"Perhaps some of the sophs saw it on the bulletin board and nabbed it for a joke," suggested a tall, handsome brunette who had been introduced to the Lookouts as Miss Scott.
"A poor sort of joke, I should say," Robin Page said, a trifle contemptuously.
"Well, we were told we might expect--" Blanche Scott broke off short, with a significant twitch of compressed lips.
"It was unfortunate, of course," Portia Graham hastily remarked, "but we"ll hope no more notices go astray. You freshmen at the Hall had better keep in closer touch with us. That means come over to our house and be sociable. How many more freshmen besides yourselves live at Wayland Hall?"
"Two; Miss Cornell and Miss Ingram." Muriel supplied this information.
"They were sitting toward the back of the hall when the meeting began.
There they are!" She located the two at a short distance from them, talking earnestly to the student who had been elected to the vice-presidency. She bore a slight resemblance to Irma Linton. The Lookouts often saw her on the campus and during recitation periods, but did not know her name.
"Oh; I see them. They are in good hands." Miss Graham looked relieved.
"Elaine Hunter is the sweetest girl in the whole world, I believe. Just to be in the same house with her is to love her."
"She reminds us of a friend of ours at home." Jerry glanced very approvingly toward the pretty freshman. "We have noticed her on the campus. If she is as fine as Irma Linton, our friend, she is worth knowing. We were sorry that Irma didn"t choose Hamilton, but her mother was a Wellesley graduate and anxious for Irma to enter Wellesley."
"I know how that goes," nodded Miss Graham. "My dearest friend was packed off to Smith College to please her family. She didn"t care to enter Smith, but went as a matter of duty."
At this juncture, Elaine Hunter, accompanied by Miss Cornell and Miss Ingram, joined the group around the president and more introducing followed. Presently the whole party trooped out of Science Hall and across the wide campus together, making the still autumn dusk ring with their clear young voices.
From the Silverton Hall girls the Lookouts learned that the regular freshman dance, which the soph.o.m.ores gave each year to their younger sisters, was soon to take place. The date had not yet been given out. It was the autumn event at Hamilton. The juniors and seniors could come to it if they chose. On St. Valentine"s night the juniors always gave a masquerade to all three of the other cla.s.ses. Washington"s birthday the seniors claimed as theirs and gave either a play or a costume dance. To the freshmen belonged the Apple Blossom hop, a dance given by them each spring in the time of apple blossoms.
When the seven freshmen bade their congenial cla.s.smates good-bye, and struck off across the campus for Wayland Hall, it was with a new and delightful sense of fellowship and cheer. Like the Lookouts, the two girls from New York City had been disappointed at the lack of cordiality they had met with at Hamilton. Neither had known of the first cla.s.s meeting until after it had been held, and both were a trifle hurt at having been ignored. As the Lookouts had known nothing at all about it, they at least could not be blamed for not having pa.s.sed word of it along.
"Well, we are at last beginning to meet the folks," Jerry said with a certain touch of grim satisfaction, as the five girls settled themselves in Ronny"s and Lucy"s room for a few moment"s private chat before the dinner bell sounded.
"If we were living at Silverton Hall or Acasia House we would be far more in touch with college matters," commented Ronny reflectively.
"You may blame me for choosing Wayland Hall," Marjorie reminded. "I liked the picture of it better than the others."
"Yes; you picked this stately old lemon and we followed your lead."
Jerry favored her room-mate with a genial grin which the latter returned in kind. "We forgive you for it. How could you guess who else beside Busy Buzzy lived here? I like the Hall. The rooms are good, the meals are gooder, and the conveniences are goodest of all. It has the prettiest lawn and veranda of them all, too."
"It"s a blue-ribbon place or Moretense wouldn"t have besieged Miss Remson to let her in here. I decline to say Busy Buzzy for fear of getting the habit. I am too careless to apply it to her only in privacy.
I"m likely to come to grief," Muriel said lightly.
"It"s no worse than "Moretense,"" argued Jerry. "You say that all the time. I hope, for your sake, you won"t get caught saying _that_."
"It sounds so much like "Hortense" that I could get away with it,"
retorted Muriel. "Anyway, I like to name people according to their lights and so do you. Long may we wave with no embarra.s.sing accidents."
Whereupon Jerry and Muriel solemnly shook hands.
"Isn"t it time we had a meeting of the Five Travelers?" Lucy Warner broke in irrelevantly. "On the train we said we would have one once a week. This is our third week here and we haven"t had even one."
"Quite true, Lucificus Warneriferous, sage and philosopher," agreed Jerry, with a gravity which would have been admirable on any other occasion.
"Jeremiah is all taken up with the naming habit," put in Ronny slyly.
"Ain"t I jist," chuckled Jerry. "Our cook always says that when I ask her if she is going to the movies on Sat.u.r.day night."
"We are away off the subject." Marjorie had done little but laugh since the five had sat down to talk.
"Certainly, we are." Lucy regarded Jerry with pretended severity. "We never keep to a subject when Geraldine Macy is present." Though she spoke in jest there was a curious light in Lucy"s green eyes which no one present except Marjorie understood. It always appeared when Lucy was anxious to impart a confidence.
