Marjorie Dean, College Freshman

“Did you, indeed,” Natalie returned somewhat hastily. It was beginning to dawn upon her that she did not in the least like any of these freshmen. They were entirely too independent to suit her. Recalling that which she had been aching to ask when Marjorie had asked her if she were Miss Weyman, she now questioned almost rudely: “How did you know who I was when you saw me at the station?”

“We did not know who you were then,” explained Muriel. “We merely saw a gray car full of girls. Miss Macy said it looked like a French car. Afterward, we met a delightful sophomore, Miss Trent. In talking with her, she mentioned that you had gone to the station to meet us.”

“Oh, yes. Miss Trent. She was on the veranda when we left here.” She looked toward Miss Cairns for corroboration. The latter nodded slightly and made an almost imperceptible gesture with her left hand.

“We are so sorry we missed you, at any rate.” Miss Vail took it upon herself to do a share of the apologizing. At the same time she rose from her seat on the couch bed. “How do you like the table here?” she queried condescendingly. “We find it better than last year. Remson has a new cook now. She can see the other cook silly when it comes to eats.”

A peculiar silence ensued as Miss Vale’s high-pitched tones ceased. It had been forced upon the Lookouts to defer an opinion of said “table” until the next day. They were certainly at present in no position to make a statement.

“As we have been here so short a time we can’t pass an opinion on a thing at Wayland Hall yet.” Marjorie answered for her friends, not daring to look toward any of them.

“Naturally not,” agreed Miss Cairns suavely. “Mind if we leave you now? We really must go, Nat. We had our dinner at Baretti’s tonight. Some of the Sans are waiting at the Colonial for us. We are going on there for dessert.”

“Yes, the gang will wonder what has become of us.” Natalie now got to her feet. She favored the Lookouts with a smile, which was intended to be gracious, but utterly lacked sincerity. Her pals already at the door, she joined them. This time there was no handshaking. While it would not have been necessary, a truly sincere bevy of girls would have undoubtedly shaken hands and enjoyed that act of fellowship.

“Thank you for remembering us at the station today, even though we did miss connections. We appreciate your coming to call on us this evening, too. Freshmen are very lowly persons at college until they have won their spurs on the field of college honors. We shall try not to be an annoyance to our sophomore sisters.”

Marjorie tried conscientiously to put aside all trace of irritation as she made this little speech. She realized that her chums had left it to her to handle the situation. While they had all exchanged a certain amount of conversation with the visitors, they had run out from sheer lack of sympathy. The callers had aroused belligerence in Jerry, Ronny and Muriel. Lucy Warner had fairly congealed with dislike. Marjorie had alone stayed on an even keel.

Perhaps the unfailing courtesy of the tired, hungry lieutenant made some slight impression on the departing sophomores. Halfway out the door as Marjorie answered, Natalie Weyman had the grace to say: “You really haven’t anything to thank us for, Miss Dean. Wait until we do something for you, worth while. We will drop in on you again when we have more time. Good night.”

She had been on the point of offering her hand at the last, stirred out of her usual self-centeredness by Marjorie’s gentle manners. Then she had looked again at the freshman’s exquisite face, and fellowship had died before birth. Natalie Weyman was considered a beauty at home, in New York City, and at Hamilton College. She had at last seen a girl whom she considered fully as pretty as herself. As a result she was now very, very jealous.

CHAPTER XIII. – ON THE TRAIL OF DINNER

“Can you beat it? Uh-h-h-h!” Jerry dropped with angry force into the arm chair which Natalie Weyman had so recently vacated. “What was the matter with those girls, anyway? How could they help but know that we hadn’t had our dinner? It was after six o’clock when we reached here. It took time to get hold of Busy Buzzy and be assigned to our rooms, and more time to make ourselves presentable. Why couldn’t they have figured out that much? Next step in our process of deduction; they came to the door about twenty minutes past seven. Now how could we have had time to go down stairs, eat our dinner and be back in our room again?”

“The answer is, they didn’t do any deducing,” declared Muriel. “I suppose they simply chose their own time to call.”

“A very inconvenient time, I must say,” grumbled Jerry. “Here’s another point that needs clearing up. If that Miss Weyman drove her car down to the station, expecting to bring the five of us back in it, why was it cram-jam full of girls?”

“They may have been friends of hers who merely wanted to ride down to the station, Jerry,” surmised Ronny. “Why trouble your brain about our callers now? Let us think about where we are going to have our dinner. The dining room is closed, of course. We shall have to call on the hospitable Baretti for sustenance. He’s hospitable if his restaurant is still open. Otherwise, I don’t think much of him.”

