Marjorie Dean, Post-Graduate

“I’d started for Silverton Hall to see Robin and Phil. Phil has a great idea she wants to tell Robin and me about. Now the great idea will have to wait. I’m going to a pow-wow in Gussie’s room.”

“No one invited me to a pow-wow.” Ronny turned reproachful eyes on Gussie. “I enjoy pow-wows far more than Marjorie does.”

“I invite you to one this minute. Excuse my seeming neglect. I’ve been at the Hall just long enough to set down my luggage and start out to find Marjorie. Double delighted to find your Highness, too.” Gussie made Ronny an exaggerated, respectful bow. Now sure of Ronny’s approval she entered blithely into the spirit of Veronica’s teasing remarks.

“Will you ask Jerry and Lucy to come and meet the gang in my room?” Gussie was in a pleasant flutter of excitement as the trio reached the second floor of the Hall. “Flossie went for Leila and Vera. They’re probably at the party now.”

“I’ll answer for Jerry, and trot her to the pow-wow directly,” Marjorie promised.

“Lucy’s still in our room. I think. You may expect us.” Ronny returned Gussie’s salute with one equally extravagant and disappeared into her room.

“She’s a perfect love! I won’t need that shaking after all,” Gussie confided to Marjorie with sparkling eyes as the two separated briefly.

Marjorie hurried lightly down the hall and opened the door of Room 15. “Hello, Jeremiah,” she greeted; “Gussie Forbes is back. We’re invited to a pow-wow in her room this very moment.”

“Well, well, well; you don’t mean it.” Jerry Macy looked up with an incredulous grin from the letter she was writing.

“Yes, I do mean it.” Marjorie pounced upon Jerry and tried to pull her up from her chair. Jerry grinningly braced herself and remained firm.

“You can’t do it, Marvelous Manager. I’m someone you can’t manage. So Gentleman Gus is going to have a pow-wow! Shall Jeremiah attend it, or finish her letter? Which? What?” Jerry had applied the nickname “Gentleman Gus,” to Augusta Forbes because of the number of male rôles the tall, broad-shouldered sophomore had played in campus shows during her freshman year.

“You’ll attend it,” was Marjorie’s threatening prediction as she began a fresh onslaught upon her apparently stationary chum. “If I can’t haul you up from that chair I’ll go for reinforcements. Then we’ll see what’ll happen.”

“Just see what’s happened already.” Jerry sprang up from the chair. “Why, Bean, respected Bean, excuse me. I nearly tipped you over, didn’t I?” she innocently apologized as she bumped smartly against her roommate.

“Oh, never mind. You don’t know any better,” Marjorie made charitable allowance as she tucked her arm in Jerry’s and moved resolutely toward the door.

In front of the closed door of Gussie’s room Marjorie smiled and raised a finger. Inside a merry babel of fresh young voices told them the pow-wow was in full swing. Marjorie tapped lightly on the door. No one answering, she turned the knob and she and Jerry entered the room. Ronny, Lucy, Leila and Vera formed a group around which the five sophomore chums known to their friends as the Bertramites had gathered.

At sight of Marjorie and Jerry a mild shout went up from the assembled nine. Gussie made a jubilant dash from the group to receive them.

“For goodness sake, girls, moderate your whoops of joy,” cautioned Flossie Hart when she could make herself heard above the commotion. “The Hall is full of young and timid freshies. This warning isn’t meant for you P. G.’s,” she laughingly excepted. “Only the Bertramites are included in it.”

“A pow-wow is a pow-wow. I’m surprised at you, Floss,” reproved Calista Wilmot with a giggle.

“Remember eats are necessary at a pow-wow. Trot out whatever you happen to have in your suitcases that’s eatable,” Gussie ordered. “I’ve a five-pound box of chocolate nuts. Next? That means Floss, Calista, Charlotte and Anna. The rest of you are company and have to be entertained.”

Gussie cleared the center table with one or two energetic sweeps of the arm. Her chums began a prompt diving into bags and suitcases for their contributions to the feast. Calista produced a pasteboard box of macaroons, Flossie one of salted almonds, Anna a sweet grass basket of stuffed dates and Charlotte Robbins a box of home-made maple and chocolate fudge and a large jar of tiny sour pickles.

“There.” Gussie arranged the toothsome array of delicacies on the table to her satisfaction. “Here’s to our noble P. G.’s,” she proposed, flourishing an arm. “Long may they wave. Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!”

The five Bertramites came out lustily on the hurrahing. The room rang with their gleeful shouts.

The echoes of them had hardly died out before the six guests were returning the compliment quite as vociferously. They continued to make plenty of pleasant noise as they sampled the sweets and rushed from one topic of girl interest to another.

“Someone is rapping on the door.” Leila’s quick ears were the first to catch the sound.

“I’ll go.” Gussie hurried to the door, a pickle in one hand, a square of maple fudge in the other. She transferred the pickle to the fudge hand and opened the door.

“Why, Miss Remson!” Her eyes widened in surprise. “Come in. We’re having a jollification. You are just in time for it.”

