Peggy Parsons a Hampton Freshman.
by Annabel Sharp.
INTRODUCTION
Last year Peggy Parsons and Katherine Foster were room-mates at Andrews Preparatory School.
Their escapades and their hunger for good times and adventure kept them from being great favorites of the princ.i.p.al there, but they were loved by the girls of the school and were soon invested with a degree of leadership.
"Peggy Parsons at Prep School," the first book in this series, tells how much happiness they managed to crowd into a single year.
A would-be charitable enterprise of Peggy"s is recounted, also. And if she had never undertaken it, mistaken though she was, she could not have gone to Hampton, and the present volume would never have been written.
Mr. Huntington, a rich old man, whom people believed to be poverty-stricken because of the way he lived, became a great friend of Peggy"s as the result of a Thanksgiving dinner party she arranged for the cooking-cla.s.s of her school to give him.
She and Katherine were instrumental, through an adventure in playing amateur detectives, in finding Mr. Huntington"s grandson, of whom he had lost track.
The grandson-the "Jim" of the present book-was an Amherst student about Peggy"s own age.
Katherine Foster had planned to go to Hampton College, but Peggy could not see her way clear. The room-mates were broken-hearted at the prospect of not being together for another year. After Katherine had been a.s.signed another room-mate, Gloria Hazeltine, Peggy gave up hope of going and could not plan with any interest for any other kind of year.
Mr. Huntington then stepped in and turned over for Peggy"s use the income from a dear little group of bungalows which he had named "Parsons Court."
So Katherine and Peggy were enabled to look forward to college together just as they had their prep school.
PEGGY PARSONS A HAMPTON FRESHMAN
CHAPTER I-MAKING AN IMPRESSION
"Katherine Foster!"
"Peggy Parsons!"
Two suit-cases went banging down on the wooden platform and two radiant figures hurled themselves into each other"s arms, oblivious of the shriek of departing trains, the rattling of baggage trucks, and the jostling crowds who were at liberty to laugh at their impulsiveness.
For this was Springfield, where East meets West on its way to half a dozen New England colleges, and where every fall the same scenes of joyous greeting are enacted with the annual accompaniment of little squeals of delighted welcome and many glad kisses.
"Well, Peggy, you look just the same as ever!"
"It"s been a perfect _century_, Katherine! Going right up to Hampton?
Taking the 9:10? So am I. Oh, so _much_ to talk about--"
Breathlessly chattering all the while, the two girls in blue serge, who had been room-mates last year at preparatory school, gathered up their suit-cases again and crossed the tracks to the other side of the station to wait for the Hampton train. Engines steamed along before and behind them, but neither looked away from the other"s glowing face during the crossing, nor did they cease both to talk at once until they were actually seated in their train some time later, packed in with a mob of laughing and attractive girls with suit-cases in the aisles, in the racks over their heads, and in their laps.
"Isn"t it wonderful that we met this way?" cried Katherine, while Peggy was trying to hand the remaining untraveled bits of their tickets to the perspiring conductor. "We"ll see our new rooms for the first time together, and we"ll make a very nice impression on the inhabitants of Ambler House because we can plan out some kind of grand entry to appeal to them."
Peggy laughed. "It"s an awfully _big_ place we"re going to," she said, looking about at the swaying crowds of girls. "I"m just beginning to realize it. It will take more than our planning to make any impression at all, I think. And maybe n.o.body will _ever_ notice us. It won"t be like Andrews."
"You"re still Peggy Parsons, aren"t you? And I"m still your room-mate, Katherine Foster. _And_ we"re going to live in one of the grandest suites on campus-oh, I don"t believe they will pa.s.s us by altogether."
And Katherine gave a little swaggering motion of her head that sent Peggy into gales of laughter.
"You"re conceited and sn.o.bbish, friend room-mate," she giggled. "The summer has spoiled you."
But Katherine smiled back complacently into her eyes.
Suddenly there was a curious stir all about them. The girls who had been standing in the aisle were all pushing toward the end of the car, and those seated were struggling up from under their luggage, their faces bright with antic.i.p.ation.
"Katherine," whispered Peggy, "I think we"re there!"
Oh, the world of meaning in that one sentence. The hopes, the expectations, the pleasures and good times for four whole years were summed up in it, and Katherine silently nodded her head, unable to speak.
The brakeman was already calling out something that he meant for "Hampton," and he rounded out his shout with the long-drawn wail, "Don"t leave any articles in the car!"
As if any of those precious and bulky suit-cases could be forgotten! The stampede began in earnest as soon as the train stopped, and Peggy and Katherine found themselves swept out to the platform and jostled down the steps and thrust forward toward the station of their own college town.
The girls from the train rushed this way and that, and other girls from the college rushed to meet them. Katherine spied a taxi that had still two vacant seats.
"Come, taxi,-quick," she gasped in Peggy"s ear. And the two went running forward, their suit-cases b.u.mping and thumping against their knees.
Before they reached the machine they saw that they were racing with a mob of other girls, all frankly eager to be the first to secure places in the last cab with a vacancy.
In every direction other taxis were whirring off, filled to overflowing with girls and bags, and here and there the rumble of hoofs mixed in, as a pair of horses drawing an old-fashioned cab likewise laden dashed off.
Peggy and Katherine were panting. It had become a very exciting race. A taller girl, with a lighter suit-case, sprinted ahead of them and reached the taxi first. But she stopped to ask the driver his price, and while she was doing so Katherine and Peggy piled in.
The taller girl turned to take her rightful place and saw two hot and beaming young ladies in the exact corner she had run so hard to claim.
She stepped back with a chagrined laugh, and Peggy and Katherine laughed too, with the utmost good nature, now that they had attained what they sought. They heard the other two occupants of their car murmuring the names of college houses to the chauffeur, and with a thrill of pride Peggy said, "Ambler House."
"And you, miss?" the driver asked Katherine.
"Why, Ambler House, too, of course," she said, and then blushed scarlet for fear the other girls would think her an idiot, for at the moment it had indeed seemed to her that even a taxi-cab driver ought to know that she was going to live in college wherever Peggy was.
The quaint, prim streets of the New England town were nothing but so much colored confusion to the eyes of the four in the cab. Each one had a consciousness that this perhaps was the height of life: that they would never touch anything better than this again. Riding along thus, packed tight in a taxi, through Hampton, to college for the first time.