Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore Part 3

"You can make up your minds that I don't intend ever to serve on any reform committees--object, the betterment of the heathen; the Sans, I mean." Jerry made this announcement with a shade of belligerence.

Unconsciously she turned her eyes toward Marjorie.

Marjorie laughed. "I know what you are thinking, Jeremiah," she said, with quiet amazement. "Don't worry. I shall not suggest a reform movement here for the Sans' moral benefit."

"Glad of it. Imagine me laboring patiently with that benighted heathen, Leslie Cairns, to help her to see herself as others see her," grumbled Jerry.

"How much the Sans would enjoy being called the heathen," interposed Katherine Langly.

"It's appropriate. When people behave like savages, they cla.s.s themselves as such. It is a pity that we should be obliged to consider fellow students as enemies!" Jerry continued with vehemence. "Why should petty spite be carried to the point where it is a menace to the whole college? An inst.i.tution for the higher education of young girls in particular should be free of such ign.o.bility."

"Fights and fusses are not conducive to the cultivation of a scholarly mind," Helen Trent agreed with mock solemnity.

"They are not," returned Leila, with a strong Celtic inflection of which she, in her earnestness, was entirely unconscious.

Naturally it evoked laughter. Leila's occasional slight lapses into a brogue were invariably amusing to her chums.

"Laugh at my brogue if you wish, I will not break your bones," she said good-humoredly, making use of an ancient Irish expression. "I am most Celtic when serious. Ah, well! Perhaps it is petty in us even to be discussing the Sans, since we can say nothing good of them."

"That is their fault; not ours," Lucy Warner said incisively.

"The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in their stars, but in themselves, that they are underlings," Vera aptly applied with a change of p.r.o.nouns.

"Quite right, my child. They began it. Not one of us, before the Lookouts came here to Hamilton, raised a voice against the Sans. We know the Lookouts did not. This letter Leslie Cairns wrote to Jerry means war to the knife, all this year. Unless, by good fortune, Miss Remson has won her point and they are not to come back to the Hall. With them out of Wayland Hall we might hope for peace. Put them in other campus houses, they would soon lose track of you girls and turn their bad attentions to or on someone else. Miss Remson has a strong case against them on account of the way they treated Marjorie." Such was Helen's opinion.

Marjorie flushed at mention of the Sans' bad treatment of herself. She glanced at Ronny, who returned the glance with an enigmatical smile.

Leila was staring at Marjorie, her face also a study.

"Girls," Marjorie began, in her clear resonant enunciation, "I shall have to tell you something that only Ronny and Leila know. I told Leila only this afternoon. I asked Miss Remson not to mention the Sans'

treatment of me in her complaint to the president. I had a long talk with her last June before college closed. I asked Ronny if she cared if I did so, because she had gone to the trouble of getting Miss Archer here and spared no pains to help me. All of you helped me, too, but Ronny and Miss Remson did the hardest part. Ronny said I must do whatever my conscience dictated. I felt that I did not wish to have anything to do with their leaving the Hall. If Miss Remson wins or has won her point against them, that's different. Last March, before we held the meeting in the living room, it seemed as if I could not endure being under the same roof with them. That feeling pa.s.sed away. They were so utterly defeated. Miss Remson says she has enough insubordinate and really lawless acts on their part against them to warrant their being transferred to another campus house. She said it had been done occasionally in past years with beneficial results."

"That means the Sans will be at the Hall again this year." Resentment burned briefly in Helen's eyes. Slow to anger, she was slower to forgive.

"We don't know that yet," resumed Ronny. "All this happened last June.

Miss Remson made her complaint then, I believe. She intended to, at any rate. Naturally, we could not ask her about the result, and she said nothing more about it before we went home. I think she will mention it to Marjorie and me. If she does we will ask if we may tell you girls who were interested in the affair of last March."

"We'll know anyway, if the Sans appear bag and baggage," put in practical Lucy.

"Yes; but I mean Miss Remson will tell us the details," returned Ronny.

"Wherever the Sans live on the campus, our best way is to go on about our own affairs regardless of them. I hate to think of Hamilton College as a battle ground. I will fight for my rights, if I must, but I will ignore a worthless enemy as long as I can. We must make our plans for a happier Hamilton, which does not include the Sans. We must create a spirit of unity here that will discount cliques." Marjorie argued with deep earnestness. "If we fight, shoulder to shoulder, for the best, in time we shall attain it. It's our influence that will count. It may not be felt at once; gradually it will be. We need not expect the Sans will change their views. We must put them in the background by being true and kindly and honorable. Then their false standards will count for nothing."

CHAPTER IV.

AN INVITATION TO AN "OFFICE PARTY."

"I'm very, very sleepy, Jeremiah, but I shall try to keep awake for the chimes. It would be unkind not to greet my second friend tonight."

Marjorie made these whimsical statements between yawns.

"Wait for 'em, then, if you can," returned Jerry. "The minute my head touches the pillow I shall be dead to the world. You'll never keep awake. You are yawning now."

"I shall," firmly avowed Marjorie. Tired out by the long railway journey, her eyes would close. Nevertheless she slipped into a silk negligee and curled up on the floor beside a window, to wait for the welcoming voice of her loved friend. The light in the room extinguished, the white moonlight touched her sweet face, lending it a new and wistful beauty. From her post at the window she could see Hamilton Hall, a magnificent gray pile in the moonbeams. The campus stretched away on all sides of it like an enchanted emerald carpet full of lights and shadows.

