Her feet stuck firmly when she tried to go and as she was lifting them up with a generous accompaniment of Macefield House paint, the door banged behind her and she was left to make her humiliating way back as she had come, with the ladder to be surmounted again, and her eyes so full of tears of embarra.s.sment that she could hardly see to walk.
She had no intention of going around the back way. Her only desire was to get home.
She must face again the guns of the enemy-for that wonderful poem mustn"t be lost to the _Monthly_-but she would make her charge after she had rested once more in the trenches of Suite 22, and had equipped her army of one with a new uniform.
For that was the plan that was already taking shape in her mind. She would return in disguise. She had sallied forth in her brightest and best. Well, she would go back as meek as a freshman should, in plain clothes-and who would know she was the young stupid who had scaled the step-ladder and marred the new grey paint of the invitation house?
"Well," said Katherine, yawning up at her lazily from the couch, when she was once more within the home walls, "how did it go, room-mate?"
"How did what go?" inquired Peggy, kicking off her pumps hastily and sliding them out of sight, under the dressing table.
"Why, the interview with the great Ditto. You make me tired, Peggy-acting just as though you were bored by the best thing that"s happened to either of us yet. And really and truly, you"re just as glad as I am for you. Admit that you are."
"Not-so wildly," Peggy made a little grimace, as she flung the rose-colored silk dress into a corner. A moment later her m.u.f.fled voice came from the bed room, where she was fumbling among her dresses. "I never can find anything I want."
"Are you looking for your kimono? Going to rest a while, before we get dressed for dinner? Your kimono"s under the bed, Peggy; I saw the blue edge sticking out. Hurry back in here and tell me the news; I"m consumed with curiosity."
Peggy came back into the study, wearing a blue serge skirt, her head lost to view in a middy blouse in the process of being slipped on. She struggled to the top at last and peered out with pleading eyes.
"Will you go over there with me, Katherine?" she said in a tone she strove to make indifferent.
"Go over there with you? Haven"t you been?"
"I want your company," Peggy stammered with difficulty, unable to tell the fib that would have been a direct answer to her room-mate"s question.
"Well," said Katherine, getting up slowly and stretching her arms, "I should say I will."
And so Peggy, her army reinforced, began her march on Macefield House a second time.
If Katherine was surprised at her simplified costume, she made no comment, but held her arm chummily all the way over, and Peggy felt that victory was in sight.
"Look, they"ve painted their porch," she said in a.s.sumed surprise, when they came in sight of the fateful ladder.
"So they have," cried Katherine, "and we can"t get up _that_ way."
And then she began to t.i.tter.
"What"s the matter?" demanded Peggy quickly.
"Somebody-somebody-_did_ go up anyway," Katherine laughed delightedly.
"There are footprints all over it! Oh, mustn"t the Macefield House girls be furious?"
Peggy was silent.
"Don"t you think that"s funny?" her room-mate insisted, still laughing.
"Perfectly _simple_," returned Peggy. "Some people haven"t a bit of sense. I imagine it was some-some delivery boy, don"t you?"
"More likely a freshman. Delivery boy with those little feet? How ridiculous-as if he"d wear high heels!"
"Katherine, you"re a regular Sherlock Holmes," Peggy protested.
"I believe I could ferret out the criminal," persisted Katherine. "I"ve thought of a good clue."
"How would you do it?" Peggy"s voice was little more than a whisper.
"Look on the bottoms of all the freshmen"s shoes for paint," announced her friend.
"Katherine!"
"Yes?"
"Last year you and I were detectives and we found out things together, which did people good. But do you think-after our partnership then, it is right for you to go-looking things up all by yourself without me, now?"
"How perfectly silly of you," laughed Katherine; "of course you"d have to help. You could look at the shoes of the girls on one side of the campus, and I"d take our side. Anyway it"s all in fun. I suppose we"d better go around the back way, don"t you think so?"
Peggy thought so, decidedly. In a few moments they were climbing the dark back stairs to the room of the great _Monthly_ editor on the second floor.
The door of Number 11 stood part way open and showed a delightful and luxurious confusion within. Peggy and Katherine got a glimpse of tall red roses, Oriental couch cover, and a profusion of pillows, old bronze bric-a-brac, green leather banners, scattered books and ma.n.u.scripts, with the inevitable Mona Lisa enigmatically smiling down at it all from the opposite wall of the room.
Peggy and Katherine, after a light knock, advanced into the room and seated themselves on the inviting couch.
"A book-case and a dictionary," murmured Peggy. "Such funny things to have at college."
"But there"s a tea table, too," reminded Katherine. "In fact, I never saw a room that had such a varied a.s.sortment of things-and all in harmony."
"I like that leather peac.o.c.k screen," Peggy went on.
"Oh, I love it all-but don"t you think it"s the least bit oppressive?
That incense smell lulls my senses to sleep. I don"t see how Ditto can be the fresh, breezy sort she is,-perfectly matter-of-fact and everydayish,-and live in an opium den of a room like this."
"It isn"t just what her character would lead you to expect," admitted Peggy.
Just then, a girl drifting aimlessly by in the hall paused at the door, and glanced in curiously at the two freshmen sitting so stiffly, toes out, hands clasped in their laps, awaiting the all-important Ditto.
"Dit know you"re here?" she asked, with friendly brevity.
Both girls shook their heads.
"I"ll get her," said the other, disappearing, and an instant later they heard, up and down the hall, the loud cry, "_Dit-to! Di-i-t Armandale_!
Somebody to see you!"
From the third floor came a scrambling noise, then the sound of light feet tapping on the stairs.
"Well, you really did come, you children," gasped the owner of the room, coming in flushed from her hasty descent and blowing a wavy strand of golden hair from her face.
She plumped down between them on the couch and looked from one to the other with an air of delighted proprietorship.
"And you"re beginning just right, too, as I knew you would. Thirteen is the open road to glory, here, and you certainly were courageous, handing in a poem first thing."