Marjorie Dean, College Senior

“If they aren’t, we might find another site, even better. There is plenty of open ground below them.”

“Yes; but it belongs to the Carden Estate and isn’t for sale. I asked Miss Susanna about it last June. She knows all about the land near the college and Hamilton Estates. She explained to me the reason for that row of houses along that little street. You know we wondered why they were there.”

“It always looked to me as though a couple of city blocks of third rate houses had been picked up and dumped down just outside the campus limits for no particular reason,” was Jerry’s view of it.

“Well, there’s a reason,” smiled Marjorie. “The workmen who built Hamilton College lived in those houses while the work was in progress. It took almost five years to build our Alma Mater, Jeremiah. By the workmen, I mean the foremen and more important of the builders. I don’t know where the laborers lived. In the town of Hamilton, I presume. Those houses were considered very sizable and comfortable in Mr. Brooke Hamilton’s day, Miss Susanna said.”

As the two busied themselves with their unpacking, they continued to talk over the project of enlarging their little circle to nineteen members. Until their particular allies had returned to Hamilton nothing could be done.

“Wait until college has opened, then I’ll call a meeting. We’d best have it in Leila’s and Vera’s room. It is larger than ours. Between you and me, Jeremiah, what ought we to do about the freshies?” Marjorie straightened from her trunk, her arms full of wearing apparel, and stared dubiously at Jerry.

“What?” This time the ejaculation came involuntarily. On her knees before her trunk, Jerry’s head and plump shoulders had been temporarily eclipsed, as she dived into the trunk to fish up the few remaining articles at the bottom. “Oh, yes, I got you.” Jerry had comprehended a second after Marjorie had spoken.

“What you said at breakfast about the strangers being well within our gates, made me feel that we ought to begin to try to get acquainted with them. We promised Miss Remson to help them get settled, if we could. I don’t mind their being noisy.” Marjorie paused.

Jerry eyed her quizzically. “You think they are too much like the Sans to be a positive comfort around the house, now don’t you?”

“They seemed a little that way to me,” Marjorie admitted. “The Sans were older by a year or two than these girls when they entered Hamilton. These freshies are very juvenile acting.”

“They acted last night as though they didn’t care a button whether they met anyone else or not. A sufficient-unto-themselves crowd, you know. Still, if we hold off from them, they may feel that we are puffed up over our senior estate. The best way, I guess, is to cultivate them. We can be friendly, but a trifle on our dignity at the same time.”

“We’ll probably meet them in the halls and on the veranda during the next day or so. That will start the ball rolling. I’d rather not make any calls until I’ve had one or two chance encounters with some of them. Being on station duty is different. It is a detail.”

“I hate to butt into a stranger’s room, freshie or no freshie,” Jerry agreed. “You know how we felt when the three Sans came to call before we had hardly taken off our hats.”

In spite of Marjorie’s ever ready willingness to be of service when needed, she still retained a certain amount of shyness which had been hers as a child.

“I am not afraid of being snubbed by these lively freshie children,” she presently said, with a trace of humor. “I don’t care to intrude on them unless I am truly sure they want to know us.”

“They don’t know what they want or what they don’t want,” calmly observed Jerry. “I am not enthusiastic over them, Marvelous Manager. I’ll try to be a conscientious elder sister to them, but it will be an awful struggle.”

Marjorie laughed at this. Jerry chuckled faintly in unison. The unexpected invasion of Lucy, Katherine Langly and Lillian Wenderblatt put an end to confidence. The will to labor also languished and was lost in the ardor of meeting and greeting.

Invited to stay to luncheon, the ringing of the bell found Jerry’s and Marjorie’s room in a state of temporary disorder. Every available space was piled with feminine effects.

“Things are in an awful uproar.” Jerry waved her arm over the chaotic array. “The worst is over with our unpacking done. It won’t take long after luncheon to put this stuff where it belongs. Glad you girls came to the Hall. It saves us the trouble of going after you.”

Ronny and Muriel now appearing, the seven girls went happily down to luncheon. As a result of Jerry’s and Marjorie’s talk regarding the freshman arrivals at Wayland Hall, both were prepared to be conscientiously friendly on sight.

A trifle ahead of their companions in descending the stairs, at the foot of the staircase they encountered Augusta Forbes, Calista Wilmot and Florence Hart, the “tow-head,” just entering the hall from the veranda. The eyes of the two sets of girls met for an instant. Marjorie smiled in friendly, unaffected fashion, intending to speak. Jerry emulated her example. To their surprise Augusta Forbes put on an expression of extreme hauteur; Florence Hart stared icily out of two pale blue eyes. Calista Wilmot, however, smiled cheerfully, taking no notice of her companions’ frozen attitude.

It was all done in a second or two. Marjorie’s color heightened. She felt as though she had received a slap in the face. The smile fleeing from her lips, she treated the haughty pair to a steady, searching glance. Then she quietly withdrew her gaze.

CHAPTER VII – MAKING SURE PROGRESS

“Now what was the matter with them?” Jerry demanded, as she and Marjorie entered the dining room. “Were we properly snubbed? No mistake about it. They must have heard what I said about them last night.”

“I don’t recall that you said anything very dreadful about them,” returned Marjorie.

“I compared them to Comanches and expressed my general disapproval of their howls,” confessed Jerry cheerfully. “Only they didn’t hear me say anything. Leila said as much as I. Neither of us meant to be ill-natured. You know I usually say outright whatever I think in a case of that kind.”

“Those two freshies acted as though they were angry with us for some unknown reason or other.” Marjorie knitted her brows. “They’d hardly have behaved like that simply because they didn’t know us and resented our smiling at them on that account.”

