Josephine Chase

“ About the hem of the skirt, around the square neck and short sleeves and on the ends of the separate sash trailed shadowy clusters of violets, stamped upon the crêpe with an art known only to the Chinese.
“Where did you find it, General?” she gasped, as she held up the lovely, shimmering frock for her captain and Ronny to see. “I never expected to own a dream gown like this.”
“It is a spring poem in shades,” declared Ronny, lightly touching an end of the sash. “I can guess where it came from. Only a high-grade Chinese bazaar could furnish a gown of its kind. ”

“ That evening as Hal assisted the two girls into the tonneau of the limousine, he was of the romantic opinion that he had merely persuaded a couple of stray moonbeams to ride with him. The light of the fair, increasing moon endowed the duo with a peculiar ethereal beauty which gave him a feeling of reverence. Girls were mostly like flowers was his boyish comparison. The most beautiful flower of them all was Marjorie. ”

“ Of course Miss Langly knows that you have told us this, Lucy?”
“Yes; I asked her if she cared if you girls knew it. I said I was sure you would fight for her. She said she did not wish you to do so, but she did not care if I told you. She supposed almost every one at the Hall knew it.
“There isn’t much we can do at first,” said Marjorie thoughtfully. Every pair of eyes were turned on her sweet face as she began speaking. “Our best plan is the old way we have always done; take her under our wing. ”

“ While Lucy was not anxious to make new acquaintances, she did not like to see the others ignored. Jerry, Muriel and Marjorie had, however, been cut to the quick.
“I feel queer over it,” was Marjorie’s candid admission. “It is just as though some one had given poor old Hamilton College a hard slap. It is not according to the tradition of any really fine college to forego hospitality. Why, you will recall, Ronny, Miss Archer was telling us that one of the oldest traditions of Hamilton was ‘Remember the stranger within thy gates.’ I thought that so beautiful. ”

“ As the quartette approached the row of brightly-garbed young women, Joan Myers, who stood at its head, bent a steady stare upon Marjorie. Next she turned to the girl on her left and muttered in her ear. The latter chanced to be Natalie Weyman, 172 resplendent in an apricot satin frock, with over panels of seed pearls on satin and a garniture of the same at the very low bodice. The gown was sleeveless, and smacked more of the stage than of a college frolic. A cluster of peculiar orange and white orchids trailed across one shoulder. These Marjorie could honestly admire. ”

“ Jerry favored her room-mate with a genial grin which the latter returned in kind. “We forgive you for it. How could you guess who else beside Busy Buzzy lived here? I like the Hall. The rooms are good, the meals are gooder, and the conveniences are goodest of all. It has the prettiest lawn and veranda of them all, too.”
“It’s a blue-ribbon place or Moretense wouldn’t have besieged Miss Remson to let her in here. I decline to say Busy Buzzy for fear of getting the habit. I am too careless to apply it to her only in privacy. I’m likely to come to grief,” Muriel said lightly. ”

“ I imagine it is much colder in Sanford. A fine little town, I hear. It has such a splendid high school. One has to have a high standard of honor to be admitted to it. If one cheats in examinations or does anything dishonest one is expelled from school. Just like that!” Leslie struck her hands smartly together. “One really should be very careful. Even if one has been expelled and then happened to get back 261 into this wonderful high school, through influence, the story of one’s dishonesty is likely to travel into college.”
“Yes, I have heard that, too,” chimed in Natalie Weyman. ”

“ I despise the ultra-sophisticated type of girl she is. She boasts that she rides to hounds, enters dachshunds at bench shows, plays billiards and so on. She swaggers about like a detestable young man instead of a young girl.”
“Really, Leila, you are certainly a successful information gleaner,” Nella regarded her room-mate with an amused smile. “You know how to keep it to yourself, too. I hadn’t heard that Miss Langly had been abused by the Sans, or, that a freshman who rode to hounds was conspiring with the Sans to snatch her room.” ”

“ Marjorie spoke with the eagerness she always betrayed when on the subject of Brooke Hamilton. Never in a student had the departed philanthropist possessed a more generous admirer.
“If that is your heart’s desire, I will be the one to tell you it is not easily obtained. A niece of his, a very old lady, lives there. She will see no one. She is not in sympathy with the college. They say she has no liking for girls,” was Leila’s dampening information. ”

“ Most of us will be home for Thanksgiving, and all of us for Christmas and Easter,” was Marjorie’s philosophical consolation.
“Well, we’re going to have one last good old frolic at Connie’s tonight, anyway,” was Jerry’s cheering reminder.
“I can’t come tonight, Constance,” Lucy Warner announced in her brusque fashion. “I must give these last few evenings to Mother. Besides, I don’t feel at home in your crowd when the boys are there. I don’t care much about young men. I never know what to say to them,” she added, coloring slightly. ”

