"I can"t let you," stammered Lilian. "I never _could_ fix my hair well, but I wouldn"t let you bother with it for the world."
"Just time before dinner," Peggy insisted, whipping a towel from the dresser and beginning to fasten it around the reluctant shoulders of the other freshman.
She was led down the hall and Peggy experimented with all the Suite 22 hair-dressing implements. Egg shampoo, alcohol, bay rum, electric dryer, special French orris powder, and finally the hot curling iron.
Then Katherine dexterously did it up for her-not in an original style at all, but in the mode that had swept the entire college: so that when their work was finished and the victim was handed an oval ivory mirror, she exclaimed with wonder, for there was reflected a nice-looking-girl just like a hundred others in Hampton, with wonderful ripples of soft gleaming hair, that made you want to follow the waves with your fingers.
"Is that me?" asked Lilian.
"We"ll forgive you for being ungrammatical, since it"s all in recognition of our efforts," said Peggy delightedly. "It is very much you-the way you ought to have been all along, and will, I hope, continue to be, now that we"ve shown you the way. Mercy, Kay, she does look wonderful! If you and I ever get poor, we"ll know of one talent we have at least whereby we can hope to make an honest living."
So Lilian came that night to the party, very much elated, and entirely self-confident, instead of shrinking and conscious of making an inferior appearance.
Those who had chafing-dishes had brought them, those who had not had borrowed them. Beside each chafing-dish, the hostesses had arranged a little set of materials.
"Now, two chafing-dishes are prepared to make fudge, one sea-foam, and one chocolate marshmallow. Will the freshmen kindly pair off and choose what they want to make? Here are the materials for white taffy over here, as a prize for the ones that get done first." Peggy made the announcement, and the girls lit the chafing-dishes and started in with great zeal.
This was the kind of party to please them all. Nothing but candy-and all they could make and eat of that!
"This is an anti-climax party," explained Katherine, when the fudge was bubbling with its rich delicious odor, in the chafing-dish chosen by Florence Thomas and herself. "Peg and I thought of the awful faults we all found in each other last night"-_they_ hadn"t done any of the finding, but the others didn"t notice that they painted themselves blacker than they were-"and we have a suggestion to make as to how to cure them."
The girls were a little displeased-more of that criticism business? they wondered. Even the tempting odor of the cooking candy couldn"t quite appease them.
"It"s just a way to wipe out the faults as soon as possible," said Peggy with her funny and irresistible little smile. "I thought if we each cured the faults of the others in our own minds, why-where would they be?"
There was an alarming simplicity to this.
Doris dropped her fudge spoon.
"What do you mean, Peggy?" she demanded.
"Well," laughed Peggy gleefully, delighted with the discovery she and Katherine had made, "that party last night did no good, some way.
Everybody went home feeling disgruntled and out of sorts-and overwhelmed more or less with their own imperfections. If each fault-finder just-doesn"t find fault, you know,-even in her own mind, there won"t be any fault pretty soon to be found."
"Don"t see it," said Myra Whitewell.
"If _you_," Peggy turned to her patiently, "if _you_ just wiped out the notion you had about me-and stopped letting it torment you-that I wanted to run things, you know,-why, why-then you wouldn"t see me like that, would you? Pretty soon every one in Ambler House would be praising every one else, and loving every one so much that the other houses would begin to notice, and would catch the infection. I think it"s better to let our enemies find fault with us, if they must, but not our friends."
"Ambler House would get a wonderful reputation for having the best freshmen on Campus if we all boosted our house and our cla.s.smates everywhere, I can see that," ventured Florence Thomas eagerly.
"Well, shall we try?" urged Peggy, "shall we just try it out as an experiment?"
Because it was Peggy, and because the idea was new, and because the candy was just ready to eat now, and very tempting, the good-natured freshmen light-heartedly promised to try her plan-and to follow it faithfully until it had had time to show either some result-or no result at all.
This was the beginning of an att.i.tude of mind that later became habitual with that group of freshmen. It wasn"t many weeks after this anti-fault-finding party in Peggy"s room that, if a first-year girl heard that another lived in Ambler House, she was filled with wistful envy; for the good times the Amblerites had, their gay and loyal friendship became matters of common college discussion.
