Peggy Parsons a Hampton Freshman Part 27

"I know your manner. Was she properly overcome?"

"Well, no. In fact she said, 'This is but a drop in the bucket. I'll have you persecuted.'"

"She must have said 'prosecuted,' Gloria."

"Well, one or the other, the effect is the same. She _has_ been persecuting me."

"Well, and then did you give her the rest?" asked Peggy, desirous of hearing all of the story.

"Yes, I poured into her hands the full amount the bidders had given me in return for all my beautiful kimonos, gowns, waists and underwear."

"Sounds like an elevator call in a department store."

"Doesn't it? But she didn't know. She counted it out and returned me two dollars and said I'd given her too much. I was thankful there had been enough. Oh, Peggy, Peggy, Mrs. Ormsby saw it all. She is a brick. But I feel so mean, so mean--"

"You needn't. Now you've learned, and you can go around here in sackcloth and ashes and you will be the 'freshmen's handsome president'

still. That's what the uppercla.s.s girls call you. So it will come out all right. And n.o.body guessing anything."

"You know," Gloria was laughing through her tears, "the reason I wouldn't tell you was because I couldn't bear to risk seeing your stare of disillusionment and loss of faith-in case you felt about me as some of the others do. I don't know why they should, but they act as if I were sort of superhuman. And all my worry about your att.i.tude for nothing! I've just been plain Gloria Hazeltine to you all the time, haven't I, Peggy? And to Katherine. I'm-kind of glad. It's awful to have people holding such ridiculous ideals about you."

"No, it isn't. When you're graduated, you will look back on it as something very precious-and very wonderful. It is one of the best things that can come to any one-such idealization as you have met with at the hands of our cla.s.s. And the only way to do is to live up to it, to make it as true as truth."

"That's what I was doing, in a way," explained Gloria woefully. "But only to the most material side of it. I wanted to live up to their ideal of me in wonderful clothes-in generous subscriptions, and all that kind of thing."

"Well, young lady, now you right-about face and live up to the other side of it. They would follow you and love you if you were as shabby as our wash-lady. So you can go as simply dressed as you want, and they will do nothing but imitate you. It's a wonderful power you have, Gloria."

Gloria brushed back the straying hair from her tear-stained face.

"I never thought of that, really, Peggy," she said. "Do you suppose there is really a little something worth while in me to call forth such feeling on the part of the cla.s.s?"

"A good deal," said Peggy. "But not-exactly what they think. You can be even finer than they believe, though, if you'll set about it."

"I wish I were like you, Peggy," wailed Gloria.

"Like me! Now, Gloria Hazeltine, you know you don't. n.o.body expects me to be anything very remarkable. They love me but they have to love a lot of faults along with me. So they love me and look _down_, and you and look _up_."

"You've helped, Peggy. Instead of being sorry and ashamed of myself and realizing that I'm not as nice as they think, I'm going to turn that energy to _being_ as nice. Do you think I can do it?"

"I'm not from Missouri-but I cling to their motto, and I do believe you can fulfill it for me."

"All right, I _will_ show you. You and all of them. I'm going to surprise you, Peggy Parsons!"

Peggy left her room with a little sigh.

"I've come to collect Katherine," she poked her head into Zelda Darmeer's abode and said.

Katherine came hastily out to her, and the two made their way to Ambler House, the several purchases they had made carried loosely in their arms.

When they were comfortably enwrapped in the dear, restful, homelike atmosphere of their own suite, Peggy gave Katherine a sketchy report of her interview with Gloria.

"We've had to have our finger in two college pies of very different flavors, Kathie," she mused when the tale was done. "Our first case was a girl who didn't have recognition _enough_-was swamped under the weight of indifference and criticism that met her here. The other has too much and couldn't stand it. She fell to pieces under the burden of wors.h.i.+p the girls insisted on placing on her. It's funny, isn't it, Katherine?"

"Such weeps, such weeps," laughed Katherine, not without sympathy in her tone. "If only everybody in college could have things evened up for them as we have. We're neither too high nor too low. We have a lovely suite-each of us has a-nice room-mate" (Katherine smiled as she flung this little inclusive compliment at herself), "and people like us a good deal, but not so much that they expect more of us than is humanly possible."

"But I don't think we'd be any different in any situation," judged Peggy. "Do you know, friend room-mate, I'm afraid we're hopelessly commonplace."

"I believe you're right," Katherine agreed stoutly, "and I'm glad _of_ it!"

CHAPTER XIV-SPRING TERM

It is worth while having come through months of winter, full of varying fortunes, to wake at last in the glory of Spring Term.

Spring Term! Those of us who have had it,-what wouldn't we give to be able to drift backward for a moment and feel the wonder of Spring Term around us again? Sweet with its apple-blossoms, prodigal of its suns.h.i.+ne, giving away New England in a strange manner, showing that she possesses a wildness and radiance of youth that for three-fourths of the year she denies.

For Spring Term is satisfaction. There is enough of it. When its magic first comes to the freshman she thinks there will be eons more of Spring Terms.

But there will not be. Only four of them in a lifetime-during those years when the newness of life is fresh, when the power to respond sings through every girl's heart its most exultant tune.

A more or less bony livery horse, perked up for spring, with the inevitable runabout, stood before each campus house's back door in those days.

When his hirers came down from their rooms, they undid the knot about the hitching post and, picking up the reins, slapped them on the beast's back and careened away, out into the wonderworld their Hampton had become.

Red canoes began to flash across the bright and shallow waters of Paradise.

Rubber-soled shoes slapped their way to the tennis courts, and their wearers sat for hours without any alleviating shade, just to have possession of a court at last for sixty minutes.

"I don't know _what_ I've ever done to deserve it," said Peggy, leaning on her window-sill beside Katherine, while the two looked out on it all.

"I've heard the uppercla.s.s girls tell some of our freshmen when they were homesick, 'Wait till Spring Term.' Now I understand what they meant," returned Katherine slowly.

"Oh, room-mate, I am glad I belong to such a world. Wouldn't it be-wouldn't it be _terrible_ to have Spring Term come along and be a senior-or an _alum_?"

"Seniors graduate-I suppose they don't realize it's all for the last time-maybe they do, though. But alums!" Katherine caught her arm and pressed it in an odd panic. "Do you suppose we will actually some day be-that?" she asked with a shudder.

Peggy laughed out into the suns.h.i.+ne. "Not for ages and ages. Three years more-why, that's almost the same as forever. Katherine," she changed the subject suddenly, "I wish we had a canoe! Watch those adorable ones on Paradise-see the drops sparkle off that paddle-oh, Kathie, let's have one, h'mm?"

Katherine was immediately beside herself with joy.

"We can get one second-hand from a girl down at Weldon House," she said joyously. "I heard about it the other day."

Peggy demurred. "I don't want a second-hand one," she declared decidedly. "I want a new one, that n.o.body has ever adventured in before us. I don't know how to paddle though, do you?"

"No, except that the girl at Weldon that wants to sell this one I mentioned took me out in hers and sort of advertised it by letting me experiment with the paddle awhile. I nearly tipped us over and she was so anxious to have me buy the boat she never said a word."