"Go ahead. Let"s hear the news from the knowledge shop," ordered Leslie as the roadster sped south under her practical hands. "Then I have a bit of news for you. Maybe you won"t like it for a second or two. After you get used to it, you will."
"What is it? You tell me first. My sc.r.a.ps of news can wait." Eager curiosity animated the junior"s vapid features.
"No; I"m anxious to hear what"s happened over there." Leslie made a backward movement of the head in the direction of the college.
"All right." Elizabeth gave in, slightly sulky. Soon she forgot to sulk as she weirdly embellished truth for her companion"s gratification.
Leslie listened, calmly sorting out in her own mind the proportion of truth contained in the other"s narrations.
"Oh, I forgot to tell you about yesterday," Elizabeth declared, when her budget of gossip was exhausted. "I was out driving with a freshie who has an awful crush on me and I nearly ran over Bean and a scrub woman, or servant-anyway an old fossil she was with. They were marching along the middle of the pike near the Carden Estate. I came around the corner pretty fast. I was on my own side of the pike, though. I"m sure of that.
I know--"
A sudden deep scowl corrugated Leslie"s forehead. "You are positive you didn"t hit either of them, are you?" she asked in an odd, sharp voice.
"Of course not. Everest, the freshie, said I knocked the old lady down.
It scared the silly goose. She grew quite panicky over it. I knew I didn"t come within six feet of either of them. She wanted me to go back.
I was too wise to do that."
"What did this woman look like?" again came the tight, tense tones. "I suppose, though, you couldn"t tell much about her."
"No, I couldn"t. Evie said she was dressed in black and small."
"You should have gone back." Leslie"s loose lips tightened in displeasure. It was easy enough to give advice which she herself had not followed on a similar occasion. "For all you know that woman may have been faculty. Bean"s on very good terms with them."
"Oh, pshaw! This woman looked old, from the glimpse I caught of her-too old to be faculty. She"d have nothing to report anyway. They had no business on the pike in the very path of machines, coming and going."
"Bess, you don"t seem to have good sense." Leslie had grown caustic.
"You _know_ Matthews threatened to ban cars when I ran down Langly. If you are reported for this, you"re _done_ with your buzz wagon at Hamilton. So are all the other students. Oh, this is too bad! And all because you are either too stubborn or else too stupid to learn to drive!"
"I don"t understand you, Leslie, and you will kindly stop calling me stupid," sputtered Elizabeth, her face very red.
"You will understand in a minute. As it happens, your punk driving may have seriously interfered with a business venture of mine. Since I left college I have been looking about for a chance to go into business for myself. One of my ventures is to be a garage near Hamilton College."
Leslie spoke rapidly and with displeased force. "Now I chose to even my score with Bean at the same time. That"s why I wanted you to find out about those properties. I heard last year before I was fired from college about a wonderful dormitory the little prigs were going to try to build near the campus, for the benefit of plebeian beggars who want to go through college on nothing a year.
"I remembered it after I left Hamilton. That"s why I came back and took up a residence here. I made up my mind I"d find out the site they were after and take it away from them. The woman I am with is my chaperon, not my aunt. I tried to get Alida and Lola interested in the affair, but couldn"t. I knew you could help me, so I decided to forget the past and be friends with you again."
"Why didn"t you explain all this to me in the beginning, instead of deceiving me so?" burst forth Elizabeth rancorously.
"It had to be kept a dead secret. You would have told it to someone, sure as fate. I"m telling you now. That"s soon enough," returned Leslie coolly. "Now listen to the rest. I have bought those boarding-house properties west of the campus-the block that contains the seven houses.
I paid sixty thousand dollars for them and I am going to have "em torn down and a mammoth garage put up there. You see what will happen to my investment if cars are banned at Hamilton."
"Oh, bother your old investment!" Elizabeth had grown angrier as she listened to Leslie. "It will never amount to a string of gla.s.s beads. Am I to blame because people won"t keep out of the path of my car?"
"The path of your car!" Leslie repeated with a sarcastic snicker. She was equally incensed at her companion"s disparagement of her business venture. "Where is that wonderful path? All over the road, I"ll say. The state ought to issue you a non-license instead of a license."
Thus began a quarrel which raged hotly for several minutes. Elizabeth was furious at having been deceived by Leslie. The latter was utterly out of temper over the seeds of catastrophe to her plans which the junior had sown. They were a long way from Hamilton when the altercation began. In the midst of it Leslie turned the roadster about and started back over the route they had come. By the time the campus wall appeared in sight a black silence had fallen between them. Nor was it broken until Leslie brought her car to an even stop at the eastern entrance.
"You may as well get out here," she sullenly dictated.
"Sorry I didn"t have my own car. I needn"t have troubled you then,"
vituperated Elizabeth, as she hastily bundled herself out of the roadster.
"A good thing for public safety you didn"t have it," Leslie sneered. "If my investment turns out unprofitable, it will be _your_ fault."
With that she drove on, her brief connection with Elizabeth Walbert at an end. At the height of her anger, a cool ruthlessness behind it informed her that the time had come to drop the junior irrevocably. She no longer needed her services. If cars should be banned at Hamilton College, as a result of Elizabeth"s reckless blundering, she would know it soon enough. Shrewd use of her eyes would quickly furnish her with the information. She laughed to herself as she recalled the junior"s rage.
