THE REAL QUEEN
The first weeks of Jacquette’s sophomore year discouraged her. After
Louise and Bobs and Marquis had gone, a blank fell into her days. All
around her the Sigma Pi good times were going on, but, though she was
allowed to share the secrets whenever the girls remembered to tell them
to her, she constantly felt herself just outside the circle of fun. She
had too much time to study, and, without the excitement that had urged
and hurried her all the year before, she dragged through her lessons
listlessly. The zest had gone from everything.
It was not long before Mademoiselle’s keen eyes noticed the change, and
one day, with a few adroit questions, she learned the facts.
“But is it a secret, dearie--this inactive membership?” she asked,
almost before Jacquette realised that she had mentioned it.
“No, not exactly. It’s all right for you to know, Mademoiselle, but of
course we don’t care to have the other sororities making capital of it.
They’d tell all the new girls there must be something wrong with Sigma
Pi, or my people wouldn’t have wanted me to be inactive.”
“I see,” said Mademoiselle with an understanding shake of the head. “At
any rate, I’m glad it’s right for me to know, pet, because it makes me
happy. Now, about the lessons, did it ever occur to you, honey, that,
after a dear little girl has once fallen into the habit of pinning her
garments together, it is very hard for her to feel the necessity of
sewing on buttons?”
Jacquette looked puzzled.
“This is what I mean,” Mademoiselle went on, lifting her shoulders
ever so little and giving her head a sprightly toss which Jacquette
instantly recognised as her own. “I’m a bright little girl! I’m a
clever little girl! It isn’t necessary for me to spend time on my
lessons. Oh, no, I never look up the references! I don’t bother with
the grammar! My translation is so good that it brings up my marks even
if I do fail on those stupid old rules. I’m such a lucky little girl!
_I’ll get through._
“That’s pinning one’s clothing together to keep it from falling off.
Wait, dearie, I haven’t done. Won’t you try, now that you have more
time, to form the habit of sewing the buttons on your lessons?”
No one could resist Mademoiselle when the pleading tone came into her
voice, and, from that moment, Jacquette’s inactive membership became
endurable. She had begun to sew on the buttons; and gradually, as the
weeks went on, she won back the old Brookdale sense of satisfaction in
making each lesson a finished piece of work--a feeling which she had
learned to regard as childish during her freshman year at Marston.
“Tia, what makes you look so young?” she demanded, one evening, as
she and Aunt Sula finished playing a duet which ended in a series of
martial chords. “Is it just that rose-coloured waist? You don’t know
what a dear little brown ringlet there is, trickling down in front of
this ear.”
“Trickling ringlet! Your English teacher would call that a vicious
misuse of the verb,” Aunt Sula laughed as she tucked the ringlet into
place. “Perhaps I look different because I’m so happy over your finding
time for the music again. I feel as if somebody had given me back my
Brookdale girl.”
“Brookdale,” Jacquette repeated, with an odd little smile, as she
hunted through a pile of music. “That makes me think of Margaret
Howland. She asked me right out, this morning, why I wasn’t going to
spreads and things; so I had to tell her in confidence, that I was
inactive for this year. Guess what she said.”
“‘Oh, how I do envy you!’” Aunt Sula hazarded, roguishly.
“No, sir! She said for goodness’ sake not to let her mother hear of it,
or she’d surely be made to do the same thing.”
“Oh! Mrs. Howland has her troubles, then.”
“Troubles! If you think Sigma Pi makes troubles, you ought to have a
little experience with the Kappa Delts. They’ve been just over-reaching
themselves in their rushing this fall. It’s spreads every other minute,
and matinees and automobile rides and bunches of violets for their
pledges, and everything else you can think of. The worst of it, for
Margaret, is that she’s the kind of girl that tries to keep up her
studies besides, you know, and I can’t help seeing, myself, that she’s
just worn out.”
