Marjorie Dean College Freshman Part 3

"_Surprised?_ Well, yes; _quite_ a lot."

The familiar voice that gave utterance to this pithy affirmation proceeded from the doorway leading into the reception hall. It electrified the placid trio at the table. Three heads turned simultaneously at the sound. Marjorie made a dive for the doorway.

"Jeremiah!" she exclaimed, with a joyful rising inflection on the last syllable. "Wherever did you come from? This is my third splendid surprise today. You can see for yourself who's here. You've had one surprise, at least." Marjorie clung to Jerry with enthusiastic fervor.

"I have, I have," agreed Jerry, putting two plump arms around Ronny, who had come forward the instant she grasped the situation. "Now how in the world do you happen to be here, mysterious Mystery? You are the last person I thought would be on the job to welcome me to our city."

"How long have _you_ been here? That is what I should like to know,"

Marjorie interposed, patting the hand she held between her own.

"Long enough to hear all you said about me. I'm simply furious. No; I am perfectly delighted, I mean. Now what do I mean?" Jerry showed her white even teeth in a genial grin.

"We didn't say anything about you that would either delight you or make you furious. I know you didn't hear a single thing we said, except maybe the last sentence. How did you get in? Not by the front door or we would have heard the bell. Now confess: Delia let you in by the back door."

Marjorie waved a triumphant finger before Jerry's nose as she made this conjecture.

"I'll never tell how I came in. No; that won't do, Geraldine. You must try to be civil to these Deans. They may ask you to stay a few days and you--" Jerry paused significantly, then sidled up to Mrs. Dean. "I'm so pleasant to have around," she simpered. "You will positively adore me when you get used to my ways." She put both arms around Mrs. Dean and gave her a resounding kiss.

"You may stay as long as you please, and the longer you stay the better pleased we shall be." Her invitation thus extended, Mrs. Dean was now a.s.sisting Jerry to remove her long coat of tan covert cloth. "How did you manage to keep so dry, Jerry?" she inquired. "It has been raining steadily all evening. Veronica came to us thoroughly drenched."

"The beautiful truth is, Delia hung my coat in front of the range and dried it. I had an umbrella, too, and I ran like a hunter the minute I left the taxi. I made the driver stop at the corner below the house and I ducked in at the side gate. I landed on your back porch just as Delia was going to serve the dessert. I asked her not to tell you I was here.

It's a great wonder she didn't laugh and give me away."

"I noticed she had a broad smile on her face when she came into the dining room. I thought it was in honor of Ronny. Here she was aiding and abetting _you_, Jeremiah Macy! She knows I have been anxiously waiting for you to come home. Just wait till I see her!"

Marjorie chuckled in antic.i.p.ation of her interview with Delia. The latter would regard Jerry's stealthy arrival as a huge joke in which she had played an important part.

"I thought a relative had come to see you," Jerry continued. "Delia said it was a young lady from away off. That's all she seemed to want to tell me. I didn't quiz her. It was none of my business."

"That is the time Delia fooled you," Ronny a.s.serted. "Delia knows me.

She wanted to surprise you, too."

"All right for Delia. Wait until _I_ interview her for keeping so quiet about you." All of which pointed to a lively session for Delia. "Anyhow I had some cherry pudding with whipped cream. I saw it the minute I struck the kitchen. I hoped it wouldn't give out before it got around to me. There was enough, though, for Delia and me. We emptied the dish."

"All this going on behind my back!" Mrs. Dean made an unsuccessful effort to look highly displeased. "I shall have to discipline the commissary department for smuggling vagrants into the house under my very nose. Not to mention distributing pudding with a free hand!"

"Vagrants! She means me." Jerry rolled her eyes as though greatly alarmed. "I see I'll have to swallow the insult. If I make a fuss I may be put out."

"Promise good conduct in future and we'll try to overlook the past,"

Marjorie graciously conceded.

"Thank you, kind lady! I wasn't always like this. Once I had a home--"

Jerry gave vent to a loud snivel. "I lost it. Now all I can say is:

"Into your house some tramps must fall, Some Deans must be made aweary."

Sobbing out this pathetic sentiment, Jerry endeavored to lean on Marjorie, with disastrous results. They were saved from toppling over by landing with force against Veronica.

"Here, here!" expostulated Ronny. "Don't add a.s.sault and battery to vagrancy. Have some respect for me. I'm a real guest. I arrived by the front door."

"Excuse me and blame Marjorie for being an unstable prop. Try to regard me as your friend." Jerry leered confidently at Ronny.

"I'll think it over. You are the funniest old goose ever. I'll try to prevail upon the Deans to let you stay."

"Oh, I think I can manage them," Jerry returned in a confident stage whisper.

"Yes, we are going to be kind to our tramp now." Marjorie gently propelled Jerry to the table and shoved her, unresisting, into a chair.

