Annabel Sharp

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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?” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ After many little pats on ruffles and curls Peggy and Katherine were dressed at last, and stood before their mirrors almost satisfied.
Then Katherine went downstairs to see if the girls needed any last help with the decorations.
Hazel Pilcher stuck her head in at Peggy’s door.
“Ready?” she called.
Peggy swung from the mirror and bowed to her, laughing.
“As ready as I can be,” she said. “Hazel, you look simply wonderful. You look—like somebody in the movies or on the stage.”
“Well,” said Hazel easily. “You might look prettier than you do, Peggy; you don’t make the most of yourself.” ”

“ The first few days of her presidency she had enjoyed with a frank egotism that had pleased Peggy and had caused Katherine many amused smiles.
But she was accustomed to it all now. There is no class in college so breathlessly eager to bestow devotion as the first class, and when the admired person is one of their very own, an added quality of loyalty and unswerving devotion creeps in.
“I just don’t believe that girl ever did a mean or silly thing in her life,” the voice followed Gloria as she started downstairs, with the rest of her party in her wake. ”

“ Katherine laughed delightedly. “There are footprints all over it! Oh, mustn’t the Macefield House girls be furious?”
Peggy was silent.
“Don’t you think that’s funny?” her room-mate insisted, still laughing.
“Perfectly simple,” returned Peggy. “Some people haven’t a bit of sense. I imagine it was some—some delivery boy, don’t you?”
“More likely a freshman. Delivery boy with those little feet? How ridiculous—as if he’d wear high heels!”
“Katherine, you’re a regular Sherlock Holmes,” Peggy protested.
“I believe I could ferret out the criminal,” persisted Katherine. “I’ve thought of a good clue.” ”

“ And Peggy looked at the beautiful silk stockings that gleamed on her feet when the shoes were removed.
“Look out, Morning Glory,” shouted a merry Junior, “there are some of your freshmen worshippers present—and they say all idols have clay feet!”
Peggy’s heart skipped a beat, and Gloria seized the shoes uncertainly as if to put them on again. The room burst into a shout of laughter, and Gloria ducked her flaming head gracefully and laughed with the rest. ”

“ No use for any girl to tell herself that this was the wind howling—or the rain dejectedly descending on a tin roof—for no wind ever howled so precisely up and down scales with such sobbingly human and barnyard notes, and no rain was ever known to be so surprisingly vocal, nor so loud and threatening one moment and so tremulously broken and far away the next. ”

“ Everybody’s used to it, and if a girl downstairs is wearing an especially good-looking dress, she’ll stand up and turn around and gaze about the audience for a moment so that we can be sure to get its effect. That’s what always happens,” Peggy explained blithely to their guest.
Mrs. Moore hadn’t been to the theater often, anywhere. So that, in itself, was a pleasure. But to sit in a theater crowded with girls, all in evening dress as they would have gone to a ball, their throats and arms white in the glare of the electric lights, was a never-to-be-forgotten experience. ”

“ Boyd’s was the popular restaurant, where the girls trooped in to luncheon whenever the allowance from home seemed to justify such a luxury, where they sat on Saturday evenings, their white shoulders gleaming above the white silk, green chiffon and blue crêpe de Chine of their very best dresses.
“Are we really—invited by—Gloria?” questioned Lilian, halting before the luminous name of the freshman president. “Isn’t that wonderful of her to give a party for Mother!”
Gloria, adorable in white furs, met them at the doorway of Boyd’s, and greeted Mrs. Moore with her own delightful impulsiveness. ”

“ For floors are vastly more used at college than anywhere else except, perhaps, in the nurseries. Few people realize the solid comfort there is in floors. They are not simply objects lying flatly and dispiritedly beneath our feet to be trodden upon, but they make the most delightful divans and seats in the world, and possess a superior seating capacity.
At least that was the way the Hampton girls found it, and during vacation time they often outraged a parent or relative by proceeding to sit down and be comfortable, if it chanced that every real chair was taken. ”

“ She fell to pieces under the burden of worship the girls insisted on placing on her. It’s funny, isn’t it, Katherine?”
“Such weeps, such weeps,” laughed Katherine, not without sympathy in her tone. “If only everybody in college could have things evened up for them as we have. We’re neither too high nor too low. We have a lovely suite—each of us has a—nice room-mate” (Katherine smiled as she flung this little inclusive compliment at herself) , “and people like us a good deal, but not so much that they expect more of us than is humanly possible.” ”

