when +we were taking all those notes over to Gloria?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“It wouldn’t be so strange if you’d realized +they might all have been for you,” Katherine +defended her. “They might, you know. It was +just your crazy generosity that gave them up and +deprived me of rooming with a freshman president. +Did you really wish you were president? +I hope you <em class="italics">did</em>, because if you didn’t you’re more +than human and I don’t like such people.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“There!” cried Peggy, abruptly stopping in +her homeward limp, and throwing her arms +around her room-mate’s neck, “I’m not half so +ashamed of it now that it’s been dragged out +into the light of day—the light of moon, I mean. +It’s funny how much better it makes a person feel +to confess something mean and be sympathized +with for it.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Anyway,” said Katherine, as their tired feet +climbed the steps of their house, “you were the +<em class="italics">dea ex machina</em>, Peggy Parsons.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“The—the what?” demanded Peggy, startled. +“Oh, it’s mean to spring anything like that on a +trusting room-mate who hasn’t any Latin dictionary +along. I’ll be driven to using a trot for +your remarks, if you keep on.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Their laughs rang out inside the huge dimly +lighted hall, and the matron, in curl-papers and +a purple wrapper, strode forth from her room +noiselessly and confronted the culprits.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Hush, hush,” she said. “At this time of +night! Please go up to your room without any +more of this unseemly laughter.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Yessum, yessum,” whispered Katherine and +Peggy meekly, and together they stole up the +broad stairway to their rooms, where they +snapped on the light and looked at each other +and laughed again—but this time silently.</p> +<!-- File: 114.png --> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="chapter-vias-others-see-us"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref pginternal" href="#id7">CHAPTER VI—AS OTHERS SEE US</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst">Bang! Bang!</p> +<p class="pnext">“My-y goo-oodness, is it time to get up?” +Katherine sat up sleepily the morning after the +freshmen officers’ reception, and tried to get some +response from the little log-like Peggy in the +bed across the room. But Peggy’s face was toward +the wall and she presented a perfect picture +of deep sleep.</p> +<p class="pnext">The banging continued and Katherine felt it +incumbent upon her to locate it. Gertie Van +Gorder, who had kindly taken upon herself the +task of waking up the entire second floor at +whatever hours its individual inhabitants specified, +never thumped like that. She always came +quietly in and laid icy cold wet wash cloths over +their faces, and informed them calmly, “Your +tub is ready, girls; I’ve left my violet ammonia +in there for you.”</p> +<p class="pnext">So it wasn’t Gertie.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Peggy,” yawned Katherine fretfully, “can’t +you wake up and help me think what that is?”</p> +<p class="pnext">But Peggy, accustomed to so much more efficient +means of awakening, never stirred.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Come in,” invited Katherine unwillingly and +experimentally to the banging, and Hazel Pilcher +entered, with Myra Whitewell in her wake.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Lazy!” cried Hazel. “You’ve missed breakfast!”</p> +<p class="pnext">Katherine moaned and hunched her shoulders +in her pink-ribboned nightgown. “What’s become +of Gertie?” she demanded. “We can’t +wake up by ourselves, can we?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Gertie’s in Boston; didn’t you know? Went +for the week-end,” and Hazel sat down on the +foot of the sleeping Peggy’s couch and laughed +until she was hoarse. “Now that just shows that +what Myra and I are getting up is a real necessity,” +she giggled. “If there wasn’t a crack o’ +doom of some kind, I suppose the whole second +floor of Ambler House would snooze right +through the three days until Gertie gets back. +It’s—it’s ludicrous,” she finished, after fishing +around for a good word.</p> +<p class="pnext">“You’re sitting on Peggy,” pointed out Katherine +lackadaisically when the laughter of her +guests had died down.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Wake up, Peggy,” cried Hazel, shaking the +rounded shoulder. “Wake up and quit being sat +on.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“You spoke of a plan,” drawled Katherine, +when all had seen that the only effect on Peggy +was a tossing of her golden curls on the pillow. +“Was it something to take Gertie’s place? If it +were, I don’t think anything could; Gertie will +get up at any hour to call us, and says she likes +it, too. I’m too loyal to Gertie——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Nonsense,” snapped Myra Whitewell, who +had not forgotten that one of the room-mates +had been largely instrumental in electing her opponent +at elections the day before. “This is a +fault party that we’re going to have to-night, in +Hazel’s room. Just freshmen, except Hazel. +You two must be sure to come.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“A fault party?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Yes, every house ought to have one. Hazel +says this house did last year. Each person tells +the others their faults, you know, and then we +can improve. Everybody is very frank and it +really is good for you to know.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Myra glanced somewhat bitterly at the inattentive +form of Peggy, and Katherine hastily +turned a little surprised laugh into a sneeze.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh, so she wants to tell Peggy her faults,” +mused Katherine. “Peggy of all people! Why, +she hasn’t any.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I don’t want to come,” a muffled voice came +from the erstwhile sleeper. “It hurts people’s +feelings.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“It shouldn’t,” interposed Myra sharply. “If +it does, <em class="italics">that’s</em> a fault, and somebody can bring +up that. Everybody ought to be glad to know +what’s the matter with them. Why, the idea!” +she burst out, “there isn’t one of us who hasn’t +seen something to correct in the others, and instead +of just keeping it to ourselves and being +hypocrites, isn’t it a thousand times better to +tell the person right out?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I don’t think the person would like that,” +the muffled voice protested.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, all the freshmen must come,” Myra persisted. +“Come at nine-thirty to-night, in case +we don’t have another chance to tell you.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“That’s a funny thing,” said Peggy, rubbing +her eyes when the two had gone. “Do you know +any faults of any of the girls, Katherine? I +don’t. Let’s see, there are eight freshmen in this +house altogether,—and Hazel taking part makes +nine. Why, Katherine, I think we have wonderful +people here.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“That part won’t matter so much,” hinted the +wise Katherine. “They want to do the telling, +I think.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I’ll watch the girls all day whenever I’m not +at class, and if I see anything the matter with +any of them, I’ll have something to report on.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I know some for Myra myself.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Some way I hadn’t thought of that,” answered +Peggy. “I believe I do, too. But here’s +a good idea, Katherine,—you and I live together, +and did all last year, and we ought to know <em class="italics">slews</em> +of faults about each other. So when we are +called on we can just show each other up at a +great rate—drag each other out to be ridiculed”—Peggy +rocked in bed with the merriment of the +thought. “We can make up the most wild faults +of all, and please everybody,” she laughed.</p> +<p class="pnext">“You wouldn’t be gloating over foolish things +like that if you knew we’d missed breakfast,” +interrupted Katherine. “And, my goodness, +woman, there’s the chapel bell!”</p> +<p class="pnext">The room was a confusion of flying clothes, +waving hair-brushes and dodging figures, for +some ten minutes thereafter. Then the pink and +white cretonne bed covers were smoothed quickly +over two couches that had each been made up in +a single swooping motion, including sheet, blankets, +comforter and all. The fat pillows were +stuffed into their cretonne covers and thrown at +the head of the beds, and then two well-dressed, +well-groomed appearing girls, with their notebooks +under their arms, emerged and tore down +the broad stairway, flying across the campus +lawn, just in time to be shut out of chapel, while +the first welling notes of the organ came out to +them, as they stood panting at the door.</p> +<p class="pnext">“You know that girl down the hall who keeps +saying ‘all things work together for good,’” said +Katherine. “Well——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“What do you mean?” asked Peggy, but she +had already cast one fleeting glance towards the +Copper Kettle just outside the campus.</p> +<p class="pnext">“It’s just a question of whether we can get +breakfast in twenty minutes and be in time for +our first class,” went on Katherine. “And I’m +starved, and I—don’t mind having missed chapel, +after all. That’s what I mean.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Laughing, Peggy caught her arm and the two +took a short cut out of campus and across the +road to the little tea room.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Nothing is served till nine o’clock,” they were +informed, for provision was made against just +such a feeling as Katherine had expressed. The +two ran around the corner to the nearest drug +store, and regaled themselves with two egg chocolates +each.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Goodness,” murmured Peggy on their way +back to recitation, “I certainly wish Gertie were +back, bless her heart. If anybody at the meeting +to-night finds any fault with <em class="italics">her</em>, while she’s +away, they’ll have me to deal with.”</p> +<p class="pnext">But when the freshmen were assembled that +evening, no word was said against Gertie, nor +was her name so much as mentioned, for there +is little satisfaction in scoring an absent friend, +when you have just received license to make a +present one squirm.</p> +<p class="pnext">Two candles were lit in Hazel’s rose-and-old-blue +room. There was no other light. On the +couch and here and there about on the floor sat +the Ambler freshmen, in silk kimonos of Japanese +or French design. Florence Thomas was +wearing a pale blue with big gold dragons, +Peggy noticed as soon as she came in, for the +candle light flickered over it, and the dull gold +threads gleamed.</p> +<p class="pnext">Myra’s kimono was of midnight blue crepe de +chine without any relieving color tone whatever. +Her face shone above it more pale and proud +than usual.</p> +<p class="pnext">“The reason we are here,” began Myra, rising +and standing gracefully before them, with +her dark eyes taking in every one of the group, +“is to see if we can’t be of some help to each +other in weeding out the most glaring faults of +the Ambler House freshmen. Hazel is here as a +sort of referee, and each girl is to tell—quite +without reservation—any criticisms she may have +for the rest of us. Now begin, somebody.”</p> +<p class="pnext">She sat down again with a little silken rustle, +and Florence Thomas leaned forward, her pleasant +face serious with the weight of her self-imposed +task.</p> +<p class="pnext">“There’s one thing I’ve noticed,” she said +slowly. “Doris Winterbean and May Jenson +don’t seem to mingle with the rest of the house +as they might. Now I don’t want you two girls +to get mad,” turning to her victims, “but you +have an awfully ungracious air when any one +comes to your door, and you always lay a book +face down as if you could hardly wait to take +it up again. You aren’t exactly snobs,—maybe +it’s only that you’re too studious. You never +have any eats in your room, and yet you are always +going to call on other people when you hear +they have. And that’s about the only way any +of us can entice you into our rooms——”</p> +<p class="pnext">Doris and May wilted perceptibly under this +attack, and their mouths opened in astonishment +to see the way they had been impressing these +girls whom they had supposed were their generous +friends. But instead of making them more +gentle when it came their turn to uncover faults, +they threw discretion to the winds, and heaped +up accusations, forgetting that another morning +was coming and they must go on living among +these girls throughout the year.</p> +<p class="pnext">The atmosphere of friendship which prevailed +when the girls arrived in Hazel’s room, was +changed now to one of animosity.</p> +<p class="pnext">One after another, the girls criticized each +other’s gowns, table manners and personality. +Each new victim of attack blanched, drew a sharp +breath of horror and surprise to see in what esteem +she had been held, and then bided her time +to “get back.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Faith in friendship died in that college room. +Listening to the deeply serious voice of her critic, +each girl had some fleeting memory of that same +critic—bursting laughingly into her room for an +exchange of confidences, or protesting admiration +and liking in a sunny, hearty fashion.</p> +<p class="pnext">A girl named Lilian Moore came in for the +worst of the drubbing. Hardly a girl present +but had discovered some glaring defect in her.</p> +<p class="pnext">“You’ll pardon me, but your clothes have absolutely +no style, and Ambler House can’t help +wishing you were a little more modern. It hurts +a house to have to claim a girl that will not dress +properly—it destroys the tone of the whole +house.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Your hair—this is awful—but it really ought +to be washed more. It ought to be fluffy and +done with some care, and not—just wadded up +as you do it.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“We like you—Doris and I were saying the +other day what a nice girl you were—but we +both said we’d like you so much better if you +didn’t say ‘indeed’ all the time.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“You have absolutely no faculty for making +friends.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Your room is so unattractive—there’s nothing +in it, really, and you can’t expect girls to +want to go to see you.”</p> +<!-- File: 127.png --> +<p class="pnext">“You don’t walk right—you stoop.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Those were some of the things that these +dainty freshmen had been thinking about her +since the first day she had appeared among them, +shining-eyed and shy, anxious for their approval, +fearful lest she, with such limited advantages, +should fail to measure up to their wonderful +standard! And then, oh, glory of life, and happiness +undeserved, they had seemed to care after +all! They had seemed to want to talk to her, +had passed her their candy, had often come to +her to be helped with difficult algebra problems!</p> +<p class="pnext">No one even asked her if she had any fault to +find in return. What could she have found to +criticize about <em class="italics">them</em>? So she was passed over +at last, and allowed to sink back in silence, miserably +conscious of her cotton crepe kimono that +she and her mother had made with such pride +and such appreciation of its becomingness. Her +cheeks burned a tortured red, but there was nobody +to notice her.</p> +<p class="pnext">The hilarity with which Peggy and Katherine +had meant to accuse each other of colossal faults +had died. They sat quietly in the candle dusk, +holding each other’s hands while indignation +showed in their faces.</p> +<p class="pnext">“And Peggy Parsons——”</p> +<p class="pnext">It was the cold, diamond-hard voice of Myra +Whitewell speaking. “Peggy Parsons, I’ve felt +it my duty for quite a while to tell you how thoroughly +conceited you are——”</p> +<p class="pnext">Katherine, who had shifted uneasily when the +speech began, gasped now and would have +laughed in her relief, for it seemed to her that +if there was one thing in the world everybody +must know that Peggy was <em class="italics">not</em>, it was conceited. +Myra was wide of the mark, Katherine felt, and +she did not even press her room-mate’s hand that +still lay passively in hers.</p> +<!-- File: 129.png --> +<p class="pnext">“You feel as if you have to dip into everything,” +went on Myra, with a voice in which spite +was veiled in a grave tone of carrying out a disagreeable +duty. “You felt you must run the elections——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Ah,” thought Katherine, “I knew that was +the reason.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“As if the freshman class couldn’t get along +without you! You made yourself very forward +and, it seemed to some of us, bold, by going up +and advising Alta Perry how to do things. And +Alta the junior president! It wasn’t respectful, +and it was taking a good deal on yourself!”</p> +<p class="pnext">Here Florence Thomas, astonished that any +one should dare arraign Peggy, got up, the golden +dragons flaming in the dim light, and moved deliberately +toward the door.</p> +<p class="pnext">She found the door locked, and the key gone. +She turned angrily.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Until we’re through, nobody ought to go,” +explained the high-handed Myra Whitewell. +“As I was saying, Peggy, your egotism——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Back it up, back it up,” protested Doris Winterbean.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well,” Myra accepted the challenge, “that +poem of yours in the <em class="italics">Monthly</em>——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“How did you know?” cried Peggy and Katherine, +simultaneously.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Why, I read the foolish thing in the <em class="italics">Monthly</em>,” +snapped Myra, surprised.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy, her eyes alight, and Katherine, dawning +credulity in her face, turned and met each +other’s gaze in slow triumph.</p> +<p class="pnext">“It’s <em class="italics">in</em>?” asked Peggy breathlessly.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Of course—how else——?” murmured Myra.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Girls!” cried Peggy, radiantly, “my poem is +in the <em class="italics">Monthly</em>! I didn’t suppose they’d really +use it—oh, I would have told you all, if I’d been +sure. Are the new <em class="italics">Monthlies</em> down on the table +now, Myra?”</p> +<!-- File: 131.png --> +<p class="pnext">“Yes, they’re downstairs.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I’m going to sneak down just as I am and get +mine,” breathed Peggy, “and then shall I read it +to you, girls?”</p> +<p class="pnext">Faults, depression, lost faith—all forgotten in +the frank joy that was Peggy’s.</p> +<p class="pnext">She pattered across the floor, begged prettily +for the key, took it from Hazel Pilcher’s reluctant +hand, and fitted it in the lock.</p> +<p class="pnext">A moment later they heard her trailing down +the hall.</p> +<p class="pnext">There was complete silence while she was +gone.</p> +<p class="pnext">The outraged feelings were subsiding, and the +girls, who a few moments before were almost +hating each other, now waited in pleasant anticipation +the reading of the poem.</p> +<p class="pnext">There was no warning of her return. They +were simply watching the door, which she had +left open, and all of a sudden she stood framed +in it, the soft candle glow lighting her lovely +face and blue-clad figure, and the tan cover of +the <em class="italics">Monthly</em> which she held clasped to her heart.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I—can’t come back in,” she whispered. “I +met our house-mother on the stairs, and she made +me promise to go right to my own room if she’d +let me creep down and get the <em class="italics">Monthly</em> from the +table. It’s after ten, and all the lights are out +down the hall. Good-night, girls; I’ve had a +lovely time,” and she really believed she had.</p> +<p class="pnext">Katherine followed her, with a backward wave +of the hand, and what more fault finding went +on after their departure they never knew.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I s’pose it isn’t much to any one else,” said +Peggy deprecatingly, “but I just feel as if this +was the nicest number of the <em class="italics">Monthly</em> ever gotten +out!”</p> +<p class="pnext">And Katherine answered loyally, “I do too.”</p> +<p class="pnext">The cretonne couch covers they had smoothed +up in such haste that morning were carefully +folded back, and Katherine climbed into her bed, +and with a little tired sigh was fast asleep; but +Peggy, after carefully fixing the screen around +her room-mate’s couch so that the light shouldn’t +trouble her, propped herself up with pillows in +her own bed, the College <em class="italics">Monthly</em> on her knees.</p> +<p class="pnext">She found her name in the index, “Margaret +Parsons,” and was thrilled by the formality of +that. Then she fluttered the leaves over—just +as any one might, she told herself, until she came, +to her intense surprise, of course, to her poem.</p> +<p class="pnext">This she proceeded to read. And when she +had finished, she tried to read one of the stories +or a poem by some one else, but somehow nothing +seemed interesting after that—nothing had for +her quite the vividness or charm, so she shamefacedly +yielded to the temptation to read hers all +over again.</p> +<p class="pnext">But before she had finished, a curious sound +disturbed her.</p> +<!-- File: 134.png --> +<p class="pnext">From somewhere down the hall came the unmistakable +sobs of a person crying out her heart +in heedless abandon. It was not very loud, but +was penetrating and alarming.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy listened, hardly able to believe her ears. +When she and Katherine were so happy in college, +was it possible any girl would have cause +to cry like that?—right here in Ambler House?—the +nicest dorm on Campus?</p> +<p class="pnext">Sighing, she slid her feet into her slippers, +dipped her arms into her kimono again, laid the +precious <em class="italics">Monthly</em> on the dressing-table, turned +out the light and was soon in the fearsome hall, +with those sounds echoing down it, and no light +but the tiny globule of red at the other end, which +indicated the fire-escape.</p> +<p class="pnext">She went on toward the unwinking light, until +she was sure she stood before the door through +which the crying emanated.