“That would be the height of snobbishness,” replied Jerry. “We’d better tell the girls. They may try to be helpful and get a snubbing, same as we did.”

Seated at table, Jerry proceeded to tell the others of the incident. Be it said to her credit she made no attempt to retail it as gossip. She bluntly stated what had happened and warned them to keep their helpfulness at home.

“That’s too bad,” Lillian Wenderblatt said sympathetically. “It puts you all at sea as to what to do next. You say the one girl returned your smile. Perhaps when you know her better you can find out what ails the other two.”

“They can’t have a grievance against us when they don’t know us,” Marjorie said. “I shall let those two alone for the present and confine my attention to some of the other freshies.”

With this she dropped the incident from her thought and speech. After luncheon, as she redressed her hair to go to the station, it recurred to her disagreeably. She half formed the guess that Elizabeth Walbert might have made the acquaintance already of these two freshmen and prejudiced them against herself and her friends. Miss Walbert could not possibly have a just grievance against her. Their acquaintance had been too brief. As a former friend of Leslie Cairns, however, she probably held rancor against the Lookouts.

Marjorie sturdily dismissed this conjecture as not in keeping with her principles. She felt it unfair to accuse Elizabeth Walbert, even in thought, of such an act. She resolved to take Lillian Wenderblatt’s advice and cultivate the acquaintance of the black-eyed girl who had shown signs of affability. She might then, eventually, learn wherein lay the difficulty.

A rollicking afternoon with her chums, crowded with meeting and welcoming at least twenty seniors who had returned to college on the same train as Helen Trent, drove the disquieting incident from her mind. Helen was the last one of the nine girls, who had long been intimate friends, to return to Hamilton. Lillian now added as the tenth “Traveler,” the band of friends were in high feather. Helen was triumphantly escorted to the Lotus from the station and there feted and made much of. Arriving at ten minutes past four o’clock, it was after six before she saw the inside of Wayland Hall. Three rounds of ices apiece had also dampened the ardor of all concerned for dinner.

“These joyful ice cream sociables are appetite killers. There goes the dinner gong and yours truly is listening to it without a snark of enthusiasm. I think I’ll forego dinner and finish straightening my traps,” declared Jerry. Now returned to her room, Jerry viewed her still scattered possessions with distinct disfavor.

“You had better go down and eat something,” advised Marjorie. “You will be ravenous about bedtime, if you don’t. We haven’t a thing here to eat except candy. As a late feed it’s conducive of nightmares, Jeremiah.”

“Wise and thoughtful Mentor, so it is,” grinned Jerry. “I’ll take your advice.”

“If I see that black-eyed girl who smiled at me downstairs I shall speak to her and start things moving,” Marjorie said with decision. “I won’t ask her the very first thing what was the matter with her friends, but I’ll do so as soon as I am a little bit acquainted with her.”

Marjorie found no opportunity to put her resolve into execution that evening. The freshman in question was seated at a table the length of the room from the one at which she sat. The two freshmen who had shown such utter hauteur had seats at the same table as their black-eyed friend. Marjorie had not even an opportunity to catch the other girl’s eye.

The following morning, as she started across the campus with Ronny for a stroll and a talk in the warm early autumn sunshine, fortune favored her. Seated on a rustic bench under a huge elm tree were two of the freshmen she was anxious to come into touch with. One was the black-eyed girl, the other the plump blonde.

“It’s a splendid opportunity, Ronny.” Marjorie took Ronny by the arm. “Come along. I am going to speak to them. No time like the present, you know.”

“All right, lead the way.” Ronny obligingly allowed Marjorie to propel her toward the bench where the duo were seated.

“Good morning.” Marjorie stopped fairly in front of the rustic seat, her brown eyes alight with gentle friendliness. “Isn’t the campus wonderful today? This is one of its happy moods. I always say it changes in expression just as persons do.”

“Good morning.” The black-eyed girl’s tones were as friendly as her own had been. The fair-haired girl also acknowledged the greeting with a nod and smile. “Truly, I agree with you. I think this campus is the most magnificent piece of lawn I ever saw or expect to see.”

“I see where the good old campus has made another friend.” Ronny now broke into the conversation nicely started between Marjorie and the freshmen. “Marjorie, this person here,” Ronny playfully indicated her chum, “calls it her oldest friend at Hamilton.”

“I don’t wonder. I hadn’t thought of it in that light before,” returned the blonde freshman half shyly.

Both freshmen showed a certain pleasure mingled with reserve in having thus been addressed by the two seniors.

“If you don’t mind, I am going to bring that seat over there up beside yours.” Marjorie promptly got into action. “Then we can all have a sunny morning confab. It is high time we began to get acquainted with our little sisters,” she finished laughingly.

Together she and Ronny carried the nearby seat to a place beside the one holding the two freshmen. Then conversation began afresh, a trifle stiffly at first. Soon the four were laughing merrily over Calista Wilmot’s humorous narration of her first day at Bertram Preparatory School when the taxicab driver had, at the start, misunderstood her and carried her to the opposite end of the borough in which the school was situated.

“He landed me with a flourish in front of the main entrance to the Bertram Academy for young men,” she related. “I saw a crowd of young men playing football on a side lawn. That was queer, I thought. I didn’t see a sign of a single girl. He set my luggage down on the drive. In another minute he would have been off and away. I had paid him before we started. I called out to him to wait and asked him if he was sure it was the Bertram Preparatory School for Girls. Right then we came to an understanding. Maybe I didn’t drive away from that school in a hurry. I had a perfect string of mishaps that day, big and little.” She continued to relate them to her amused listeners.