“ It’s a wonder I didn’t call the house-matron. Oh, you incorrigible youngsters, what in the world was it?”
Peggy’s face assumed an aggrieved expression immediately.
“It was only our lesson,” she responded somewhat sulkily.
“Lesson! My goodness, what are they giving the freshmen now that their lessons turn out to be imitations of a menagerie? Why, when I was a freshman”— (with a very superior air, for Hazel Pilcher was now enjoying all the glory of a sophomore’s exalted position) —“we had Latin and French and math and history, but I never heard of a course in ghostly noises. ”

“ Delia Porter, Helen Pearson, Margaret Perry and so on, until all at once from the most inviting looking of all leaped her own name, Peggy Parsons, in perfectly unfamiliar writing—writing almost too assured to be that of a freshman at all.
Wonderingly she unfolded the little square, and then, jammed in by the other girls as she was, she flung her arms around Katherine’s neck and cried out with a sob of joy, “Oh, kiss me, Katherine!—they want my poem for the Monthly!”
From dull gray the world leaped to glowing radiance. ”

“ I suppose a person ought to be awfully dressy,” Peggy said doubtfully.
“I don’t know,” murmured Katherine. “I shouldn’t think it would be necessary to dress much if you were just one of the multitude like me. But being one of the youngest authors in college, it’s different with you.”
With arms around each other’s shoulders, the room-mates strolled back across the campus toward Ambler House. The sunlight shone over the campus and over the moving army of girls going in every direction across it, for it was just at the end of recitation hour. ”

“ When Jim set them down outside the big recitation hall, where she was actually to attend class with Peggy, she smoothed her coat with happy anticipation, and perhaps the full wonder of Thirteen came to this shabby little woman, with grey in her hair, as radiantly as it came twice a week to these Hampton girls, who picked up snatches of everything under the sun, and who learned without the miserable grind, an easy style of writing that set them apart from the girls who had never had Thirteen. ”

“ The girls were flocking forth, some still in their damp slickers, the rain glistening on them; others all immaculate just as they were ready to start out to recitations: and still a lazy third contingent, who had not yet had any classes or who were wantonly cutting them, as sweet as flowers in Japanese silk kimonos and little pattering slippers. ”

“ After two miles they were warm and thirsty—and hungry, too, and their feet dragged a little.
“Oh, that cider, that cider,” laughed Katherine. “I wish it could come part way to meet us!”
“Never mind, room-mate,” cheered Peggy, with mock heroism; “only a mile and a half to go now, and then the lovely cider will be running into our jug, and we can get several glassesful to drink there. And ginger cookies to your heart’s content, Kay.”
“Can’t we—speed up a little?” urged Katherine on the strength of that; “if we just double our steps, we’ll get there sooner.” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ I saw into that girl’s heart to-day—a mother can—even though I’m not her mother—and she’s not happy.”
“Mother!” cried Lilian. “Why, Gloria is simply bubbling with happiness. Don’t you think anybody would be perfectly radiant who had all she has?”
“I wonder if you couldn’t find it out, Lilian, and see if you couldn’t help her in some way—she——”
Peggy brushed away the thought of the incongruity of Lilian Moore, very much one of the masses in Hampton, acting as confidante and comforter to the lofty Gloria, whose position set her up to twinkle before the worshipful freshmen, star fashion. ”

“ Peggy and Katherine exchanged glances with deep sighs, and trudged down the steps, and slowly back toward the mill.
The cider mill was an important institution to Hampton girls—and to Amherst boys, if they cared to walk so far. The man who owned it seemed to feel an especial responsibility toward college girls—as every one does near a college town—and so he kept a counter in the entrance hall over which he sold as much cider as a girl wanted to drink, for five cents. One of his stalwart young helpers would fill her glass as many times as she wished, for the single first payment. ”

“ She sat down again with a little silken rustle, and Florence Thomas leaned forward, her pleasant face serious with the weight of her self-imposed task.
“There’s one thing I’ve noticed,” she said slowly. “Doris Winterbean and May Jenson don’t seem to mingle with the rest of the house as they might. Now I don’t want you two girls to get mad,” turning to her victims, “but you have an awfully ungracious air when any one comes to your door, and you always lay a book face down as if you could hardly wait to take it up again. You aren’t exactly snobs,—maybe it’s only that you’re too studious. ”

“ Peggy, by clutching at the knees and then the shoulders of the girls on either side, arose with difficulty and went out into the hall.
What she saw there made her shut the door behind her.
The matron, just as they had feared, was outside the door. But there was another woman with her. A horrid-looking woman, Peggy thought, very different from any one usually seen in campus houses.
The matron’s face was troubled, and Peggy felt instinctively that it was something more than their reckless auction that was causing her uneasiness. ”