</p> +<p class="pnext">It was Lilian Moore’s room. She had a small +single room and was apparently drowning herself +in tears there.</p> +<p class="pnext">The recklessness of the crying, the absolute +indifference as to who heard or knew, made +Peggy hesitate for just a minute before she +turned the knob of the door and went in. She +was not exactly afraid, and yet she felt very +much alone with something too painful for her +to cope with, as she felt her way into the darkness.</p> +<p class="pnext">She felt her foot sink into a soft pile of clothing, +then immediately after, she stumbled against +some large and solid object that she never remembered +having seen in the middle of Lilian’s +room, and for which she failed utterly to account.</p> +<p class="pnext">Lilian was throwing herself about on the bed +now, and Peggy did not know whether she realized +there was any one in the room or not. She +felt for the light, and, after much fumbling, +found it, and snapped it on.</p> +<p class="pnext">The freshman’s room was in a state of complete +confusion. An open trunk half packed was +what she had run against in the darkness. Piles +of clothing and books were strewn round about it +on the floor, ready to go in. Lilian, herself, fully +dressed, started up from the bed with a cry, as +the glare of light flooded everything, and dropped +back moaning when she saw that it was Peggy +who had come.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Now,” said Peggy quietly, sitting down on +the bed beside the tossing figure, “let’s be real +still or the matron will hear us.”</p> +<p class="pnext">This obvious common sense thrown like cold +water over her misery had an immediate effect +on the other girl, who had expected sympathy.</p> +<p class="pnext">The sobs shuddered down to long-drawn painful +breaths, and Lilian covered her swollen eyes +with two weak hands.</p> +<!-- File: 137.png --> +<p class="pnext">“I’m sure it isn’t just the way you think,” +said Peggy, after a few minutes. “It couldn’t be +as bad as all that.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“What couldn’t?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Why, whatever is the matter.”</p> +<p class="pnext">There was a pause and then came a smothered, +“Yes, it could. It is. Oh, and I wanted to come +to college so—I wanted to come!”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well—and you came, and here you are with +all of us,” Peggy reminded.</p> +<p class="pnext">“That’s just it,” the confidences came now +pouring over each other for utterance. Lilian +clasped Peggy’s cool fingers with a fevered hand. +“I wish to goodness that I hadn’t ever come. I +don’t belong. The girls showed me that to-night. +Oh, when I think of how my mother kissed me +good-bye—and—and gave me up for all this year—just +for—this——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“For what?” helped out Peggy.</p> +<p class="pnext">“To have the girls make fun of my room, my +clothes—and me. Listen, Miss Parsons. We +lived in a small town where nobody was very +well-to-do. And mother—wanted something +better for me than she had ever known. When +she was a girl she used to dream of going to college——”</p> +<p class="pnext">Sobs choked the narrator and she struggled +for a moment before she could go on.</p> +<p class="pnext">“And—when I began to grow up, she decided +that I should go—oh, Miss Parsons, when I came +away she said to remember that I was going for +both of us!”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy’s fingers tightened around the feverish +hand, and she could see very clearly in her mind +the face of this girl’s mother with its wistful +yet self-sacrificing expression, and the tears came +suddenly to her eyes.</p> +<p class="pnext">“She saved, my mother did, for years so that +there would be enough—for me—to come on +Campus like the other girls,” a trace of bitterness +crept in here. “But I didn’t know how they +dressed at a place like this and how they all fixed +up their rooms. I didn’t realize there would be +anything besides the tuition and board—and—I—didn’t—know—they +couldn’t—love me——”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy tore her hand from the other’s grasp +and went and stood by the desk with her back +to the bed. Her eyes fell on a blotted and tear-stained +letter which began, “Dear Mother.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Listen, Lilian,” she said, going back to the +couch, “I haven’t any mother at all. That will +seem strange to you, who have seen me laughing +around here, happy and singing most of the +time. But I haven’t,—and I know that nothing +ever will quite make up. That letter you have +begun—just try to realize that no matter what +happens to me,—whatever hard thing I may have +to go through, I can’t write such a letter as that.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Lilian stared at Peggy in surprise. Why, she +had supposed the little Miss Parsons had <em class="italics">everything</em>.</p> +<p class="pnext">“You are the one to be envied after all,” said +Peggy. “No matter how many of the girls like +you, or how much they care, it isn’t anything to +the way a person’s own mother cares. And if +you want them to, the girls will care, too. We’ll +begin now to <em class="italics">make</em> them.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“It’s too late—I’m going home.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Going home after your mother saved to send +you?—going home without the least little bit of +a try to bring things your way?—going home +and taking away your mother’s chance to enjoy +college through you?—oh, no, you’re not going +home!”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well,” hesitancy showed in Lilian’s manner, +“I’ve been packing my trunk. I made up my +mind that the girls would never have to see my +homely clothes any more.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Stay a week and—try, will you?” pleaded +Peggy. “Katherine and I would miss you awfully +if you went home now.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“You and Katherine? Would you really?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Yes, really and truly. Why, when we first +knew you here, we said you were the kind of +girl we wanted for a friend, and that we were +sure we were going to like you,” fibbed kind little +Peggy, striving to find in her memory a record +that they had noticed her at all.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Then it isn’t everybody in the house that feels +as some of those girls do?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Nobody really,” stoutly maintained Peggy. +“Even the ones who talked too much didn’t feel +that way. They had all just been rubbed the +wrong way by some one else—and you were an +unresisting object to fire away at in their turn. +And don’t you suppose some of the rest had just +as horrid things said to them as you did? And +they aren’t crying about it either. They are protected +by being more egotistical and sure of +themselves and they’re just thinking ‘how ignorant +that critic of mine was,’ that’s all.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“If you want me to,” said Lilian suddenly, “I’ll +stay—for you.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Stay for the mother,” corrected Peggy, “and +for your own satisfaction, too.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Very well, I will,” came the determined voice +at last.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Then good-night,” said Peggy, “and don’t you +think about it again to-night—will you?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“No,” said Lilian sturdily, “I’ll think only +about to-morrow when maybe, if I come to see +you, you’ll read me your poem in the <em class="italics">Monthly</em>.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Why, you <em class="italics">dear</em>,” said Peggy, and, since she +was a very human little girl, she made her way +back to her room in a state of pleasant warmth +and contentment.</p> +<!-- File: 143.png --> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="chapter-viicinderella"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref pginternal" href="#id8">CHAPTER VII—CINDERELLA</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst">As a college morning dries all tears and wipes +out all resentments of the night before, the freshmen +were only slightly haughty in their demeanor +toward each other next day, and none of the upper +classmen had reason to suspect that they had +been going through a period of stress and disillusionment +all by themselves.</p> +<p class="pnext">Lilian came down to breakfast, ate hurriedly +and scurried off to class, after casting one quick +glance of adoration toward Peggy.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy and Katherine became conspirators as +soon as she was well out of the house.</p> +<p class="pnext">“You have time this first hour to-day, and I +have the third,” said Peggy. “So you go down +and buy some green and white cretonne and some +silk for pillow tops, and I’ll sew them up when I +come in.”</p> +<p class="pnext">In the afternoon they hung a “Busy” sign on +their door for the first time, set the percolator +perking coffee to inspire them and plunged into +the green and white material in earnest.</p> +<p class="pnext">“These cretonne curtains will be nearly as +pretty as ours, don’t you think so?” asked Peggy, +“and ours were made at the store. I’m getting +very proud of us as seamstresses, Kathie.”</p> +<p class="pnext">The plain silk was made into pillow tops of red, +blue and yellow.</p> +<p class="pnext">“The red one will brighten things so,” approved +Katherine, when she came to stitch it over a +plump pillow, one of three that the room-mates +hadn’t needed this year for themselves.</p> +<p class="pnext">Like culprits, they sneaked down the hall, their +gay offerings wadded as closely as possible in +their arms, and knocked in fear and trembling at +Lilian’s door. If she had called “Come in,” they +would have run. But they received no answer, +so Peggy cautiously opened the door, and thrust +her curly head inside.</p> +<p class="pnext">“It’s all right,” she whispered in relief to Katherine +a moment later, when she saw that Lilian +had not returned from class.</p> +<p class="pnext">The friends worked quickly, and soon the +green and white curtains were hung at the windows, +and the three bright pillows were ranged +along the couch.</p> +<p class="pnext">“But she hasn’t any couch cover at all,” wailed +Peggy, standing off to look at the result “And +the white bedspread does look so hopeless showing +through those gay cushions. What shall we +do, room-mate?”</p> +<p class="pnext">Katherine’s forehead was wrinkled. “You +know that old green denim curtain that hangs before +the clothes closet in our bedroom, Peggy? +Don’t you suppose that would be better than nothing? +It was there when we came, but it isn’t so +very ancient looking, and it would be inconspicuous +anyway—and just about the kind of thing +you see in lots of rooms.”</p> +<p class="pnext">With ruthless hands they tore down the big +green curtain in their own suite, snipped off the +rough end with scissors, and bore it back in +triumph to Cinderella’s apartment.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I’m going to run over to Gloria’s,” said Peggy +then, “and ask her to part with one or two of +those pictures she got for being elected. She has +two Home-keeping Hearts that I know of, and +several pictures that look like photographs that +can’t mean much to her, and would just cheer +up our protegee wonderfully, and make her room +pass muster with any guest.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy’s tireless feet carried her blithely across +the campus to Gloria’s room, and it didn’t take +her twenty minutes to pick out what she wanted, +with Gloria’s help.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Of course I’m glad to have your little friend +have them,” said the obliging freshman president. +“And if you want me to, I’ll come over and see +her some time and bring a lot of girls from my +house—junior celebrities and senior dramatists +and people like that, and it might have a good +effect on those Amblerites that tried to snub +her.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“It looks like a different place,” Peggy and +Katherine congratulated themselves later when +they had done what they could in the way of +changes. “It’s changed from a poor little apology +of just a place to sleep, into an inviting and +cozy college room—with the brightest cushions +a person could imagine,” they summed up boastfully.</p> +<p class="pnext">Lilian came dragging home from classes, tired +circles under her eyes after the strain of the +evening before, and a return of hopelessness toward +her situation. She had Peggy and Katherine +for her friends, but after all these two joyous freshmen +went very much their own way, +and were too busy with engagements with more +important people, to think of her much—the girl +with the horrid clothes and the wadded-up hair—and +the unattractive room. So she reasoned +disconsolately.</p> +<p class="pnext">She opened her own door listlessly and entered +the room.</p> +<p class="pnext">And then she thought that she had made a +mistake. It couldn’t be her room—of course it +wasn’t—and yet, when she turned in bewilderment +to leave it she beheld her own books on the +rickety little table.</p> +<p class="pnext">Well, it was magic! However it had happened, +she accepted it with a queer choking sense +that she was really to live in a room like other +rooms hereafter. College had suddenly come +close.</p> +<p class="pnext">She parted the green and white cretonne curtains +and looked out on a new world; she stroked +the bright silk cushions with a new sense of comfort +and luxury.</p> +<p class="pnext">Then she went over to the dresser and drew +out the tear-stained letter that began “Dear +mother,” and tore it into bits. A few minutes +later her pen was flying over some clean, fresh +sheets in a glowing description of college, of her +room, of her friends.</p> +<p class="pnext">It was the sort of letter to make a mother +think with a sigh of gladness when she read it, +“Well, she is having it all. How nice, that my +daughter can draw about her such friends. How +lovely, that she is so pleasantly situated in such +a delightful room—and how, best of all, that she +should not have been deprived of college.”</p> +<p class="pnext">An interested group of girls clustered around +the house bulletin board on the stair landing, and +read many times the latest sign that was pinned +there:</p> +<!-- File: 150.png + +| “Freshmen!!! +| All Meet To-night +| In Peggy Parsons’ Room. +| Bring +| Chafing-dishes.” --> +<p class="pnext">“Looks like a nice party to me,” speculated +Doris Winterbean. “But May and I haven’t a +chafing-dish. May, go and borrow one from +some sophomore, because I’m curious, and after +last night I certainly want something cheerful.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy herself knocked at Lilian’s door a few +minutes later.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I’ve got a sign up for a party to-night,” she +said as soon as a welcoming voice had called to +her to enter, “and I thought maybe you’d like +Kay and me to fix your hair for it—it’s pretty +hair—and I thought——”</p> +<p class="pnext">Lilian tried to say something about the benefits +she had already received at their hands, but +Peggy hurried on.</p> +<p class="pnext">“We have a new electric hair dryer, and Kay +has some marcel irons—an amateur kind, you +know—and if you’d like to have us practise them +on you,—I think the result would surprise the +girls and send them right down to Gibot to have +theirs done.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I can’t let you,” stammered Lilian. “I never +<em class="italics">could</em> fix my hair well, but I wouldn’t let you +bother with it for the world.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Just time before dinner,” Peggy insisted, +whipping a towel from the dresser and beginning +to fasten it around the reluctant shoulders of the +other freshman.</p> +<p class="pnext">She was led down the hall and Peggy experimented +with all the Suite 22 hair-dressing implements. +Egg shampoo, alcohol, bay rum, electric +dryer, special French orris powder, and finally +the hot curling iron.</p> +<p class="pnext">Then Katherine dexterously did it up for her—not +in an original style at all, but in the mode +that had swept the entire college: so that when +their work was finished and the victim was +handed an oval ivory mirror, she exclaimed with +wonder, for there was reflected a nice-looking-girl +just like a hundred others in Hampton, with +wonderful ripples of soft gleaming hair, that +made you want to follow the waves with your +fingers.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Is that me?” asked Lilian.</p> +<p class="pnext">“We’ll forgive you for being ungrammatical, +since it’s all in recognition of our efforts,” said +Peggy delightedly. “It is very much you—the +way you ought to have been all along, and will, +I hope, continue to be, now that we’ve shown you +the way. Mercy, Kay, she does look wonderful! +If you and I ever get poor, we’ll know of one +talent we have at least whereby we can hope to +make an honest living.”</p> +<p class="pnext">So Lilian came that night to the party, very +much elated, and entirely self-confident, instead +of shrinking and conscious of making an inferior +appearance.</p> +<p class="pnext">Those who had chafing-dishes had brought +them, those who had not had borrowed them. +Beside each chafing-dish, the hostesses had arranged +a little set of materials.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Now, two chafing-dishes are prepared to +make fudge, one sea-foam, and one chocolate +marshmallow. Will the freshmen kindly pair off +and choose what they want to make? Here are +the materials for white taffy over here, as a prize +for the ones that get done first.” Peggy made the +announcement, and the girls lit the chafing-dishes +and started in with great zeal.</p> +<p class="pnext">This was the kind of party to please them all. +Nothing but candy—and all they could make and +eat of that!</p> +<p class="pnext">“This is an anti-climax party,” explained +Katherine, when the fudge was bubbling with its +rich delicious odor, in the chafing-dish chosen by +Florence Thomas and herself. “Peg and I +thought of the awful faults we all found in each +other last night”—<em class="italics">they</em> hadn’t done any of the +finding, but the others didn’t notice that they +painted themselves blacker than they were—“and +we have a suggestion to make as to how to cure +them.”</p> +<p class="pnext">The girls were a little displeased—more of +that criticism business? they wondered. Even +the tempting odor of the cooking candy couldn’t +quite appease them.</p> +<p class="pnext">“It’s just a way to wipe out the faults as soon +as possible,” said Peggy with her funny and irresistible +little smile. “I thought if we each +cured the faults of the others in our own minds, +why—where would they be?”</p> +<p class="pnext">There was an alarming simplicity to this.</p> +<p class="pnext">Doris dropped her fudge spoon.</p> +<p class="pnext">“What do you mean, Peggy?” she demanded.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well,” laughed Peggy gleefully, delighted +with the discovery she and Katherine had made, +“that party last night did no good, some way. +Everybody went home feeling disgruntled and +out of sorts—and overwhelmed more or less with +their own imperfections. If each fault-finder +just—doesn’t find fault, you know,—even in her +own mind, there won’t be any fault pretty soon +to be found.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Don’t see it,” said Myra Whitewell.</p> +<p class="pnext">“If <em class="italics">you</em>,” Peggy turned to her patiently, “if +<em class="italics">you</em> just wiped out the notion you had about me—and +stopped letting it torment you—that I +wanted to run things, you know,—why, why—then +you wouldn’t see me like that, would you? +Pretty soon every one in Ambler House would be +praising every one else, and loving every one so +much that the other houses would begin to notice, +and would catch the infection. I think it’s better +to let our enemies find fault with us, if they must, +but not our friends.”</p> +<!-- File: 156.png --> +<p class="pnext">“Ambler House would get a wonderful reputation +for having the best freshmen on Campus +if we all boosted our house and our classmates +everywhere, I can see that,” ventured Florence +Thomas eagerly.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, shall we try?” urged Peggy, “shall we +just try it out as an experiment?”</p> +<p class="pnext">Because it was Peggy, and because the idea +was new, and because the candy was just ready +to eat now, and very tempting, the good-natured +freshmen light-heartedly promised to try her plan—and +to follow it faithfully until it had had time +to show either some result—or no result at all.</p> +<p class="pnext">This was the beginning of an attitude of mind +that later became habitual with that group of +freshmen. It wasn’t many weeks after this anti-fault-finding +party in Peggy’s room that, if a +first-year girl heard that another lived in Ambler +House, she was filled with wistful envy; for the +good times the Amblerites had, their gay and +loyal friendship became matters of common college +discussion.</p> +<p class="pnext">Myra Whitewell would not have worked into +the system if she could have helped it. But the +others, very much in earnest under the stimulus +of Peggy’s sunny example, refused to give heed +to her grouches, or to be hurt at her snubs,—and +they never failed to speak well of her outside, +so that this praise of theirs came to her +ears at last, and filled her heart with warmth in +spite of herself, and she could not do less than +give them her friendship—yes, and even her +warped and selfish love,—in the end.</p> +<p class="pnext">There was candy enough left after the spread +that night for each freshman to take a plateful to +her particular junior or senior friend.</p> +<p class="pnext">As they were leaving, their faces glowing with +appreciation of the pleasant evening they had +just spent, and in anticipation of the junior’s or +senior’s delight at their offering, Doris Winterbean +drew Peggy aside and whispered in her +ear:</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, I don’t know, Pegkins, it’s rather wonderful, +but I’ve tried your plan ever since you +spoke of it and it’s had an uncanny effect. Why, +do you know, I already see the greatest difference +in that Lilian girl? Honestly! Peggy, her hair +looks <em class="italics">pretty</em> to me now, and I thought it was +horrid last night. And her face and manner—she +just seemed as happy and confident as anybody, +instead of so shy and uncomfortable. It’s—magic, +Peggy, and you may not believe me, +but I really do see her altogether differently.”