Marjorie Dean, College Junior

“I call my mother ‘Captain,’” she informed, then went on to explain further of their fond home play. She fully expected Miss Susanna would criticize it as “silly.” She was already understanding a little of the lonely old gentlewoman’s bitterness of heart. Her earnest desire to know the last of the Hamiltons had arisen purely out of her great sympathy for Miss Susanna.

“You seem to have had a childhood,” was the surprising reception her explanation called forth. “I can’t endure the children of today. They are grown up in their minds at seven. I must say your father and mother are exceptional. No wonder you have good manners. That is, if they are genuine. I have seen some good imitations. Young girls are more deceitful than young men. I don’t like either. There is nothing I despise so much as the calloused selfishness of youth. It is far worse than crabbed age.”

“I know young girls are often selfish of their own pleasure,” Marjorie returned with sudden humility. “I try not to be. I know I am at times. Many of my girl friends are not. I wish I could begin to tell you of the beautiful, unselfish things some of my chums have done for others.”

Miss Susanna vouchsafed no reply to this little speech. She trotted along beside Marjorie for several rods without saying another word. When she spoke again it was to say briefly: “Here is where we turn off the road. Is that basket growing very heavy?”

“It is quite heavy. I believe I will set it down for a minute.” Marjorie carefully deposited her burden on the grass at the roadside and straightened up, stretching her aching arms. The basket had begun to be considerable of a burden on account of the manner in which it had to be carried.

“I couldn’t have lugged that myself,” Miss Susanna confessed. “I found it almost too much for me with the handle on. Ridiculous, the flimsy way in which things are put together today! Splint baskets of years ago would have stood any amount of strain. If you had not kindly come to my assistance, I intended to pick out as many of those jars as I could carry in my arms and go on with them. The others I would have set up against my own property fence and hoped no one would walk off with them before my return. I dislike anyone to have the flowers I own and have tended unless I give them away myself.”

“I have often seen you working among your flowers when I have passed Hamilton Arms. I knew you must love them dearly or you would not spend so much time with them.”

“Hm-m!” The interjection might have been an assent to Marjorie’s polite observation. It was not, however. Miss Susanna was understanding that this young girl who had shown her such unaffected courtesy had thought of her kindly as a stranger. She experienced a sudden desire to see Marjorie again. Her long and concentrated hatred against Hamilton College and its students forbade her to make any friendly advances. She had already shown more affability according to her ideas than she had intended. She wondered why she had not curtly refused Marjorie’s offer.

“I am rested now.” Marjorie lifted the basket. The two skirted the northern boundary of Hamilton Arms, taking a narrow private road which lay between it and the neighboring estate. The road continued straight to a field where it ended. At the edge of the field stood a small cottage painted white. Miss Susanna pointed it out as their destination.

“I will carry this to the door and then leave you.” Marjorie had no desire to intrude upon Miss Susanna’s call at the cottage.

“Very well. I am obliged to you, Marjorie Dean.” Miss Susanna’s thanks were expressed in tones which sounded close to unfriendly. She was divided between appreciation of Marjorie’s courtesy and her dislike for girls.

“You are welcome.” They were now within a few yards of the cottage. Arriving at the low doorstep, Marjorie set the basket carefully upon it. “Goodbye, Miss Hamilton.” She held out her hand. “I am so glad to have met you.”

“What’s that? Oh, yes.” The old lady took Marjorie’s proffered hand. The evident sincerity of the words touched a hidden spring within, long sealed. “Goodbye, child. I am glad to have met at least one young girl with genuine manners.”

Marjorie smiled as she turned away. She had never before met an old person who so heartily detested youth. She knew her timely assistance had been appreciated. On that very account Miss Susanna had tried to smother, temporarily, her standing grudge against the younger generation.

Well, it had happened. She had achieved her heart’s desire. She had actually met and talked with the last of the Hamiltons.

