Peggy Parsons a Hampton Freshman Part 10

"Oh, so she wants to tell Peggy her faults," mused Katherine. "Peggy of all people! Why, she hasn't any."

"I don't want to come," a m.u.f.fled voice came from the erstwhile sleeper.

"It hurts people's feelings."

"It shouldn't," interposed Myra sharply. "If it does, _that's_ a fault, and somebody can bring up that. Everybody ought to be glad to know what's the matter with them. Why, the idea!" she burst out, "there isn't one of us who hasn't seen something to correct in the others, and instead of just keeping it to ourselves and being hypocrites, isn't it a thousand times better to tell the person right out?"

"I don't think the person would like that," the m.u.f.fled voice protested.

"Well, all the freshmen must come," Myra persisted. "Come at nine-thirty to-night, in case we don't have another chance to tell you."

"That's a funny thing," said Peggy, rubbing her eyes when the two had gone. "Do you know any faults of any of the girls, Katherine? I don't.

Let's see, there are eight freshmen in this house altogether,-and Hazel taking part makes nine. Why, Katherine, I think we have wonderful people here."

"That part won't matter so much," hinted the wise Katherine. "They want to do the telling, I think."

"I'll watch the girls all day whenever I'm not at cla.s.s, and if I see anything the matter with any of them, I'll have something to report on."

"I know some for Myra myself."

"Some way I hadn't thought of that," answered Peggy. "I believe I do, too. But here's a good idea, Katherine,-you and I live together, and did all last year, and we ought to know _slews_ of faults about each other.

So when we are called on we can just show each other up at a great rate-drag each other out to be ridiculed"-Peggy rocked in bed with the merriment of the thought. "We can make up the most wild faults of all, and please everybody," she laughed.

"You wouldn't be gloating over foolish things like that if you knew we'd missed breakfast," interrupted Katherine. "And, my goodness, woman, there's the chapel bell!"

The room was a confusion of flying clothes, waving hair-brushes and dodging figures, for some ten minutes thereafter. Then the pink and white cretonne bed covers were smoothed quickly over two couches that had each been made up in a single swooping motion, including sheet, blankets, comforter and all. The fat pillows were stuffed into their cretonne covers and thrown at the head of the beds, and then two well-dressed, well-groomed appearing girls, with their notebooks under their arms, emerged and tore down the broad stairway, flying across the campus lawn, just in time to be shut out of chapel, while the first welling notes of the organ came out to them, as they stood panting at the door.

"You know that girl down the hall who keeps saying 'all things work together for good,'" said Katherine. "Well--"

"What do you mean?" asked Peggy, but she had already cast one fleeting glance towards the Copper Kettle just outside the campus.

"It's just a question of whether we can get breakfast in twenty minutes and be in time for our first cla.s.s," went on Katherine. "And I'm starved, and I-don't mind having missed chapel, after all. That's what I mean."

Laughing, Peggy caught her arm and the two took a short cut out of campus and across the road to the little tea room.

"Nothing is served till nine o'clock," they were informed, for provision was made against just such a feeling as Katherine had expressed. The two ran around the corner to the nearest drug store, and regaled themselves with two egg chocolates each.

"Goodness," murmured Peggy on their way back to recitation, "I certainly wish Gertie were back, bless her heart. If anybody at the meeting to-night finds any fault with _her_, while she's away, they'll have me to deal with."

But when the freshmen were a.s.sembled that evening, no word was said against Gertie, nor was her name so much as mentioned, for there is little satisfaction in scoring an absent friend, when you have just received license to make a present one squirm.

Two candles were lit in Hazel's rose-and-old-blue room. There was no other light. On the couch and here and there about on the floor sat the Ambler freshmen, in silk kimonos of j.a.panese or French design. Florence Thomas was wearing a pale blue with big gold dragons, Peggy noticed as soon as she came in, for the candle light flickered over it, and the dull gold threads gleamed.

Myra's kimono was of midnight blue crepe de chine without any relieving color tone whatever. Her face shone above it more pale and proud than usual.

"The reason we are here," began Myra, rising and standing gracefully before them, with her dark eyes taking in every one of the group, "is to see if we can't be of some help to each other in weeding out the most glaring faults of the Ambler House freshmen. Hazel is here as a sort of referee, and each girl is to tell-quite without reservation-any criticisms she may have for the rest of us. Now begin, somebody."

She sat down again with a little silken rustle, and Florence Thomas leaned forward, her pleasant face serious with the weight of her self-imposed task.