“First thing to do is to find out where he holds forth. I hope the place is not far from here. I’m so hungry and so tired.” Marjorie spoke with a tired kind of patience that ended in a yawn. “We had better start out at once. We’ll probably find some one downstairs who can direct us.”

The others no less hungry, the Five Travelers lost no more time in getting downstairs, preferring to leave the subject of their recent callers until a time more convenient for discussion. At the foot of the stairs they encountered two girls about to ascend.

“Good evening. Will you please direct us to Baretti’s?” It was Ronny who asked the question in a clear, even tone that, while courteous, was so strictly impersonal as to be almost cool. Having just encountered a trio of girls whom she had instantly set down as snobs, Ronny had donned her armor.

“Good evening.” Both girls returned the salutation. The taller of the two, a sandy-haired young woman with sleepy gray eyes, a square chin and freckles now became spokesman. “You will find Baretti’s about a square from the west wall of the campus. Turn to your right as you pass out the main gate.”

“There is the Colonial, too, about two squares beyond Baretti’s,” informed the other, a pretty girl in a ruffled gown of apricot organdie that accentuated the black silkiness of her hair which lay off her low forehead in little soft rings.

“Thank you.” Ronny modified the crispness of her tone a trifle. “We shall not care to go further than Baretti’s tonight. May I ask what time the restaurant closes?”

“Ten o’clock.” The gray-eyed girl seemed on the point of volunteering a remark. She half-opened her lips, then closed them almost tightly as if repenting of the impulse.

With a second “Thank you” a shade cooler than the first, Ronny concluded the brief interview. The four Lookouts had walked toward the Hall door, which stood open, and there paused to wait for her. Ordinarily, Ronny would have addressed the strangers with a certain graciousness of manner which was one of her charms. She had relaxed a little from her first reserve on the strength of their apparent willingness to direct her to Baretti’s. She had not missed, however, the gray-eyed girl’s deliberate checking of her own purposed remark. While she forebore to place an adverse construction upon it, nevertheless it had annoyed her. Trace of a frown lingered between her dark brows as she joined the others.

“I noticed you didn’t get very chummy with that pair,” greeted Jerry. “Just so you located our commissary department, Baretti. He’s our star of hope at present.” Jerry led the way across the veranda and down the steps.

“I know the way to Baretti’s, never fear,” Ronny assured. “It is one square from the west wall of the campus. Just how much of a walk that means, we shall see. It may be anywhere from a quarter to three-quarters of a mile to the west wall. We turn to our right as we go through the gateway.”

“We will have to walk it, even if it is a mile,” decreed Muriel. “I’d walk two miles for something to eat. I am about as hungry as I can ever remember of being. Our introduction to Hamilton! Good night!”

“I can’t get it through my head that we are actually students at Hamilton College,” declared Muriel. “I feel more as though I had just arrived at a summer hotel where people came and went without the slightest interest in one another.”

“It is missing dinner at the Hall that makes it seem so. If we had had a fair chance at the dining room we would have felt more – ” Jerry paused to choose a word descriptive of their united feelings. “Well, we would have felt cinched to Hamilton. That nice Miss Trent helped us, of course, but she faded away and disappeared the minute she turned us over to Miss Remson. I don’t believe we can be, what you might call, fascinating. No one seems to care to linger near us. Wouldn’t that be a splendid title for one of those silly old popular songs? ‘No one cares to linger near,’ as sung by the great always off the key vocalist, Jerry Macy. Wh-ir-r! Bu-z-z-z! What has happened to you swe-e-etart, that you do not linger near-r-r? I am lonele-e-e – ”

Jerry’s imitation of a phonograph rendering a popular song of her own impromptu composition ended suddenly. Muriel placed a defensive hand over the singer’s mouth. “Have mercy on us, Jeremiah,” she begged. “You are at Hamilton now. Try to act like some one. That’s the advice I heard one of the mill women give her unruly son at the nursery one day last winter.”

“I trust no one but ourselves heard you,” was Veronica’s uncomplimentary addition, delivered in a tone of shocked disapproval.

“I don’t blame anyone for not caring to linger near such awful sounds.” Lucy’s criticism, spoken in her precise manner, produced a burst of low-keyed laughter. It appeared to amuse Jerry most of all.

By this time they had passed through the gateway, flanked by high, ornamental stone posts, and were following a fairly wide, beaten footpath that shone white in the light shed by the rising moon. On their right hand side, the college wall of matched gray stone rose considerably above their heads.

“This wall must be at least ten feet high and about three or four thick.” Jerry calculatingly appraised the wall. “It extends the whole around the campus, so far as I could tell by daylight. I was noticing it as we came into the grounds today.”