</p> +<p class="pnext">And Peggy burst out into a little laugh of enjoyment, +and her eyes followed Lilian with pride. +But she did not think it was necessary to disabuse +the mind of Lilian’s new admirer by telling +her that the “magic” had a very material +foundation.</p> +<!-- File: 159.png --> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="chapter-viiiindian-summer"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref pginternal" href="#id9">CHAPTER VIII—INDIAN SUMMER</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst">Glory lay over the whole college world.</p> +<p class="pnext">The sun blazed upon an earth more beautiful +than Peggy and Katherine ever remembered to +have seen it. The woods, when the two took their +walks, were as red with burnished leaves as if +they had been on fire.</p> +<p class="pnext">And a golden haze came in the morning and at +sunset.</p> +<p class="pnext">The mystery, the still power, and the vague +melancholy of autumn, crept through the veins of +the Hampton girls, and they walked and picnicked +on Leeds rocks, and sang away the glorious +afternoons far into the twilight, when the +sudden coolness warned them of what they would +forget—that these days were going, and that +winter would soon be upon them.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy and Katherine saw their first autumn +at college dissolving in that golden haze almost +before they had begun to enjoy it and to realize +that all this was really theirs—this life among +seventeen hundred girls, all young, all having +identical interests, all happy and congenial.</p> +<p class="pnext">There came a Saturday afternoon too lovely +to be spent at home.</p> +<p class="pnext">“What shall we do to-day, Katherine?” Peggy +asked. “Let’s just go somewhere by ourselves. +Do you want to drive, or walk, or have a bacon +bat or take some books down by Paradise and +read?”</p> +<p class="pnext">A day like that one suggests many ways for +enjoyment, but if there is one thing more absolutely +satisfying than another, and just-the-thing-to-do +on such a Saturday afternoon, it is to tramp +over to the cider mill, with a jug and a capacity-appetite +for new cider and ginger cookies.</p> +<p class="pnext">So it was inevitable that Peggy and Katherine +should decide on this as the ideal adventure, after +they had exhausted all the possibilities.</p> +<p class="pnext">“That cider mill seems just as much a part of +the college as Seelye Hall,” laughed Katherine. +“Peggy, can’t you taste that wonderful cider +now? Let’s go right away,—I think we can +walk over and back, don’t you?”</p> +<p class="pnext">That would mean about a nine-mile jaunt.</p> +<p class="pnext">Somebody in the house had a gallon jug, and +the room-mates promptly and unceremoniously +“borrowed” this and, with silk sweater coats, +and a ribbon tied around their heads to keep +their hair from blowing, started off into the +wonder of Indian summer, their hearts full of +joy over every one of the nine miles that lay before +them.</p> +<p class="pnext">The road was dusty, the jug was heavy, the +day was hot. After two miles they were warm +and thirsty—and hungry, too, and their feet +dragged a little.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh, that cider, that cider,” laughed Katherine. +“I wish it could come part way to meet us!”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Never mind, room-mate,” cheered Peggy, +with mock heroism; “only a mile and a half to +go now, and then the lovely cider will be running +into our jug, and we can get several glassesful +to drink there. And ginger cookies to your +heart’s content, Kay.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Can’t we—speed up a little?” urged Katherine +on the strength of that; “if we just double our +steps, we’ll get there sooner.”</p> +<p class="pnext">So the dust clouded up more thickly under +their hastening footsteps, and the mile and a half +dwindled and disappeared, until there before +them was the cider mill itself, keeping guard +over a little stream that gurgled into the mill and +out again.</p> +<!-- File: 163.png --> +<p class="pnext">“At last, room-mate!” hailed Katherine.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Katherine,” hesitated Peggy, right in sight of +their goal, “have you—have you thought how +much heavier the jug will be to carry back when +it is full?”</p> +<p class="pnext">Katherine cast at her one withering glance, +seized her arm, and the two ran now, the jug +bumping as it would against their knees, and the +perspiration bright on their foreheads.</p> +<p class="pnext">“It looks like a deserted castle,” panted Peggy +when they turned up the worn pathway to the +entrance of the mill. “And isn’t it quiet? +Doesn’t it usually make some kind of noise?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“You’re thinking of the planing mill, infant,” +mocked Katherine.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well,—I—anyway, Katherine, the door is +shut.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“It won’t be hard to open,—why can’t +you—?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Yes, I can open it,” Peggy answered, stepping into +the entrance hall where the glasses of +cider and the little packs of ginger cookies were +usually sold, “but there’s no one here now that +we’re in, and it looks more deserted than ever +and there isn’t even a <em class="italics">crumb</em> of a ginger cooky—and +I’m starved, nor a <em class="italics">sip</em> of cider—and I’m +<em class="italics">thirsty</em>!”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Why, this is Saturday, too. What do you suppose +is wrong, Peggy? I’m absolutely dead, if +I must confess it. I can’t possibly walk home +without a cool drink of cider to brace me up. I +never was so hungry and tired in my life.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“That’s his house, I think,” Peggy nodded +across the road toward a comfortable-looking +farm house.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Do you suppose the cider man would be +home?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Anyway,” Peggy said faintly, “his wife +would, and she might have some ginger cookies.”</p> +<p class="pnext">They hurried down the walk and shuffled +across the dusty road, feeling that if they were +disappointed now they could scarcely bear it.</p> +<p class="pnext">They went to the side door of the farm house +and knocked timidly.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh, Peggy, they’re <em class="italics">eating</em>!” gasped Katherine. +“I feel like a tramp. I almost wish I was +one, too, and then maybe they’d invite us in. But +isn’t it a late time to be having dinner?”</p> +<p class="pnext">The cider man’s wife stood in the doorway +now, smiling at them somewhat impatiently.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Did you come for cider?” she asked. “Well, +about ten others have been here before you to-day, +on the same errand, but he didn’t make any +to-day. And there aren’t any ginger cookies. +We didn’t have anything for the other girls, +either. I never saw anybody like you college +girls—a person feels guilty if he rests one day,—what +with you all being hungry and thirsty just +the same. I’m real sorry.”</p> +<!-- File: 166.png --> +<p class="pnext">“We—we brought a jug,” said Peggy pathetically.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Brought a jug? Ernie!” (raising her voice, +and calling back into the room where the table +was). “They brought a jug.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Ernie called back something, and a smile flitted +across his wife’s face.</p> +<p class="pnext">“He says if you want to wait till he’s through +dinner, he’ll go over and make some,” she interpreted. +“We’re very late getting dinner to-day—we’ve +had so many interruptions. But if you +want to wait———?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“We’ll wait!” cried Peggy and Katherine in +the same breath.</p> +<p class="pnext">“It will be about an hour,” said the woman, +closing the door.</p> +<p class="pnext">“An hour!” Peggy and Katherine exchanged +glances with deep sighs, and trudged down the +steps, and slowly back toward the mill.</p> +<p class="pnext">The cider mill was an important institution +to Hampton girls—and to Amherst boys, if they +cared to walk so far. The man who owned it +seemed to feel an especial responsibility toward +college girls—as every one does near a college +town—and so he kept a counter in the entrance +hall over which he sold as much cider as a girl +wanted to drink, for five cents. One of his stalwart +young helpers would fill her glass as many +times as she wished, for the single first payment.</p> +<p class="pnext">Then there were the ginger cookies, done up in +oiled paper, in packages of a dozen, that his wife +had made, and these the hungry young invaders +could purchase at ten cents a package. They +seemed so much a part of it all that cider never +tastes quite perfect to Hampton graduates, to this +day, without ginger cookies. Any of the Hampton +girls would have been surprised to visit any +other cider mill and find that their order for ginger +cookies was not understood.</p> +<p class="pnext">Opposite the mill, on the same side as the farmer’s +house, but farther back, and screened all +around by a circlet of trees, so that it sparkled +in the midst of them like a Corot painting, was +the cool mill-pond, with reeds and rushes growing +out into it, and shady branches overhanging +it.</p> +<p class="pnext">Drawn toward this now in their search for +something of interest to while away the time, +Peggy and Katherine parted the bushes and +young birch trees, and found themselves looking +into the very heart of beautiful things, with all +the world of dust and disappointment and fatigue +behind them.</p> +<p class="pnext">“That water looks cool,” murmured Peggy +gladly.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Yes; I don’t know as it’s safe drinking water, +but I think we might <em class="italics">wade</em> in it.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“If we have time.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“An hour?—why of course there’s time. What +else can we do to amuse ourselves?”</p> +<!-- File: 169.png --> +<p class="pnext">They were as entirely hidden from the road +and the farm house as if they had been in another +world. Without more argument, the two +sat down and Katherine slipped out of her grey +pumps, and flung her grey silk stockings after +them. Peggy was wearing tan oxfords and tan +stockings.</p> +<p class="pnext">“O-oh, who would dream there could be anything +so cold on such a warm day?” gasped +Peggy, trying it with her toes.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I like this reedy, weedy part,” laughed Katherine, +her feet dipping in up to her ankles.</p> +<p class="pnext">They sat, thus, side by side, dangling their feet +like happy children, seeking to fathom with their +eyes how soon the water got deep enough to +drown them, should they step out farther, and +watching idly the patterns made by the sea-weed +strands near the shore.</p> +<p class="pnext">“What if a fish should come?” cried Katherine +suddenly, and laughed at the expedition with +which Peggy’s feet came glistening up out of the +water. “Don’t be silly, Peggy,” she giggled, “fish +can’t bite anything but flies and worms.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Maybe the kind that would live in a mill-pond +could,” said Peggy, comfortably sliding the reassured +feet back into the still water. “And anyway, +who wants to dispute habitation with a +fish?”</p> +<p class="pnext">With all manner of the gayest and most idiotic +prattle they whiled away that endless hour, and +if any one had stood just outside the fringe of +little trees and had heard their voices without +seeing them, he would never in the world have +guessed that such inconsequential conversation +was being indulged in by two freshmen in good +standing of the largest woman’s college in +America; girls who would be candidates for the +degree within four years and who were even now +in the process of being moulded into “intelligent +gentlewomen.”</p> +<!-- File: 171.png --> +<p class="pnext">“Hasn’t that bird a funny whistle?” asked +Katherine suddenly. “Listen! He whistles just +like a person!”</p> +<p class="pnext">And as soon as the words were out of her +mouth, she was covered with confusion, for the +realization came to her that it was a person,—somebody +going by on the road, probably, and +they had so far forgotten the world outside their +own green hedge that it had startled them.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I’m going to peek out,” said Peggy. Thrusting +the leaves aside, she made a tiny opening,—large +enough for her eyes to get a clear view of +the road.</p> +<p class="pnext">And then all of a sudden she sprang up, her +face hot with excitement, and made as if to burst +through the thicket to the road itself. She would +have accomplished this had not Katherine caught +her dress and dragged her back so violently that +she sat down, breathless, on the bank of the pond, +exclaiming over and over in gladness, “It’s Jim! +Katherine, it’s Jim!”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Your shoes and stockings, child,” urged Katherine. +“Put them on, quick.”</p> +<p class="pnext">But Peggy seized one grey and one tan stocking +and on they went over her wet feet. Then +she stepped into her tan oxfords and flew out +from shelter.</p> +<p class="pnext">Katherine looked helplessly after the retreating +Peggy, and then down at the assorted pair of +stockings left for her. “There seems to be nothing +to do but put them on,” she sighed resignedly. +In a few minutes she emerged from the +shadows with as much dignity as she could assume.</p> +<p class="pnext">And there down the road was Peggy, the full +blaze of the autumn sun on her golden head, her +eager face uplifted and aglow, and towering +above her two good-looking young men, apparently +oblivious to everything except this strange +and vivacious little apparition that had burst so +suddenly upon them.</p> +<p class="pnext">One, Katherine recognized at once as Jim +Huntington Smith, the grandson of old Mr. +Huntington, whom they had known last year at +Andrews, and through whose generosity Peggy +had been enabled to come to college.</p> +<p class="pnext">The two girls had been the means of discovering +Jim’s relationship to the owner of “Gloomy +House,” as the old Huntington place was known, +and of re-uniting these two members of the same +family.</p> +<p class="pnext">So they regarded Jim as very much their property; +as they might look upon some handsome +older cousin.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy was waving an arm back towards the +pond, and the boys were laughing. Then as she +went on with her gesticulations they looked up +and saw Katherine.</p> +<p class="pnext">Katherine had been shrinking back against the +trees that lined the water, very conscious of the +one tan stocking and the other grey one. She +was trying to make up her mind whether to go +forward and divert Peggy some way so that she +would let these boys go, and would come back +and change stockings, or whether she should go +back and hide, and run the risk of having the +whole joyous trio down the road charge upon her +unexpectedly.</p> +<p class="pnext">It was all settled for her now.</p> +<p class="pnext">Jim swung his cap in the air and started toward +her, while Peggy and the other young man +followed more slowly. And even at such a time +Katherine couldn’t help noticing the funny little +way Peggy’s eye-lashes kept sweeping down +and up again, and how pretty and pink her face +was.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh,” smiled Katherine to herself, “if she +should suddenly wake up and notice her own +feet.”</p> +<!-- File: 175.png --> +<p class="pnext">“Well, Katherine Foster, how are you?” Jim +was saying, wringing her hand heartily. “This +is certainly fine. Bud and I walked over from +Amherst to get some cider, but found there was +none to be had. But meeting you people compensates +for it all.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh, but there’s going to be some cider, too,” +Katherine informed him; “that’s what we’re +waiting for. The man is just finishing his dinner +and he promised to come over and make some for +us. I hope he’ll let us watch him—I never saw +any cider made.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“We’ll stick around.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Do—and maybe———”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Maybe you’ll help us carry our jug home. +It’s just inside the trees there.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I should say we will. It turns out to be mutually +lucky that we met; we have the advantage +of cider being made and you get your jug carried home. +How’s Hampton anyway? Like it +as well as you thought you would? Peggy has +sent me a post-card now and then, but they all +say the regulation thing: ‘Having a glorious time, +the cross is our room,’ ‘Perfectly lovely up here, +nice weather for ducks,’—you know the kind.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Katherine laughed. She remembered the day +she and Peggy had picked out a complete set of +post-cards with Hampton views, and how they +had been in the habit of dispatching them with +the most bromidic messages they could think of, +to their friend at Amherst.</p> +<p class="pnext">“We just did it for fun,” she told him now. +“We wanted to embarrass you before the other +fellows by having a perfect flood of the usual type +of post-cards coming in from a girls’ college. +We thought you’d know. Why, we even signed +them all sorts of different things—‘Essie,’ and +‘Jennie’ and ‘Millicent’ and——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“And Marmalade,” added Jim with a twinkle +in his eye. “I have them all, making a border +around my room. The other boys are green with +envy. They——”</p> +<p class="pnext">At this moment Peggy and her companion +reached them, and Peggy interrupted Jim in perfect +unconcern.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Katherine, I want you to meet Mr. Bevington, +of Amherst college; Mr. Bevington, this is +Miss Foster, my room-mate.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Awfully pleased to meet you,” murmured the +Bevington youth over Katherine’s hand.</p> +<p class="pnext">“You may not be when you know what your +friend, Jim, has volunteered for you,” laughed +Katherine.</p> +<p class="pnext">“It couldn’t make any difference.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“He’s promised that you and he will carry our +cider jug home for us when we get it filled.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Has he?” cried Peggy delightedly. “Oh, +that’s going to be lovely. It was awfully heavy, +Mr. Bevington, when we were dragging it over +here. At first it seemed as light as a feather, but +before we had traveled a mile it became as heavy +and awkward as a cannon ball.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“So you see,” Katherine turned and laughed +up at Bud Bevington, “there’s an awful task +ahead of you.”</p> +<p class="pnext">But of course both young men were delighted +to carry any burden for two such charming young +ladies, and as they started back toward the mill +the talk veered to other subjects and ranged from +sports to house dances, when the owner of the +mill came up to them.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Are you the college girls that wanted the +cider?” he asked jovially.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Two of us are,” Peggy answered primly. +“But all of us would like to come and watch you +make it if we may.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“You can help,” answered the man.</p> +<p class="pnext">So with that delightful prospect ahead of them, +they entered the rambling building, dim except +where the sunlight found a crack between the +dusty boards and streamed weakly in.</p> +<p class="pnext">They followed the man up a winding stairway, +that was like climbing to some quaint old attic. +There was one place where they could look down +and see the black, gold-specked water rushing +away under the stairs. It gave Peggy a creepy +feeling. The specks of gold were dots of light +that fell into its darkness.</p> +<p class="pnext">“It—makes an awful roaring noise—kind of +subterranean sound,” murmured Katherine, but +nobody heard her, because of the rush of the +stream.</p> +<p class="pnext">When they reached the loft above, they stood +to one side waiting for the man to begin.</p> +<p class="pnext">“The young ladies are going to make the +cider,” he said.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh,” cried Peggy, “that’s fine, but how do we +begin?”</p> +<p class="pnext">The man hauled over several large sacks of apples, +lifted a round cover in the floor, bringing +to view a kind of chute.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Pour them apples down there,” he invited.</p> +<p class="pnext">With the assistance of the boys, they lifted +the sacks and the apples went tumbling down +through the opening. But Peggy and Katherine +were aghast to see what kind of apples they were.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Why, some of those I poured down were just—<em class="italics">awfully</em> +bad,” declared Peggy. “In fact, quite +decomposed,” she added facetiously.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Don’t they get sorted out down below?” +Katherine inquired anxiously when the last of +the sacks had been emptied.</p> +<p class="pnext">But the cider man only laughed.</p> +<p class="pnext">When they went down, the apples fell into a +kind of wagon without wheels, which moved +slowly by machinery, till it reached a certain +place, where heavy weights came down from +above and slowly crushed the fruit. Very soon a +small stream of clear amber juice ran down a +trough and into a large hogshead.</p> +<p class="pnext">The cider man filled their jug, and then gave +them each a glass, and told them to drink all they +wanted from the hogshead, without additional +charge, since he had made the cider just for +them.</p> +<p class="pnext">Sweet, clear and refreshing as any cider in the +world, this came to their thirsty lips. And yet—the +girls thought they had never enjoyed cider +less. The memory of that collection of apples +that had gone hurtling down the chute!</p> +<p class="pnext">The boys, however, were enthusiastic, because +Peggy and Katherine had made it, and they +praised it highly enough so that the kindly owner +of the mill did not notice the heroic efforts of his +two feminine guests to seem appreciative.</p> +<p class="pnext">Out into the sunlight again the little party +came, Jim carrying the jug nonchalantly on his +shoulder.</p> +<!-- File: 182.png --> +<p class="pnext">“Rebecca at the well,” he laughed; “here she +is in moving pictures.”</p> +<p class="pnext">And the others laughed, too, and began the +long walk toward Hampton, as refreshed as if +they were just starting out for the day.</p> +<p class="pnext">The farmer stood in the doorway of his mill, +and watched the departure with a friendly smile.