"There's one thing I've noticed," she said slowly. "Doris Winterbean and May Jenson don't seem to mingle with the rest of the house as they might. Now I don't want you two girls to get mad," turning to her victims, "but you have an awfully ungracious air when any one comes to your door, and you always lay a book face down as if you could hardly wait to take it up again. You aren't exactly sn.o.bs,-maybe it's only that you're too studious. You never have any eats in your room, and yet you are always going to call on other people when you hear they have. And that's about the only way any of us can entice you into our rooms--"

Doris and May wilted perceptibly under this attack, and their mouths opened in astonishment to see the way they had been impressing these girls whom they had supposed were their generous friends. But instead of making them more gentle when it came their turn to uncover faults, they threw discretion to the winds, and heaped up accusations, forgetting that another morning was coming and they must go on living among these girls throughout the year.

The atmosphere of friends.h.i.+p which prevailed when the girls arrived in Hazel's room, was changed now to one of animosity.

One after another, the girls criticized each other's gowns, table manners and personality. Each new victim of attack blanched, drew a sharp breath of horror and surprise to see in what esteem she had been held, and then bided her time to "get back."

Faith in friends.h.i.+p died in that college room. Listening to the deeply serious voice of her critic, each girl had some fleeting memory of that same critic-bursting laughingly into her room for an exchange of confidences, or protesting admiration and liking in a sunny, hearty fas.h.i.+on.

A girl named Lilian Moore came in for the worst of the drubbing. Hardly a girl present but had discovered some glaring defect in her.

"You'll pardon me, but your clothes have absolutely no style, and Ambler House can't help wis.h.i.+ng you were a little more modern. It hurts a house to have to claim a girl that will not dress properly-it destroys the tone of the whole house."

"Your hair-this is awful-but it really ought to be washed more. It ought to be fluffy and done with some care, and not-just wadded up as you do it."

"We like you-Doris and I were saying the other day what a nice girl you were-but we both said we'd like you so much better if you didn't say 'indeed' all the time."

"You have absolutely no faculty for making friends."

"Your room is so unattractive-there's nothing in it, really, and you can't expect girls to want to go to see you."

"You don't walk right-you stoop."

Those were some of the things that these dainty freshmen had been thinking about her since the first day she had appeared among them, s.h.i.+ning-eyed and shy, anxious for their approval, fearful lest she, with such limited advantages, should fail to measure up to their wonderful standard! And then, oh, glory of life, and happiness undeserved, they had seemed to care after all! They had seemed to want to talk to her, had pa.s.sed her their candy, had often come to her to be helped with difficult algebra problems!

No one even asked her if she had any fault to find in return. What could she have found to criticize about _them_? So she was pa.s.sed over at last, and allowed to sink back in silence, miserably conscious of her cotton crepe kimono that she and her mother had made with such pride and such appreciation of its becomingness. Her cheeks burned a tortured red, but there was n.o.body to notice her.

The hilarity with which Peggy and Katherine had meant to accuse each other of colossal faults had died. They sat quietly in the candle dusk, holding each other's hands while indignation showed in their faces.

"And Peggy Parsons--"

It was the cold, diamond-hard voice of Myra Whitewell speaking. "Peggy Parsons, I've felt it my duty for quite a while to tell you how thoroughly conceited you are--"

Katherine, who had s.h.i.+fted uneasily when the speech began, gasped now and would have laughed in her relief, for it seemed to her that if there was one thing in the world everybody must know that Peggy was _not_, it was conceited. Myra was wide of the mark, Katherine felt, and she did not even press her room-mate's hand that still lay pa.s.sively in hers.

"You feel as if you have to dip into everything," went on Myra, with a voice in which spite was veiled in a grave tone of carrying out a disagreeable duty. "You felt you must run the elections--"

"Ah," thought Katherine, "I knew that was the reason."

"As if the freshman cla.s.s couldn't get along without you! You made yourself very forward and, it seemed to some of us, bold, by going up and advising Alta Perry how to do things. And Alta the junior president!

It wasn't respectful, and it was taking a good deal on yourself!"

Here Florence Thomas, astonished that any one should dare arraign Peggy, got up, the golden dragons flaming in the dim light, and moved deliberately toward the door.

She found the door locked, and the key gone. She turned angrily.

"Until we're through, n.o.body ought to go," explained the high-handed Myra Whitewell. "As I was saying, Peggy, your egotism--"

"Back it up, back it up," protested Doris Winterbean.