Hester's Counterpart Part 15

He laughed again and held Miss Debby's hand tight in his own while they moved up the walk toward the tiny cottage.

"From this time, I shall have faith in you, though evidence is lacking,"

she said.

She liked the boy. She had never before been so pleasantly impressed by a young man as she had been by him. He was wholesome, clear-eyed and unaffected.

Debby Alden recognized these virtues in him and received him at once into her home and friends.h.i.+p. She liked his college talk; his bright way of making his smile and voice put his words at fault. Yet, while he entertained her she was not wholly unconscious of two things--that Hester was not herself, and that the resemblance between the two girls was not the result of mere chance. Suddenly she turned to Helen with the question:

"Have you any sisters? Did you ever have any?"

"No, unfortunately, I am an only child," was the reply.

"Which may account for any peculiar little traits of character or manner," said Robert Vail. "Only a brother or sister is able to 'comb one' thoroughly smooth. They trim the plant of self-esteem; they nip the bud of selfishness before it can bloom; they serve their purpose, nuisances though they are--these brothers and sisters."

"How unfortunate that you never had any. You might have been--" Helen left the sentence unfinished, implying by her tone that he might have been all that he was not.

"But you served the same purpose, cousin. You have never failed in your duty toward me. You are worth a dozen brothers and sisters when it comes to 'combing one down.'" They laughed at the sally and might have carried it further had not Miss Alden led the way to the lunch table.

CHAPTER X

Hester Alden barely escaped being campused for dancing her way through the main hall and shrieking in wild excess of spirits. To add to the enormity of the offense, the day on which this had occurred was the day when the ice-cream wagon came in from Flemington and disposed of its wares at the front entrance of the campus. At the time of her exhibition of high spirits, Hester had held high in her hand a paper b.u.t.ter-dish filled with cream, which had melted and was trickling over the edge of the dish and down her sleeve. The German teacher had heard the unusual commotion and appeared on the scene.

"Ach, Fraulein Alden, what matters it by you? To your room go you at once. To Miss Burkham, I such conduct shall report."

Hester in the exuberance of spirit, hugged the little German lady who was as fat as a dumpling. "Fraulein Franz, you are a dear old soul if you do get your English verbs confused. You would dance and laugh and spill your ice-cream too, if you were to play on the scrub team."

"Gra-shus," said Fraulein. "Pardon me, I did not know the cause. I wonder not that you much rejoice."

She retired to her room. Hester laughed again, but softly this time for Miss Burkham's office was not a great distance away.

"The dear old Fraulein! To think of her begging my pardon for reprimanding me. I am only too glad it was not Miss Burkham. If she had seen me, I'd had two weeks on the campus and someone else would have been compelled to carry my cream from the wagon to the coping."

The other east dormitory girls had heard the news and were quite as well pleased as Hester. Mame Cross had been forbidden by her father to play any but practice games. He thought she grew too excited for her own good. It was her place on the second squad which Hester was to fill.

Helen had used her influence in behalf of her roommate; for there were ten other players who would have been as well pleased as Hester was, had it fallen to their lot to subst.i.tute. Fortunately they were a liberal, broad-minded set of girls. They were not envious, but rejoiced with Hester in her good fortune.

As Hester hurried down the main hall to the dormitory stairs, she found her own particular set of friends waiting for her on the landing.

"Here she is!" cried Erma. "We have been looking everywhere for you.

Isn't it simply grand to think that one of our set got on?"

"I'm glad you've got it, since I couldn't," said Mame. She had always the expression of one on whom Fortune had frowned. On the contrary, she had fairly basked in that lady's smiles, since the first day of her babyhood.

"I don't see why father will not let me play. There's no danger of my hurting myself, and what if I should? He has an idea that I am such a precious article that I should be done up in cotton. One thing, Hester, if you play a match game, you'll look better than I do. My basket-ball suit was a fright; but then, I never do have anything that looks like other girls."

Hester was about to express herself contrary to this sentiment, when an audacious remark from Erma caused her to fall back in silence.