“We are not so far from the end of it now.” Marjorie made the announcement with a faint breath of relief. “You can see the corner post from here. I think it about a quarter of a mile from the gate.”

“And only a square from it lies our dinner, thank goodness! Let’s run.” Muriel made a pretended dash forward and was promptly checked by Jerry. “You wouldn’t let me sing. Now you need a clamp. I’ll give you a piece of advice I heard last winter at that same old nursery: ‘Walk pretty. Don’t be runnin’ yourse’f all over the place.’”

“There is Baretti’s across the road.” Marjorie pointed down the road a little, to where, on the opposite side, two posts, topped by cluster electric lights, rose on each side of a fairly wide stone walk that was the approach to the restaurant. It stood fully a hundred feet from the highway, an odd, one-story structure of brown stone, looking like an inn of a bygone period. In sharp contrast to the white radiance of the guide lights at the end of the walk, the light over the doorway was faint and yellow, proceeding from a single lamp, set in a curious wrought-iron frame, which depended from a bell-like hood over the door.

Through the narrow-paned windows streamed the welcome glow of light within. It warmed the hearts of the Five Travelers even as in departed days it had gladdened the eyes of weary wayfarers in search of purchased hospitality.

“What an odd old place!” Lucy Warner cried out in admiration. “It is like the ancient hostelries one reads of. I wonder if it has always been an inn. It must be considerably over a hundred years old.”

“I suppose it is. A good deal of the country around here is historic, I believe. You remember the bulletin said Brooke Hamilton was a young man at the time of La Fayette’s visit to America. That was in 1824. He and La Fayette met and the Marquis was so delighted with him that he invited him to join his suite of friends during his tour of the country. I wish it had said more about both of them, but it didn’t,” finished Marjorie regretfully.

“Perhaps the old Marquis de la Fayette and young Brooke Hamilton walked down the very road we walked tonight and supped at the same old inn,” Veronica said, as they approached the two wide, low steps that formed the entrance to the restaurant.

“Quite likely they did,” agreed Jerry. The foremost of the party, she opened the heavy, paneled door of solid oak.

A faint, united breath of approbation rose from the visitors as they stepped into a room of noble proportions. It was almost square and as beautiful an apartment as the girls had ever seen. Beam ceiling, wainscoting and floor were all of precisely the same shade and quality of dark oak. So perfectly did every foot of wood in the room match that it might have all come from one giant tree, hewn out and polished by gnomes. There was something about its perfection that suggested a castle hall of fairy lore. On each side of the room were three high-backed, massive oak benches. The tops of these were decorated by a carved oak leaf pattern, the simplicity of which was the design of genius itself. The heavy, claw-legged oak tables, oval in shape and ten in number, all bore the same pattern, carved in the table top at about two inches from the edge. There was no attempt at placing the tables in rows. They stood at intervals far enough apart to permit easy passage in and out among them. Yet each table seemed fitted into its own proper space. Moved two inches out of it, the whole scheme of artistic regularity would have been spoiled.

“It’s evident that Signor Baretti never furnished this room,” commented Ronny in a voice just above a whisper. “I never saw anything like it, before! never! Lead me to a seat at one of those beautiful tables.”

“Yes; do let us sit down as soon as we can,” echoed Muriel eagerly. “I am dying to look and look and look at everything in this adorable old room. I am glad it is almost empty. We can sit and stare and no one will be here to resent it.”

This time it was Muriel who took the lead and made a bee-line for a table at the far end of the room on the right. The others followed her, quickly slipping into the oak chairs, each with its spade-shaped, high back and fairly broad seat. That these chairs were built for comfort as well as ornament the Lookouts soon discovered.

“Oh, the joy of this comfy chair,” sighed Ronny. “It actually fits my back. That’s more than I can say of those train seats. I am going to turn in the minute I am back at Wayland House. I am so tired, and a little bit sleepy.”

Marjorie and Ronny shared one menu, while each of the others had one to herself. After the usual amount of comment and consultation, all decided upon consommé, roast chicken, potatoes au gratin, and a salad, with dessert and coffee to follow. Their order given to a round-faced, olive-tinted Italian girl, the Five Travelers were free to look about them for a little.

Directly across from them at a table which formed a wide obtuse angle with theirs were four girls. While the quartette had appeared to be occupied in eating ices on the entrance into the restaurant of the Sanford party, no move of the strangers had been lost on them. Four pairs of young eyes covertly appraised the newcomers. That the Five Travelers interested the other girls was clearly proven by the frequency of their glances, discreetly veiled. Deep in the exploration of the menu, the Sanford quintette were unaware that they had attracted any special attention from the diners at the one other occupied table in the room. Nevertheless, while they were busy with the ordering of their dinner, they were being subjected to a most critical survey.