The serious side of the situation returning, all signs of mirth faded from her rugged face. The investment she had made had been planned with a view toward placating her father. Once she had the garage ready for business she intended writing him of what she had done. There was no large garage near the college. Students owning cars were obliged to place them wherever they could find a vacant s.p.a.ce in the several garages between the college and the town of Hamilton. A few students even had been obliged that year, owing to lack of accommodations, to leave their automobiles in town.
Leslie"s idea of building a large garage near the campus would not have appealed to a present-day business man. The expense for site, the outlay in tearing down, in order to rebuild, not to mention the cost of erecting the garage-these items would have made the day of large profits too far distant. Leslie, however, was not considering either expense or profits. Her double aim was to even her score with Marjorie Dean, at the same time impressing her unforgiving father with her great business ability.
Now disaster threatened, precipitated by the very p.a.w.n she had used to further her own ends. She could only hope that Elizabeth"s blundering had not caused mishap. She was sure Marjorie would not report the matter. What her companion might do remained to be seen. It would depend entirely upon the ident.i.ty of the elderly woman in black.
While Elizabeth Walbert and Leslie Cairns were engaged in altercation, Marjorie was trying to frame a letter to the offended mistress of Hamilton Arms. She was alone in her room, Jerry having wisely decided to leave her in absolute quiet while she composed the difficult message.
She wrote and rewrote, tore into bits what she had written and began again. What she set down seemed a poor expression of her mind in the matter.
The shadows of late afternoon had begun to lengthen when she finally sealed the product of her painful industry and addressed the envelope to her offended friend. Though her heart was heavy, her mind was more at ease. Miss Susanna might ignore her written explanation so far as acknowledging it went. Nevertheless, Marjorie felt that she could not ignore the truth it contained.
CHAPTER XXIII-"GETTING EVEN"
Due to the unexpected quarrel which had sprung up between herself and Leslie, Elizabeth had gained no fruitful suggestions regarding ways and means of hazing from Leslie Cairns. She told herself she did not care.
No doubt Leslie would have coolly advised her to "drop it." This the vengeful girl had no intention of doing. Her spleen against Augusta Forbes had grown to an extent which made her determined to "even up"
with the detested freshie, no matter how great the risk of detection.
She firmly believed herself to be too clever to be detected.
The first days of a stormy March whistled and shrieked across the campus before Elizabeth hit upon a scheme which seemed within her scope.
Fortune appeared to favor her in that Augusta exchanged sharp words with Alma Hurst and Ida Weir, the two freshmen who made it hardest for her on the basket ball team. The trouble occurred between the halves of a practice game. Elizabeth chanced to be standing near enough to the two, as a spectator, to hear a part of it. It gave her an excuse to seek out Alma and Ida that evening and have a confidential talk with them. Both players were bitter against Augusta, who had, as usual, been valiantly standing up for her rights. Elizabeth"s crafty insinuations, which grew soon to open denunciation of Gussie, fell upon willing ears. Thereafter the trio were to be found with their heads together as they formulated their plot against independent Gussie.
Continued stormy weather forced Elizabeth to abandon the idea of tying Augusta to a tree on the campus and leaving her there. It also meant too great a hazard. Three of them could hardly manage the tall, broad-shouldered freshie when it came to a question of physical strength. She had tried to coax a sufficient number of girls into her scheme and had failed. She decided to resort to the method she had earlier employed of doing some mischief to Augusta"s room. Over and over the three plotters discussed the subject, proposing this trick and that.
Many of the proposals were too hard for accomplishment to be considered more than briefly. Every now and then one or the other would hit upon something that could be added to the list which they had made up of depredations easy "to get away with."
"The time has come to act," were the words with which Elizabeth greeted the two freshmen one afternoon. They had met her by appointment in the library. Neither lived at Wayland Hall. She had cunningly warned them against coming there until they should have "put over the great stunt."
Then no suspicion could, later, be attached to them.
"Glad to hear it," Alma Hurst said with a disagreeable smile. "If ever I detested a girl I do that overgrown, domineering freshie. You can"t make me believe that she didn"t go to Miss Dean with a great long string of yarns about us. Miss Dean wrote me a _hateful_ note. In it she claimed the sports committee had been observing us for quite awhile. I know they _hadn"t_. I wouldn"t believe _her_ any sooner than I would Miss Smarty Forbes."
"Better not let any of Miss Dean"s friends hear you say that." Elizabeth arched her eye-brows with a knowing air. "Her crowd think her perfection. She is awfully influential on the campus. I never tried to put anything over on her for fear of getting into difficulties."
"I"ve heard she was a power here." The accompanying shrug denoted supreme indifference. "I"m not likely to come within conversational range of her crowd. She doesn"t approve of me, nor her pals, either.
Miss Forbes gets all the babying from _them_. Can"t say I admire their taste."
Elizabeth gave a contemptuous sniff. "Miss Dean pretends to be very n.o.ble and talks a lot about observing Hamilton traditions. She treated me abominably the day I landed on the station platform, a freshie." For the twentieth time Elizabeth recited her imaginary grievance. The tale was, as usual, a far departure from truth. It impressed her listeners because they wished to be impressed by it.
"I"m not surprised." Alma was still smarting from the merited rebuke Marjorie had delivered her by letter. "She"s been _so_ unfair toward us.
Proffy Leonard allows her to run basket ball. Speaking of hazing-was she hazed two years ago? I heard so, and that the girls who hazed her were expelled from college. I heard they were seniors."