Grace Harlowe's Third Year at Overton College Part 10

"There," she announced with satisfaction, after half an hour's steady work, "Father and Mother can't say I forgot them. Let me see, there are Nora and Jessica, Mrs. Gray and Mabel Allison. Eleanor owes me a letter, and, oh, I nearly forgot the Southards, and there is Mrs. Gibson. I shall have to devote two nights to letter-writing," she added ruefully.

"I do love to receive letters, but it is so hard to answer them."

"Isn't it, though?" sighed Anne, who was seated at the table opposite Grace, engaged in a similar task. "Now I wish we were going home, don't you, Grace?"

"Yes," returned Grace simply. "But we can't, so there is no use in wis.h.i.+ng. However," she continued, her face brightening, "we are going to have Mabel with us, and that means a whole lot. All Overton will be glad to see her--that is, all the juniors and seniors and the faculty and a few others."

"There is only one Mabel Ashe," said Anne softly. "Won't it be splendid to have her with us?"

Grace nodded. Then, after writing busily for a moment, she looked up and said abruptly: "There is just one thing that bothers me, Anne, and that is the way Miss West is behaving. What shall I tell Mabel when she asks me about her? In my letters I haven't made the slightest allusion to anything."

"Tell Mabel the truth," advised Anne calmly. "By that I don't mean that you need mention the Sphinx affair, but if you say to her frankly that we have tried to be friendly with Miss West and that she appears especially to dislike us, she will understand, and nine chances to one she will be able to point out the reason, which so far no one seems to know."

"I suppose I had better tell her," sighed Grace. "I hate to begin a holiday by gossiping, but something will have to be done, or Mabel will find herself in an embarra.s.sing position, for I have a curious presentiment that Miss Kathleen West will pounce upon her the moment she sees her, just to annoy us."

Since the evening of the bazaar, when Kathleen had nodded curtly to Grace at the entrance to the Sphinx's tent, she had neither spoken to nor noticed the four girls who had in the beginning received her so hospitably. No one of them quite understood the newspaper girl's att.i.tude, but as she was often seen in company with Alberta Wicks and Mary Hampton, they were forced to draw their own conclusions. Grace fought against harboring the slightest resemblance to suspicion against the two seniors and their new friend.

"Does Miss West know that Mabel is coming to Overton for Thanksgiving?"

asked Anne.

"No," returned Grace, looking rather worried. "I suppose some one ought to tell her."

"I'll tell her, if you like," proposed Anne quietly. "I think she is in her room this evening. I heard her say to one of the girls at dinner that she intended to study hard until late to-night."

"No," decided Grace, "it wouldn't be fair for me to s.h.i.+rk my responsibility. Mabel wrote me about Kathleen West in the first place, and I promised to look out for her. If she doesn't yearn for my society, it isn't my fault. I'm not going to be a coward, at any rate. I'll go at once, while my resolution is at its height. She can't do more than order me from her room, and having been through a similar experience several times in my life I shan't mind it so very much," concluded Grace grimly, closing her fountain pen and laying it beside her half-finished letter.

"I'm going now, Anne. I hope she won't be too difficult."

Grace walked resolutely down the hall to the door at the end. It was slightly ajar. Rapping gently, she stood waiting, bravely stifling the strong inclination to turn and walk away without delivering her message.

She heard a quick step; then she and Kathleen West confronted each other. Without hesitating, Grace said frankly: "Miss West, Miss Ashe is to be my guest on Thanksgiving Day. Of late you have avoided me, and my friends as well. But Mabel is our mutual friend. So I think, at least while she is here, we ought to put all personal differences aside and unite in making the day pleasant for her."

"Nothing like being disinterested, is there?" broke in the other girl sneeringly, her sharp face looking sharper than ever. "I can quite understand your anxiety regarding not letting Miss Ashe know how shabbily you have treated me. Your promises to her didn't hold water, did they? And now you are afraid she will find you out, aren't you?

Don't worry, I shan't tell her. She'll learn the truth about you and your three friends soon enough."

"You know very well I had no such motive," cried Grace, surprised to indignation. "Besides, I know of no instance in which either my friends or I have failed in courtesy to you."

"How innocent you are!" mimicked Kathleen insolently. "You must think me very blind. Remember, I haven't worked for four years on a newspaper without having learned a few things."

