Jane Allen, Junior Part 2

The haunted look, so foreign to the face of Jane, shaped itself again.

"Is she--did you hurt her?"

"I hope so," dared Dozia. "It would be a charity to send her home.

Her name is s.h.i.+rley Duncan and she's from some country town. But Jane, if she gets really horrid, I mean more horrid than she is now, I want you to stand by me. That's what I came for."

"All right Dozia," said Jane, "but I hope it won't have to go as far as that."

"Me too," responded the carefree Dozia. "But there's no telling what s.h.i.+rley may do."

For some moments after Dozia glided out Jane stood there, her gray eyes almost misty.

"Of all the tragedies!" she was thinking. Then with a jerk she pulled herself up. "But I guess I can handle it," she declared finally, and when she succeeded in rousing Judith no one would have suspected anything new amiss.

Jane Allen might have worries but they could not dominate her. Sunny Jane, with sunny hair and gray eyes, was no mope. It would take fight to conquer this new condition, she realized, but Jane could fight, and her dreams on this first night back in college were strangely confused with school-day battles.

More than once she awoke with a start, as if some danger were impending, and a sense of uneasiness possessed her. Each time it seemed more difficult to fall back into slumber, and all this was new, indeed, to happy Jane.

"Daddy!" she murmured. "It's because of daddy's----"

She was finally sound asleep.

CHAPTER III

THE MISFIT FRESHMAN

Yes, they were back in college and work was waiting. This thought invaded confused brains and stood out like a corporal of the guard, shouting orders into lazy ears on Wellington campus next morning.

Jane Allen threw first one slipper and then another at Judith Stearns' bed across the room from her own. But still Judith's hand ignored the hair brush on the chair at her elbow.

"Judy," called Jane, "the warning bell has warned. Turn down the corner on that dream and wake up." Each word of this climbed a note in tone until the last was almost a shout. Then Judith's hand moved to Jane's slipper on her own (Judith's) forget-me-nots, the little floral pieces that adorned a very dainty garment with the embroidery on Judith's chest--arms and neck ignored in the pattern.

"What say?" she muttered sleepily.

"Up," answered Jane. "Ever hear that little word before?"

"Yep, pony riding," drawled Judith. "Up, up, one, two, three, go!"

and at this Judith sprang up with such vigor and volume (in point of scope) that she sprang over the neighboring bed and swooped down on Jane's hat box! Her black hair now fell fearlessly over the embroidered forget-me-nots, and her bare feet shot in their usual skating strike.

"Good thing that hat box is the new kind," commented Jane, "but even at that it will hardly serve as a divan. Still, I am glad you are up. Do you know where you are, Judy Stearns? And what you are expected to do today?"

"All of those things and additional horrors are seething through my poor brain," moaned Judith, "but a moment ago I was having a fast set of tennis with adorable Jack St. John--Sanzie they call him.

Have I told you about him, Jane darling?" Judith gathered herself and her feet up from the black enameled box and glided over to her own corner.

"No, Judy, I do not recall Sanzie," replied Jane, who was already armed with soap and towel for the lavatory. "But keep the story. I shouldn't like to get interested in boy tennis just now. We must forget--" proclaimed Jane in tones so dramatic a poet calendar on the wall trembled in the vocal waves. "Forget! forget----" and Jane was outside the door with a sweeping wave of her big fuzzy towel and a rather alarming thrust of her fist full of soap.

"Ye-eah," groaned Judith, "forget is the word, Sanzie and tennis."

She glanced at the tiny clock on a shelf of the bracket type. It was Jane's idea the clock should not be cluttered with surroundings.

"Gee-whiz! It is late, and this the first day. Glad the others on this corridor are all nice and punctual."

In bathrobe and slippers Judith soon followed Jane down the long hall. Neither dallied long in the plunge, for Judith was wide awake now, and presently, after dressing and patting herself and belongings into place, she confronted Jane with this: "I heard Dozia Dalton last night. And I know there will be trouble about the farmer girl. Jane, tell me, is she the scholars.h.i.+p?"

"Yes," almost gasped Jane the irreproachable. "And to think that I, in any way, should be responsible for bringing her to college!"

"But you are not, Janie dear," soothed Judith. "That your father should give this college a scholars.h.i.+p each year is a n.o.ble thing, and how can you tell who may win it? That girl is--well, a bit raw,"

she ground her mouth around the word, "but we have nothing to do with that. She doesn't belong among the juniors, and just leave it to little Judy to steer her off. Don't go trying any uplift; just cut her dead and watch her wilt. From the ashes there may arise a nice little green thing, even if it is of the common garden variety of onion. Now Jane, you have got to do exactly that. Keep s.h.i.+rley Duncan on her own grounds. Shoo her out of junior haunts."

"You are right, Judy. I have been tortured with the idea that I would have to play fairy G.o.dmother to that--that 'hoodlum.'

Honestly, did you ever see so ordinary a girl in Wellington?"

"Never. But then she may be a genius. I have read such descriptions of them. There's the first breakfast bell. Smile now and disappoint the horde. They think you have been crossed in love and the old maid depression has settled upon you. You acted that way yesterday,"

teasingly.

Jane's laugh pealed out at this. It was like ragging a down scale, that rippling crescendo, and Judith needed no other a.s.surance of her friend's good humor.

But the day's tasks left little time for trifles. College work is serious and exacting, each day's programme being carefully and even scientifically marked out to make the round year's schedule complete. Jane and Judith, juniors, with a reputation made in their previous years, "buckled" down to every period with that intelligence and determination for which both had been credited.

Everything was so delightful and the autumn air so full of promise!

Jane could not find a true reason for the haunting fear that seemed to follow her in the person of that crude country girl, who somehow had won the Alien scholars.h.i.+p.

It was in free time late the next afternoon that this fear took definite shape. Jane and her contingent were leaving the study hall when s.h.i.+rley Duncan brushed up through their arm linked line.

She was garbed in a baronet satin skirt of daring hue with an overblouse of variegated georgette. This as a school frock! At first glance Jane almost recoiled, then the possibility of delayed baggage suggested itself and softened her frown.

"Don't notice her," whispered faithful Judith.

Jane's glance just answered when the unpopular freshman broke through the line, grasped Jane's hand and deliberately forced a folded slip of paper into it. Then, with a mocking smile that ran into an audible sneer, she turned and sped away. Her awkward gait and frank romping so close to Wellington Hall brought questioning glances from the line of juniors.

"What's that, Jane Allen?" asked Janet Clarke good-naturedly. "I hope you are not doing uplift for anything like that this year?"

"The merry little mountain maid," mocked Inez Wilson, doing a few skips and a couple of jumps in demonstration.

"How on earth did she ever make Wellington?" demanded the aristocratic Nettie Brocton, disapproval spoiling her leaky dimples.

"Girls, you are horrid!" declared Judith to the rescue. "You all know the freaks love Jane. It's her angel face," and Judith playfully stroked the cheek into which streaks of bright pink threatened admission of guilt--that Jane really knew the uncouth country girl.

"She's a stranger to me," said Jane truthfully, "but in spite of that I must respect her confidence." The crumpled note was thereat securely tucked into the pocket of Jane's blouse.

Winifred Ayres t.i.ttered outright, but the advent of Dozia Dalton furnished a welcome interruption.

"Girls," she panted, "what ever do you think? Dol Vincez, our dangerous adversary of last year, runs the beauty shop beyond our gate! Can you comprehend the audacity?"

"We can when you say Dolorez," replied Jane. "Do you actually mean to say she has set up the College Beauty Shop at our very door?"