</p> +<p class="pnext">There is nothing so wonderfully satisfying as +college Saturday afternoon, with all lessons forgotten—and +only a restful Sunday in the immediate +future. And such a perfect fall day as +this!</p> +<p class="pnext">The friends strolled leisurely along, enjoying +the brilliant coloring of the trees, and the +beautiful golden sunlight of a late October afternoon.</p> +<p class="pnext">They had nearly reached Hampton village and +Katherine was beginning to think that Peggy +would reach Ambler House without discovering +her mistake about the stockings when, with a +thrill of horror, she heard her say, “Look at my +feet, how <em class="italics">dusty</em> they are—you couldn’t tell <em class="italics">what</em> +color shoes I had on.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“But, oh, dear, if they aren’t blind they can tell +what color <em class="italics">stockings</em>,” moaned Katherine to herself.</p> +<p class="pnext">Politely Jim and their new friend glanced +down at the dusty oxfords.</p> +<p class="pnext">Jim gave a start and was about to speak, when +Katherine saw him suddenly look at her feet, too. +His eyes twinkled.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Is that a—new fad?” he asked finally. “A +fellow would never dare adopt anything so +radical.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Is what a new fad?” demanded the unconscious +Peggy, and then she looked down and +saw.</p> +<p class="pnext">Her face burned with a quick red, but she +laughed infectiously. “We—we went wading, +and I suppose I did this when I saw you, Jim, so +it’s all his fault. Kay dear, can you forgive?”</p> +<p class="pnext">Jim and Bud laughed with her, and of course +the devoted Katherine forgave on the spot.</p> +<p class="pnext">Young men are not allowed to linger in the +grounds at Hampton, so the adieus were quickly +said and Peggy and Katherine hurried across the +campus to Ambler House.</p> +<p class="pnext">No sooner had they reached their room than +word went down the hall that there was cider in +room 22, and one by one the girls on the second +floor found excuses to drop into Peggy’s and +Katherine’s room. They were most generously +supplied with cider, as they hoped they would +be, and Peggy and Katherine had no wish to +keep any of it for themselves, after they had +seen the sort of apples that went into it.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Funny thing,” said Peggy sadly as they were +dressing for the evening later, “I don’t believe +I’ll ever like cider so very much again.”</p> +<!-- File: 185.png --> +<p class="pnext">“No,” agreed Katherine, “the safest way to +do, if you want to keep your enthusiasm for anything, +is not to know how it’s made.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“You’re right. I’ll shut my eyes more after +this,” laughed Peggy, “but anyway, dear room-mate, +we had an awfully nice time, didn’t we?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh, so, so,” answered Katherine noncommittally.</p> +<!-- File: 186.png --> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="chapter-ixthe-house-dance"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref pginternal" href="#id10">CHAPTER IX—THE HOUSE DANCE</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst">It seemed no time at all to Peggy, after the +Indian summer passed, that winter rushed upon +them and shriveled them up on their way to +classes, and blew powdered snow in their faces +when they went for their walks.</p> +<p class="pnext">“There’s only one thing I can think of to +brighten things up,” wailed Doris Winterbean +one day, “so that we’ll all carry away pleasant +memories of the place for Christmas.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, what’s that?” asked Peggy, without interest, +for each day of hers was as full of good +times as it could be, and she thought she wouldn’t +need pleasant things to remember over the holidays +anyway, because she would be enjoying +herself so much during them that it would crowd +all thoughts of past and future, too, out of her +head.</p> +<p class="pnext">“A house dance,” said Doris thrillingly.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy was all interest now.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Would they—could we get one up before +Christmas?” she asked. “But then,” the brightness +faded from her eyes, “I have to lead half +of the time and I’m not tall enough, so it really +doesn’t matter as much to me as it might.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh, pshaw,” exclaimed Doris, “I didn’t mean +that kind of a dance. Not just girls, you know.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“No-o?” said Peggy cautiously.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Of course not.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, whom then?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh, people from Amherst or Williams—or +Dartmouth or wherever we can get them.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“You mean a <em class="italics">man</em> dance?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Yes.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, let’s have it right away.”</p> +<!-- File: 188.png --> +<p class="pnext">“I don’t know anybody to ask, except a young +prep school boy, but——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh, I’ll have Jim bring over a lot of people +from Amherst, and we can decorate the room +with purple in their honor, and then we can all +sing their songs when the dancing is over.”</p> +<p class="pnext">The plans for the dance were soon being elaborately +laid by every Amblerite. The matron said +it must be in the afternoon. So they set a convenient +Saturday, and dispatched their invitations +informally over the telephone. Jim responded +so nobly to the appeal Peggy made to +him, that he rounded up half a dozen football +stars and glee club men for the partners of the +girls who didn’t know anybody within telephoning +distance.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I’ll bring the whole frat, if you say so,” came +Jim’s cheerful voice over the wire. “Half of them +can’t dance to amount to anything, but they can +stand around and be ornamental—and fetch and +carry ices.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, our dancing isn’t a thing of beauty +and a joy forever either, but that won’t keep us +off the floor. Bring anybody you like, that is, +of the kind I mentioned, but they must be willing.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“<em class="italics">Willing</em>? Can you take care of all Amherst +if I bring it?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“<em class="italics">Yes</em>,” responded Peggy enthusiastically. “<em class="italics">We</em> +could, but there wouldn’t be ices enough.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh, well,” laughed Jim, “you can’t expect us +to come without ices.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I suppose not.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, you expect us Saturday. Six of us +anyway. I’ll bring the crowd over in my machine.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh, <em class="italics">Jim</em>! Have you a machine?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Better believe I have. And some day, when +the weather is fine, I’ll take you riding.”</p> +<!-- File: 190.png --> +<p class="pnext">“Oh, goody! What kind is it?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“A Ford.”</p> +<p class="pnext">And Peggy hung up the receiver on the laugh +that drifted to her over the wire.</p> +<p class="pnext">She climbed to her room and sank silently +down on the window seat.</p> +<p class="pnext">All the recitations of Saturday morning +dragged unaccountably whenever an Ambler +House girl was called on.</p> +<p class="pnext">They were too eager for classes to be over +and the time for the dance to come, to take a +great interest in dative and accusative cases, or +in the sum of the angles of right angle triangles.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I’m going to dress as carefully as I <em class="italics">can</em>,” said +Peggy, scrubbing her happy face until it shone.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Yes, do, dear, and please take time to put on +stockings that are mates,” laughed Katherine as +she laid a dainty afternoon dress upon the bed +and removed her pumps from their shoe-trees.</p> +<p class="pnext">After many little pats on ruffles and curls +Peggy and Katherine were dressed at last, and +stood before their mirrors almost satisfied.</p> +<p class="pnext">Then Katherine went downstairs to see if the +girls needed any last help with the decorations.</p> +<p class="pnext">Hazel Pilcher stuck her head in at Peggy’s +door.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Ready?” she called.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy swung from the mirror and bowed to +her, laughing.</p> +<p class="pnext">“As ready as I can be,” she said. “Hazel, you +look simply wonderful. You look—like somebody +in the movies or on the stage.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well,” said Hazel easily. “<em class="italics">You</em> might look +prettier than you do, Peggy; you don’t make the +most of yourself.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy turned her disappointed gaze back to +the mirror.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Come down to my room and I’ll just fix you +up a little,” said Hazel.</p> +<p class="pnext">Now Hazel’s ideas of dress, and those of the +rest of the girls in the house, widely differed. +For she always bought the most extreme styles +in hats and suits, and she always adopted the +most exaggerated new mannerisms of walking +and talking.</p> +<p class="pnext">So Peggy was inclined to be doubtful of the +value of her assistance, but Hazel urged her, so +she finally went down to her room.</p> +<p class="pnext">Here, Hazel uncorked several delightful-looking +little jars.</p> +<p class="pnext">“You’d better shut your eyes,” warned she, +and a minute later something cool was sliding +along Peggy’s eye-lashes, and then she felt it +again, going over her eye-brows.</p> +<p class="pnext">She knew in a horrible moment just what was +happening, but the foolish wish to look as wonderful +as possible, held her silent, and prevented +the protest that had sprung to her lips.</p> +<p class="pnext">“And now,” said Hazel, in a matter-of-fact +way, “your lips.”</p> +<!-- File: 193.png --> +<p class="pnext">And Peggy watched fascinatedly in a hand-glass +while the dainty, scented little red pencil +made its crimson imprint on her mouth.</p> +<p class="pnext">“And—just a touch on your cheeks,” said Hazel +again.</p> +<p class="pnext">“No,” said Peggy, “that would be too absurd; +I won’t——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well,” conceded Hazel, laughing, “you don’t +really need it; your face is as red as fire now. +You seem to think your looks are very much +changed. But they’re just improved. Everybody +will still <em class="italics">recognize</em> you, you know, Peggy, +infant.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“They’re here; they’re here,” an excited buzz +went through the second floor, at the word of +some generous messenger, who had run up for +a minute from below, to spread the news.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy forgot everything in the haste she made +to get down to greet the boys, for she was responsible +for the coming of a large number of +the guests, and she thought how peculiar Jim +would think it if she were not even there to welcome +them.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Jim,” she cried, holding out her hand. “I’m +awfully glad to see you. And Mr. Bevington, +too. No, you’re not a bit early. We’ve been +upstairs twiddling our thumbs and wondering +why in the world—we thought the Ford must +have broken down, you know,” she added as she +opened the door into the big reception room, +which looked very lovely with its many purple +banners.</p> +<p class="pnext">With the handsome Amherst contingent at +her heels, Peggy carried her small curly head +high while a pardonable pride shone in her eyes.</p> +<p class="pnext">A gasp went up from the groups of girls, who +were standing about in different parts of the big +room, talking to the few guests who had arrived +before the Amherst men.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Look what Peggy Parsons has with her,” +murmured Doris Winterbean to Florence +Thomas, while the small princess advanced, chatting +with her subjects.</p> +<p class="pnext">Never had such a fine set of young men descended +upon Ambler—or any other campus +house, for any occasion except the incomparable +annual occasion of Junior prom.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Doris, let me present Mr. Bevington, who +plays on the football team; and Mr. Mason, the +president of the dramatic club, and Mr. Brown, +the one who wrote that article we were all so +crazy about in their paper.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Thus the introductions went on, and the girls +who met these heroes would have been tongue-tied +before such greatness had not Peggy, before +she left them, raised them also to eminence. Miss +Winterbean was the one who had invented the +Lilian Walker waltz the girls would teach their +guests that afternoon; Miss Thomas, of course, +was the vice-president of the freshman class—“the +best class——” Peggy leaned over and whispered +it, so that the girls who were not members +of it shouldn’t hear,——“the best class that had +ever come to Hampton.” Miss Pilcher was the +house entertainer, and could play anything that +was written, for a piano.</p> +<p class="pnext">Hearing themselves thus praised, the girls took +heart and laughed happily up into the faces of +the men as the music began.</p> +<p class="pnext">“My Little Dream Girl” caught them up into +its delightful, sweet rhythm, and with such partners +as they had not enjoyed before in college, +the Hampton girls were swung out across the +floor.</p> +<p class="pnext">To Peggy, laughing up at Bud Bevington, it +seemed that the whole world was dancing. He +knew so many funny steps, and threaded his way +so dangerously among the other couples, doubling +the time, and then going even faster, until their +one-step was simply a run-step as fast as they +could go.</p> +<p class="pnext">“You—you think—this is a football field,” +gasped Peggy, when she could speak at all. “I—I’m +half dead—I know now how it feels to be +a football.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“You mean I’ve been kicking you,—did I hit +your foot, really?”</p> +<p class="pnext">Bud was contrition itself.</p> +<p class="pnext">“N-no, certainly you didn’t; how could you +when they went so fast? I mean you have been +making a goal with me.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I hope the goal is a long way off,” laughed the +football man.</p> +<p class="pnext">They had gone around nearly twice more, when +he bent and said suddenly in Peggy’s ear, “Who +is our cross-looking friend in the doorway with +the Charley Chaplin scowl?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Man or woman?” asked Peggy.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Woman,” he answered.</p> +<!-- File: 198.png --> +<p class="pnext">“Well, I see quite a group of our house-matron +in the doorway—but she is probably only one, but +if you don’t stop running with me so fast I can’t +be really sure whether there are ten of her or +just one.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Noticeably slackening his pace, he glanced +again toward the matron.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Still looks ominous,” he warned.</p> +<p class="pnext">“You must come over and meet her—but let’s +go very slowly for a while, till the atmosphere +clears a little.”</p> +<p class="pnext">When they finally approached the matron, she +smiled at Bud Bevington—who could help it? +And Peggy was able to get her breath, while the +two talked for a few minutes.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy danced every dance, sometimes in the +large reception room with all the others, and +sometimes in the alcove parlor off at one end, +where new steps could be tried without any onlookers, +if failure resulted.</p> +<!-- File: 199.png --> +<p class="pnext">She noticed that several of her partners looked +at her rather intently, and she fervently hoped +it was because she looked very nice. But there +was usually a fleeting smile that baffled her. No, +it was something besides admiration—or a new +kind of admiration or something—oh, she would +give up trying to account for it, and just have +a good time.</p> +<p class="pnext">So she danced with every guest and enjoyed +her ices, and said good-bye to the boys with great +reluctance, and pressed her nose against the window +pane to see the last of them.</p> +<p class="pnext">Jim, glancing back, as he started the machine—which +wasn’t a Ford at all—saw her and +waved.</p> +<p class="pnext">The machine chugged off, and she went upstairs +with a happy sigh and a little regretful that +their house dance was over.</p> +<p class="pnext">When she reached her room, Katherine, who +had preceded her, gave her one startled glance, +and then burst out laughing.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh, you look awful, child,” she said, “whatever +happened to you?”</p> +<p class="pnext">And Peggy rushed to the mirror.</p> +<p class="pnext">Horror of horrors—what—and then she remembered! +Those eye-lashes and eye-brows that +Hazel had put on so carefully—and those lips, +too—had run! The black wavered down greasily +from her eyes, making weird dark lines. The +mouth with which she had so carelessly eaten ices +was—a good deal to one side now.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I forgot,” murmured Peggy, and that was all +she was able to say, and this she repeated miserably +at intervals, while Katherine dipped a towel +in the water pitcher and began applying it to +the beautifiers.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Don’t tell me until you want to,” said Katherine, +trying to keep the giggles back, and to +speak sympathetically. “It isn’t so very bad—just +kind of—wavy.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well,” moaned Peggy, “Hazel Pilcher put it +on. I can’t think how I came to let her, and—it +must have been awfully poor make-up and got +so—warm——!”</p> +<p class="pnext">Her explanation ended in a sob and she jerked +away from Katherine’s ministrations, and flung +herself a crying heap upon the couch.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh, Katherine! and I thought I looked so +nice! Oh, they all saw and <em class="italics">knew</em>, and the ones +I just met to-day couldn’t know but I marked up +my face like that always. It’s—it’s awful—I +wish I had never come to college—I wish I’d +never seen an Amherst man—or Hazel Pilcher +either. What shall I do?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Jim knows,” Katherine soothed.</p> +<p class="pnext">“B-but he’ll be ashamed of me,” moaned +Peggy.</p> +<!-- File: 202.png --> +<p class="pnext">“He won’t either. He’ll just think it’s funny,” +Katherine tried to comfort her.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Funny! Oh, dear, and I suppose it is—but +not to me. And Bud Bevington—every time he’s +seen me there’s been something—r-ridiculous +about me!”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy shook with sobs, and hid her face in the +cushions of the window seat, sure that she would +never take any pleasure in life again.</p> +<p class="pnext">She wouldn’t go down to dinner, so Katherine +had it sent up on a tray, and though Peggy felt +that she really wasn’t the tiniest bit hungry, she +ate all that was brought to her, and almost wished +she had decided to go down after all, because +then she might have asked for a second helping.</p> +<p class="pnext">Katherine and the other freshmen made up +an impromptu party to go to a picture show that +evening, but Peggy could not be persuaded to +join them.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I never knew her to sulk before,” said Florence +Thomas. “What in the world is the matter +with her?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Sulk,” cried Katherine indignantly, “why +Peggy doesn’t know how to <em class="italics">sulk</em>. She—she just +had a very sad thing happen to her, and you’d +cry, too, if it happened to you, only you wouldn’t +get over it as soon as Peggy will.”</p> +<p class="pnext">The picture show wasn’t a great deal of fun +for Katherine when most of her thoughts were +drifting back to her poor room-mate. The rest +of the girls laughed and cried at little Mary Pickford’s +pathos and drollery, but she felt it difficult +to keep her attention on the screen, and was +almost glad when it was over, and they could +hurry back to Ambler House.</p> +<p class="pnext">The door of Suite 22 stood open, all the lights +blazed forth, the sound of happy laughter came +to her ears and the unmistakable perfume of +American beauty roses greeted her nostrils.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Peggy!” she cried, as she entered the room, +to find every available vase full of the most +gorgeous roses she had ever seen, and an appreciative +sophomore and junior court listening to +the tale of Peggy’s sad experiences of the afternoon.</p> +<p class="pnext">“You little wretch,” she said, shaking her fist +at her room-mate in mock rage, “when you get +<em class="italics">me</em> to sympathize with you again, you’ll know it. +It’s just a joke now, isn’t it, but, girls, she was +crying her eyes out over it an hour or so ago.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Th-that’s just what I’ve been telling them,” +cried Peggy, “and now I can’t think how I could.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, what’s made the change?” Katherine +demanded.</p> +<p class="pnext">Iva Belmington and Hazel Pilcher waved magnificently +toward the overladen vases and water +pitchers. “Those,” they said simply.</p> +<p class="pnext">And at the same time Peggy poured a shower +of cards into her lap, and, taking them up, she +read, one after the other, the names of all the +six boys from Amherst who had come to their +dance that afternoon.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Wasn’t it <em class="italics">lovely</em>?” cried Peggy. “They evidently +left the order at the florist’s when they +drove through the town. Look at Jim’s card, +Katherine, he wrote something on it.”</p> +<p class="pnext">From the assortment in her lap, Katherine selected +the card which read Mr. James Huntington +Smith, and there sure enough across the top +of it were the words in pencil, “With appreciation +for a very jolly afternoon.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well,—but they must have seen, just the +same,” hinted the practical Katherine.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh, but they didn’t <em class="italics">mind</em>!” returned her radiant +room-mate.</p> +<!