“Too bad. Don’t you think you might----”
“Coax her to be inactive? Never in the world! You ought to have heard
her pity me, this morning! She’s a dandy girl, though. I was thinking,
to-day, that if she’d only happened to be a Sigma Pi, she and I would
have had such fine times together all through high school. Here’s that
duet I was looking for. We haven’t played it for ages. Let’s try it.”
Next morning, when Jacquette reached school she found an unusual
buzz of excitement outside the building. Newspapers were fluttering
everywhere, and knots of boys and girls were standing about, each group
with heads close together over some intensely interesting article that
they were reading.
The Sigma Pi girls were gathered near the school entrance, and, as
Jacquette came up, Mamie Coolidge thrust a paper under her eyes.
“See that,” she ordered, pointing to the tall headlines,
“BOARD OF EDUCATION
SCORES AGAINST
SECRET SOCIETIES”
“They’ve got our injunction set aside, Jack,” Blanche Gross hurried to
explain, without waiting for Jacquette to read the rest. “So now they
can enforce that horrid rule against secret societies, and they’re
going to do it. And do you realise what it means, right here in Sigma
Pi? No sorority girl can hold a class office any more. That makes Etta
give up the secretaryship of the junior class!”
“And it takes Blanche out of the senior dramatics; that’s worse,” Etta
broke in.
“And Flo Burton off the basket-ball team,” Blanche took it up again.
“And as for football, the Marston eleven will simply go to smash.
Nearly every fellow on it is a fraternity man.”
“Oh, it will kill this school, that’s all!” Mamie Coolidge declared.
“It may not make so much difference in schools where there aren’t so
many secret societies, and of course we’ll get another injunction very
soon, but, in the meantime, Marston High will suffer more than we will,
that’s one sure thing.”
“That’s the tardy bell, girls!” cried somebody, just then, and, before
Jacquette could learn any more, the newspaper was furled and they all
went hurrying to their places.
As she reached her desk she noticed Mary Elliott looking at her with
swollen eyes, from across the aisle. A minute later Mary reached over
and laid a scrap of paper on Jacquette’s desk. On it was scrawled the
two lines:
“Yestreen the Queen had four Maries,
The night she’ll hae but three.”
“What do you mean?” Jacquette scribbled beneath the words, and handed
the paper back, but instead of answering, Mary put her handkerchief to
her eyes and began to cry.
Jacquette watched her in bewilderment. Had she offended her without
knowing it?
Then the soft, penetrating voice of Mademoiselle, calling her name from
the roll, brought her back to duty, and she faced about with a start.
As soon as the noon hour came, Jacquette followed Mary into the hall.
“What is it, Mary? What do you mean?” she asked.
“Haven’t you seen the morning paper?”
“Why, yes, but----”
“Oh, it’s different with you! Your family understands. But you ought to
have seen how angry my father was when he read that article.”
“Angry? At the Board, do you mean?”
“Oh, no! It was the first he had ever heard about the secret societies
getting that injunction against the Board, and he said it was an
unheard-of piece of insolence, and that he should think every boy and
girl connected with it would have been expelled, and that he felt
disgraced to see me wearing this pin and he wasn’t going to have a
daughter of his belonging to an organisation that was in antagonism to
the school authorities, and----”
“But, Mary, didn’t you tell him there was no such thing as resigning
from Sigma Pi?”
“Oh, I did!” Mary had shrunk back into a dark corner of the hall where
she could mop her eyes without being noticed. “I told him I’d have to
be expelled from the sorority and that would disgrace me before the
whole school, and everything else, but nothing made any difference.
He says the disgrace is in belonging to such a society. He’s given me
three days to make up my mind to leave Sigma Pi of my own accord and if
I haven’t done it then, I think he’s going to make me. Oh, Jacquette!”
Mary began to sob again. “I haven’t any mother, you know. There’s just
a housekeeper.”
“You poor little thing!” said Jacquette, drawing Mary’s arm through
hers protectingly. “Here, take my handkerchief. Yours is soaking wet.