Myra Whitewell would not have worked into the system if she could have helped it. But the others, very much in earnest under the stimulus of Peggy"s sunny example, refused to give heed to her grouches, or to be hurt at her snubs,-and they never failed to speak well of her outside, so that this praise of theirs came to her ears at last, and filled her heart with warmth in spite of herself, and she could not do less than give them her friendship-yes, and even her warped and selfish love,-in the end.
There was candy enough left after the spread that night for each freshman to take a plateful to her particular junior or senior friend.
As they were leaving, their faces glowing with appreciation of the pleasant evening they had just spent, and in antic.i.p.ation of the junior"s or senior"s delight at their offering, Doris Winterbean drew Peggy aside and whispered in her ear:
"Well, I don"t know, Pegkins, it"s rather wonderful, but I"ve tried your plan ever since you spoke of it and it"s had an uncanny effect. Why, do you know, I already see the greatest difference in that Lilian girl?
Honestly! Peggy, her hair looks _pretty_ to me now, and I thought it was horrid last night. And her face and manner-she just seemed as happy and confident as anybody, instead of so shy and uncomfortable. It"s-magic, Peggy, and you may not believe me, but I really do see her altogether differently."
And Peggy burst out into a little laugh of enjoyment, and her eyes followed Lilian with pride. But she did not think it was necessary to disabuse the mind of Lilian"s new admirer by telling her that the "magic" had a very material foundation.
CHAPTER VIII-INDIAN SUMMER
Glory lay over the whole college world.
The sun blazed upon an earth more beautiful than Peggy and Katherine ever remembered to have seen it. The woods, when the two took their walks, were as red with burnished leaves as if they had been on fire.
And a golden haze came in the morning and at sunset.
The mystery, the still power, and the vague melancholy of autumn, crept through the veins of the Hampton girls, and they walked and picnicked on Leeds rocks, and sang away the glorious afternoons far into the twilight, when the sudden coolness warned them of what they would forget-that these days were going, and that winter would soon be upon them.
Peggy and Katherine saw their first autumn at college dissolving in that golden haze almost before they had begun to enjoy it and to realize that all this was really theirs-this life among seventeen hundred girls, all young, all having identical interests, all happy and congenial.
There came a Sat.u.r.day afternoon too lovely to be spent at home.
"What shall we do to-day, Katherine?" Peggy asked. "Let"s just go somewhere by ourselves. Do you want to drive, or walk, or have a bacon bat or take some books down by Paradise and read?"
A day like that one suggests many ways for enjoyment, but if there is one thing more absolutely satisfying than another, and just-the-thing-to-do on such a Sat.u.r.day afternoon, it is to tramp over to the cider mill, with a jug and a capacity-appet.i.te for new cider and ginger cookies.
So it was inevitable that Peggy and Katherine should decide on this as the ideal adventure, after they had exhausted all the possibilities.
"That cider mill seems just as much a part of the college as Seelye Hall," laughed Katherine. "Peggy, can"t you taste that wonderful cider now? Let"s go right away,-I think we can walk over and back, don"t you?"
That would mean about a nine-mile jaunt.
Somebody in the house had a gallon jug, and the room-mates promptly and unceremoniously "borrowed" this and, with silk sweater coats, and a ribbon tied around their heads to keep their hair from blowing, started off into the wonder of Indian summer, their hearts full of joy over every one of the nine miles that lay before them.
The road was dusty, the jug was heavy, the day was hot. After two miles they were warm and thirsty-and hungry, too, and their feet dragged a little.
"Oh, that cider, that cider," laughed Katherine. "I wish it could come part way to meet us!"
"Never mind, room-mate," cheered Peggy, with mock heroism; "only a mile and a half to go now, and then the lovely cider will be running into our jug, and we can get several gla.s.sesful to drink there. And ginger cookies to your heart"s content, Kay."
"Can"t we-speed up a little?" urged Katherine on the strength of that; "if we just double our steps, we"ll get there sooner."
So the dust clouded up more thickly under their hastening footsteps, and the mile and a half dwindled and disappeared, until there before them was the cider mill itself, keeping guard over a little stream that gurgled into the mill and out again.
"At last, room-mate!" hailed Katherine.