"Nice Mr. Huntington," said Gertie amiably, "nice, poor cheated Peggy.
Her shall have one-just one, mamma said,-slap your wrists---"
"Gertie, I"m going to put you up on the hill one of these days," laughed Peggy. On the hill was a certain state inst.i.tution which visitors to the town were always annoyingly mistaking for the college.
"But then, visitors are always funny," as Gloria had once explained.
"One of them asked me where I came from and I said Iowa. She looked at me a minute and then said, "Will you please say that again?" Obligingly I repeated "Iowa." "Isn"t that odd?" she said then. "How strangely you _do_ p.r.o.nounce it. Now _I"ve_ always heard it called Ohio.""
At the thought of Gloria, the salted almonds became bitter in Peggy"s mouth, and she made a little face of distress.
"Kaddie, _do_ you think Gloria isn"t as happy as she might be?" she inquired of her room-mate.
With the quick facility of college girls for jumping from the most inane and frivolous pleasantries to the most serious att.i.tude of mind, Katherine answered thoughtfully.
"Peggy, how could she help being happy?"
This question certainly appeared a staggerer on the face of things.
"Happy?" trilled Doris Winterbean, "Why, I saw her yesterday going to vespers in the _loveliest_ Belgian blue velvet suit mine eyes have ever beheld. Happy! My _dear_! I"m free to say that if my own friend Self had been clad in such Consider-the-Lilies raiment, _I"d_ have gone to vespers _dancing_!"
"Don"t be silly," said Peggy.
"Well," finished Doris defiantly. "Please satisfy our curiosity and show us how such a suspicion ever crept into that woolly little head of yours."
She dodged Peggy"s pillow as it came hurtling at her with good aim, and then sat pensively with hands clasped over her knees as if to listen to a tearful tale.
"I"d never have noticed it, I admit," said Peggy.
"Of course not," chorused the nut-eaters.
"You know," interposed Katherine, "sometimes I think people who aren"t in college, you know,-like Mrs. Moore, just can"t imagine a life like ours, all happy and independent and so arranged that nothing serious could _possibly_ creep in to trouble us. So if a girl seems abstracted, or just resentful of too close scrutiny, as perhaps Gloria was, she is apt to jump---"
"No, no, I can"t believe that," said the foolish voice of Doris. "Mrs.
Moore wouldn"t jump. Anything that is less a tax on our credulity, Kathie, but not that,-not _jump_."
"Take the nuts away from that girl. They are beginning to have a bad effect, in fact, nutty," shrilled Peggy.
"As I was going to say," continued Katherine imperturbably, "people like Mrs. Moore jump at conclusions---"
"O-oh," murmured Doris. "That explains it. I wish you"d said that before. It"s quite all right, Kathie, now that you"ve made yourself clear. The fault was all mine."
"Doris," snapped Myra Whitewell, pinching her, "will you be serious?"
"I"m so serious, I"m going home. You hurt."
"Oh, Doris, do come back; don"t act like-like---"
"Like a freshman, I suppose? Well, I am a freshman. And I guess I will go back to my room and be serious all by myself."
"You needn"t go and be mad, Doris."
"Well, you needn"t pinch me."
Such comic dismay was registered on the faces of the group that Doris"
intention to play the spoilsport fled in a burst of laughter from her pouting lips.
"_Gooses_!" she cried at them.
"Doris, you mean geese," corrected Myra, "but it is no term to apply to a group of perfect ladies anyway."
They were back again in the favorite freshman style of badinage, and the atmosphere that had threatened to become tense was eased perfectly.
"To go back---" began Peggy.
The rippling notes of irresponsible song came from Gertie.
"Do you think there"s any intelligence in this group of highly cultured persons?" complained Peggy. "Because I don"t. I wanted to have you girls help me about a real problem--"
"But not our problem, Peggy," reminded Katherine; "in fact it"s none of our business."
"It"s Glory"s, Glory"s, hallelujah"s," chanted Doris as an apropos contribution to the talk.
"Oh, I never heard anything so perfectly baffling as you people," cried Peggy in despair. "Here I was going to have a serious discussion--"
"Serious discussion!" gasped Gertie Van Gorder. "Quick, girls, pa.s.s Peggy some more of her own nuts."
Even while the box was being pa.s.sed, the irrepressible roomful took up the Hampton song where Peggy had interrupted them when she found them in Myra"s room.
"Just one college, And that"s the college we sing to: Just one college, And that"s the college for us.
There"s neighbor Holyoke over the way- There"s just one college for us!
But she can neither dance nor play,- There"s just one college for us.
Just one college, And that"s the college we sing to.
Just one college, And that"s the college for us.
Oh, Va.s.sar has a n.o.ble site- There"s just one college for us!
But men, men, men are her delight- There"s just one college for us!"
CHAPTER XII-THE AUCTION
"Peggy, look at that sign!"
The room-mates were standing before the students" bulletin board down in the note-room.
"It"s bridge, I suppose," said Peggy idly.
"Bridge! No, it isn"t. Look! it isn"t that kind of auction."