DANGER AHEAD
“This is Wayland Hall, is it not?” The driver of the head automobile had
now sprung from the roadster and was advancing toward the veranda steps.
She was a tall girl, gracefully slender in her smart tan motor coat,
with straight, well-cut features and large flashing dark eyes. From
under her small tan motor hat her hair showed jet-black and silky,
contrasting sharply with the healthy pallor of her oval face. Her tone,
indifferently impersonal, was such as she might have used in addressing
a traffic officer, or other guardian of public service.
“Good evening. Yes, this is Wayland Hall,” Vera’s courteous intonation
contrasted sharply with the stranger’s almost imperious manner of
speaking.
“Thank you.” The girl in tan turned abruptly away from the steps and
hurried back to the roadster. She paused at one of the tonneau doors for
an instant’s conversation with the, as yet unseen, occupant within the
car, then went on to the next car where she paused again for a word with
its driver.
“What shall we do, flee, or make a stand and greet our little freshie
sisters?” Vera murmured.
“You have me there.” Leila cast a comically apprehensive glance toward
the line of cars, now stretching most of the way down the drive. “It is
one thing to welcome a freshie at the station, but quite another to
extend the hand of welcome from the veranda. And, if the other eleven
should prove like this first haughty lady, with the flashing black eyes
and an imperial air, there will be little need of our kind offices,”
Leila ended a trifle satirically.
“You got it, did you? So did I,” Leslie said half grimly. “I hate to
hang out on the veranda and run the risk of being classed as a mutt by
this freshie legion. Somehow, I feel something like that coming our way.
On the other hand, we’re P. G’s., trying to live up to Hamilton’s first
tradition. Let’s stick it out, and see what happens.”
“I’ll go and tell Miss Remson they’ve arrived. I’ll be back in a
minute.” Vera flitted into the house to find Miss Remson.
From the head car an elderly woman, white-haired and smartly dressed,
had now emerged. Immediately she began to busy herself with a goodly
quantity of luggage which she began removing, piece by piece, from the
back of the car. Leslie watched her shrewdly, for a moment, then
muttered to Leila, “She’s the chaperon, on the order of Gaylord, you
know. Wait and see if I haven’t said it.”
Leila nodded. “Here they come,” she said softly.
The luggage-laden occupants of the line of cars were now on the way to
the veranda of the Hall led by the tall dark girl whose high animated
tones could be clearly heard above the voices of her companions.
In the same moment Miss Remson came out upon the veranda with Vera, an
expression of surprise in her kind blue eyes. “I never thought of them
as arriving by automobile,” she was saying to Vera. “A good thing I held
dinner back for them.”
Before Vera could make reply the first three of the luggage-burdened
group of travelers had reached the veranda. The trio consisted of the
tall, dark girl, the elderly woman and a very blonde stout girl wearing
eye-glasses.
“Where can I find the manager of the Hall, Miss—— What is her name, Mrs.
Weatherly?” The tall dark girl turned rather impatiently to her elderly
companion. “Really, I have forgotten it.”
“Miss Remson, I believe,” supplied the gray-haired woman in a politely
expressionless tone. “Don’t you recall, Miss Norris, that I—”
“Where can I find Miss Remson?” The tall girl paid no heed to the
half-formed question on her companion’s lips. She had instead addressed
herself to Leila who chanced to be sitting nearest to her.
“I am Miss Remson.” The little manager stepped forward to meet the
newcomers as they gained the veranda floor.
“Oh, are you? I am Miss Norris. This is Mrs. Weatherly, our chaperon. We
made the trip here from New York by motor instead of by train. We would
have arrived earlier except for a provoking tire blow-out on one of our
machines. I hope our rooms are in readiness for us. We are really quite
fagged from the trip. And, may we have dinner? Perhaps your maids might
help us with our luggage.”
Miss Norris deposited the two leather bags she carried upon the veranda
floor. She did not offer a hand to Miss Remson, apparently not seeing
the hand the manager had already half extended.
Ignoring the girl’s half arrogant attitude, Miss Remson’s fund of
old-fashioned courtesy did not desert her. “I am glad to welcome you to
Wayland Hall, Miss Norris,” she said, bowing an acknowledgment of the
girl’s introduction to the chaperon, Mrs. Weatherly. “You will find your
rooms ready; satisfactory, also I trust. Dinner has not yet been served.
I had expected you by train. Dinner was therefore held back on account
of your expected arrival. Miss Harper, Miss Mason and Miss Cairns,
Hamilton post-graduates, drove down to the station to welcome you. They
reported to me the fact of your non-arrival by train.”
Miss Remson proceeded in her brisk manner to introduce Miss Norris and
Mrs. Weatherly to the three P. G’s. without giving the haughty freshman
the opportunity of immediate answer to her own pleasant, but dignified
reply.
“Pleased to meet you,” Miss Norris’s smiling, careless nod to each of
the three P. G’s. in turn was indicative of the precise amount of
pleasure she derived from the meeting. Nor did she offer a hand to them.
“So kind in you to go to the station. Thank you for thinking of us.”
“You are welcome,” Leila became spokesman, her tone formal, rather than
friendly. She was not fond of being patronized. Miss Norris’s glance
wavered a trifle as she met the steady light of the Irish girl’s blue
eyes.
