Peggy Parsons a Hampton Freshman Part 7

"Will you vote for Myra Whitewell?" some friend was imploring.

"No," said Peggy, suddenly, "let me alone. Every one is after me so hard to vote for other people that I haven't had any time to work for my own candidate."

And she forced her way through the throng, shouting into each bewildered and crimson ear, "Vote for Gloria Hazeltine! She's a _dandy_ girl."

"Peggy, _Peggy_, listen a moment," said Katherine's agonized voice.

"What do you think the Andrews girls are doing? Going back on us at the last minute. They say they will put up Florence Thomas for president if neither of us will run, and that you and I are traitors to try to elect some one not from our own prep school."

"Well," said Peggy, gritting her teeth, "we can elect Gloria without Andrews."

"Oh, but, Peggy, we will be voting against our own school! If they insist on putting her up this way, won't we have to vote for Florence?"

Peggy shook her head and went on through the thick crowds of freshmen.

"She's a _dandy_ girl," Katherine heard in Peggy's clear tones.

Here in this giant recitation room was a.s.sembled a cla.s.s in the process of being welded together into an organization having one heart and one mind. It was a conglomeration of more or less uncertain and dazed girls now. Some were actively working up sentiment, but for the most part they stood in groups, each group a stranger to the others, four hundred and fifty girls, many of whom had never seen each other before this day, trying to realize that they were of one college flesh and that out of this roomful must be made the dearest friends.h.i.+ps of a lifetime.

There was nothing coherent about them as yet. They held aloof from each other, partly in timidity and partly in pride, and their interests were in conflict rather than in unison.

Once pledged to a name for president, they clung to it desperately as if that particular girl had been their best and oldest friend. And they hated all the other girls who had been put up.

Slips of paper were pa.s.sed around and, with a feeling of deep importance, each freshman wrote the name of the girl she wanted for her president.

With much rustling the slips were collected in hats by freshmen appointed by the pretty Junior who presided.

Then with more rustling they were counted, while the freshmen's eyes popped out of their heads in eagerness to learn how good a showing their favorite was making.

The silence was most respectful when the pretty Junior took up the counts the freshmen had made and read in her sweet, serious voice, "Myra Whitewell 200, Gloria Hazeltine 101, Florence Thomas 99, Corinne Adams 50."

The ignorant freshmen remained breathless, waiting to be told whether any one was yet their president or not.

"It is necessary, according to the by-laws, to have a two-thirds majority for a candidate before she can receive office," the presiding Junior informed them in those dainty and precise tones of hers.

"Therefore another vote will be cast, in the hope of bringing about more unanimity."

With joy the freshmen wrote again on slips of paper. But the vote came in again identically the same! The pretty Junior, whose name was Alta Perry, raised her eye-brows in surprise. Tirelessly the appointed freshmen pa.s.sed out new voting slips.

"When a candidate has too few votes to be really in the running,"

protested the Junior mildly, "the voting would get on faster to give those votes elsewhere. The idea is not to show your loyalty to any one girl, but to elect a president for the freshman cla.s.s."

Peggy took council with her henchman, Katherine.

"If those Adams votes go to Florence Thomas, I suppose Gloria will be sacrificed sooner or later," she said. "If they go to Myra Whitewell-I think she's the haughty little thing yonder wearing the Mrs. Castle head-ache band,-why, then Gloria's out, too. The only thing to do is to get them for Gloria."

She sped away to the Andrews group, where Florence Thomas, who had always taken life pleasantly and coolly, was the flushed and eager center of ninety-nine supporters, both those from her own school and the others who had rallied to her cause.

"Girls," said Peggy, "we're two ahead of you. Please be reasonable--"

But she saw the curious star-like quality of Florence's eyes. And she hadn't the heart to go on.

The plain, kindly, everyday, comfy Florence to light up and s.h.i.+ne like that! Well, if she had known in time how honors could bring that girl out, perhaps Peggy would have considered her a perfectly suitable president from the beginning.

"If _you_ had wanted it, Peggy, I wouldn't have stood a chance,"

Florence breathed down to her from the window seat on which she was perched so as to overlook her adherents. "The girls only put me up because you and Katherine failed them."

Failed them! Peggy's heart skipped a beat. The cold glances of the other girls let her guess only too plainly how she was viewed by the Andrews contingent, the members of her own school.

"If you give up something that most anybody would want and feel just right about it, then somebody comes and takes the joy out of life by seeing you as a villain still," mused Peggy aloud.

She didn't try to get the Corinne Adams votes for Gloria, she didn't argue with a single Myra Whitewell enthusiast.

And the vote came in again so nearly the same that the pretty Junior was vexed, and looked at her wrist watch and thence out to the waning sunlight over the campus. Really an afternoon spent with her own somewhat intelligent juniors would be greatly preferable to this monotonous and stubborn concourse of freshmen who seemed to have set their hearts on making an election impossible. Corinne Adams had lost seven votes to Myra, and now tragically arose and announced her withdrawal from the contest. Many voices murmured protestingly "no, no,"

as she came forward and went toward the door, but these sympathizers had not voted for her when they had the chance.

"I never knew anything so heart-breakingly mixed up," said Peggy. "That Junior's mad, the freshmen are near to tears and the candidates are all wobbly."

And then suddenly an idea lifted her right up out of the depression and doubt that was settling over the room. She stepped over to the desk and held a confab with the Junior and the freshmen vote-collectors.

Alta Perry s.n.a.t.c.hed eagerly at the chance to bring order out of chaos.

She arose and rapped for attention. Immediately all the despairing whispers ceased.

"Some one has suggested that the girls would like to see the candidates," she said, "so that they'd know who they're voting for."

A wave of approval swept her audience.

"So I'll ask the girls who are still up to come forward to the platform so that-everybody may see them."

The crowd parted, while from three corners of the room the candidates came.

The Junior smiled apologetically as she ranged them before the cla.s.s.

This was vastly amusing to her, but she realized that all the voters were staring forward with hero-wors.h.i.+p in their eyes waiting to see which was the girl for whom each had been so religiously voting, ballot after ballot.

"Myra Whitewell," introduced Alta Perry, nodding toward the first girl.

The girl acknowledged the introduction with an abrupt lifting of her chin. She was small and dark, with snapping brown eyes and a fine, slender, somewhat selfish face with no color in it. Her lips were full and red.

A pretty, wilful, egotistical picture this first candidate presented to the freshman cla.s.s. Myra was the sort of girl who would always have blindly devoted followers willing to put up with her whims and ill-tempers because they believed her to be of finer clay than the rest of the world.

She herself was superbly conscious of this extra fineness. She scanned the eager faces of the crowd with quick glances, haughty, like a young princess reviewing her humble but faithful subjects.

"And this is Florence Thomas," continued the Junior, her eyes sparkling just a bit with the fun of the little drama.

And the cla.s.s saw Florence Thomas for just what she was-a nice, ordinary, typical girl like most of them; possessed of a good deal of executive ability if it was forced into action, neither markedly self-centered nor self-sacrificing.

She had a little round face, with wavy dark-brown hair around it. They got no very distinct impression of the second candidate further than this. She was without the rare gift of personality that "gets across,"

and hence her undoubted, sterling qualities had little opportunity for appeal.

Her face was flushed with her sudden prominence, and there was a trace of embarra.s.sment in her smile.