-- File: 206.png --> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="chapter-xtinsel-and-spangles"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref pginternal" href="#id11">CHAPTER X—TINSEL AND SPANGLES</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst">“My mother is coming.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Lilian Moore made the announcement to +Peggy in a tone of mingled joy and reluctance.</p> +<p class="pnext">The Christmas holidays were over and the +fearsome midyear examinations were things of +the past. The dullest of the three terms had settled +into full swing—day after day of white earth +and grey sky.</p> +<p class="pnext">The Ambler House girls had been having a +Wednesday evening frolic down in the parlor, +with the piano banging and gay voices shouting +out their musical defiance of dullness in general.</p> +<p class="pnext">“She writes that she’s coming for just a day +to see a little bit of college for herself,” went on +Lilian. “Peggy—she’ll—be disappointed in—my +grandeur. You see, I raved so about everything +when I was home at Christmas time. I guess it +may hurt her feelings to see that I’m not—one of +the foremost people in my class.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Lilian essayed a laugh that broke into a sob.</p> +<p class="pnext">Myra Whitewell, who stood near, impatiently +turned away. “I never knew anybody to be so incessantly +humble in my life. You really do make +me tired, Lilian. Haven’t we all liked you for +a long time——? You young Stupid, don’t you +know that we all have to take <em class="italics">some</em> steps toward +popularity ourselves? Don’t you know that we +are <em class="italics">all</em> outsiders when we come here, and it depends +at least <em class="italics">partly</em> on ourselves whether we +ever become insiders? You are always bringing +up the same thing.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy laughed at these two who had never +learned to become entirely reconciled to each other +even after all the close association of living together +in the same house. Myra was so impatient and so proud; +so well equipped with a good +opinion of herself, while Lilian was almost maddeningly +willing to be trodden under foot on +every occasion.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Mother says maybe she can absorb a little +of college for herself,” Lilian mused, not heeding +Myra’s cutting comment, for she had grown used +to them.</p> +<p class="pnext">“When is she coming?” asked Katherine, who +glanced around the room of singing girls, and +tried to imagine what impression it might make +on one who was not a girl any longer, and was +seeing it for the first time.</p> +<p class="pnext">“To-morrow,” answered Lilian, with that same +note of doubt in her voice.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well,” said Katherine, her eyes still on the +shouting young women who rocked to the music +they sang, while the piano did its best to be heard +above them, “I think we can show her a good +time.”</p> +<!-- File: 209.png --> +<p class="pnext">“Will you help me, girls?” cried Lilian, brightening +in sudden gratitude.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Why, of course,” said Katherine, “any guest +of any of us is a guest of the house—that is, if +the one who is entertaining wants it to be so.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I haven’t much for to-morrow,” said Peggy +quickly. “I know you have several recitations, +Lilian,—we’ll see that she is taken care of every +minute from the time she arrives until she leaves +us, weeping.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy’s enthusiasm was beginning to carry her +away.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Let’s go and plan out the hours,” she said to +the rest of the group—“just like those schedules +they publish in the papers of the way certain +great people—and criminals—spend their days: +thus, 9 a. m., has breakfast on tray; 10 a. m., +sees dressmakers and milliners; 11 a. m., rides +in automobile, under guard——”</p> +<p class="pnext">Lilian was laughing, all her doubts vanished.</p> +<!-- File: 210.png --> +<p class="pnext">Even Myra entered into the plans with spirit.</p> +<p class="pnext">And never had a celebrity been met by a more +enthusiastic crowd than was gathered at the +Hampton station to meet the frail and fluttering +little woman who stepped down from the 9:10.</p> +<p class="pnext">Her eyes, shy and yet full of anticipation, were +searching for Lilian, who fairly flew down the +platform, the happy bevy of girls keeping close +behind.</p> +<p class="pnext">After Lilian had kissed her mother, each girl, +as her name was spoken, wrung her hand with +such goodwill and welcome that poor little Mrs. +Moore realized that she would probably have +rheumatism in her fingers for days, as a result. +But her worn cheeks flushed with pleasure.</p> +<p class="pnext">Whose would not, at such a reception when +she had expected to be merely a spectator during +her single day’s stay?</p> +<p class="pnext">She was borne first to Lilian’s room.</p> +<p class="pnext">Entering Ambler House, her eyes glowed, and +she turned her head to look after a merry group +that came running down the steps, their books +under their arms. Through the great hall, the +floor shining and smooth, with handsome rugs +to give color here and there—and up the broad +stairs the little procession wended its way.</p> +<p class="pnext">And Lilian could hardly restrain a cry of surprise +as she and her mother, followed by the +faithful escort, stepped inside her room.</p> +<p class="pnext">On the dresser was an adorable bunch of violets +with inviting purple pins beside it.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Some one has sent you flowers?” cried little +Mrs. Moore, noticing these, even before she took +note of the dainty green and white curtains, and +the green denim couch cover, that Peggy and +Katherine had been inspired to supply.</p> +<p class="pnext">“No, they didn’t,” cried Peggy from the doorway. +“They didn’t send <em class="italics">her</em> the flowers,—look +on the card!”</p> +<p class="pnext">And when Mrs. Moore picked up the card that +lay beside the pins, she read aloud, “For Mrs. +Moore; welcome to Hampton, from one of Lilian’s +friends, Myra Whitewell.”</p> +<p class="pnext">If you could have seen the look of pleasure with +which the little woman lifted those fragrant flowers, +and with shaking fingers fastened them to +her girdle! Oh, precious first impression of college! +How it crept into her heart with the fragrance +of those violets—quite the nicest thing +that had ever come to her in her care-worn, workaday +life!</p> +<p class="pnext">Lilian’s own face was suffused.</p> +<p class="pnext">That Myra, of all people, should have been so +dear and thoughtful! And, a moment since Lilian +had been harboring a rather bitter and unkind +thought against the black-haired freshman.</p> +<p class="pnext">For Myra was the only one of the Ambler +House “crowd” who had not been at the station +to meet her mother. Lilian felt hurt. But now, +she remembered Myra’s chemistry laboratory, +that was in full session at this moment—and to +her, also, a new feeling came with the odor of +those violets.</p> +<p class="pnext">She thought, with quick gratitude, that nothing +she could ever do for Myra would be too much +now to repay her for that glad and surprised +light in her mother’s eyes.</p> +<p class="pnext">“And now, Mrs. Moore, you’re going to be +handed from one to another of us, hour by hour,” +laughingly explained Peggy. “Your daughter +has some classes that she really feels she <em class="italics">must</em> +attend. Ordinary classes we could all cut with +pleasure, but Lilian’s this morning happen to include +math, and Lilian is—well, she doesn’t know +a triangle from a piece of fudge, Mrs. +Moore——”</p> +<p class="pnext">She broke off, giggling, and fled down the corridor +to escape Lilian, who pursued with pretended +rage, at her daring thus to lay bare +her mathematical shortcomings to her trusting +mother.</p> +<p class="pnext">“So,” Katherine took up the story of the adventures +that were to form Mrs. Moore’s great +day, “you are to walk with me, please,—if you +will, down Elm street and down West street a bit, +and Green street, and then you will have seen all +the part of town that belongs to college life that +is outside Campus—invitation houses, undesirables +and all. Then at eleven I shall turn you +over to Peggy and Hazel Pilcher, at the campus +gate, and they will show you through the new library +and chapel and the Art building annex. +That’s as far into the future as you are allowed +to peep.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“It sounds very alluring,” murmured Mrs. +Moore, whose eyes were still bulging, from the +sight of her staid and quiet Lilian pursuing and +pounding the fair-haired Peggy.</p> +<p class="pnext">The company of the girls was more to her +than the sightseeing itself, and she found herself +swept along by the gay hilarity of whoever happened +to be her escort. She forgot that her hair +was as grey as theirs was black or golden; she +forgot that she had believed her time for gaiety +was over.</p> +<p class="pnext">In the big library she paused, hushed, before +the sight of many graceful figures bending in +silent absorption over the volumes that lay in +their laps or before them on the massive tables. +She could not guess, in her awe of such an intellectual +atmosphere, that fully a third of these diligent +readers were bowed over Arnold Bennett +and Gilbert Parker, instead of the volumes of +deep learning she fancied.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I wonder if the matron will let me ask Mother +to the House to lunch,” puzzled Lilian, a little +later, when she met them, after the tour of the +campus was complete. “I haven’t had time to +ask her and there may not be a place.”</p> +<!-- File: 216.png --> +<p class="pnext">“There will be lots of places, but your mother +and we won’t be there to fill them,” said Peggy +quickly. “Gloria has invited us down to Boyd’s +for a real party.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Beef steak and French fried potatoes—and +peas?” cried Hazel. “A real one?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“That’s just it,” said Peggy, slightly disappointed +that her friend had been so quick to +guess. “How did you know? I was the only +one with Gloria when she telephoned the order.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“How did I know!” scoffed Hazel, “as if anybody +that knew what was best would dream of +ordering anything else at Boyd’s.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Boyd’s was the popular restaurant, where the +girls trooped in to luncheon whenever the allowance +from home seemed to justify such a luxury, +where they sat on Saturday evenings, their white +shoulders gleaming above the white silk, green +chiffon and blue crêpe de Chine of their very best +dresses.</p> +<!-- File: 217.png --> +<p class="pnext">“Are we really—invited by—Gloria?” questioned +Lilian, halting before the luminous name +of the freshman president. “Isn’t that wonderful +of her to give a party for Mother!”</p> +<p class="pnext">Gloria, adorable in white furs, met them at the +doorway of Boyd’s, and greeted Mrs. Moore with +her own delightful impulsiveness.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I’m so glad to know you, Mrs. Moore,” she +said with that pretty earnestness for which Gloria +was famed throughout the freshman class. “It +was awfully good of the girls to let me have you +for a luncheon party. You know, mothers are +scarce around these parts, and if we can’t have +our own, we lie awake nights planning the best +way to ensnare somebody else’s, whenever one +comes visiting. So please excuse us if we act as +if you belonged to us all instead of just to Lilian.”</p> +<p class="pnext">And Mrs. Moore looked straight into the clear-blue +eyes of the tall red-haired idol of the freshmen, and +said she was only too glad to be adopted +by any and all of her daughter’s friends.</p> +<p class="pnext">Something went grey and blank in Gloria’s +wonderful eyes before her searching gaze, and +the lashes swept down. The tall, graceful figure +drew itself more erect, as if she were on guard +in some way. And Mrs. Moore dropped the +warm hand she had been holding, with a sigh.</p> +<p class="pnext">The beautiful hostess led the way upstairs into +the dining room and was shown to a long table +that had been reserved for her.</p> +<p class="pnext">With much throwing aside of velvet coats and +furs, the friends seated themselves around the +guest of honor and leaned forward, their elbows +quite frankly on the table.</p> +<p class="pnext">Every girl was laughing and talking, with the +single exception of Gloria herself. As the little +luncheon progressed, with the whole table in a +happy uproar, Gloria’s abstraction became more +and more noticeable.</p> +<!-- File: 219.png --> +<p class="pnext">Celebrities are entitled to their moods. So no +one spoke of Gloria’s for some time.</p> +<p class="pnext">Then Peggy leaned over and whispered, “Come +back to us, won’t you?”</p> +<p class="pnext">And Gloria’s face was swept with sudden color.</p> +<p class="pnext">She turned startled eyes on Peggy’s laughing +face. Then she shook her shoulders as if she +might free herself from some unpleasant thought.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I—wouldn’t be anywhere else—for a farm,” +she said.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh, well,” murmured Peggy to herself, “it +wasn’t anything but my imagination. What +could Gloria possibly have to bother her? Maybe +she didn’t have her history or her Greek to-day. +She’s just the one to mind it a lot, if she +didn’t always excel in the classroom.”</p> +<p class="pnext">After the wonderful ice-cream and the dear +little French pastries had been consumed, with +much delight by the girls and with wistful enjoyment +on the part of Mrs. Moore, the check +was laid by Gloria’s plate, with the deferential +air the waitresses always used to a very good +customer.</p> +<p class="pnext">Gloria, without glancing at the total, motioned +for a pencil, and scribbled her name and the name +of her house across it.</p> +<p class="pnext">Then she slid into the soft coat Katherine held +for her, and while Peggy and Hazel and Myra +were still busy patting Mrs. Moore into her +things, she moved idly toward the stairs, her eyes +glancing over the crowded dining-room as listlessly +as if she were not a celebrity at all. Hushed +groups watched her pass and admiration and affection +shone in fifty pairs of eyes.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Honestly, girls,” she caught a distinct murmur, +“I just can’t talk while she’s going by. Did +you ever see anything so wonderful?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“She’s the best-looking girl in college,” came +the rapt answer from another girl at the same +table.</p> +<!-- File: 221.png --> +<p class="pnext">But this incense drifted past Gloria without +making any particular impression.</p> +<p class="pnext">The first few days of her presidency she had +enjoyed with a frank egotism that had pleased +Peggy and had caused Katherine many amused +smiles.</p> +<p class="pnext">But she was accustomed to it all now. There +is no class in college so breathlessly eager to bestow +devotion as the first class, and when the +admired person is one of their very own, an +added quality of loyalty and unswerving devotion +creeps in.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I just don’t believe that girl ever did a mean +or silly thing in her life,” the voice followed +Gloria as she started downstairs, with the rest +of her party in her wake.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I don’t believe she’d have any use for a +<em class="italics">minute</em> for a girl who didn’t live right up to her +ideals. You know, she’s one of the advantages +of college,—she and girls like her—we can see +what we <em class="italics">might</em> be anyway, even if few of us +really come within a mile of it.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Was there a trace of bitterness about that vivid +and gracious mouth of Gloria’s? Did she really +hurry a little to be out of earshot of those praises +that, however ridiculous, would once have been +sweet?</p> +<p class="pnext">At the foot of the stairs she waited for Mrs. +Moore. She bade her good-bye prettily, saying +she must remain downtown for some shopping, +and that she hoped they’d all see Mrs. Moore in +Hampton again—a great many times.</p> +<p class="pnext">“My dear, I want to thank you for a <em class="italics">beautiful</em> +luncheon,” Mrs. Moore smiled up into the lovely +face with that quaint way she had. “I do indeed +wish I might stay right now, and live in town +somewhere so that I could get to know the girls +better. And I think a sort of Everybody’s-Mother +would be a good thing for many of the +students.”</p> +<!-- File: 223.png --> +<p class="pnext">But if she had hoped to bring a hint of the desire +for confidence from Gloria she was disappointed.</p> +<p class="pnext">Gloria’s eyes took on that odd grey blankness +again, and though she nodded politely and pressed +Mrs. Moore’s hand warmly, there was not a +trace of that electric circuit between them which +it was so easy to establish with Peggy and Katherine +or most of the other girls.</p> +<p class="pnext">“She’s very cold—and proud,” mused Mrs. +Moore, glancing in a puzzled way at the retreating +back of Gloria.</p> +<p class="pnext">Lilian was the sort of girl any one could understand. +When she felt badly she would cry, +when she didn’t she’d laugh. If she liked any +one, she showed it, and if she disliked any one +she nearly made faces at them, her distaste was +so apparent.</p> +<p class="pnext">Gloria Hazeltine was a new specimen to Lilian’s +mother. She discovered with her woman’s +intuition that something was troubling the young +girl. She wanted so much to help her. But she +could do nothing before such icy reserve.</p> +<p class="pnext">“What—happens to me now?” she turned to +Peggy and said, as they went to the outer door +of the restaurant. “I suppose we go back to the +college?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“No,” said Peggy, peering anxiously down the +street outside. “No, your sightseeing goes on +from here. But I don’t see—what ought to be +here.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Have you ordered a machine, Peggy?” asked +Lilian in awe and happy expectation.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy’s laugh rang out. “Well, not exactly +ordered it,” she explained, “but hinted for it. It’s +Jim’s, and he promised to bring it over from Amherst +and meet us here at 2 o’clock. He’s five +minutes late. That’s—oh, there he is. Come +on, Mrs. Moore, come on, Lilian and Katherine +and Myra Whitewell and Doris Winterbean. +Hazel, I’m sorry you have classes.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Unselfishly she handed Mrs. Moore into the +front seat beside Jim, sure that it would add to +the interest of everything for her, to have this +good-looking young man explain things and deferentially +point out new attractions.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Only an hour and a half, Jim. I want to get +Mrs. Moore back to go to Thirteen with me, and +Lilian has biology at that time. You don’t think +that’s so good a show class as Thirteen, do you, +Lilian?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Mercy, no,” hastily answered Lilian. “Not +so good a show class as any other. You don’t +want to see grasshoppers cut up, do you, +Mother?”</p> +<p class="pnext">Mrs. Moore protested that she had no interest +in grasshoppers under any circumstances, so the +plan to hear Thirteen stood.</p> +<p class="pnext">“We just want to show you as many of the +dear places we love to visit as possible,” said +Katherine, crossing her arms on the back of the +seat Mrs. Moore occupied. “We could never +walk to more than one, but with the machine you +can see a number. Only you mustn’t suppose +that we have machines when we see them. No, +indeed, we walk or we hire a nice old poky horse +and runabout from the livery stable. The horse +may be almost an extinct animal in other places, +but he’s still a great favorite up here.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Thus she was whirled along the river road, +through their favorite picnic spots, from hamlet +to hamlet while tea-house after tea-house flashed +into view and were pointed out with accompanying +tales of affectionate or funny reminiscences +by the Hampton girls.</p> +<p class="pnext">At one, a large and ugly cat was always to be +expected at every party. The woman who ran +the tea-house had taken for her motto, “Love me, +love my cat,” and its baleful green eyes watched +hungrily every mouthful that passed through the +patrons’ lips.</p> +<p class="pnext">Doris remembered an afternoon when she and +Gloria and the great Mary Marvington, of the +Junior class, had taken tea there, and Gloria had +unwittingly put her foot on the cat’s tail under +the table, the cat howled, and Gloria sat stonily, +her face white, trying to think what that <em class="italics">awful</em> +sound could be.</p> +<p class="pnext">“The cat <em class="italics">wouldn’t</em> stop howling, of course, because +Gloria <em class="italics">didn’t</em> lift her foot, and Mary Marvington +was in <em class="italics">hysterics</em>, so I leaned under the +table and removed poor Gloria’s foot from the +poor cat’s tail, and I think old Tabby is running +yet.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Lilian, Katherine and Peggy screamed with +delight at Doris’ very much embellished story.</p> +<p class="pnext">Mrs. Moore’s eyes were sparkling now, and +she almost had to pinch herself to realize that +she was, for the first time in her life, in college.</p> +<!-- File: 228.png --> +<p class="pnext">When Jim set them down outside the big recitation +hall, where she was actually to attend class +with Peggy, she smoothed her coat with happy +anticipation, and perhaps the full wonder of +Thirteen came to this shabby little woman, with +grey in her hair, as radiantly as it came twice a +week to these Hampton girls, who picked up +snatches of everything under the sun, and who +learned without the miserable grind, an easy style +of writing that set them apart from the girls who +had never had Thirteen.</p> +<p class="pnext">“If all their classes are like this,” thought Mrs. +Moore, “I should think they’d rave in their letters +about the school part of it more than anything +else.”</p> +<p class="pnext">But alas! Their classes all like that! Only +one was like it. The others were too apt to be +nightmares of mathematics or agonies of Greek +tragedy and Lyric poets or merciless written lessons +in medieval history.</p> +<!-- File: 229.png --> +<p class="pnext">Dinner at Ambler House was the next thing +on Mrs. Moore’s program, and she listened to +that roar of conversation and laughter that always +began as soon as grace had been said in the +dormitory dining-rooms.</p> +<p class="pnext">Fifty-four girls, all talking and joking at once, +and yet one never heard a loud voice.</p> +<p class="pnext">“They are nice girls,” thought Mrs. Moore.