"You have something special to tell us, haven"t you, Lucy?" Marjorie quietly asked.
"Yes, I have, but I wish it to be a confidence made to the Five Travelers," Lucy said with stiff positiveness. "While what I have to tell you is not anything which touches us personally, it is something which should be brought to your attention. I don"t wish to tell you until we have a meeting. I think we had better have that meeting no later than tomorrow night."
CHAPTER XVII.-A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.
The result of Lucy"s strong plea for an official meeting of the Five Travelers was a gathering, in hers and Ronny"s room, on the next evening. As all had agreed to prepare for tomorrow"s recitations first, it was nine o"clock when they a.s.sembled to hear what Lucy had to say.
What Marjorie said, however, the next moment after Ronny had turned the key in the door was: "Girls, I"d like to have Ronny take charge of this meeting. While there are only a handful of us, someone ought to be at the head."
Veronica demurred vigorously. She was overruled and found herself mistress of ceremonies whether she would or no.
"Very well," she at last accepted, "I will do the best I can to be an ill.u.s.trious head to this n.o.ble organization. To begin with, I will say that I admire Lucy"s policy. What we report here weekly is official. If we merely talked it over in our rooms it would sometimes seem like gossiping, even though we did not intend it to be such. I don"t know that I have anything special to tell. I will say this: Much as I like Wayland Hall and Miss Remson, I do not like the atmosphere of it. It is a house quietly divided against itself. There is no unity here of the better element of girls. There ought to be. I am ready to say how such unity might be brought about. I am not sure that I wish to make it my business. I am not sure that it would come under the head of being a Lookout. As the Five Travelers we have made no pledges, thus far," she concluded with her strange, flickering smile.
"While I was anxious to carry out the plan we made on the train about the Five Travelers, what I have to tell you really comes under the head of being a Lookout." Lucy paused and glanced around the uneven semi-circle into which the girls had drawn their chairs. "Someone I know is in great need of help, or rather protection, and that is Miss Langly."
"In need of protection," repeated Muriel Harding in a surprised tone.
"What awful calamity hangs over that quiet little mouse"s head?" The other three girls also looked in mild amazement. Katherine Langly, a quiet little soph.o.m.ore, was the one acquaintance Lucy had made by herself.
"It is those hateful soph.o.m.ores from whom she needs protection,"
explained Lucy, smiling faintly at Muriel"s question. "They torment her in all sorts of sly ways. I mean the ones Jerry named "our crowd." They wish her to leave the Hall as a friend of theirs, a freshman, is trying to get in here. You see she won a Hamilton scholarship. I mean one offered by Hamilton College. She tried special examinations made up by the Hamilton faculty of years ago. Her papers were considered so nearly perfect that she was awarded the special scholarship which no one had won for twenty years. It covers every expense. Mr. Brooke Hamilton founded it and laid aside a sum of money for it. It is still in bank. So few have won this scholarship, the money has acc.u.mulated until it is now a very large sum."
"How interesting!" the four listeners exclaimed in the same breath.
"Truly, I shall never rest until I have dug up a lot of Mr. Brooke Hamilton"s history," a.s.serted Marjorie. "He was almost as interesting as Benjamin Franklin, who was the most interesting person I ever heard of.
Pardon me, Lucy. I am the one who is off the subject tonight."
"What does "our crowd" do in the way of ragging Miss Langly?" demanded Jerry, bristling into sudden belligerence. "They make me weary! The idea of insulting a girl who has more mind in a minute than the whole bunch will have in a century."
"They never speak to her, although this is her second year at the Hall.
You see, the scholarship mentions a certain room in each of four campus houses which the winner may have the use of. She cannot share it with anyone. The terms state that a young woman brilliant enough to win the scholarship has the right to exclusive privacy."
"Wasn"t that dear in Brooke Hamilton?" Ronny cried out involuntarily. "I adore the memory of that fine gentleman. I shall certainly join you in the history-digging job, Marjorie."
"Now let Brooke Hamilton rest," ordered Jerry. "I am the only one of you who really has a mind to the subject."
"Give me credit," emphasized Muriel. "I haven"t said a word. I"ve listened hard. What else do these millionaires do, Lucy?" Muriel wagged her head proudly at Jerry to show the latter how closely she had been paying attention.
"Oh, they make remarks about her clothes and snub her dreadfully at table. She sits at the same table as that Miss Cairns and Miss Vale.
They take turns staring steadily at her, sometimes, until they make her so nervous she can scarcely eat. She said it wasn"t so bad last year for she sat at a table with Miss Harper and Miss Sherman. Besides, these girls weren"t trying to get her room. It has been worse this year. One day last week Miss Myers, she is a ringleader among them, stopped her in the hall and asked her if she would not be willing to trade rooms with Miss Elster, the freshman they are working to get into the Hall. Miss Langly explained that, on account of her scholarship, she had no choice in the matter. She was angry, and she also said that if she were free to make the exchange she would not do it. Then she walked away. That evening Miss Myers reported her to Miss Remson for burning her lights late, walking noisily about her room and slamming her door after the ten-thirty bell had rung."