CHAPTER VII – TWO KINDS OF GIRLS

“You are a dandy,” was Jerry’s greeting as Marjorie walked into their room at ten minutes past six. “Where were you? Lucy said you ruined your blue pongee with some horrid old chemical. It didn’t take you two hours to change it, did it? I see we have on our pink linen.”

“You know perfectly well it did not take me two hours to change it. A plain insinuation that I’m a slowpoke. Take it back.” In high good humor, Marjorie made a playful rush at her room-mate.

“Hold on. I am not made of wood, as Hal says when I occasionally hammer him in fun.” Jerry put up her hands in comic self-defense. “You certainly are in a fine humor after keeping your poor pals waiting for you for an hour and a half and then not even condescending to appear.”

“I’ve had an adventure, Jeremiah. That’s why I didn’t meet you girls in Hamilton. I started for there in a taxicab. Then I met a lady in distress, and, emulating the example of a gallant knight, I hopped out of the taxi to help her.”

“Wonderful! I suppose you met Phil Moore or some other Silvertonite with her arms full of bundles. About the time she saw you she dropped ’em. ‘With a sympathetic yell, Helpful Marjorie leaped from the taxicab to aid her overburdened but foolish friend.’ Quotation from the last best seller.” Jerry regarded Marjorie with a teasing smile.

“Your suppositions are about a mile off the track. I haven’t seen a Silvertonite this afternoon. The lady in distress I met was – ” Marjorie paused by way of making her revelation more effective, “Miss Susanna Hamilton.”

“What? You don’t say so.” Jerry exhibited the utmost astonishment. “Good thing you didn’t ask me to guess. She is the last person I would have thought of. Now how did it happen? I am glad of it for your sake. You’ve been so anxious to know her.”

Rapidly Marjorie recounted the afternoon’s adventure. As she talked she busied herself with the redressing of her hair. After dinner she would have no more than time to put on the white lingerie frock she intended to wear to Elaine’s birthday party.

Jerry listened without comment. While she had never taken the amount of interest in the owner of Hamilton Arms which Marjorie had evinced since entering Hamilton College, she had a certain curiosity regarding Miss Susanna.

“I knew you girls would wait and wonder what had delayed me. I am awfully sorry. You know that, Jeremiah,” Marjorie apologized. “But I couldn’t have gone on in the taxi after I saw what had happened to Miss Susanna. She couldn’t have carried the basket as I did clear over to that cottage. She said she would have picked up as many plant jars as she could carry in her arms and gone on with them.”

“One of the never-say-die sort, isn’t she? Very likely in the years she has lived near the college she has met with some rude girls. On the order of the Sans, you know. If, in the past twenty years, Hamilton was half as badly overrun with snobs as when we entered, one can imagine why she doesn’t adore students.”

“It doesn’t hurt my feelings to hear her say she disliked girls. I only felt sorry for her. It must be dreadful to be old and lonely. She is lonely, even if she doesn’t know it. She has deliberately shut the door between herself and happiness. I am so glad we’re young, Jeremiah.” Marjorie sighed her gratitude for the gift of youth. “I hope always to be young at heart.”

“I sha’n’t wear a cap and spectacles and walk with a cane until I have to, believe me,” was Jerry’s emphatic rejoinder. “Are you ready to go down to dinner? My hair is done, too. I shall dress after I’ve been fed. Oh, I forgot to tell you. I bought you a present to give Elaine. We bought every last thing we are going to give her at the Curio Shop.”

“You are a dear. I knew some of the girls would help me out. I supposed it would be you, though. Do let me see my present.”

“There it is on my chiffonier. You’d better examine it after dinner. It is a hand-painted chocolate pot; a beauty, too. Looks like a bit of spring time.”

“I’ll look at it the minute I come back. I’m oceans obliged to you.” Marjorie cast a longing glance at the tall package on the chiffonier, as the two girls left the room.

