Peggy Parsons a Hampton Freshman Part 17

"I'm going to dress as carefully as I _can_," said Peggy, scrubbing her happy face until it shone.

"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.

After many little pats on ruffles and curls Peggy and Katherine were dressed at last, and stood before their mirrors almost satisfied.

Then Katherine went downstairs to see if the girls needed any last help with the decorations.

Hazel Pilcher stuck her head in at Peggy's door.

"Ready?" she called.

Peggy swung from the mirror and bowed to her, laughing.

"As ready as I can be," she said. "Hazel, you look simply wonderful. You look-like somebody in the movies or on the stage."

"Well," said Hazel easily. "_You_ might look prettier than you do, Peggy; you don't make the most of yourself."

Peggy turned her disappointed gaze back to the mirror.

"Come down to my room and I'll just fix you up a little," said Hazel.

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.

So Peggy was inclined to be doubtful of the value of her a.s.sistance, but Hazel urged her, so she finally went down to her room.

Here, Hazel uncorked several delightful-looking little jars.

"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.

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.

"And now," said Hazel, in a matter-of-fact way, "your lips."

And Peggy watched fascinatedly in a hand-gla.s.s while the dainty, scented little red pencil made its crimson imprint on her mouth.

"And-just a touch on your cheeks," said Hazel again.

"No," said Peggy, "that would be too absurd; I won't--"

"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 _recognize_ you, you know, Peggy, infant."

"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.

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.

"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.

With the handsome Amherst contingent at her heels, Peggy carried her small curly head high while a pardonable pride shone in her eyes.

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.

"Look what Peggy Parsons has with her," murmured Doris Winterbean to Florence Thomas, while the small princess advanced, chatting with her subjects.

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.

"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."

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 cla.s.s-"the best cla.s.s--" Peggy leaned over and whispered it, so that the girls who were not members of it shouldn't hear,--"the best cla.s.s that had ever come to Hampton." Miss Pilcher was the house entertainer, and could play anything that was written, for a piano.

Hearing themselves thus praised, the girls took heart and laughed happily up into the faces of the men as the music began.

"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.

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.

"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."

"You mean I've been kicking you,-did I hit your foot, really?"

Bud was contrition itself.

"N-no, certainly you didn't; how could you when they went so fast? I mean you have been making a goal with me."

"I hope the goal is a long way off," laughed the football man.

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?"

"Man or woman?" asked Peggy.

"Woman," he answered.

"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."

Noticeably slackening his pace, he glanced again toward the matron.

"Still looks ominous," he warned.

"You must come over and meet her-but let's go very slowly for a while, till the atmosphere clears a little."

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.

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.

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.

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.