“Yes; it was certainly very sweet in you,” she hastily amended, then
turned to Miss Remson with: “We should like to see our rooms before we
have dinner.” She made no attempt to introduce the stout girl beside her
to the three P. G’s.
The bevy of freshmen behind her were paying small attention to their
leader’s conversation with Miss Remson. They were evidently satisfied
with their leader’s method of management. A low-toned buzz of
conversation was going on among them, punctuated by frequent gusts of
laughter.
“Come on, girls.” Miss Norris waved a beckoning arm to the buzzing group
at the foot of the veranda steps. With a condescending smile and nod to
the three P. G’s. she and her two companions followed Miss Remson into
the house. Mrs. Weatherly also bowed to them, pleasantly, and with a
curious expression almost of appeal on her plump features. The blonde
girl showed not the slightest interest in them as she moved stolidly
along beside Miss Norris.
“Isn’t there a lift in the house?” was the last the trio left on the
veranda heard of Miss Norris, as her voice floated back to them from the
reception hall. “At Edgely Manor each campus house has—”
“Edgely Manor! Humph,” Leslie’s subdued ejaculation held a degree of
light contempt. “So that’s what it’s all about. We may as well check out
on this particular crowd of freshies, and be helpful to them by giving
them a good letting-alone.”
“Tell us about Edgely Manor, wise Leslie,” begged Vera amusedly.
“Speak no word of it until we are in the dining room. Did I not hear you
say you were hungry, Midget? I am that hungry myself, and that in spite
of having been well snubbed,” Leila had dropped into colloquial
Celticism. “It’s sadly hurt I should feel. Now why do I smile?” Her
strong features were full of laughing amusement.
“One can’t take a flock of geese seriously,” Leslie answered.
“Not unless the whole flock comes hissing at once,” laughed Vera as they
entered the house.
“Even then they are not dangerous, if one turns on them,” Leila declared
contemptuously.
As the three P. G’s. crossed the hall on their way to the dining room
they glimpsed the last of the procession of freshmen rounding the corner
at the head of the staircase.
“They came, they saw, and they’re now safe in port. Why worry about
them?” Leslie murmured satirically.
“I was wondering how you were going to end that time-worn quotation,”
was Leila’s sly rejoinder.
“Well, I couldn’t say ‘they conquered,’ for they haven’t, and I had to
say something,” Leslie defended with a grin.
“You remind me of an Irish woman on our estate who once said very
impressively to me, ‘You may be knowin’ Miss Leila, that a watched pot
never yet set the world on fire,’” Leila chuckled.
Laughing, the trio entered the long pleasant dining room to find it
occupied, thus far, by only three students. Miss Duncan, the freshman of
the previous year who had passed a perfect entrance examination which
had entitled her to the “Brooke Hamilton honor room” at the Hall, had
returned early to college in order to tutor such students as might
desire her services. Miss Ryan and Miss Keller, sophs of the previous
year, had also returned to take up their junior estate at Hamilton.
“Now,” Leslie began as the three friends seated themselves at their
table, “I’ll tell you about Edgely Manor. Described in a few words, it’s
a precious pet knowledge shop. It’s supposedly a prep school to college,
but it’s really more on the order of a fashionable boarding school. The
majority of the girls who enroll there are the daughters of society
folks. Miss Tremaine, who is at the head of the school, is an outrageous
snob. As a consequence, the Edgely Manor girls have an inflated opinion
of themselves. I know this to be true, for my father picked the Manor
for me as a prep school. I started in there, and managed to stand Miss
Tremaine and her precious pets for two months. One Saturday afternoon I
took a run into New York, and home. I’d had enough of the Manor. I
balked, and wouldn’t go back. Peter the Great had to find another school
for me. I met Natalie Wyman at the new school, and liked her. I hadn’t
liked a single girl at the Manor. Nat was a frightful snob, and I
developed snobbish tendencies from chumming with her. I know now that I
wasn’t ever a snob at heart. I was a democrat, like my father. If I
hadn’t been, I could never have climbed out of the pit I’d dug for
myself. You girls remember the way the Sans ran things during their
freshman year at Hamilton.” Leslie fixed her dark eyes soberly upon
Leila.
“I am not likely to forget it,” Leila made honest reply. “I was strongly
tempted not to come back to Hamilton the second year on that very
account. It was love of Hamilton College, and all it stood for, that
brought me back to it again as a soph. Then Marjorie came, Beauty set
her good little feet on the campus, and you know the rest.” A gleam of
sentiment shone in Leila’s eyes.
“Yes, I know the rest,” Leila nodded slowly. “Seeing this crowd of girls
today brought back memory of the Sans. In this Miss Norris I saw myself
again, leading my crowd, and behaving like a villain. You know what a
lot of trouble I managed to stir up, at the Hall, and on the campus. I
have a hunch that history is going to repeat itself; not on the campus.
The battle for democracy has been fought and won there, thanks to
Marjorie and you girls who stood by her so faithfully. Here at the
Hall—look out.” Leslie laughed in her odd noiseless way. “Whatever
starts here, I shall take a hand in. Because of the flivver I made five
years ago I’m going to fight as hard for democracy this year as I once
fought against it.”
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