</p> +<p class="pnext">After dinner it had been planned that Lilian +should have her mother alone until theater time, +when they were all going to a musical comedy +which happened to be in town that night, direct +from New York.</p> +<p class="pnext">But Mrs. Moore, who noticed that Peggy was +already dressed for the theater, asked her quietly +to come also.</p> +<p class="pnext">“It’s about your friend; I hoped I’d have a +word with you,” little Mrs. Moore began when +she and her daughter and Peggy were comfortably +propped against the cushions.</p> +<!-- File: 230.png --> +<p class="pnext">“Myra?” asked Peggy, doubtfully, for she was +the only person who might possibly occasion the +sad and foreboding expression in the older woman’s +eyes.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Myra!” echoed Mrs. Moore in astonishment, +fingering the violets at her waist, which had been +revived for wear to the play. “Myra! No, indeed. +No, it was Gloria Hazeltine I was troubling +over.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy laughed. “Oh, it would be very foolish +troubling over <em class="italics">her</em>,” she said; “she’s freshman +president, you know——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Yes, I know.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“And the prettiest girl in Hampton.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Undoubtedly.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“And she’s the best dressed——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Of course, my notions of dress are old fashioned, +but even I could see that.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“And she’s rich——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, I can’t help it, Peggy; I saw into that +girl’s heart to-day—a mother can—even though +I’m not her mother—and she’s not happy.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Mother!” cried Lilian. “Why, Gloria is +simply bubbling with happiness. Don’t you think +anybody would be perfectly <em class="italics">radiant</em> who had all +she has?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I wonder if you couldn’t find it out, Lilian, +and see if you couldn’t help her in some way—she——”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy brushed away the thought of the incongruity +of Lilian Moore, very much one of the +masses in Hampton, acting as confidante and +comforter to the lofty Gloria, whose position set +her up to twinkle before the worshipful freshmen, +star fashion.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I don’t think anything is really bothering +Gloria,” she said gently, “and there’d be no way +for any of us to find out what it was if there +were.”</p> +<!-- File: 232.png --> +<p class="pnext">And she changed the subject to the entertainment +before them.</p> +<p class="pnext">Ambler House had taken the first row in the +balcony, for from this vantage point the girls, +their bare arms leaning on the polished rail, could +stare down and pick out their faculty friends and +their celebrity acquaintances, and, also, they got +a better view of the stage, and could hear the +music to better advantage than from any other +seats.</p> +<p class="pnext">One of the girls of the house was given an +orchestra ticket and was thus bought off from +her position in the theater’s “rubber row,” as +their chosen place was most inelegantly called.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Now, Mrs. Moore, I’ll just take your coat and +then you lean over and look at anybody you like. +Nobody minds being stared at. Everybody’s used +to it, and if a girl downstairs is wearing an +especially good-looking dress, she’ll stand up and +turn around and gaze about the audience for a +moment so that we can be sure to get its effect. +That’s what <em class="italics">always</em> happens,” Peggy explained +blithely to their guest.</p> +<p class="pnext">Mrs. Moore hadn’t been to the theater often, +anywhere. So that, in itself, was a pleasure. +But to sit in a theater crowded with girls, all in +evening dress as they would have gone to a ball, +their throats and arms white in the glare of the +electric lights, was a never-to-be-forgotten experience.</p> +<p class="pnext">The play was a dashing affair, all beauty and +melody, and the irrepressible audience hummed +the catchy airs between acts.</p> +<p class="pnext">Also there was the customary promenade during +the intermission.</p> +<p class="pnext">The girls from the balcony went downstairs, +and, threading their way through the crowded +aisles in which the girls were chatting, found the +seat of some friend and leaned gracefully near +her for a few moments.</p> +<!-- File: 234.png --> +<p class="pnext">And the talk usually ambled along something +like this:</p> +<p class="pnext">“My dear! Aren’t you crazy about it? Honestly +I never heard anything like that chorus—hm, +hm, hm, hm,——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Those costumes! My dear, did you ever see +anything so fragile? Perfectly hectic! But the +colors—I’d give anything to have a winter suit +made on that grey and silver <em class="italics">motif</em>——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Her voice!”</p> +<p class="pnext">“His eyes!”</p> +<p class="pnext">“That step they did was perfectly beautiful—don’t +you think we could work it out by ourselves? +Watch carefully if they bring it in again; +I can follow it all up to that little kick she does +and the half turn in the air——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“What a perfectly stunning gown! Why in +the world didn’t you save it for Junior Prom? +Well, you may have others, but I’m sure I never +saw you in anything more becoming—it’s a <em class="italics">darling</em>, +Dotty; look at Helen’s <em class="italics">cute</em> gown!”</p> +<p class="pnext">“They say this made an awful hit in New York—do +you think it’s true that May Hastings is +really going on the stage when she graduates? +Why, I should think her people would feel terribly. +But it would be a thrilling life, wouldn’t +it?”</p> +<p class="pnext">With a final burst of music, the entire company +crowded the stage in one of those hurrahing +finales, and the girls from Ambler House +gathered up their wraps and made all haste for +the stairs.</p> +<p class="pnext">Outside Peggy summoned a taxi, and Mrs. +Moore, Lilian, Katherine and herself climbed in.</p> +<p class="pnext">“The station in time for the 11:10!” she called +to the chauffeur, and in an instant Mrs. Moore +was being whisked away from her one bright day +of college.</p> +<p class="pnext">For she had not felt like incurring the extra +expense of staying longer, and Peggy and Katherine +had been unable to think of a tactful means +of arranging that part of it themselves. So they +had simply crowded all they could for her into +one day so that she would have a typical picture +of the rush of college life to take back to her +small town with her.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well,” said Peggy, holding up her face to be +kissed just as the train came in, “how did you +like college? What impression did it make on +you?”</p> +<p class="pnext">And little faded Mrs. Moore clasped her hands +before her while her eyes shone mistily.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Why, I think”—her voice came huskily +mingled with the throb of the engine—“it is better +than any of my dreams, and you dear girls +have been the best of all.” And then she kissed +Peggy.</p> +<!-- File: 237.png --> +<p class="pnext">CHAPTER XI</p> +<p class="pnext">A SERIOUS DISCUSSION</p> +<blockquote><div> +<div class="line-block outermost"> +<div class="line">“Just one college,</div> +<div class="line">And that’s the college we sing to:</div> +<div class="line">Just one college,</div> +<div class="line">And that’s the college for us!”</div> +</div> +</div></blockquote> +<p class="pfirst">The egotistical song of Hampton came out to +Peggy from the door of Myra’s room when she +stopped before it on her way home from class.</p> +<p class="pnext">A comfortable fudge-eating group looked up +from the Morris chair and the couch as she entered.</p> +<p class="pnext">“’Lo, Peggy,” said Gertie Van Gorder, interrupting +the song and waving with a piece of +fudge towards an unoccupied chair. “Sit down, +Peg.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Can’t,” said Peggy. “Is Katherine here?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Nope,” said Katherine’s voice from behind a +pillow. “I’m up at gym having a—c-c—brr-r—” +the pillow was made to shiver—“a cold +shower!”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Come on home, Kat, you wretch,” laughed +Peggy; “I’ve had a present from Mr. Huntington.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“<em class="italics">Who</em>,” demanded Gertie, impertinently, “is +Mr. Huntington?—and why didn’t you have him +to our house dance?”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy and Katherine laughed.</p> +<p class="pnext">“He’s an old man, silly,—and one of my very +best friends; in fact, he sent me to college, and +his grandson is Jim that you all met, because I +<em class="italics">did</em> have him to the house dance.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, then,” pursued Gertie still inquisitive, +“what was his present?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Something good?” inquired Myra, sliding to +the edge of her seat.</p> +<p class="pnext">“If it is, we’re all coming,” smiled Gertie graciously.</p> +<!-- File: 239.png --> +<p class="pnext">“Well,” Peggy admitted, “it’s—salted almonds. +Five pounds of them—I suppose———”</p> +<p class="pnext">But she was the last one in the room. The +group had fled with a rushing sound down the +hall and were already murmuring their appreciation +in Suite 22.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Save <em class="italics">some</em> for me,” mocked Peggy, when she +overtook them.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Nice Mr. Huntington,” said Gertie amiably, +“nice, poor cheated Peggy. Her shall have one—just +one, mamma said,—slap your wrists———”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Gertie, I’m going to put you up on the hill +one of these days,” laughed Peggy. On the hill +was a certain state institution which visitors to +the town were always annoyingly mistaking for +the college.</p> +<p class="pnext">“But then, visitors are always funny,” as +Gloria had once explained. “One of them asked +me where I came from and I said Iowa. She +looked at me a minute and then said, ‘Will you +please say that again?’ Obligingly I repeated +‘Iowa.’ ‘Isn’t that odd?’ she said then. ‘How +strangely you <em class="italics">do</em> pronounce it. Now <em class="italics">I’ve</em> always +heard it called Ohio.’”</p> +<p class="pnext">At the thought of Gloria, the salted almonds +became bitter in Peggy’s mouth, and she made +a little face of distress.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Kaddie, <em class="italics">do</em> you think Gloria isn’t as happy as +she might be?” she inquired of her room-mate.</p> +<p class="pnext">With the quick facility of college girls for +jumping from the most inane and frivolous +pleasantries to the most serious attitude of mind, +Katherine answered thoughtfully.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Peggy, how could she help being happy?”</p> +<p class="pnext">This question certainly appeared a staggerer +on the face of things.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Happy?” trilled Doris Winterbean, “Why, I +saw her yesterday going to vespers in the <em class="italics">loveliest</em> +Belgian blue velvet suit mine eyes have ever +beheld. Happy! My <em class="italics">dear</em>! I’m free to say that +if my own friend Self had been clad in such Consider-the-Lilies +raiment, <em class="italics">I’d</em> have gone to vespers +<em class="italics">dancing</em>!”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Don’t be silly,” said Peggy.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well,” finished Doris defiantly. “Please satisfy +our curiosity and show us how such a suspicion +ever crept into that woolly little head of +yours.”</p> +<p class="pnext">She dodged Peggy’s pillow as it came hurtling +at her with good aim, and then sat pensively with +hands clasped over her knees as if to listen to a +tearful tale.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I’d never have noticed it, I admit,” said +Peggy.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Of course not,” chorused the nut-eaters.</p> +<p class="pnext">“You know,” interposed Katherine, “sometimes +I think people who aren’t in college, you +know,—like Mrs. Moore, just can’t imagine a life +like ours, all happy and independent and so arranged +that nothing serious could <em class="italics">possibly</em> creep +in to trouble us. So if a girl seems abstracted, +or just resentful of too close scrutiny, as perhaps +Gloria was, she is apt to jump———”</p> +<p class="pnext">“No, no, I can’t believe that,” said the foolish +voice of Doris. “Mrs. Moore wouldn’t jump. +Anything that is less a tax on our credulity, +Kathie, but not that,—not <em class="italics">jump</em>.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Take the nuts away from that girl. They +are beginning to have a bad effect, in fact, nutty,” +shrilled Peggy.</p> +<p class="pnext">“As I was going to say,” continued Katherine +imperturbably, “people like Mrs. Moore +jump at conclusions———”</p> +<p class="pnext">“O-oh,” murmured Doris. “That explains +it. I wish you’d said that before. It’s quite all +right, Kathie, now that you’ve made yourself +clear. The fault was all mine.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Doris,” snapped Myra Whitewell, pinching +her, “will you be serious?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I’m so serious, I’m going home. You hurt.”</p> +<!-- File: 243.png --> +<p class="pnext">“Oh, Doris, do come back; don’t act like—like———”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Like a freshman, I suppose? Well, I am a +freshman. And I guess I will go back to my +room and be serious all by myself.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“You needn’t go and be mad, Doris.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, you needn’t pinch me.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Such comic dismay was registered on the faces +of the group that Doris’ intention to play the +spoilsport fled in a burst of laughter from her +pouting lips.</p> +<p class="pnext">“<em class="italics">Gooses</em>!” she cried at them.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Doris, you mean geese,” corrected Myra, “but +it is no term to apply to a group of perfect ladies +anyway.”</p> +<p class="pnext">They were back again in the favorite freshman +style of badinage, and the atmosphere that +had threatened to become tense was eased perfectly.</p> +<p class="pnext">“To go back———” began Peggy.</p> +<!-- File: 244.png + +| “I want to go back, +| I want to go back to the farm!” --> +<p class="pnext">The rippling notes of irresponsible song came +from Gertie.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Do you think there’s any intelligence in this +group of highly cultured persons?” complained +Peggy. “Because I don’t. I wanted to have you +girls help me about a real problem——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“But not our problem, Peggy,” reminded +Katherine; “in fact it’s none of our business.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“It’s Glory’s, Glory’s, hallelujah’s,” chanted +Doris as an apropos contribution to the talk.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh, I never heard anything so perfectly +baffling as you people,” cried Peggy in despair. +“Here I was going to have a serious discussion——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Serious discussion!” gasped Gertie Van +Gorder. “Quick, girls, pass Peggy some more of +her own nuts.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Even while the box was being passed, the irrepressible +roomful took up the Hampton song +where Peggy had interrupted them when she +found them in Myra’s room.</p> +<blockquote><div> +<div class="line-block outermost"> +<div class="line">“Just one college,</div> +<div class="inner line-block"> +<div class="line">And that’s the college we sing to:</div> +<div class="line">Just one college,</div> +</div> +<div class="line">And that’s the college for us.</div> +<div class="line">There’s neighbor Holyoke over the way—</div> +<div class="line">There’s just one college for us!</div> +<div class="inner line-block"> +<div class="line">But she can neither dance nor play,—</div> +</div> +<div class="line">There’s just one college for us.</div> +<div class="line">Just one college,</div> +<div class="line">And that’s the college we sing to.</div> +<div class="inner line-block"> +<div class="line">Just one college,</div> +</div> +<div class="line">And that’s the college for us.</div> +<div class="line">Oh, Vassar has a noble site—</div> +<div class="line">There’s just one college for us!</div> +<div class="inner line-block"> +<div class="line">But men, men, men are her delight—</div> +</div> +<div class="line">There’s just one college for us!”</div> +</div> +</div></blockquote> +<!-- File: 246.png --> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="chapter-xiithe-auction"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref pginternal" href="#id12">CHAPTER XII—THE AUCTION</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst">“Peggy, look at that sign!”</p> +<p class="pnext">The room-mates were standing before the students’ +bulletin board down in the note-room.</p> +<p class="pnext">“It’s bridge, I suppose,” said Peggy idly.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Bridge! No, it isn’t. Look! it isn’t that kind +of auction.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Breathlessly then they read the alluringly artistic +letters, and made out with difficulty:</p> +<div class="center line-block noindent outermost"> +<div class="line">Auction!</div> +<div class="line">Big auction.</div> +<div class="line">Everybody come.</div> +</div> +<!-- --> +<blockquote><div> +<p class="pfirst">Beautiful clothes, evening dresses, lingerie, +furs, everything for the wardrobe of the college +girl to be auctioned off positively second-hand. +Money must be paid on the spot.</p> +<p class="attribution">—— <span class="small-caps">The Weldon House Girls.</span></p> +</div></blockquote> +<p class="pfirst">“That’s Gloria’s house,” said Peggy.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Yes,” said Katherine, “and all of those girls +have so many clothes they don’t know what to +do with them. I think it is an awfully good idea +to sell some of them this way.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I’ve never been to one of those auctions before. +Usually it’s just kept in the house. Each +girl sells what she doesn’t want, and any other +girl in the same house who has seen and envied +that particular garment can buy it. Donna Anderson +got some lovely evening slippers that way +in her house for fifteen cents, and when they +were cleaned they were just as good as new.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I can think of lots of Gloria’s things I’d like.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Yes, especially that Belgian blue velvet suit +the girls were talking about.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Both girls laughed at the idea of Gloria selling +her new things.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Don’t you worry about those girls,” said +Katherine finally, “they’ll just auction rags and +tatters and get good prices for them, too.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Have you got some spare money to go with?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“A little—about seven dollars. At the rate +some of those sales are made, I ought to be able +to get quite a complete outfit for that.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“And I’ve a little. I haven’t counted just how +much. But of course we can get some more from +the bank.”</p> +<p class="pnext">When they trailed into Ambler House for +luncheon they found the greatest interest and +excitement reigning.</p> +<p class="pnext">The auction was in the air, and nobody could +think of anything else.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Just little tiny no-account auctions,—why, +some house is having one every day, but who +ever heard of a wholesale kind like this?” cried +Doris. “I certainly will be there.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Since the sign, for all its artistic printing, had +neglected to say what day the auction would be +held, Ambler House sent a deputation over to +Weldon to find out.</p> +<p class="pnext">Weldon House sent back word, “Saturday +afternoon, of <em class="italics">course</em>,” so that part of it was settled, +and approved by everybody.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy and Katherine went in no small state +of excitement. It was a new kind of amusement +so far as they were concerned.</p> +<p class="pnext">The freshmen from Ambler House were almost +the only members of the first class to attend.</p> +<p class="pnext">The freshmen in other campus houses were +not so precocious as this singularly self-confident +crowd, and did not feel like rushing in where +something was going on that was beyond their +experience.</p> +<p class="pnext">As soon as the Amblerites stepped inside of +Weldon House, they noticed a conspicuous poster +with a hand inked on it pointing, and the single +word, “Upstairs.”</p> +<!-- File: 250.png --> +<p class="pnext">The matron of Weldon House was standing +before the sign with a curious expression puckering +her lips, when the gay little group swept +by.</p> +<p class="pnext">Once upstairs, there was another poster, a +more helpful one, this time, “Go to Room 27.”</p> +<p class="pnext">The upper hall was full of other anxious buyers +plodding their way in the direction indicated +by the guide-post. Room 27 belonged to a most +gracious Junior, Zelda Darmeer.</p> +<p class="pnext">It was characteristic of Zelda that her walls +were decorated with the mottoes, “No studying +aloud,” and “Never let your studies interfere +with your regular college course.”</p> +<p class="pnext">The auction was already in progress when +Peggy, Katherine and their companions stepped +inside.</p> +<p class="pnext">It was being conducted on the most informal +lines. Whenever a girl had anything to auction, +she acted as her own auctioneer, and when the +others thought she had taken enough time, one +of them serenely set up in competition.</p> +<p class="pnext">The chairs were piled with soft blue chiffons, +dainty white under-garments, and plumed hats +and mangey furs.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Put this up, somebody. Who belongs to +this? Put this up. I want to bid on it!” One +of the guests was rudely waving a silver-spangled +scarf that had slipped from a chair nearby and +fallen at her feet.