Peggy Parsons a Hampton Freshman Part 9

"'But I was afraid as well as glad: afraid that maybe I wouldn't know how to do everything just as I should and that I might in some way disappoint the girls who were mentally carrying me about on their shoulders. In case you ever feel that way, little First Lady-and this is the reason for my note being written-I want you to know that you'll be very welcome to come to the veteran-and get the advice or bolstering up she may be able to give you as a result of having learned from her own mistakes.

"'Remember the juniors are just in college to be big sisters to the freshmen, and I hope you will come and claim the relations.h.i.+p the first free minute you have.

"'Love and congratulations, "'_Mary Marvington_.'"

"Oh," said Peggy, clasping her knees, "isn't that a lovely one?"

"Well, it's hard to realize that you are one of the great ones, now, Morning Glory," sighed Katherine whimsically, "so that even ex-presidents will be flattered when you go to see them. And the condescension is all yours! Because a brand new freshman president is more in the college public eye than an 'old' junior who used to be once what you are now."

"Great ones," Gloria was repeating to herself.

"Do you suppose I really am?" she asked artlessly.

"Yes, you are," Katherine said. "A few hours ago you weren't half as much as Peggy-and didn't have the outlook she had, but now--"

Peggy and Gloria simultaneously clapped their hands over Katherine's mouth, and in her quick movement Gloria's ma.s.s of folded notes scattered over the floor like a sudden storm of Luther Burbank snow-flakes.

When they had gathered these together again and had helped Gloria sort out the most interesting-looking ones to read first, they each kissed her and went home, leaving her well absorbed in her overwhelming correspondence before they were even out of sight.

There was a reception in honor of the officers that evening in the Students' building. The freshmen were tired from their strenuous day, but they looked charming, nevertheless, in their soft silks and batistes as they drifted down the walk to the scene of festivities.

"There's Peggy Parsons!" a cry went up as soon as the pair from Suite 22, Ambler House, entered the building.

Peggy was immediately surrounded and borne off toward the receiving line, down which she was marched with nearly all the Andrews crowd and ever so many others in her wake. It did her heart good to hear every Andrews girl telling Gloria Hazeltine that each had voted for her from the beginning-and they believed it, the happy enthusiasts, Peggy could see that.

Then Peggy was swept on by the mob and was soon in the middle of a seethe of dancers, all girls, fox-trotting, one-stepping, waltzing and b.u.mping into each other in brilliant lavender, pink, blue and white confusion. How many dances she danced, nor what they were, she never could remember afterwards. For as soon as one girl left her another carried her off; juniors, seniors, soph.o.m.ores and freshmen, she couldn't tell which. But every one knew her name and hailed her as Peggy as if they had known her all their lives.

"I never knew anything so funny," she said, when she was limping home later, with Katherine in the moonlight. "It was just all a kaleidoscope.

I feel a good deal like a moving-picture that has been run too fast."

"I think you were the director of the picture," smiled Katherine, glancing affectionately at her dishevelled room-mate. "You wrote the scenario for the election, and directed it, even if you did have to be in the picture yourself."

"Katherine, you've got an awfully horrid room-mate," mused Peggy in answer to this eulogy.

"I've got Peggy Parsons," Katherine refuted.

"Well, she's the one I mean," Peggy laughed.

"You'd be ashamed of her if you knew. Katherine, what do you think I almost wished when we were taking all those notes over to Gloria?"

"It wouldn't be so strange if you'd realized they might all have been for you," Katherine defended her. "They might, you know. It was just your crazy generosity that gave them up and deprived me of rooming with a freshman president. Did you really wish you were president? I hope you _did_, because if you didn't you're more than human and I don't like such people."

"There!" cried Peggy, abruptly stopping in her homeward limp, and throwing her arms around her room-mate's neck, "I'm not half so ashamed of it now that it's been dragged out into the light of day-the light of moon, I mean. It's funny how much better it makes a person feel to confess something mean and be sympathized with for it."

"Anyway," said Katherine, as their tired feet climbed the steps of their house, "you were the _dea ex machina_, Peggy Parsons."

"The-the what?" demanded Peggy, startled. "Oh, it's mean to spring anything like that on a trusting room-mate who hasn't any Latin dictionary along. I'll be driven to using a trot for your remarks, if you keep on."

Their laughs rang out inside the huge dimly lighted hall, and the matron, in curl-papers and a purple wrapper, strode forth from her room noiselessly and confronted the culprits.

"Hush, hush," she said. "At this time of night! Please go up to your room without any more of this unseemly laughter."

"Yessum, yessum," whispered Katherine and Peggy meekly, and together they stole up the broad stairway to their rooms, where they snapped on the light and looked at each other and laughed again-but this time silently.

CHAPTER VI-AS OTHERS SEE US

Bang! Bang!

"My-y goo-oodness, is it time to get up?" Katherine sat up sleepily the morning after the freshmen officers' reception, and tried to get some response from the little log-like Peggy in the bed across the room. But Peggy's face was toward the wall and she presented a perfect picture of deep sleep.

The banging continued and Katherine felt it inc.u.mbent upon her to locate it. Gertie Van Gorder, who had kindly taken upon herself the task of waking up the entire second floor at whatever hours its individual inhabitants specified, never thumped like that. She always came quietly in and laid icy cold wet wash cloths over their faces, and informed them calmly, "Your tub is ready, girls; I've left my violet ammonia in there for you."

So it wasn't Gertie.

"Peggy," yawned Katherine fretfully, "can't you wake up and help me think what that is?"

But Peggy, accustomed to so much more efficient means of awakening, never stirred.

"Come in," invited Katherine unwillingly and experimentally to the banging, and Hazel Pilcher entered, with Myra Whitewell in her wake.

"Lazy!" cried Hazel. "You've missed breakfast!"

Katherine moaned and hunched her shoulders in her pink-ribboned nightgown. "What's become of Gertie?" she demanded. "We can't wake up by ourselves, can we?"

"Gertie's in Boston; didn't you know? Went for the week-end," and Hazel sat down on the foot of the sleeping Peggy's couch and laughed until she was hoa.r.s.e. "Now that just shows that what Myra and I are getting up is a real necessity," she giggled. "If there wasn't a crack o' doom of some kind, I suppose the whole second floor of Ambler House would snooze right through the three days until Gertie gets back. It's-it's ludicrous," she finished, after fis.h.i.+ng around for a good word.

"You're sitting on Peggy," pointed out Katherine lackadaisically when the laughter of her guests had died down.

"Wake up, Peggy," cried Hazel, shaking the rounded shoulder. "Wake up and quit being sat on."

"You spoke of a plan," drawled Katherine, when all had seen that the only effect on Peggy was a tossing of her golden curls on the pillow.

"Was it something to take Gertie's place? If it were, I don't think anything could; Gertie will get up at any hour to call us, and says she likes it, too. I'm too loyal to Gertie--"

"Nonsense," snapped Myra Whitewell, who had not forgotten that one of the room-mates had been largely instrumental in electing her opponent at elections the day before. "This is a fault party that we're going to have to-night, in Hazel's room. Just freshmen, except Hazel. You two must be sure to come."

"A fault party?"

"Yes, every house ought to have one. Hazel says this house did last year. Each person tells the others their faults, you know, and then we can improve. Everybody is very frank and it really is good for you to know."

Myra glanced somewhat bitterly at the inattentive form of Peggy, and Katherine hastily turned a little surprised laugh into a sneeze.