“Glad to join in the fun.” The manager’s tones were utterly friendly. “I’m the bearer of wet-blanket news, though. Miss Monroe, next door to this room, has just complained of the noise going on here. She has an examination in mathematics tomorrow and insists upon quiet so that she can study. I’m sorry, children.” A good-humored smile overspread her face. “You’ll have to try to play more quietly.”

“Why, the idea! We haven’t been here an hour yet, and it’s so early in the afternoon!” Gussie burst forth half resentfully. “Pardon me, Miss Remson. I don’t mean that for you. I mean it for fussy Miss Monroe, whoever she may be. Talk about pure freshie nerve!” Gussie’s eyes traveled the group of now silent students for sympathy. She found it in the common expression of blank, half-sheepish surprise written large on her friends’ faces.

“Miss Monroe isn’t a freshman, Augusta,” the manager corrected gently. “She is trying the examinations this week which will admit her to the sophomore class. I explained to her that you and Miss Hart were sophomores, hoping she might make allowance.”

“A would-be soph, and complaining of the sophs! What a loyal addition to the sophie class she will be,” Florence Hart cried sarcastically.

“Not wishing to be too inquisitive, Miss Remson, may I ask if Miss Monroe insisted you should come and tell us what a noisy crowd we were?” Leila inquired smoothly.

“Yes, Leila; she did,” the little woman replied in her concise way.

“Now why, I wonder, did she not come and tell us herself?” Leila’s tones were silky, but her blue eyes had narrowed.

Miss Remson laughed. “Clever Leila,” she regarded the Irish girl with approbation. “I may as well tell you girls frankly. Miss Monroe put it to me as my duty to reprimand you. I hope you won’t consider my enforced word of caution in the nature of a reprimand,” she ended with the independence of affection.

A chorus of loyal assurances went up which caused her to raise a premonitory hand and incline her head in the direction of the next room. After stopping long enough to eat a square of fudge and two pickles with true schoolgirl appetite she left behind her an ominously quiet crowd of girls.

“A nice reputation you have as a P. G., Jeremiah Macy.” Jerry severely addressed herself in the mirror of a dressing table. “Just think” – she turned accusingly toward Lucy Warner – “even Luciferous Warniferous, the Sanford sage, got a hot shot for being too boisterous.”

“Don’t blame me. Blame the company I keep,” chuckled Lucy.

“Luciferous Warniferous couldn’t be boisterous if she tried,” defended Ronny. “She hasn’t said half a dozen words since I led her into this room. I know she hasn’t whooped once. Can you whoop, Luciferous? That’s what I’d love to know?” Ronny peered owlishly at Lucy.

“Don’t give a demonstration of it till we are out on the campus,” warned Anna Perry. Her inflection was sarcastic. “It’s not safe here.”

“I sha’n’t give one at any time or at any place,” Lucy retorted with great firmness.

“The very idea,” scolded Flossie Hart. “Why, we made twice as much noise when we first came to the Hall last year and no one made a fuss.”

“I won’t stand it.” Gussie Forbes shook back her short curls, squared her shoulders and linked her hands behind her back in the attitude her chums knew meant battle. “Can’t help it if this Miss Monroe is going to be a soph. She might have known we’d subside. She could have waited a little to see. I won’t be mean enough to say I hope she flunks in math. But I’ll say she’ll flunk in popularity if she can’t live and let live.”

CHAPTER XX. – BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

That evening in Ronny’s room Leila, Vera, Marjorie and Jerry gathered for one of their old-time “Traveler” meetings. The arrival of Ronny’s trunks had furnished a treat of Mexican sweets, tempting and varied. There were all sorts of candied tropical fruits, strange toothsome nut pastes and a golden delicious sweet called dulce. There were even candied sweet potatoes.

“Get busy and help yourselves,” Ronny directed as she placed the large square tin box of confections on the table before her chums. “I’ve a supply of Mexican candy on hand. I’m going to take this box to l’enfant angelique.” She smiled as she referred to Gussie Forbes by the title the chums had privately re-named her after her change of heart during her freshman year. “Back in a minute.” Ronny flitted from the room burdened with a second square tin box of sweets.

“Gentleman Gus needs a reward of good conduct for keeping her temper this afternoon. She was all ready to turn the pow-wow into a real tomahawking party with one blonde scalp for a trophy,” was Jerry’s opinion.

“I expected an explosion,” Marjorie confessed with a smile; “but none came. Gussie is splendid, I think.”

“How perfectly foolish in Miss Monroe to take such a ridiculous stand! I can’t help criticizing her for it,” Vera said disapprovingly. “In the face of not knowing whether she will pass her exams or not.”

“If she flunks in the soph exams, she can still try for freshie estate,” Lucy reminded.

“It seems she likes no one but herself,” Leila now made dry observation. “We thought in the summer it was only the four of us at the Hall and Kathie who were not to her taste. Now we may banish our sorrow. We are no worse off than the rest of the college.”