"You had dessert. Now you had better have the rest of the dinner. While Delia is getting it ready you can tell us how it all happened. How did you get away from the beach before your folks were ready to come home?"

"I teased Mother good and hard and she finally said 'yes.' It took me about two hours to pack and wish the beach good-bye. The folks will be home Sat.u.r.day. I'll have three whole days with you girls. I hadn't figured on the distinguished presence of Miss Veronica Browning Lynne."

"Neither had I," smiled Marjorie. "The best part of Ronny's visit is that it is going to last until the very day I start for Hamilton. Ronny is going to Hamilton, too, Jerry."

"Did I get that right?" Jerry placed an a.s.sisting hand to one ear. "Say it again, will you? Hooray!" Jerry picked up a dessert fork and waved it jubilantly. "The three of us; and Muriel Harding as a fourth staunch supporter! We can teach the Hamilton faculty how to act and revolutionize the whole college. Oh, yes! Lucy Warner makes a fifth.

Ummm! She will have to be supported until she gets on her ear. Then she'll freeze solid and support herself."

Neither Ronny nor Marjorie could refrain from laughing at this view of Lucy. It was so precisely like her.

"Thank goodness there won't be Mignon to reform." Jerry sighed exaggerated relief. "Any more sieges like the four years' siege of Mignon ahead of me, and I'd stay at home and go to night school for a change. Talk about the wars of the Trojans! They were simple little sc.r.a.ps compared with the rows we've had at Sanford High with various vandals."

Delia appearing from the kitchen with a heavily laden tray, the three girls greeted her with a concerted shout. Not in the least dismayed, she only beamed more broadly, as each of the trio attempted to take her to task, and refused to commit herself.

After Jerry had made a substantial repast, she was triumphantly conducted to her room by Ronny and Marjorie.

"Have you a kimono or negligee in your bag, Jerry? If you have, put it on and be comfy. If you haven't, speak now and you can have one of mine.

Captain will be on guard duty in the living room this evening. If any one calls they won't have the pleasure of seeing us. We are going to have an old-time talking bee in my house. Come along as soon as you are ready."

"I have a kimono in my traveling bag. It has probably acquired about a thousand wrinkles by this time," returned Jerry. "Wrinkled or no, I shall hail it with joy. You may expect me at your house in about fifteen minutes."

"All right," Marjorie called over her shoulder, as she and Ronny left Jerry. "Don't be longer than that. Remember we have weighty matters to discuss this evening. If we began early enough we may have the affairs of the universe settled before midnight."

When within the prescribed fifteen minutes Jerry joined her chums, it was their own personal affairs that came up for discussion. Enough had happened during the summer in their own little sphere to keep them talking uninterruptedly all evening.

"There is one thing we must do before we leave Sanford for college and that is pa.s.s the Lookout Club on to the senior cla.s.s at Sanford High.

You know we planned to do so when we organized the club, Jeremiah,"

Marjorie reminded.

"That's so," Jerry agreed, "but how do we go about it? If we just hand it to the senior cla.s.s, they may not carry it on as we would wish them to. It was really our own little private club. I'm not crazy to continue it as a sorority."

"We ought to, Jerry, just the same. The Lookouts have been a credit to Sanford High, and the influence we have tried to exert should be carried on each year by fifteen seniors." Marjorie spoke with conviction. "I have thought a good deal about it this summer. I believe the best way for us to do is for each of the Lookouts to propose the name of one member of the present senior cla.s.s. As soon as the other girls come home we will have a meeting. The names of the candidates can be written on slips of paper and read out to the club in turn. If any one of us objects to another's choice, she must say so and state her reason. If it is sufficient, the name will be dropped and the Lookout who proposed it may propose another."

"That's a good idea. While we can be trusted, I hope not to pick lemons, slackers and s.h.i.+rkers, still it makes our choice surer to have it approved by the gang. So long as we are to be the ones to do the choosing, I begin to see light." Jerry had begun to show more enthusiasm.

"It's really organizing what one might call a new Lookout chapter. We are the charter members and will continue to run our chapter as we like.

Next year the girls we choose will select their fifteen members for a new chapter, and so on, indefinitely," said Veronica.

"We need these new girls, Jerry," Marjorie earnestly pointed out. "We can't look after the day nursery and go to college, too. While we have hired help there, and Miss Allison, you know, is always ready to do all she can to help keep it running smoothly, we need the personal influence of the seniors at the nursery. There should be two club members to take their turn each day from four to six, as we did."

"Who has been looking after that part of it this summer?" Jerry demanded abruptly, her keen eyes on Marjorie. "I wrote and asked you that and you never answered my question. You are the one who has probably been making a slave of yourself at that same nursery while the rest of us have been having a lovely time."