Annabel Sharp

“ Gloria was laughing through her tears, “the reason I wouldn’t tell you was because I couldn’t bear to risk seeing your stare of disillusionment and loss of faith—in case you felt about me as some of the others do. I don’t know why they should, but they act as if I were sort of superhuman. And all my worry about your attitude for nothing! I’ve just been plain Gloria Hazeltine to you all the time, haven’t I, Peggy? And to Katherine. I’m—kind of glad. It’s awful to have people holding such ridiculous ideals about you.” ”

“ It was a very long ride down to their destination, and Peggy had time to conjure up in her mind all the pictures she had ever seen of men in the navy, and battleships, and cannons, and such warlike objects. She thrilled to the thought of such a life, with its roving over the whole world after school was done, in those great gray floating forts of cruisers with their long sinister guns always ready for whatever might deserve their cruel attention. Even when women vote, she thought, there would be no such glory of open sea for them. ”

“ Politely Jim and their new friend glanced down at the dusty oxfords.
Jim gave a start and was about to speak, when Katherine saw him suddenly look at her feet, too. His eyes twinkled.
“Is that a—new fad?” he asked finally. “A fellow would never dare adopt anything so radical.”
“Is what a new fad?” demanded the unconscious Peggy, and then she looked down and saw.
Her face burned with a quick red, but she laughed infectiously. “We—we went wading, and I suppose I did this when I saw you, Jim, so it’s all his fault. Kay dear, can you forgive?” ”

“ Slowly Peggy nodded. “I want everything,” she said. “Oh, Katherine, I don’t know how it is that when a person has so much, they can just go on wanting and wanting and not be content without it all. I know I’ve had this lovely year with all of you and ever so many girls can’t go away to school at all, but, Katherine, I’m—I’m such a pig—I—I—want college, too!”
And then the tears that would not be restrained any longer coursed down her cheeks and fell unheeded on her blue kimono, while she clasped her hands and rocked them in self-accusation and despair. ”

“ A more or less bony livery horse, perked up for spring, with the inevitable runabout, stood before each campus house’s back door in those days.
When his hirers came down from their rooms, they undid the knot about the hitching post and, picking up the reins, slapped them on the beast’s back and careened away, out into the wonderworld their Hampton had become.
Red canoes began to flash across the bright and shallow waters of Paradise. ”

“ Forest and the teachers mustn’t see any light gleaming under their doors after ten o’clock. Soon their eyes grew heavy and the thoughts of fudge began to mix themselves up curiously with dreams.
They were two little tumbled over figures, fast asleep, Peggy on her couch and Katherine on hers, when the indignant guests, wondering why they had not been summoned to the party and deciding to come without waiting for the formal bidding, strode in upon them, with much flutter of silk and crepe kimono, and patter, patter of slippered feet. ”

“ Doris dropped her fudge spoon.
“What do you mean, Peggy?” she demanded.
“Well,” laughed Peggy gleefully, delighted with the discovery she and Katherine had made, “that party last night did no good, some way. Everybody went home feeling disgruntled and out of sorts—and overwhelmed more or less with their own imperfections. If each fault-finder just—doesn’t find fault, you know,—even in her own mind, there won’t be any fault pretty soon to be found.” ”

“ But this is especially so in school and college, where a great number of young people of the same age and of more or less the same station in life are placed in exactly similar environment. The same tears, the same laughter, the same desires and the same satisfactions all girls who have gone away to school have felt in varying degree. And now here sat this roomful of girls, each suffering in the same new and unexpected way at the same time and each believing her mental situation to be strangely different from anything ever experienced in the world before. ”

“ With a sigh, Peggy lit the little alcohol lamp under the tea kettle and Katherine dived mysteriously under the desk to emerge a moment later with something that sent a general shout of approval through the entire group.
“A box! A box!” they cried, “Katherine has a box from home!”
Nothing else in life possesses quite the wonder and the satisfying delight of a real box from home. ”