“ Why should the sports committee keep back information about basket ball? To suit their own pleasure, of course. Very likely they are banded into a clique like those silly Sans Soucians. If it happens to be the same kind of clique, then look out for trouble at the try-out.”
“Perhaps they have a good reason for not giving out the information until a certain time,” argued Ronny. “Maybe they don’t approve of the Sans. As seniors, they should be on the heights, so far as college ethics are concerned.”
“I trust they are,” Jerry returned, in a prim voice, rolling her eyes at Ronny. ”

“ It struck her as rather ridiculous that, so long as the Sans Soucians snubbed the majority of the students, they should wish to be on a committee to receive the very girls they affected not to know.
“Be easy,” remarked Leila, in a tone which only Ronny, Vera and Marjorie heard. “We are to run the one-sided gauntlet, it seems. Let us be about it and have it done. Follow your leader and not too much cordiality. They have none for us, though they will be sweet on the surface.” ”

“ I shall love your support.” Ronny’s face had taken on the old mysterious expression. Too much engrossed in her own sense of injury, Marjorie did not notice this.
“My advice to you, Marjorie, is—act as though you had never seen any of the Sans when you meet them,” counseled Vera. “The sooner we can call the house together the better. It is easier to spread scandal than to crush it. We must lose no time.”
“This is Monday,” mused Ronny. “Friday night will be best, I think.”
“That is late, Ronny,” objected Leila. Marjorie also regarded her chum with somber anxiety. ”

“ Now old Proffy Wenderblatt and his family have taken her up and they make a fuss over her. She and the green-eyed 239 Sanford dig are so chummy. They make me sick. We have to be careful now about ragging her. Wenderblatt is a terror when he isn’t pleased. He would report us to Doctor Matthews. Ragging is forbidden here, same as hazing. I’d do both to any one I didn’t like, if I thought I could get away with it.”
Despite Leslie Cairns’ threats, made not only to Miss Reid but to Natalie Weyman and a few others, life slid along very peacefully for the Five Travelers. ”

“ Her point gained, Ronny managed also to persuade Lucy to accept financial help from her if necessary. This she reluctantly promised to do, provided she were 44 allowed to repay her young benefactor when in position to do so. Thus Lucy became the fifth Lookout, Hamilton-bound, greatly to Marjorie’s delight.
“What you ought to do is practice hanging around with our gang until you are not the least bit scared at Hal or Laurie or the rest of our boys,” Jerry advised. “They aren’t ogres and hob-goblins. There is really nothing very awe-inspiring about a young man. ”

“ It will be a wonderful vacation! So restful! Tell you more about it when I see you. You may go along if you happen to need perfect peace and rest.
“‘Oh, Marjorie, I am so anxious to see you and talk my head off! There isn’t a single girl at the beach this year that amounts to a handful of popcorn. They are so terribly grown-up and foolish; idiotic I might better say. They make eyes at poor old Hal and he gets so wrathy. Every time he sees one coming towards him, when he is down on the main veranda, you ought to see him arise and vanish. ”

“ She was gradually growing used to the gay badinage, which went on constantly among her chums, and on rare occasions would convulse them by some dry remark of her own.
While the Five Travelers were preparing their little feast in the utmost good fellowship, in a room two doors farther up the hall five other girls sat around a festal table, arguing in an anything but equable manner. Four of them were members of the sophomore team. The fifth was Leslie Cairns.
“It’s not fair to the kid if you girls don’t give her a chance to win.” Leslie Cairns’ shaggy eyebrows met in a ferocious scowl. ”

“ Basket ball is different, thank goodness. If I make the freshman team, I have actually achieved something.”
“I hope you make it.” Jerry spoke with a sudden sincerity arising from her devotion to Marjorie. “Muriel will try for it. Moretense is too tense to make a startling player. Shall you try for it, Ronny?”
“No, indeed,” Ronny answered. “You and Lucy and I will be fans. I am not very partial to basket ball unless the game happens to move fast. Then I grow interested. Miss Page says the seniors are managing the sports. They usually do. A senior told her of the try-out.” ”

“ Resting on its satin bed gleamed a string of graduated pearls from which hung a pearl pendant in the form of a bowknot.
“What made you do this?” she faltered. “It isn’t I who have ever done anything to make you happy. It’s you who have done everything to make me happy. I don’t know what to say, only you are all so dear to me and thank you.”
Constance standing beside Marjorie, an arm over her shoulder, Marjorie turned and childishly hid her flushed face in the frills of Connie’s white organdie gown. ”