"You see how it is, Hester," explained Erma later as the two walked arm in arm down the hall. "Mame is the best dresser in school. She has the best-made clothes and the best taste about choosing them, and you never see a pin or hook loose. Yet we never yet have heard her say she was satisfied. So we just concluded that we wouldn't encourage her. When she begins to complain and find fault with her lot, we'd look as though we pitied her. It isn't a bit of use of trying to convince her how lucky she is.

"Now, I am always the other way." Here Erma paused long enough to laugh merrily. "I'm satisfied with everything. My father is simply grand; I just adore this old seminary, and I think the girls on our hall are the sweetest things, and I never had a dress in all my life that wasn't simply a dream."

The girls rejoiced with Hester, all except Berenice. She went through with the form of congratulations, but her voice had a sarcastic touch and her eyes had narrowed themselves into mere slits. Her words were a little uncertain as to meaning; but Hester to whom all things appeared beautiful, was in no mood to take exception.

"I'm sure I'm glad you're on the scrub," she said slowly. "I'm always glad to see people get what they work so hard for."

"Thank you, Berenice. You girls have all been lovely. You do not have a bit of jealousy about letting a 'fres.h.i.+e' step in ahead of some who have been here two and three years."

"We want to win games," cried Louise Reed. "Whoever makes goals for us, suits us whether she's a freshman or a senior. Get the pennant and we'll carry you home on our shoulders."

They had come to Sixty-two. Erma and Mame in company with Berenice walked on down the corridor.

"I'd love to have been put on; but since I wasn't I am glad that Hester was. It was fair, too. She's played better than any other one on the team. She gets excited but she doesn't lose her head."

Berenice sneered. "To get on the team, one must learn to toady," she said. "No doubt if you had played lackey to Helen Loraine, you would have been playing scrub."

Erma turned suddenly to look at the speaker. There was no laughter now in either her eyes or voice as she, gazing steadily at Berenice, asked, "Do you mean to say that Hester Alden plays lackey to Helen? Do you mean to say that Helen would permit it if Hester were foolish enough to do so, and furthermore do you mean to say that Hester was not chosen for the simple reason that she is the steadiest player among the subst.i.tutes?"

Berenice shrugged her shoulders. Her little beady eyes had their lashes drawn down upon them until they had narrowed into a mere slit.

"How you do fly up, Erma! I really did not think you had such a temper; but one thing you may rest a.s.sured of: it is always you sweet girls who fly into a pa.s.sion at the slightest word."

"I have never posed as being a sweet girl, and I am not in a pa.s.sion now. I have asked you a question which you have evaded. You have insinuated things about girls who call me their friend and I will never let such matters pa.s.s. I wish you to answer my question before we go one step further."

Erma stood still. The others did as she did. Berenice laughed lightly.

"How very silly. A perfect tempest in a tea-cup simply because I choose to get off a joke."

"If that is a joke, it is in horribly bad taste," was Erma's retort.

"You are unjust, Erma. How many times have I heard you laugh at Helen for trying to stand in with the teachers, and for letting Mame copy her translations."

"Hundreds of times, but you always heard me laugh and jest when the girls themselves were present and when every one who heard, knew that it was mere fun. It was mere give and take between every one of our set who were present. You have yet to hear me criticise an absent girl, or jest about her."

Again Berenice shrugged her shoulders as though she would dismiss the subject.

"I am glad I am not ugly-tempered," she said and walked away without a backward glance at the others. For a moment, Erma was wounded. Then the humor of the situation came to her. She laughed until the silvery echoes rang from one end of the corridor to the other; and the girls begged to be quiet lest the hall-teacher follow in their footsteps and they be sentenced to solitary confinement on the campus.

After receiving the congratulations of her friends, Hester had gone to her room. Helen was busy preparing a lesson for the session the following morning.

"Of course, you know what has happened," cried Hester. "Of course you do. I can see by your eyes. Miss Watson sent for me to come to her and then told me. I knew who proposed my name. It was you, Helen Loraine. I cannot possibly thank you, and I never in the world can repay you."

Flinging her arms about her roommate's neck, Hester embraced her warmly all the while declaring that she would never be able to repay her.

"Yes, you surely can," said Helen. "Play a good game and justify my recommending you. That will please me best of all."

"I shall do that for your sake, for my own, and for the team's."