Peggy Parsons a Hampton Freshman Part 3

"I'm trying to find Miss Foster," the scared voice went on, "because I was to have roomed with her this year. I'm Gloria--"

With a single bound, the impulsive Peggy had reached the beautiful stranger and had thrown her arms around her neck. It was all her fault, she was thinking, all her fault that this nice, nice girl had been deprived of the finest room-mate on campus, for while Peggy and Katherine were at Andrews Preparatory School, Peggy had not known that she herself could go to college until the last minute, and Katherine had already been a.s.signed another room-mate. When Peggy had been given the money to come, however, by old Mr. Huntington, her friend, Katherine had written to Gloria Hazeltine-who stood before them now-and had explained that she just must room with her own Peggy, and would Gloria mind and she could easily find somebody else.

Neither of the girls had seen Gloria before, but at this first glimpse of her, Peggy's heart was warm with a sense of wanting to make up to her for having taken her place, and hence the smothering arms she wrapped so quickly around the newcomer's neck.

All the embarra.s.sment of the new guest fled at this surprisingly eager reception. She drew back from Peggy's arms and smiled happily down into her face.

"Oh, oh," she cried, "I wish more than ever that you were my room-mate!

Which is Peggy Parsons that has taken you away from me?"

Peggy at once saw the other's mistake and flushed. "I'm the guilty party," she admitted. "I'm Peggy. But I want you please to like me a little-anyway. And now--" suddenly changing to a business-like tone of hospitality, "sit right down and have some tea. Girls, this is Morning Glory, Katherine's and my best friend. You don't mind my calling you that?" she inquired anxiously. "That's the way Katherine and I spoke of you to ourselves and you-your looks bear it out so well," she faltered.

Gloria, very much taken into the Ambler House set, and already being plied with tea and wonderful beaten biscuit, didn't mind anything, and in a few minutes the whole room seemed to glow with a pervading happiness and content that took no account of the gloomy weather outside, and for this season at least the bugaboo ghost of the Freshman Rains was laid.

CHAPTER III-PEGGY'S MASTERPIECE

Peggy was bending absorbedly over her desk one evening biting her pen and then writing a bit and now and then crossing out part of what she had written, all with a kind of seraphic smile that puzzled Katherine more and more until she finally just had to speak about it.

"What are you doing, room-mate?" she demanded; "that look is so-so awfully unlike your usual expression."

"Hush," said Peggy, glancing up and waving her pen solemnly toward the other. "It's a poet's look."

"A--? Peggy Parsons, you're rooming with me under false pretenses. If you're going to turn into a genius I'm going home. You know I perfectly hate geniuses and there are so many funny ones around college. I always thought that at least you--" her tone was scathing and beseeching at the same time, "at least you were immune."

"Maybe I am," said Peggy speculatively. "What is it?"

"What's what?"

"Immune. Could a person be it without knowing it, do you suppose?"

Katherine had thrown herself across the room and had kissed Peggy fervently and repentantly at this remark. "Oh, I take it all back, Peggy," she cried, "you're not a genius. They always understand every word in the dictionary and you are-you are just a dear little dunce, after all!"

"Well, I like that!" exclaimed the injured young poet. "Let me read you this, Katherine," she continued with s.h.i.+ning eyes, "and then you'll see-oh, Katherinekins, Katherinekins, what a bright room-mate you have, and how proud you'll be of me to-morrow when Miss Tillotson reads this out in English 13."

Katherine glanced toward the inky ma.n.u.script suspiciously.

"Is it very long?" she inquired.

Peggy only shot her a reproachful glance and began to read in a sweet, thrilly voice, that already showed the effects of strenuous elocution training and would have made the veriest nonsense in the world seem beautiful by reason of its triumphant youth and its perfect conviction.

"Dreams that are dear-of night-of day- All I could think or hope or plan: Naught is so sweet in that dream world's sway As this wonderful hour of the Present's span.

There was a silence in the room when she had finished, and Peggy folded her ma.n.u.script up tenderly and laid it away on her desk with an air that was little short of reverent.

"How did you do it?" breathed Katherine, carried away by the magic of the voice rather than by any clear idea of what the voice had read. But she had a great deal of faith in Peggy, and anything she would read like that must be very fine. So Katherine pa.s.sed her judgment on it immediately.

"Do you like it?" Peggy pleaded, "oh, do you? Oh, I'm so glad. It's-it's just a piece of my soul, Katherine."

Katherine accompanied her room-mate to English 13 next day with a pleasant sense of exhilaration in her heart, for wasn't this the day Peggy was to be praised before them all-freshmen, soph.o.m.ores, juniors and seniors alike-for her wonderful poem?

There was a little stir and flutter through Recitation room 27 as the bright-eyed young literary lights of the college trooped in.

English 13 had to be held in the largest recitation room on campus, for it was the one cla.s.s that everybody would rather go to than not. It was purely elective with a number of divisions and you could walk by and decide whether or not you wanted to go in-and you always decided to go in.