Grace felt her color rising. The retort that rose to her lips found its way into speech. "No doubt your newspaper work has taught you a great deal, Miss West," she said evenly, "but I have not been in college for over two years without having learned a few things, also, of which, if I am not mistaken, you have never acquired even the first rudiments. I am sorry to have troubled you. Good night."

With a proud little inclination of the head, Grace turned and walked down the hall to her own room, leaving the self-centered Kathleen with an angry color in her thin face and the unpleasant knowledge that though she might be in college, she was not of it.

CHAPTER XII

THANKSGIVING AT OVERTON

In spite of the awkwardness of the situation precipitated by the belligerent newspaper girl, Thanksgiving Day pa.s.sed off with remarkable smoothness. Greatly to Grace's surprise, in the morning after Mabel's arrival at Wayne Hall Kathleen West had appeared in the living-room where Mabel was holding triumphant court, greeted her with apparent cordiality, and after remaining in the room for a short time had pleaded an engagement for the day, and said good-bye.

"Too bad she couldn't stay with us and go to the game, isn't it?" Mabel had declared regretfully. "I suppose she is obliged to divide her time.

Miss West is so clever. She must be very popular?" she added inquiringly.

At that moment Elfreda purposely began an account of the latest practice game in which her team had played, and Mabel, who was an ardent basketball fan, failed to notice that her questioning comment had been neither answered nor echoed. To the relief of the four friends the subject of Kathleen West was not renewed during Mabel's stay, and when, that night, she went to the station surrounded by a large and faithful bodyguard, all adverse criticism against the girl for whom she had spoken was locked within the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the four who knew.

On the Friday after Thanksgiving the first real game between the freshmen and the soph.o.m.ore teams took place in the gymnasium. The freshmen won the game, much to Elfreda's disgust, as she had pinned her faith on the soph.o.m.ores. The triumphant team marched around the gymnasium, l.u.s.tily singing a ridiculously funny basketball song which it afterward developed had been composed by none other than Kathleen West.

"Too bad she isn't up to her song," had been Elfreda's dry comment, with which the other three girls privately agreed.

The Morton House girls issued tickets for a play, which had to be postponed because the leading man (Gertrude Wells) spent Thanksgiving in the country and missed the afternoon train to Overton. Nothing daunted, Arline descended upon Grace, Miriam and Anne, pressed them into service and sent them scurrying about to the houses and boarding places of the girls they knew to be at home, with eleventh-hour invitations to a fancy dress party to be held at Morton Hall in lieu of the play, which had to be postponed until the following week. Arline had stipulated that the costumes must be strictly original. Wonderland costumes were to be tabooed. "If we present the circus again later on we don't want to run the risk of giving any one the slightest chance to grow tired of seeing the animals," had been her wise edict.

That night a mixed company of gay and gallant folks danced to the music of the living-room piano at Morton House. Those receiving invitations had immediately planned their costumes and by eight o'clock that evening, resplendent in their own and borrowed finery, were on their way to the ball. At ten o'clock there had been a brief intermission, when cakes and ices were served. This had been an unlooked-for courtesy on the part of Arline, who had plunged recklessly into her month's allowance for the purchase of the little spread. The ball had lasted until half-past eleven o'clock, and the partic.i.p.ants, after singing to Arline and rendering her a noisy vote of thanks, had gone home tired and happy.

Sat.u.r.day had been devoted to the "odds and ends" of vacation. The majority of the girls, having stayed in Overton, paid long-deferred calls, gave luncheons or dinners at Vinton's or Martell's, or, the day being unusually clear, went for long walks. Guest House was the destination of a party of girls of whom Grace made one, and which also included Miriam, Elfreda, Laura Atkins, Violet Darby and half a dozen other young women who had elected the five-mile walk, supper, and a return by moonlight. Arline, Anne and Ruth had at the last moment decided to attend an ill.u.s.trated lecture on Paris, to be held in the Overton Theatre that afternoon, with the gleeful prospect of cooking their supper at Ruth's that evening, an occasion invariably attended with at least one laughable mishap, as neither Arline's nor Anne's knowledge of cooking extended beyond the art of boiling water.

