"I really don"t know what you will do with all that truck, Miss Fielding. The rooms at Dare are rather small. You could not possibly get all those bags and the trunk--and certainly not that hat-box--into one of these rooms."
"My name isn"t Fielding," said the strange girl, paling now, but whether from anger or as a forerunner to tears it would have been hard to tell.
Her face was not one to be easily read.
"Your name isn"t _Fielding_?" gasped Edie Phelps, while the latter"s friends burst into laughter. ""R. F."! What does that stand for, pray?"
At this moment the fleshy girl who had been all this time in the background on the porch, flung herself forward, burst through the group, and ran down the steps. She had spied Ruth and Helen approaching.
"Ruthie! Helen! _Ruth Fielding!_ Isn"t this delightsome?"
The fleshy girl tried to hug both the chums from Cheslow at once. Edie Phelps and the rest of the girls on the porch gazed and listened in amazement. Edie turned upon the girl with the heap of baggage, accusingly.
"You"re a good one! What do you mean by coming here and fooling us all in this way? What"s your name?"
"Rebecca Frayne--if you think you have a right to ask," said the new girl, sharply.
"And you"re not the canned drama auth.o.r.ess?"
"I don"t know what you mean, I"m sure," said Rebecca Frayne. "But I _would_ like to know what I"m to do with this baggage."
Ruth had come to the foot of the steps now with Helen and the fleshy girl, whom the chums had hailed gladly as "Jennie Stone." The girl of the Red Mill heard the speech of the stranger and noted her woebegone accent. She turned with a smile to Rebecca Frayne.
"Oh! I know about that," she said. "Just leave your trunk and bags here and put your card and the number of your room on them. The men will be along very soon to carry them up for you. I read that in the Year Book."
"Thank you," said Rebecca Frayne.
The group of soph.o.m.ores and freshmen on the porch opened a way for the Briarwood trio to enter the house, and said never a word. Jennie Stone was, as she confessed, grinning broadly.
CHAPTER V
GETTING SETTLED
"What does this mean, Heavy Jennie?" demanded Helen, pinching the very comfortable arm of their fleshy friend.
"What does that mean? Ouch, Helen! You know you"re pinching something when you pinch _me_."
"That"s why I like to. No fun in trying to make an impression on bones, you know."
"But it doesn"t hurt bones so much," grumbled Jennie. "Remember what the fruit-stand man printed on his sign: "If you musta pincha da fruit, pincha da cocoanut." You can"t so easy bruise bony folk, Helen."
"You are dodging the issue, Heavy," declared Helen. "What does this mean?"
"What does what mean?" demanded the fleshy girl, grinning widely again.
"How came you here, of course?" Ruth put in, smiling upon their gay and usually thoughtless friend. "You said you did not think you could come to Ardmore."
"And you had conditions to make up if you did come," declared Helen.
"I made "em up," said Jennie, laughing.
"And you"re here ahead of us! Oh, Heavy, what sport!" cried Helen, undertaking to pinch the plump girl again.
"Now, that"s enough of that," said Jennie Stone. "I have feelings, as well as other folk, Helen Cameron, despite my name. Have a heart!"
"We are so glad to see you, Heavy," said Ruth. "You mustn"t mind Helen"s exuberance."
"And you never said a word about coming here when you wrote to us down South," Helen said, eyeing the fleshy girl curiously.
"I didn"t know what to do," confessed Jennie Stone. "I talked it over with Aunt Kate. She agreed with me that, if I had finished school, I"d put on about five pounds a month, and that"s all I _would_ do."
"Goodness!" gasped Ruth and Helen, together.
"Yes," said Heavy, nodding with emphasis. "That"s what I did the first month. Nothing to do, you see, but eat and sleep. If I"d had to go to work----"
"But couldn"t you find something to do?" demanded the energetic Ruth.
"At Lighthouse Point? You know just how lazy a spot that is. And in winter in the city it would be worse. So I determined to come here."
"To keep from getting fatter!" cried Helen. "A new reason for coming to college."
"Well," said Jennie, seriously, "I missed the gym work and I missed being uncomfortable."
"Uncomfortable?" gasped Ruth and Helen.
"Yes. You know, my father"s a big man, and so are my older brothers big.
Everything in our house is big and well stuffed and comfortable--chairs and beds and all. I never was comfortable in my bed at Briarwood."
"Horrible!" cried Helen, while Ruth laughed heartily.
"And _here_!" went on Heavy, lugubriously. "Wait till you see. Do you know, all they give us here is _cots_ to sleep on? _Cots_, mind!
Goodness! when I try to turn over I roll right out on the floor. You ought to see my sides already, how black-and-blue they are. I"ve been here two nights."
"Why did you come so early?"
"So as to try to get used to the food and the beds," groaned Heavy. "But I never will. One teacher already has advised me about my diet. She says vegetables are best for me. I ate a peck of string beans this noon for lunch--strings and all--and I expect you can pick basting threads out of me almost anywhere!"
"The teacher didn"t advise you to eat _all_ the vegetables there were, did she?" asked Ruth, as they climbed the stairs.
"She did not signify the amount. I just ate till I couldn"t get down another one. I sha"n"t want to see another string bean for some time."
Ruth and Helen easily found the rooms that had been drawn for them the June previous. Of course, they were not the best rooms in the hall, for the seniors had first choice, and then the juniors and soph.o.m.ores had their innings before the freshmen had a chance.
But there was a door between Ruth"s and Helen"s rooms, as they had hoped, and Jennie"s room was just across the corridor.