“ In her heart of hearts, perhaps, Peggy was remembering the occasion when she had dressed so carefully for the matinée that she didn’t get to the matinée at all, and was deciding that being on hand was really more important than making a good appearance.
She went to the hop, her spirits as light as her dancing feet, and when Harold Wilbering came eagerly over to her, she and he laughed at what had happened to her face, but he discovered what Peggy had not the least idea of for herself, that the sunburn effect was really rather becoming. It made her so vivid and so alive. ”

“ 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 buttons—a gigantic, lazy, comfortable, enjoying-life sort of a class 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 anticipation shining 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. ”

“ When, seated at last, breathless and full of anticipation, in a taxi with their trunk up on top, the two girls waved through the window to those who had not yet gone, Peggy was too happy to speak, and two bright red spots burned in her dimpling cheeks and her eyes were as blue with excitement as electric sparks.
She had never ridden on a train—a Pullman—before with just girls as company. Her aunt had always taken her the few places she had been. ”

“ There came a Saturday afternoon too lovely to be spent at home.
“What shall we do to-day, Katherine?” Peggy asked. “Let’s just go somewhere by ourselves. Do you want to drive, or walk, or have a bacon bat or take some books down by Paradise and read?”
A day like that one suggests many ways for enjoyment, but if there is one thing more absolutely satisfying than another, and just-the-thing-to-do on such a Saturday afternoon, it is to tramp over to the cider mill, with a jug and a capacity-appetite for new cider and ginger cookies. ”

“ Forest’s very table, and sat, sweet and erect, with the soft candle light over her gold-glinting hair, in her radiant black eyes, and deepening the wonderful, sweeping color of her face. Her slender neck was delicate and proud as a princess’. The other girls’ fingers rested motionlessly on their soup spoons for an instant, during which they looked at their Peggy, spellbound. There was an air of graciousness, of regal beauty about her. There was no trace of the poor little Peggy who had once tried so hard to be a belle and had failed so miserably. ”

“ Inside, in contrast to the bluster without, the library looked as cozy and homelike as a room could well be when only one person lives in it.
“Peggy,” said Katherine, “we may be going to disturb his peace for nothing.”
“Pshaw,” said Peggy, the light of high adventure shining in her eyes, “I’d rather have all sorts of surprises and disappointments and hurts and aches and shocks in my life than just have it all a kind of dull monotony, and I always give other people credit for feeling the same way. ”

“ An enormous hysterically happy crowd flocked in the wake of Gloria. Peggy and Katherine were in the outskirts of this crowd, and they looked from the heroine of their making into each other’s radiant faces.
“Well, thank goodness, her looks elected her,” sighed Peggy thankfully. “As soon as I thought of a ‘seeing is believing’ test, I knew we’d won.”
“All the girls are saying she’s the prettiest president a freshman class ever had,” laughed Katherine, “and the joke on them is that they have a regular person as well as just a beauty.” ”

“ The rose tree toppled an instant on the window-sill and then went down, flower pot, jardinière and all, into those singing, upturned faces, two stories below. There followed a frightful crashing sound, and then a stupefied silence.
Peggy, covering her face with her hands, turned and ran from the window, jumped into bed and pulled the sheet over her head.
“Oh, they’re dead, they’re dead, and I’ve killed them,” she thought miserably to herself.
She never wanted to hear a glee-club again, she never wanted to look into the face of a living soul. ”

“ Moore’s hand warmly, there was not a trace of that electric circuit between them which it was so easy to establish with Peggy and Katherine or most of the other girls.
“She’s very cold—and proud,” mused Mrs. Moore, glancing in a puzzled way at the retreating back of Gloria.
Lilian was the sort of girl any one could understand. When she felt badly she would cry, when she didn’t she’d laugh. If she liked any one, she showed it, and if she disliked any one she nearly made faces at them, her distaste was so apparent. ”

“ CHAPTER XIII—SPRING AND ANNAPOLIS In the days that followed after the winter snow’s melting it seemed to Peggy that she was seeing the world by sunlight for the first time. The wonderful new lights that fell on everything, making even a roof or a clay bank a beautiful thing to behold, the subtle perfume that came drifting out on the breeze over orchard and woodland, the pink blossoms on the apple trees, all these things sent her about with her head in the clouds and a happiness at her heart that was just the joy of living. ”