On the way back from Guest House the pedestrians had stopped at Vinton's for a rest and ices. As they trooped in the door, they pa.s.sed Kathleen West, accompanied by Alberta Wicks, Mary Hampton, and a freshman whom Grace had frequently noticed in company with the newspaper girl. Several of the girls with her bowed to the pa.s.sing trio, but Grace fancied there was a lack of cordiality in their salutations. She also imagined she noticed a fleeting gleam of malice in Alberta Wicks's face as the senior pa.s.sed their table. Inwardly censuring herself for allowing any such impression to creep into her mind, Grace dismissed it with an impatient little shake of the head.

The walking party indulged in a second round of ices before leaving Vinton's. Everyone seemed to be in a particularly happy mood, and long afterward Grace looked back on this night as one of the particular occasions of her junior year, when everyone and everything seemed to be in absolute harmony.

All the way home this exalted, elated mood remained with her. She smiled to herself as she leisurely prepared for bed at the recollection of her happy evening. Elfreda's sharp, familiar knock on the door caused her to start slightly, then she called, "Come in!"

"Hasn't Anne come home yet?" asked Elfreda, glancing about her, then, shuffling across the room in her satin mules, she curled herself comfortably on the end of Grace's couch, and, surveying Grace with friendly, half-quizzical eyes, said shrewdly, "Well, what's the latest on the bulletin board?"

"I don't know," smiled Grace. "I didn't look at the one in the hall and as for the one over at the college, I haven't paid any attention to it for the last two days. My letters usually come to Wayne Hall."

Elfreda sniffed disdainfully. "I don't mean either of those bulletin boards, and you know it, too, Grace Harlowe. I could see danger signals flying to-night, even if you couldn't. I don't see how you could have missed them." She eyed Grace searchingly, then said, with conviction, "I don't believe you did miss them. They were too plain to be missed."

Grace hesitated, then said frankly: "To tell you the truth, Elfreda, I did fancy for a moment that Miss Wicks favored me with a very peculiar look. Then I decided it to be a case of imagination on my part. Those girls haven't troubled us this year. I don't know----" she began slowly.

Elfreda interrupted her with an emphatic: "That is just what I've been telling you. That's what I mean by danger signals. Those two girls will never forgive you for making them ridiculous the night they locked me in the haunted house. Last year they had to content themselves with simply being disagreeable, because they could find no particularly weak spot in our soph.o.m.ore armor. They accomplished very little with Laura Atkins and Mildred Taylor. This year it's different." Elfreda paused to give full effect to her words. Then she ended slowly and impressively: "Don't think I'm trying to court calamity, but I am certain that perky little newspaper woman, as she styles herself, is going to prove a thorn in your side. You had better write to Mabel and explain matters, then leave Miss Kathleen West alone. She hasn't spoken to you since the day of the bazaar, so I can't see that your junior counsel is of any particular use to her."

"Still, it seems a shame to give up; besides, it is the first thing Mabel ever asked me to do," demurred Grace.

"I know, I've thought of that," continued Elfreda a little impatiently.

"But I don't think you are justified in wasting your whole year's fun worrying about some one who isn't worth it. If Mabel knew, she would be the first one to indorse what I have just said."

"I'm not wasting my year, Elfreda mine," contradicted Grace good-naturedly. "Just think what a nice time we had to-night! And I'm getting along splendidly with all my subjects. I belong to the Semper Fidelis Club, and am having the jolliest kind of times with you girls.

That doesn't sound much like wasting my year, does it?"

"I didn't say you had wasted it," retorted Elfreda gruffly. "I said, or rather intended to say, that you would be likely to waste it. You are the sort of girl who ought to have the best Overton can offer, because--well--because you deserve it. You think too much about other people, and not enough about yourself," she concluded shortly.

"What a selfish Elfreda," laughed Grace, walking across the room and sitting down beside the stout girl, whose round face looked unusually severe. "One might think Elfreda Briggs never did an unselfish act in all her twenty-two years. Now I am going to give you a piece of your own advice. Stop worrying--about me. Whatever my just desserts are, they'll overtake me fast enough. Hurrah! Here is our little Anne. Did you have a nice time, dear, and what did you cook for supper?"

"I always have a nice time at Ruth's," smiled Anne, "but, if you had seen the three cooks all trying to spoil the broth and succeeding beyond their wildest expectations, you would have been greatly edified."

"I can imagine Arline Thayer gravely bending over that little gas stove of Ruth's," said Grace.

"She had all sorts of splendid ideas about what we might make, but no one had the slightest idea as to how to make anything she proposed."