"You are the one to be envied after all," said Peggy. "No matter how many of the girls like you, or how much they care, it isn"t anything to the way a person"s own mother cares. And if you want them to, the girls will care, too. We"ll begin now to _make_ them."
"It"s too late-I"m going home."
"Going home after your mother saved to send you?-going home without the least little bit of a try to bring things your way?-going home and taking away your mother"s chance to enjoy college through you?-oh, no, you"re not going home!"
"Well," hesitancy showed in Lilian"s manner, "I"ve been packing my trunk. I made up my mind that the girls would never have to see my homely clothes any more."
"Stay a week and-try, will you?" pleaded Peggy. "Katherine and I would miss you awfully if you went home now."
"You and Katherine? Would you really?"
"Yes, really and truly. Why, when we first knew you here, we said you were the kind of girl we wanted for a friend, and that we were sure we were going to like you," fibbed kind little Peggy, striving to find in her memory a record that they had noticed her at all.
"Then it isn"t everybody in the house that feels as some of those girls do?"
"n.o.body really," stoutly maintained Peggy. "Even the ones who talked too much didn"t feel that way. They had all just been rubbed the wrong way by some one else-and you were an unresisting object to fire away at in their turn. And don"t you suppose some of the rest had just as horrid things said to them as you did? And they aren"t crying about it either.
They are protected by being more egotistical and sure of themselves and they"re just thinking "how ignorant that critic of mine was," that"s all."
"If you want me to," said Lilian suddenly, "I"ll stay-for you."
"Stay for the mother," corrected Peggy, "and for your own satisfaction, too."
"Very well, I will," came the determined voice at last.
"Then good-night," said Peggy, "and don"t you think about it again to-night-will you?"
"No," said Lilian st.u.r.dily, "I"ll think only about to-morrow when maybe, if I come to see you, you"ll read me your poem in the _Monthly_."
"Why, you _dear_," said Peggy, and, since she was a very human little girl, she made her way back to her room in a state of pleasant warmth and contentment.
CHAPTER VII-CINDERELLA
As a college morning dries all tears and wipes out all resentments of the night before, the freshmen were only slightly haughty in their demeanor toward each other next day, and none of the upper cla.s.smen had reason to suspect that they had been going through a period of stress and disillusionment all by themselves.
Lilian came down to breakfast, ate hurriedly and scurried off to cla.s.s, after casting one quick glance of adoration toward Peggy.
Peggy and Katherine became conspirators as soon as she was well out of the house.
"You have time this first hour to-day, and I have the third," said Peggy. "So you go down and buy some green and white cretonne and some silk for pillow tops, and I"ll sew them up when I come in."
In the afternoon they hung a "Busy" sign on their door for the first time, set the percolator perking coffee to inspire them and plunged into the green and white material in earnest.
"These cretonne curtains will be nearly as pretty as ours, don"t you think so?" asked Peggy, "and ours were made at the store. I"m getting very proud of us as seamstresses, Kathie."
The plain silk was made into pillow tops of red, blue and yellow.
"The red one will brighten things so," approved Katherine, when she came to st.i.tch it over a plump pillow, one of three that the room-mates hadn"t needed this year for themselves.
Like culprits, they sneaked down the hall, their gay offerings wadded as closely as possible in their arms, and knocked in fear and trembling at Lilian"s door. If she had called "Come in," they would have run. But they received no answer, so Peggy cautiously opened the door, and thrust her curly head inside.
"It"s all right," she whispered in relief to Katherine a moment later, when she saw that Lilian had not returned from cla.s.s.
The friends worked quickly, and soon the green and white curtains were hung at the windows, and the three bright pillows were ranged along the couch.
"But she hasn"t any couch cover at all," wailed Peggy, standing off to look at the result "And the white bedspread does look so hopeless showing through those gay cushions. What shall we do, room-mate?"
Katherine"s forehead was wrinkled. "You know that old green denim curtain that hangs before the clothes closet in our bedroom, Peggy?
Don"t you suppose that would be better than nothing? It was there when we came, but it isn"t so very ancient looking, and it would be inconspicuous anyway-and just about the kind of thing you see in lots of rooms."
With ruthless hands they tore down the big green curtain in their own suite, snipped off the rough end with scissors, and bore it back in triumph to Cinderella"s apartment.
"I"m going to run over to Gloria"s," said Peggy then, "and ask her to part with one or two of those pictures she got for being elected. She has two Home-keeping Hearts that I know of, and several pictures that look like photographs that can"t mean much to her, and would just cheer up our protegee wonderfully, and make her room pa.s.s muster with any guest."
Peggy"s tireless feet carried her blithely across the campus to Gloria"s room, and it didn"t take her twenty minutes to pick out what she wanted, with Gloria"s help.
"Of course I"m glad to have your little friend have them," said the obliging freshman president. "And if you want me to, I"ll come over and see her some time and bring a lot of girls from my house-junior celebrities and senior dramatists and people like that, and it might have a good effect on those Amblerites that tried to snub her."
"It looks like a different place," Peggy and Katherine congratulated themselves later when they had done what they could in the way of changes. "It"s changed from a poor little apology of just a place to sleep, into an inviting and cozy college room-with the brightest cushions a person could imagine," they summed up boastfully.
Lilian came dragging home from cla.s.ses, tired circles under her eyes after the strain of the evening before, and a return of hopelessness toward her situation. She had Peggy and Katherine for her friends, but after all these two joyous freshmen went very much their own way, and were too busy with engagements with more important people, to think of her much-the girl with the horrid clothes and the wadded-up hair-and the unattractive room. So she reasoned disconsolately.
She opened her own door listlessly and entered the room.
And then she thought that she had made a mistake. It couldn"t be her room-of course it wasn"t-and yet, when she turned in bewilderment to leave it she beheld her own books on the rickety little table.
Well, it was magic! However it had happened, she accepted it with a queer choking sense that she was really to live in a room like other rooms hereafter. College had suddenly come close.
She parted the green and white cretonne curtains and looked out on a new world; she stroked the bright silk cushions with a new sense of comfort and luxury.
Then she went over to the dresser and drew out the tear-stained letter that began "Dear mother," and tore it into bits. A few minutes later her pen was flying over some clean, fresh sheets in a glowing description of college, of her room, of her friends.
It was the sort of letter to make a mother think with a sigh of gladness when she read it, "Well, she is having it all. How nice, that my daughter can draw about her such friends. How lovely, that she is so pleasantly situated in such a delightful room-and how, best of all, that she should not have been deprived of college."
An interested group of girls cl.u.s.tered around the house bulletin board on the stair landing, and read many times the latest sign that was pinned there:
"Looks like a nice party to me," speculated Doris Winterbean. "But May and I haven"t a chafing-dish. May, go and borrow one from some soph.o.m.ore, because I"m curious, and after last night I certainly want something cheerful."
Peggy herself knocked at Lilian"s door a few minutes later.
"I"ve got a sign up for a party to-night," she said as soon as a welcoming voice had called to her to enter, "and I thought maybe you"d like Kay and me to fix your hair for it-it"s pretty hair-and I thought--"
Lilian tried to say something about the benefits she had already received at their hands, but Peggy hurried on.
"We have a new electric hair dryer, and Kay has some marcel irons-an amateur kind, you know-and if you"d like to have us practise them on you,-I think the result would surprise the girls and send them right down to Gibot to have theirs done."