Marjorie momentarily forgot her desire for sleep as she looked on the silent loveliness which night had enhanced. It filled her with all sorts of vague inspirations which she could sense but not a.n.a.lyze. She could only understand herself as being earnestly desirous of showing greater loyalty to her Alma Mater than ever before.

Then upon her inspirited musings fell the voice of her old, familiar friend, clear and silvery as ever. She sat very still, almost breathlessly, listening to the clarion, welcoming prelude. Followed the measured stroke of eleven. "I am so happy to hear you again, dear friend. Good night." Marjorie rose, and, with a last, sleepy, but loving, glance at the fairylike outdoors trotted to her couch bed. She had scarcely found its grateful comfort before she was fast asleep.

She awoke the next morning with the suns.h.i.+ne pouring in upon her to find Jerry, kimono-clad, standing meditatively beside her couch.

"Why--um--what--where----" she mumbled. "Oh, goodness, Jerry! have I overslept? What time is it? That wall clock stopped last night just after we came in, and I forgot to wind it and set it again." She sat up hastily.

"Be calm," replied Jerry, with a rea.s.suring grin. "It is only five minutes to seven. I was wondering whether I could let you sleep fifteen minutes more. I'd decided to call you when you woke of your own accord."

"I'd rather be up." Marjorie arose with her customary energy and reached for her negligee. "I have a lot to do today. Our trunks will be here by noon, I hope. I want to unpack and be all straightened out before the five o'clock train. Leila and Vera are anxious for us to go with them to meet it. We ought to meet it at any rate. We are both on the soph.o.m.ore committee for welcoming fres.h.i.+es."

Marjorie made this reminder with open satisfaction. During Commencement week, the previous June, the soph.o.m.ore cla.s.s elect had gathered for a special meeting. Its object had been to discuss ways and means of helping entering freshmen at the re-opening of college in the fall.

Marjorie and Jerry had been appointed to it as Wayland Hall representatives, together with two students from Acasia House and three from Silverton Hall.

"I imagine we are the only ones on that committee who have come back to Hamilton," Marjorie continued. "Oh, no; Ethel Laird is on it. Let me see. Grace Dearborn was the other Acasia House girl appointed. Blanche Scott, Elaine Hunter and Miss Peyton were the three from Silverton Hall.

Ronny said none of them had returned."

"I am almost sorry I did not make arrangements to have a car here this year." Jerry looked slightly regretful. "It would come in handy now.

Still, I believe it is more democratic to do without one. Besides, I ought to walk rather than ride. It keeps my weight down. There is Ronny.

She could have a dozen cars here if she wanted them. She won't have one.

She is a real democrat, isn't she?"

Marjorie nodded. "She is the most una.s.suming very rich girl I have ever known. I think if the Sans really knew her circ.u.mstances they would try to take her up, even after what happened last spring."

"They would give it up as too hard a job about five minutes after Ronny found out what they were trying to do," predicted Jerry. "I have an idea that the Sans think we don't amount to much financially. My father is worth a whole lot of money, yet it's not generally known in Sanford. He never tried to keep it a secret, but you see we have never gone in for anything but the quiet family life. So people don't think much about us, except that we are old Sanford residents."

"That is a fine way to live," thoughtfully approved Marjorie. "Well, I couldn't afford to have a car here if I wanted one ever so much. The majority of the girls at Hamilton are probably from families in about the same circ.u.mstances as the Deans. Leila said yesterday that about a third of the girls here last year had their own automobiles. She said she would have been terribly lonely during her freshman year if she had not had her car. She didn't send for it for quite awhile after she entered college. Vera sent for hers, too, and hardly drove it. Most of the freshmen they were friendly with had their own cars, so they seldom needed to drive both cars at the same time."

As she talked, Marjorie had been leisurely but steadily gathering up her toilet accessories preparatory to making her morning ablutions. Jerry, who stood idly watching her chum, suddenly realized that time was on the wing.

"Good gracious!" she exclaimed. "Here I stand like a dummy when I ought to be hiking for the lavatory myself. We'll both be late for breakfast, in spite of my early rising, if we stop to talk any longer. After breakfast we had better 'phone the baggage master about our trunks.

Otherwise they may forget all about us and not deliver them before tomorrow. I haven't the trusting faith in baggage masters that I might have."

In the lavatory they encountered Muriel and Ronny. Lucy had already preceded them and gone to pay Katherine a morning call. Presently the Five Travelers and Katherine trooped down the wide stairway to breakfast, their bright, youthful faces and clear, laughing tones lending new life to staid Wayland Hall. At the foot of the stairway they met Miss Remson and hailed her with a concerted "Good morning."

Her small, shrewd eyes softened, as she received the gay salute with a smile and returned it. Her liking for this particular s.e.xtette of students was very sincere.

"Girls," she began abruptly, her smile fading, to be replaced by an expression of sternness, "Will you come into my office after breakfast?

I have something to show you and also something to tell you." Her lips tightened to grimness as she made this announcement. "That's all." With a little nod she pa.s.sed them and hurried on up the staircase.

As she had been busily engaged with the affairs of the Hall on their arrival of the preceding afternoon, they had had opportunity only to greet her and be a.s.signed to their old rooms and places at table.