Grey sweaters over the backs of chairs, a blur of black furs, youthful heads with hair all done alike, lolling arms along the chair-tops, slim white hands toying with pencils or sweater b.u.t.tons-a gigantic, lazy, comfortable, enjoying-life sort of a cla.s.s when you came in from the back of the room, but as you went down toward the front and glanced back, there was a light of eager antic.i.p.ation s.h.i.+ning in every face, a universal expression of intelligent interest such as it is the fortune of few college professors, alas, to behold in this world.

Peggy and Katherine had dropped the wonderful poem in the 13 box outside the door-it being written on pale-blue paper so that Peggy would recognize it at once in the bundle that would soon be brought in, in Miss Tillotson's arms.

They sat as near the front as they could get, and that queer, unaccountable, crimson uneasiness that affects authors when their work is about to be read in public-part pleasurable but mostly agony-swept Peggy in a miserable flood and she sat deaf, dumb and blind to all that was going on around her until she heard the bell strike that announced the opening of cla.s.s.

Miss Tillotson at this minute came in, her arms full of ma.n.u.script, as usual, her glance moving lightly over the rustling audience of girls, who were beginning to sit up straight with that eager interest flaming.

Miss Tillotson was always sure of a response. From the moment she fingered the first ma.n.u.script and began to read in her wonderful voice that made the good things seem so much better than they were and the bad things so much worse, every pause she made, every raised-eye-brow query, every slight little twist of amused smile was received with a collective long-drawn breath, a murmur of appreciation or a small, sudden sweeping storm of laughter that convulsed the entire giant cla.s.s at once, only to drop away suddenly to still attention as her voice again picked up the thread of narrative or resumed the verse.

It is a pity but true that Peggy heard absolutely nothing of her adored 13 to-day until her own blue-folded poem was lifted up. She had gone through a hundred different emotions in the few minutes that she had already spent in this cla.s.sroom. Every time Miss Tillotson's fingers lingered near her ma.n.u.script in selecting what next to read, a s.h.i.+ver of despair went up and down her spine. Oh, why had she done such a thing?

She, only a freshman, to have had the effrontery to write a poem when all these upper-cla.s.smen-and even the Monthly board members-were in the cla.s.s-and had written such wonderful things! Of course there was the approval of Katherine by which she had set so much store a short few hours ago. But-she glanced at Katherine now sitting so tranquilly beside her. Katherine was only a freshman herself! What did her approval mean?

She hated herself for the disloyalty of the thought, but still she could not help wis.h.i.+ng that she had never shown the poem to Katherine and then she could make out it was some one else's and not have to suffer the awful humiliation--

Miss Tillotson was reading! Oh, it had actually come-this horrible calamity! Nothing could happen to save her now. Her poor little blue poem was being read out to all these wonderful girls of Hampton and she could not prevent it. Drowning, drowning in a sea of confusion, there drifted hazily through Peggy's mind a pathetic story she had once read in a newspaper about a man whose s.h.i.+p was sinking and who had put a note in a bottle, "All hope gone. Good-bye forever."

When the smooth voice of Miss Tillotson stopped there was a slight rustle over the cla.s.s, and then with one accord the girls burst out into a laugh.

It was the merest ripple of enjoying t.i.tter, but in Peggy's crimson ears it roared and echoed until the mocking sound of it was the one thing in the world. She lifted her swimming eyes and kept them on Miss Tillotson's face and even achieved a somewhat ghastly smile on her own account, believing, poor child, that she could thus keep secret the awful fact of her ident.i.ty as the writer of that "thing"-the poem had already descended to this t.i.tle in her mind-and that neither Miss Tillotson nor the girls need ever know.

"If all that the writer could 'think or hope or plan' is expressed in this particular-flight," smiled Miss Tillotson, with that dear little quirk to her mouth that Peggy had loved so many times but which hurt now, oh, beyond words to tell, "I should think that dream world of hers would resemble a nightmare."

Another gale of laughter swept the cla.s.s, fluffy heads leaned back against the chairs in abandon and s.h.i.+rt-waisted shoulders shook.

Peggy felt that if Katherine looked at her or ventured a pat of sympathy she would die. But Katherine, when Peggy's miserable glance sought her face, was gazing interestedly around the room from literary light to literary light as if to determine which could have been guilty of the blue ma.n.u.script. It certainly was a brilliant way to ward off detection from her room-mate and Peggy was grateful.

Peggy hardly knew how she got home that day. She and Katherine did not speak until they had gained the safety of their own suite and then they put a "Busy" sign on the door, and sat down on their couch.

"Katherine," said Peggy at last, "one of two things must happen now.

Either I shall never touch pen to paper again or I'll keep at writing until I make a success of it and show Miss Tillotson that I can after all."

"Yes, room-mate," agreed Katherine solemnly, "that's the only alternative open to you now."

The tragic whiteness of Peggy's face deepened.

"Never again, or-never give it _up_ until I've made good," she murmured.

"It might mean-more times like this, Katherine, if I kept on," she reminded tentatively.

"Yes, Peggy," Katherine answered slowly, "I think it _would_ mean more times like this."

"And nothing but my own determination to go on,-no reason to think I have any particular talent or ability-she has already taken away all that notion. Just the will to do it whether I can or not-to show her that I can."