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Yes, in a minute,” came a business-like voice, +“that’s mine. Only been worn three years, and +has got over two hundred perfectly good spangles +left on it. Only eight hundred came off.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy and the others joined the guests already +there, sitting quietly down on the floor in their +midst. For floors are vastly more used at college +than anywhere else except, perhaps, in the +nurseries. Few people realize the solid comfort +there is in floors. They are not simply objects +lying flatly and dispiritedly beneath our feet to +be trodden upon, but they make the most delightful +divans and seats in the world, and possess a +superior seating capacity.</p> +<p class="pnext">At least that was the way the Hampton girls +found it, and during vacation time they often outraged +a parent or relative by proceeding to sit +down and be comfortable, if it chanced that +every real chair was taken.</p> +<p class="pnext">That the goods to be sold should repose in the +chairs, and the customers should sit on the floor, +seemed highly natural to Peggy and Katherine, +and a very satisfactory economy of space all +round.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Now this,” Zelda was standing on the wabbly +heap of cushions that constituted the platform, +“<em class="italics">this</em> is my well-known blue chiffon dress. Everybody +knows and can testify to its wearing qualities. +This dress has appeared at every dance and +reception since the opening of the term. It has +shown up regularly about four times a week, and +has been universally admired.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Now this dress”—she held it up conscientiously +so that the light shone through it and it +was seen to be more or less in shreds in certain +places, but still presenting a pleasing ensemble, +nevertheless.</p> +<p class="pnext">“There are the marks of honorable service +about this dress. It has lots of good times to remember. +I was never unhappy in it once, and +that’s a boast that any gown might be proud of. +Now, girls, I got this in Boston just before I came +to college at the beginning of this year, and I +went to Hollander’s for it and I paid eighty dollars. +I’m tired of the dress now, but there are at +least five good more wears out of it. It always +<em class="italics">looks</em> dear and <em class="italics">sweet</em> once it gets on. The price +of this dress is four dollars,” she wound up.</p> +<p class="pnext">There were two ways of auctioning. According +to them, you either set your own price and the +bidders’ contest simply went on to see which +would be the first, or you offered the object after +the approved auction custom and the bidders ran +up the price as high as it would go.</p> +<p class="pnext">Zelda had a conscience. Had she not held the +gown before the light in that frank fashion, the +beauty of the frayed garment might have turned +some freshman’s head to the extent of fifteen +dollars or more, and it had served its purpose +for Zelda—she wanted a few dollars spending +money, and getting rid of her old things was a +quick method of obtaining it.</p> +<p class="pnext">When the price of the blue chiffon was named, +Lilian Moore nearly fell over on the floor. She +had been straining forward across Katherine +Foster’s knee, her eyes covetous and hungry.</p> +<p class="pnext">She had not come expecting to buy anything. +She had merely “been dragged along,” as the +girls said, and she had hoped to find enough +pleasure in watching the others purchase the wonderful +second-hands.</p> +<p class="pnext">But that pleasure was gone now. Suddenly, +as she realized that this wonderful, shimmering +blue butterfly of a dress was within her reach, +she burned with a sudden fire to have it.</p> +<p class="pnext">For Lilian, who, under the Ambler girls’ teaching, +had come to get together a fairly good school-day +wardrobe at small cost, had never yet possessed +a real evening dress.</p> +<p class="pnext">She had gone to party after party, reception +after reception and dance after dance, always +meekly and shamefacedly arrayed in the white +simplicity that had been her graduation dress at +high school the spring before. Now, staring her +in the face with soft blue intensity, was Opportunity, +and she meant to seize upon it.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Me,” she cried out, like a child in her eagerness. +“I want it, Miss Darmeer. <em class="italics">Here’s</em> the four +dollars!”</p> +<!-- File: 256.png --> +<p class="pnext">Her spending money for weeks was poured extravagantly +into Zelda’s hand, and the wonderful +gown was thrown lightly over her trembling +arm.</p> +<p class="pnext">For a little while at least—until the gorgeous +thing actually dropped to pieces—she would appear +as well-dressed, as beautiful and as fragile +as the other girls, with her hitherto covered +shoulders glistening charmingly into view and +her arms bare and bright almost to the shoulder.</p> +<p class="pnext">At this moment Gloria came in from her own +room, her fair face flushed, and her arms laden. +There was a curious hauteur, that was foreign to +her accustomed manner, clinging about her, somehow.</p> +<p class="pnext">And the very first thing that she put up was +the wonderful suit of Belgian blue!</p> +<p class="pnext">As she mounted the swaying pile of cushions, +her expression never softened to the hilarity that +the occasion had held up till now.</p> +<!-- File: 257.png --> +<p class="pnext">The light gleamed over the wonderful blue of +the thing in her arms.</p> +<p class="pnext">“A suit,” she began, in that voice the freshmen +worshipped, “a blue suit. Tailored to fit +me. Do for any tall girl. The lining is, as +you see, a good quality taffeta,” she turned the +coat conscientiously inside out, “and a blue silk +underskirt goes with the skirt. I’ve worn this +three times. I don’t think very many people saw +it, for it was only to chapel and vespers and——”</p> +<p class="pnext">A laugh interrupted her. That was rather +scathing of her, those of her classmates who were +present thought. For they were required to attend +chapel and vespers and didn’t like the implication +that they neglected their duty.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Kaddie,” whispered Peggy, “do you suppose +she’s got so many clothes—that—that three wearings +is—enough?”</p> +<p class="pnext">She gasped at the very idea of such a thing. +The condition of the chiffon gown that Zelda +had sold was more like her own things by the +time she had done with them. She could not +fancy any one parting with something they had +scarcely become even used to yet.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Maybe it isn’t becoming to her.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh, Kaddie!”</p> +<p class="pnext">Katherine looked again at the figure of Gloria +with her blue burden over her arm and saw that +she had spoken carelessly.</p> +<p class="pnext">The blue of the suit brought out the blue of +the eyes in a dazzling fashion. The triumphant +red and gold of Gloria’s hair and eye-lashes +flamed more like those of a Norse goddess than +ever.</p> +<p class="pnext">“What am I offered? I can’t advertise”—(the +ghost of a smile did quirk her lips here for an +instant)—“as Zelda did, that this suit has known +only happy times. It’s—had to take its chances. +But such as it is—it’s ready for your offers.”</p> +<!-- File: 259.png --> +<p class="pnext">She stood expectantly, the suit lifted a little on +her arm.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Twenty-five,” lazily called a senior from the +back of the room.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I’m offered twenty-five,” said the auctioneer, +“and I’m—still listening.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Thirty,” piped Hazel Pilcher eagerly.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Forty,” jumped the senior’s voice from the +back of the room.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Forty-one,” hesitated Doris Winterbean.</p> +<p class="pnext">There was no more bidding. Doris opened her +check-book and wrote the sum which had purchased +the shining wonder that had lately been +the property of the freshman president. She +knew that suit had never cost less than a hundred, +and she was more than satisfied. Its +former wearing rather lent it grace than detracted +from its value, considering who the +wearer was.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I was going to buy a new suit and a spring +coat for next term,” said Doris, “but this will +have to do instead of both now,—and I’d rather +have it.”</p> +<p class="pnext">But nothing else that was put up by the others, +or by Gloria herself, brought anything like that +price—none even yielded so high a percentage +of its original cost.</p> +<p class="pnext">Gloria offered waists, which went for prices +such as fifty cents, or, at the highest, a dollar. +Then she held up an adorable kimono, direct +from Japan, that all the girls had envied and +coveted. But beautiful kimonos are luxuries, +whereas suits of some kind are necessities. So +her sacrifice met with no such fortune as the blue +suit had called forth. Most of the girls didn’t +attend college auctions with their check-books. +Doris Winterbean was a single foresighted exception.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Isn’t it terrible to see those beautiful things +going for a few pennies?” said Peggy.</p> +<!-- File: 261.png --> +<p class="pnext">“It is,” nodded Katherine. “What can that +girl be thinking of?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Thinking of turning into a savage, I should +say,” Peggy speculated in answer. “You can see +she isn’t going to have many clothes left.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“She looks as picturesque as ever, anyway,” +sighed Katherine. “It’s too bad there are not +more of our classmates here to see her.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Yes, she was certainly a lucky choice for president,” +agreed Peggy.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Your choice.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, my choice first and the class’s afterwards, +and I’m sure we’re both proud of our +good taste.”</p> +<p class="pnext">The radiant one was again holding up an article +of apparel before their interested gaze.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Now, this,” she began her advertisement, “is +all of handmade lace——”</p> +<p class="pnext">An imperative knock sounded on the door.</p> +<p class="pnext">Every girl in the room started nervously. For +auctions, while not against any college regulation, +were not exactly the sort of thing that would +meet with a matron’s approval when indulged in +to the wholesale extent of this one at Weldon +House.</p> +<p class="pnext">Perhaps that puzzled and anxious matron they +had seen downstairs had followed the directions +on the sign and was even now upon the threshold. +How annoying, when there were many delectable +and unsold articles still lying negligently +over the chair backs.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well,” cried Gloria, in the midst of her +harangue, “come in.”</p> +<p class="pnext">But the door opened only a crack and a +muffled voice came through it.</p> +<p class="pnext">Zelda Darmeer felt a certain responsibility +since it was her room, but she would literally +have had to wade through six rows of husky +girls to get to the door.</p> +<p class="pnext">She stood up anxiously.</p> +<!-- File: 263.png --> +<p class="pnext">“Peggy Parsons, go and see what it is, will +you, please?” she begged, her face dark with annoyance.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy, by clutching at the knees and then the +shoulders of the girls on either side, arose with +difficulty and went out into the hall.</p> +<p class="pnext">What she saw there made her shut the door +behind her.</p> +<p class="pnext">The matron, just as they had feared, was +outside the door. But there was another woman +with her. A horrid-looking woman, Peggy +thought, very different from any one usually seen +in campus houses.</p> +<p class="pnext">The matron’s face was troubled, and Peggy +felt instinctively that it was something more than +their reckless auction that was causing her uneasiness.</p> +<p class="pnext">The other woman’s expression was sullen and +aggressive.</p> +<p class="pnext">She came forward threateningly as Peggy came +out, but in a moment fell back with a scowl, as +the light from the window at the end of the hall +streamed more clearly over the little figure.</p> +<p class="pnext">“That’s not Miss Hazeltine,” she said snappishly.</p> +<p class="pnext">“No,” murmured the matron, still with that +look of doubt and distaste. “This isn’t one of +my girls at all. Are you—perhaps—a friend of +Miss Hazeltine’s?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I hope I’m one of her best friends,” said +Peggy quickly. “And”—with a quick smile that +said it all—“I’m a freshman.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, I—don’t know,” hesitated the matron.</p> +<p class="pnext">The other woman frowned. “I want my +money to-day,” she demanded.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy shivered as if she had suddenly been +brought in touch with something ugly and sordid, +something meant to remain without her share +of experience.</p> +<p class="pnext">She was torn between the feeling that she had +no business, in justice to Gloria, to listen to any +more—and the desire, the need to keep Gloria +away from the menace of this woman’s eyes.</p> +<p class="pnext">She felt that Gloria was even less able to meet +and cope with this strange un-college-like situation +than she, Peggy.</p> +<p class="pnext">For Gloria seemed of finer clay, and she herself—what +was she but just an everyday young +person, glad to be alive and curious about everything +that life might hold,—happy or otherwise?</p> +<p class="pnext">Perhaps Gloria would hate her for stumbling +upon a situation like this which didn’t concern +her.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I think,” she said to the pained matron, “I +think I’d better get Gloria. She’s in there——” +Then, with an inspiration, she turned suddenly +upon the unpleasant woman.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Won’t you go down to her room,” she questioned, +“Number 20, and wait until she comes? +I’m sure that would be better; then if she cares +to see you, she can find you there.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh, she won’t want to see me,” retorted the +woman. “I’ll just wait here. There ain’t any +other door to that room she’s in, is there?”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy’s heart turned sick.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I will send her out to you,” she said quietly. +“What is your name, please?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I’ll tell <em class="italics">her</em> my name,” answered the woman +ungraciously.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I think,” observed Peggy in a low tone, “that +you had better tell <em class="italics">me</em>—wouldn’t that be best, +Mrs. Ormsby?”</p> +<p class="pnext">She appealed to the matron for confirmation.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Certainly,” agreed Mrs. Ormsby, catching a +little of Peggy’s quiet fire. “You shall at least +send in your name.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well,” grudged the woman, with a hateful +smirk, “just tell Miss Hazeltine it’s Hart and +Bates’ Dressmaking Establishment.”</p> +<!-- File: 267.png --> +<p class="pnext">“All right,” murmured Peggy, and laid her +hand on the door.</p> +<p class="pnext">The matron bit her lip uneasily, and Peggy +turned the handle and went back into the babble +of bidding that was going on inside.</p> +<!-- File: 268.png --> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="chapter-xiiifeet-of-clay"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref pginternal" href="#id13">CHAPTER XIII—FEET OF CLAY</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst">“My Morning Glory,” thought Peggy, in her +heart as she stood among the auction guests.</p> +<p class="pnext">A feeling of loyalty filled her as she found +with her glance the subject of the disagreeable +conversation that had just taken place outside +the door.</p> +<p class="pnext">The freshman president, all unconscious of +impending disaster—or at least of its nearness—was +in the act of taking off the wonderful high +button shoes that she wore because one of the +girls had expressed a desire to buy them.</p> +<p class="pnext">She was laughing at the incongruity of it, and +the light was dancing in her rose-shadowed blue +eyes.</p> +<p class="pnext">“The clothes off our backs,” she was saying +gayly, “anything to please our customers——”</p> +<!-- File: 269.png --> +<p class="pnext">And Peggy looked at the beautiful silk stockings +that gleamed on her feet when the shoes +were removed.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Look out, Morning Glory,” shouted a merry +Junior, “there are some of your freshmen worshippers +present—and they say all idols have clay +feet!”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy’s heart skipped a beat, and Gloria seized +the shoes uncertainly as if to put them on again. +The room burst into a shout of laughter, and +Gloria ducked her flaming head gracefully and +laughed with the rest.</p> +<p class="pnext">“My shoes!” she cried, with the laughter still +in her voice, as she held them up for sale, “right +off the clay feet——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Gloria!” cried Peggy reluctantly.</p> +<p class="pnext">“In just a minute,” answered the beautiful +girl, “I’m busy selling <em class="italics">these</em>. Do you want to bid +something? Then——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Gloria,” urged Peggy again, for she had +caught a faint but impatient tap on the door at +her back. She held the knob, and she felt it turn +under her grasp. She knew she was not as +strong as the horrible woman outside.</p> +<p class="pnext">“There’s—somebody waiting to see you.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Gloria paused, swaying on the uncertain heap +of cushions, with a flush of annoyance coloring +her face. Then all at once she looked directly +into Peggy’s eyes, and understood.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I’ll come,” she said, quickly, dropping the +shoes with a thud on the floor, and descending +from the teetering platform.</p> +<p class="pnext">“You haven’t sold those shoes to any one yet,” +reminded Zelda Darmeer; “they still belong to +you.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“That’s so,” assented Gloria abstractedly, and +slipped into them.</p> +<p class="pnext">With their button sides loose and flapping +grotesquely against her silken ankles, she shuffled +with what dignity she might towards the door. +Peggy took her hand from the knob, and Gloria +disappeared into the corridor.</p> +<p class="pnext">There was silence in the room for a second +after she had gone.</p> +<p class="pnext">Then the babble began again, not of bidding +this time, but of conjecture, laughter and jests.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Mystery!” observed Zelda Darmeer, hunching +up her shoulders.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Who <em class="italics">is</em> out there, Peggy?” some one demanded. +“Don’t keep us in suspense.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Yes, who’s there?” cried the others.</p> +<p class="pnext">“The—the matron,” said Peggy, truthfully. +“She came up and——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, she needn’t blame Morning Glory for +this auction,” Zelda Darmeer started up; “I got +up this auction, with two of the people from the +first floor, to sell off our old duds. We didn’t +even know Glory was coming into it, but when +she heard it she seemed to be keen about it, so—but +it isn’t her fault and I’ll tell Mrs. Ormsby +so——”</p> +<p class="pnext">She was forcing her way through the crowd +in good earnest. The six rows of girls were +stepped on and trodden under foot ruthlessly as +she proceeded towards the door.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy again sprang into position as guard. +“Don’t,” she cried out, and then added in a more +natural voice: “You’ve got us all here, now go +on with the auction.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh,” said Zelda, mystified, but amenable, “all +right. I suppose she’ll be back in a minute, and +Ormsby can’t do much anyway.”</p> +<p class="pnext">The auction went merrily forward, but Gloria +didn’t come back.</p> +<p class="pnext">After an hour or so, when Peggy was sure the +woman must have gone and the trying interview, +whatever it was, must be over, she slipped +from the room and went fearfully down the hall +toward Number 20.</p> +<!-- File: 273.png --> +<p class="pnext">She knocked on the door, and entered when a +cold “Come” sounded.</p> +<p class="pnext">Gloria was seated shoeless on the couch, her +red-gold hair in disarray, a frightened, harassed +look in her wide eyes.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Gloria,” stammered Peggy, “do you want to +talk to me?”</p> +<p class="pnext">Gloria shot her a quick glance, searching, appealing +and yet at the same time resentful.</p> +<p class="pnext">“It depends,” said Gloria. “Do you like me +very much?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Very much,” returned Peggy simply.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, then,” flung out Gloria unexpectedly, “I +sha’n’t tell you.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Sha’n’t tell me—because I like you?” cried +Peggy indignantly. “Why, I never heard of such +a thing!”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Do you like me as well as you do Katherine?” +the strange girl pursued.</p> +<p class="pnext">A vision of Katherine, familiar, dear, loyal,—her +own room-mate, rose mistily before Peggy’s +eyes.</p> +<p class="pnext">“No,” she said, truthfully, “of course not.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh,” Gloria answered, “then it isn’t like the +rest. Perhaps I can talk to you anyway. I know +that it was your efforts that made me president, +though, in the first place. Why did you do that?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Because I knew you were the girl for the +place.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“But I wasn’t.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I think you have proved yourself to be all +we hoped, and more.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“But you don’t—know about things.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I know a good deal. The freshmen swear by +you. They would follow your example——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“My example!”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Yes, and they couldn’t have a better pattern, +Gloria.