At dinner that night Marjorie’s adventure of the afternoon excited the interest of her chums. She was obliged to repeat, as nearly as she could what she said to Miss Susanna and what Miss Susanna had said to her.

“Did she mention the May basket?” quizzed Muriel with a giggle.

“Now why should she?” counter-questioned Marjorie.

“Well; she was talking about not receiving a birthday present for over fifty years. She might have said, ‘But some kind-hearted person hung a beautiful violet basket on my door on May day evening!’”

“Only she didn’t. That flight of fancy was wasted,” Jerry informed Muriel.

“Wasted on you. You haven’t proper sentiment,” flung back Muriel.

“I’ll never acquire it in your company,” Jerry assured. The subdued laughter the tilt evoked reached the table occupied by Leslie Cairns, Natalie Weyman, Dulcie Vale and three others of the Sans.

“Those girls seem to find enough to laugh at,” commented Dulcie Vale half enviously.

“Simpletons!” muttered Leslie Cairns. She was out of sorts with the world in general that evening. “They sit there and ‘ha-ha-ha’ at their meals until I can hardly stand it sometimes. I hate eating dinner here. I’d dine at the Colonial every evening, but it takes too much time. I really must study hard this year to get through. I certainly will be happy to see the last of this treadmill. I’m going to take a year after I’m graduated just to sail around and have a good time. After that I shall help my father in business.”

“There’s one thing you ought to know, Leslie, and that is you had better be careful what you do this year. I have heard two or three rumors that sound as though those girls over there had told about what happened the night of the masquerade. I wouldn’t take part in another affair of that kind for millions of dollars.”

Dulcie Vale assumed an air of virtuous resolve as she delivered herself of this warning to Leslie.

“Don’t worry. There won’t be any occasion. I don’t believe those muffs ever told a thing outside of their own crowd. They’re a close corporation. I wish I could say the same of us.” Leslie laughed this arrow with cool deliberation.

“What do you mean?” Harriet Stephens said sharply. “Who of us would be silly enough to tell our private affairs?”

“I hope you wouldn’t.” Leslie’s eyes narrowed threateningly. “I have heard one or two things myself which may or may not be true. I am not ready to say anything further just now. My advice to all of you is to keep your affairs to yourselves. If you are foolish enough to babble your own about the campus, on your head be it. Be sure you will hear from me if you tell tales. Besides, you are apt to lose your diplomas by it. A word to the wise, you know. I have a recitation in psychology in the morning. I must put in a quiet evening. Kindly let me alone, all of you.” She rose and sauntered from the room, leaving her satellites to discuss her open insinuation and wonder what she had heard to put her in such an “outrageous” humor.

CHAPTER VIII – A FROLIC AT SILVERTON HALL

The “simpletons” finished their dinner amid much merriment, quite unconscious of their lack of sense, and hustled up to their rooms to dress for the party. Leila, Vera, Helen, Hortense Barlow, Eva Ingram, Nella Sherman and Mary Cornell had also been invited. Shortly after seven the elect started for Silverton Hall, primed for a jubilant evening. Besides their gifts, each girl carried a small nosegay of mixed flowers. The flowers had been purchased in bulk by Helen, Eva and Mary. The trio had made them up into dainty, round bouquets. These were to be showered upon Elaine, immediately she appeared among them. Helen had also composed a Nonsense Ode which she said had cost her more mental effort than forty themes.

Every girl at Silverton Hall was invited to the party. It was not in gentle Elaine to slight anyone. With twenty girls from other campus houses, the long living room at the Hall was filled. Across one of its lower corners had been hung a heavy green curtain. What it concealed only those who had arranged the surprise knew. Elaine had been seized by Portia Graham and Blanche Scott and made to swear on her sacred honor that she would absolutely shun the living room until granted permission to enter it.

“I hope you have all put cards with your presents,” were Portia’s first words after greeting them at the door. “You can’t give them to Elaine yourselves. We’ve arranged a general presentation. So don’t be snippy because I rob you of your offerings.”