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh, well, you are as bad as the rest. Please +go and leave me. There’s no use. I haven’t +anybody—go quickly, please——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Now, Gloria, you’ve been saying the strangest +things. From your very odd remarks I gather +that if I—didn’t like you much, you’d think that +made me a better confidante. Now, I can’t hate +you even to please you. I like you—awfully +much—and did from the moment you came into +our room at the beginning of the year——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“It has nothing to do with my being president?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Not a thing in the world!”</p> +<p class="pnext">With a little shuddering sob, Gloria reached +for Peggy’s hand, and in an instant her shaking +shoulders were held fast in Peggy’s reassuring +clasp.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Everybody looks up to me so——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Yes,” said Peggy, “and they ought.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“They ought not! Peggy, it wasn’t good for +me, such sudden prominence! At home where I +lived I was just one of a good many. I went +abroad and traveled around and did not have an +opportunity to establish much of a place for +myself with any group. My father and mother +are indulgent, but I’ve often heard my mother +say she wished I didn’t have red hair. And here +the girls are crazy about it——”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy smoothed the radiant hair in question, +while a sudden smile curved her crooked little +mouth.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh, Gloria, child,” she laughed, “I can see +your trouble isn’t going to be such a bugaboo +after all. Go on and tell me now.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“And I’ve never managed my own money——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Now we’re coming to it,” thought Peggy.</p> +<p class="pnext">“And, Peggy, you may not believe it, but we +aren’t so very rich, after all. I know that everybody +says I’m a millionaire, but—we haven’t anything +so very much, really. And I was always +the first one asked to contribute to everything—and +I had to give quite a bit as president——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Ye-es,” mused Peggy, “I never thought of +that side of it.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“And I was expected to wear the most wonderful +clothes—I heard the girls make the remark +that Glory Hazeltine never wore the same evening +dress twice—and—and I was vain. I’ve +seemed indifferent, Peggy, I know, but in my +heart I was vain. I’m just beginning to find myself +out.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“You’ve found yourself out wrong,” mused +Peggy aloud, “and you are no vainer than any +other girl would be in your position and with +your assets.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, then, I’m sorry for the others.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Your story is that you were fiendishly extravagant, +isn’t that all?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“All? Oh, Peggy!”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, most of us have that failing to fight—and +some have reasons to make it harder to win. +But anyway, girlie, that doesn’t seem very awful, +after all. You know how the stores are? The +dressmaking shops run after the popular girls +and beg for their trade and offer them special +prices and say, ‘Oh, my dear, I shouldn’t bother +about paying now—just let it go on the account.’ +And the account seems so elastic—and you just +order a gown or suit whenever you imagine you +need one, and they are forever calling you up +by phone and saying they have something extra +nice——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I don’t know,” said Peggy thoughtfully; “I’ve +found most of the stores in this town wonderfully +lenient. They will carry an account on +and on, and if you pay once a year they’re satisfied. +It must be a great inconvenience to them +to handle such erratic accounts, but they know +the college girls are <em class="italics">all</em> honest and will pay sometime.”</p> +<!-- File: 279.png --> +<p class="pnext">“And I could have paid <em class="italics">sometime</em>—but I dare +not tell dad. He would think running such accounts +was awful. This dressmaking place is +not like the other concerns. They—they hound—you——”</p> +<p class="pnext">Terror filled the baby-blue eyes.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, you should have told somebody when +you found it getting beyond you. I have quite +a bit of money each month, and I don’t know anything +I’d rather——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh, but I shall not need it now.” Gloria even +smiled in her realization. “You see, I’ve sold +everything I had for what it would bring, and—it +made enough, I am thankful to say.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Did you tell the woman?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Not how I got it, no. I endorsed Doris’ +check and handed it over to her as if I had been +a princess——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I know your manner. Was she properly overcome?”</p> +<!-- File: 280.png --> +<p class="pnext">“Well, no. In fact she said, ‘This is but a drop +in the bucket. I’ll have you persecuted.’”</p> +<p class="pnext">“She must have said ‘prosecuted,’ Gloria.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, one or the other, the effect is the same. +She <em class="italics">has</em> been persecuting me.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, and then did you give her the rest?” +asked Peggy, desirous of hearing all of the +story.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Yes, I poured into her hands the full amount +the bidders had given me in return for all my +beautiful kimonos, gowns, waists and underwear.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Sounds like an elevator call in a department +store.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Doesn’t it? But she didn’t know. She +counted it out and returned me two dollars and +said I’d given her too much. I was thankful +there had been enough. Oh, Peggy, Peggy, Mrs. +Ormsby saw it all. She is a brick. But I feel +so mean, so mean——”</p> +<!-- File: 281.png --> +<p class="pnext">“You needn’t. Now you’ve learned, and you +can go around here in sackcloth and ashes and +you will be the ‘freshmen’s handsome president’ +still. That’s what the upperclass girls call you. +So it will come out all right. And nobody guessing +anything.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“You know,” Gloria was laughing through her +tears, “the reason I wouldn’t tell you was because +I couldn’t bear to risk seeing your stare of +disillusionment and loss of faith—in case you +felt about me as some of the others do. I don’t +know why they should, but they act as if I were +sort of superhuman. And all my worry about +your attitude for nothing! I’ve just been plain +Gloria Hazeltine to you all the time, haven’t I, +Peggy? And to Katherine. I’m—kind of glad. +It’s awful to have people holding such ridiculous +ideals about you.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“No, it isn’t. When you’re graduated, you +will look back on it as something very precious—and +very wonderful. It is one of the best +things that can come to any one—such idealization +as you have met with at the hands of our +class. And the only way to do is to live up to it, +to make it as true as truth.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“That’s what I was doing, in a way,” explained +Gloria woefully. “But only to the most material +side of it. I wanted to live up to their ideal +of me in wonderful clothes—in generous subscriptions, +and all that kind of thing.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, young lady, now you right-about face +and live up to the other side of it. They would +follow you and love you if you were as shabby +as our wash-lady. So you can go as simply +dressed as you want, and they will do nothing +but imitate you. It’s a wonderful power you +have, Gloria.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Gloria brushed back the straying hair from +her tear-stained face.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I never thought of that, really, Peggy,” she +said. “Do you suppose there is really a little +something worth while in me to call forth such +feeling on the part of the class?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“A good deal,” said Peggy. “But not—exactly +what they think. You can be even finer than +they believe, though, if you’ll set about it.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I wish I were like you, Peggy,” wailed Gloria.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Like me! Now, Gloria Hazeltine, you know +you don’t. Nobody expects me to be anything +very remarkable. They love me but they have to +love a lot of faults along with me. So they love +me and look <em class="italics">down</em>, and you and look <em class="italics">up</em>.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“You’ve helped, Peggy. Instead of being +sorry and ashamed of myself and realizing that +I’m not as nice as they think, I’m going to turn +that energy to <em class="italics">being</em> as nice. Do you think I can +do it?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I’m not from Missouri—but I cling to their +motto, and I do believe you can fulfill it for me.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“All right, I <em class="italics">will</em> show you. You and all of +them. I’m going to surprise you, Peggy Parsons!”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy left her room with a little sigh.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I’ve come to collect Katherine,” she poked +her head into Zelda Darmeer’s abode and said.</p> +<p class="pnext">Katherine came hastily out to her, and the +two made their way to Ambler House, the several +purchases they had made carried loosely in their +arms.</p> +<p class="pnext">When they were comfortably enwrapped in +the dear, restful, homelike atmosphere of their +own suite, Peggy gave Katherine a sketchy report +of her interview with Gloria.</p> +<p class="pnext">“We’ve had to have our finger in two college +pies of very different flavors, Kathie,” she mused +when the tale was done. “Our first case was a +girl who didn’t have recognition <em class="italics">enough</em>—was +swamped under the weight of indifference and +criticism that met her here. The other has too +much and couldn’t stand it. She fell to pieces +under the burden of worship the girls insisted +on placing on her. It’s funny, isn’t it, Katherine?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Such weeps, such weeps,” laughed Katherine, +not without sympathy in her tone. “If only +everybody in college could have things evened +up for them as we have. We’re neither too high +nor too low. We have a lovely suite—each of +us has a—nice room-mate” (Katherine smiled +as she flung this little inclusive compliment at +herself), “and people like us a good deal, but +not so much that they expect more of us than +is humanly possible.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“But I don’t think we’d be any different in any +situation,” judged Peggy. “Do you know, friend +room-mate, I’m afraid we’re hopelessly commonplace.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I believe you’re right,” Katherine agreed +stoutly, “and I’m glad <em class="italics">of</em> it!”</p> +<!-- File: 286.png --> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="chapter-xivspring-term"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref pginternal" href="#id14">CHAPTER XIV—SPRING TERM</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst">It is worth while having come through months +of winter, full of varying fortunes, to wake at +last in the glory of Spring Term.</p> +<p class="pnext">Spring Term! Those of us who have had it,—what +wouldn’t we give to be able to drift backward +for a moment and feel the wonder of Spring +Term around us again? Sweet with its apple-blossoms, +prodigal of its sunshine, giving away +New England in a strange manner, showing that +she possesses a wildness and radiance of youth +that for three-fourths of the year she denies.</p> +<p class="pnext">For Spring Term is satisfaction. There is +enough of it. When its magic first comes to the +freshman she thinks there will be eons more of +Spring Terms.</p> +<!-- File: 287.png --> +<p class="pnext">But there will not be. Only four of them in a +lifetime—during those years when the newness +of life is fresh, when the power to respond sings +through every girl’s heart its most exultant tune.</p> +<p class="pnext">A more or less bony livery horse, perked up +for spring, with the inevitable runabout, stood +before each campus house’s back door in those +days.</p> +<p class="pnext">When his hirers came down from their rooms, +they undid the knot about the hitching post and, +picking up the reins, slapped them on the beast’s +back and careened away, out into the wonderworld +their Hampton had become.</p> +<p class="pnext">Red canoes began to flash across the bright +and shallow waters of Paradise.</p> +<p class="pnext">Rubber-soled shoes slapped their way to the +tennis courts, and their wearers sat for hours +without any alleviating shade, just to have possession +of a court at last for sixty minutes.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I don’t know <em class="italics">what</em> I’ve ever done to deserve +it,” said Peggy, leaning on her window-sill beside +Katherine, while the two looked out on it +all.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I’ve heard the upperclass girls tell some of +our freshmen when they were homesick, ‘Wait +till Spring Term.’ Now I understand what they +meant,” returned Katherine slowly.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Oh, room-mate, I am glad I belong to such a +world. Wouldn’t it be—wouldn’t it be <em class="italics">terrible</em> +to have Spring Term come along and be a senior—or +an <em class="italics">alum</em>?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Seniors graduate—I suppose they don’t realize +it’s all for the last time—maybe they do, +though. But alums!” Katherine caught her +arm and pressed it in an odd panic. “Do you +suppose we will actually some day be—that?” +she asked with a shudder.</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy laughed out into the sunshine. “Not for +ages and ages. Three years more—why, that’s +almost the same as forever. Katherine,” she +changed the subject suddenly, “I wish we had a +canoe! Watch those adorable ones on Paradise—see +the drops sparkle off that paddle—oh, +Kathie, let’s have one, h’mm?”</p> +<p class="pnext">Katherine was immediately beside herself with +joy.</p> +<p class="pnext">“We can get one second-hand from a girl down +at Weldon House,” she said joyously. “I heard +about it the other day.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Peggy demurred. “I don’t want a second-hand +one,” she declared decidedly. “I want a new one, +that nobody has ever adventured in before us. +I don’t know how to paddle though, do you?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“No, except that the girl at Weldon that wants +to sell this one I mentioned took me out in hers +and sort of advertised it by letting me experiment +with the paddle awhile. I nearly tipped us +over and she was so anxious to have me buy the +boat she never said a word.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Within the next few days Peggy and Katherine wrote +to Canada to see about the prices of +canoes. They labored long and hard in the gymnasium +pool and took the swimming tests that +were necessary for a college permit for canoe +ownership.</p> +<p class="pnext">And then, sad, and sickening disappointment, +they found that freshmen weren’t allowed to own +canoes at all!</p> +<p class="pnext">They left the boat-house with downcast eyes, +but the glory of the day soon made them lift +their gaze, and the first thing they saw was a +joyous crew of their classmates going to sea in +a moist-floored row-boat.</p> +<p class="pnext">In a moment life was as full of promise as +ever and the two plunged down the boat-house +steps and gave their gymnasium numbers in to +charter the first craft of a similar kind that +came along.</p> +<p class="pnext">“The water’s just as—wet, under this,” +laughed Peggy as they finally pushed off.</p> +<!-- File: 291.png --> +<p class="pnext">“And the oars are just as hard to use as a +paddle,” cried Katherine, who had just dropped +one overboard. “Oh, thank you,—yes, we can +manage it all right; yes, <em class="italics">indeed</em>, we’ve had our +swimming test!” This last was to the boat-house +boy who rescued the oar and who seemed overly +concerned for their safe voyage.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Paradise,” breathed Peggy softly, a little +while later, as they drifted under the shade of +the overhanging trees and looked up toward the +glowing green campus and the bright and exotic +botanical gardens of Hampton. “Only the river +is named that—but it’s <em class="italics">all</em> paradise. Oh, Katherine, +Katherine, I think we’ve had a happy +year, don’t you?”</p> +<p class="pnext">But Katherine was not inclined at the moment +to be either poetical or retrospective. “Mercy!” +she cried out sharply, “now I’ve caught my oar +on a root!”</p> +<!-- File: 292.png --> +<p class="pnext">The bright days sped all too fast. A few walks +around Hospital Hill, a climb up Mt. Tom, a +number of evening street-car rides when the girls +sat on the front seat outside the car just back +of the motorman with the wind blowing through +their hair, a jaunt or so to a distant tea-house, +a drive behind one of the bony mares, a few +negligible recitations and examinations—and—poof!—they +were gone like smoke.</p> +<p class="pnext">The freshmen were urged to gather up their +belongings and hasten home as soon as possible +so that the campus rooms would be vacant for +that greatest drama of the spring soon to be +staged at Hampton—the commencement exercises +for the senior class.</p> +<p class="pnext">“And you and I aren’t to see a bit of it,” +grieved Peggy to her room-mate. “I suppose +they are keeping it all a mystery from us until +we get nearer it ourselves. Don’t forget to write +to me often and <em class="italics">often</em> this summer, Kathie,—it +seems strange I’m not going to see you for so +long a time.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Yes, I’ll write, of course, child. I’ll miss you +and I’ll miss Hamp, but I’ll be glad to be home +for a while, at that. My mother wants me and +so do the rest of the dear folks. I’m so eager +to get there I don’t know what to do—and yet +my eyes are all full of tears at leaving, at the +same time.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, we ought to be laughing instead of +crying—neither of us got any conditions or low +grades except——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Now you needn’t remind me of that. I got +that low grade in botany because I couldn’t draw, +not because I didn’t know the lessons. It’s funny +if you have to be an artist for every course——”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Never mind, Kathie, I barely came out on the +safe side of math. I’m going to have a bonfire of +my trigonometry and my old higher algebra as +soon as I get off the train at home. <em class="italics">They</em> shall +never cause anybody else such misery.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I’ll give you my botany book to throw in +with them.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“All right, your botany book is elected to the +conflagration.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“I know one thing that <em class="italics">won’t</em> go in.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“What’s that, my dear?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“A certain number of the <em class="italics">Hampton College +Monthly</em>.”</p> +<p class="pnext">A quick color swept over Peggy’s face.</p> +<p class="pnext">Laughingly she caught her room-mate’s arm +and started with her on an expedition to round +up the freshmen of the house for a last half day +together while they still enjoyed their lowly state.</p> +<p class="pnext">Florence Thomas, Myra Whitewell, Doris +Winterbean, Gertrude Van Gorder, Lilian Moore +and May Jenson they summoned out onto the +campus where they were all content to stroll, +arms intertwined, meeting other groups who +were, like themselves, bidding Hampton farewell +for the summer.</p> +<p class="pnext">It was late afternoon, with the sun streaming +over everything and the houses and trees casting +their long quiet shadows over the grass, when +there drifted by a group of seniors, singing idly +one of their senior songs.</p> +<p class="pnext">The music of it caught Peggy’s heart and she +shut her eyes against the tears. There were +senior celebrities in that group—girls whom she +had known very well by sight—whom she would +never see again. Part of college they had been, +and now they were humming their senior song +for the last time across that dear old campus.</p> +<p class="pnext">How could they bear to leave—when it was to +be shut on the outside of the college gates always—except +as they flitted back through the +years in the doubtful and unenviable role of +alumnæ?</p> +<p class="pnext">With a full heart Peggy was glad she was just +beginning, glad that she would shout for her +class’s red lion emblem at basketball matches and +polo ground for three years more, glad that she +was to return and buy, in the pride of her sophomoreship, +her little red canoe, glad that college +was still brimming over with experiences for +her, as yet untried and unguessed.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Come quickly, Peggy,” cried Gloria Hazeltine, +passing the Ambler girls on a run, “Glee +club’s having a sing over by Seelye Hall. Hurry, +or you’ll miss some of it.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Glad of the opportunity to be with so great a +number of girls once more before vacation, the +Ambler freshmen began to run too, and soon the +voices of the glee club carried to them.</p> +<p class="pnext">Through the crowd that had gathered they +caught glimpses of the singers’ white dresses.</p> +<p class="pnext">“They’re singing ‘Where-oh-where,’” cried +Katherine.</p> +<!-- File: 297.png --> +<p class="pnext">And as the words of the familiar song were +wafted out to them, Peggy and Katherine smiled +their queer pride and happiness into each other’s +eyes, since for the first time the song applied to +<span class="small-caps">Them</span>.</p> +<blockquote><div> +<div class="line-block outermost"> +<div class="line">“Where, oh, where are those verdant freshmen?</div> +<div class="line">Where, oh, where are those verdant freshmen?</div> +<div class="line">Where, oh, <span class="small-caps">Where</span> are those verdant freshmen?</div> +<div class="line">Sa-afe <em class="italics">now</em> in the Soph’more Class!”</div> +</div> +</div></blockquote> +<div class="vspace" style="height: 5em"> +</div> +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 35729 ***</div> +</body> +</html> |