There! Now, come out in the air, and eat some luncheon. I’m thinking of
something that I believe will comfort you, but I can’t tell you about
it just yet. I wouldn’t say much to the other girls, until you’ve heard
my plan. Just stop worrying until to-morrow, can’t you, please? You
must, you know, if the Queen says so.”
“Oh, but I can’t bear being expelled and having the girls not like me!
Jacquette, will you have to turn against me? Will I have to give up
being one of the Queen’s Maries?”
“I should say not!” Jacquette declared, with a sudden sense of shame as
she recognised her own old fears in Mary’s panic. “You leave the whole
thing to me.”
“Oh, you don’t know my father!” Mary protested, but she dried her tears
and smiled, in spite of herself, as she followed the Queen into the
bracing October air.
“I hope to have that honour, some day,” Jacquette answered, roguishly.
She felt very motherly and tender toward this timid girl who seemed
so easily influenced by her. “In the meantime, I’m going to take his
daughter and get her something to eat. Where’s Marion Crandall, to-day?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t come to school.”
“Etta!” Jacquette called, just then, as she and Mary overtook a buzzing
group of Sigma Pi girls, gathered under a tree. “Let me see that
paper, won’t you? I didn’t get a chance to read it before school.”
“This is the afternoon paper. There’s something worse yet, now. Isn’t
that perfectly shameful?” Etta answered excitedly, pointing to a column
which was headed,
“SIGMA PI EPSILON
SORORITY IN
DISGRACE.”
“Mercy!” Jacquette gasped. “What’s this?”
Her eyes ran hurriedly through the sensational account of a deception
which had been practised at Marston High School by two members of the
Sigma Pi Epsilon sorority.
For the sake of getting into a sorority that she considered desirable,
the article said, a certain girl who lived outside of the district
had given as her own the address of one of the members of the Marston
chapter of Sigma Pi Epsilon, and, by doing so, had been admitted to the
school. The names of both girls were suppressed, but it was stated that
the one who had allowed her address to be used had been suspended, and
the other expelled, from school.
“And of course there’s not one word of truth in it all!” Jacquette
exclaimed.
“I wish there weren’t,” said Etta, gloomily.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that Marion Crandall is the girl that gave Bessie Bartlett’s
address for hers so that she could come to Marston--and Bess let her do
it, too.”
“One of my Maries! And never told me! You didn’t know it, did you,
Mary?” Jacquette asked, turning to the girl at her side.
“I didn’t, Jacquette,” put in Mary Barnes.
“Nor I, either. It’s a perfect shock to me,” said Marie Stanwood.
But Jacquette was watching Mary Elliott.
“Yes, I did,” Mary owned, miserable in her honesty. “But it was before
I knew you, and Marion made me promise never to tell. She said it was
no harm; it was just a technical rule that kept her from coming to
Marston because she lived a block too far in a certain direction.”
“I knew it, too. I heard Marion ask Bess if she could borrow her
address,” put in Mamie Coolidge, avoiding Jacquette’s eyes, but
determined not to let little Mary Elliott take the blame alone. “It
didn’t seem wrong to me, at the time, either. It looks different, now.
Marion said her father knew she was going to do it, and he just laughed
and thought it was cute. But of course I never dreamed she was going
to sign her mother’s name to her report card, and then tell those awful
yarns to Mr. Branch.”
Jacquette’s eyes looked black instead of hazel, and she was every
inch the “Queen” as the girls fell into a semi-circle before her and
obediently answered her questions.
“Why, you see,” Blanche Gross took up the story, “Marion cut a lot
of her classes the first few weeks after she was initiated Sigma Pi.
I suppose the sorority importance went to her head a little, the way
it does, sometimes, you know, and at the end of the month her report
was so bad that she got worried about it and signed her mother’s name
to it instead of taking it home. But her room-teacher suspected the
signature, and Mr. Branch wrote a letter to Marion’s mother at the
address she had given, and it was Bessie’s house, of course, and she
and Marion got the letter from the postman, and tore it up, and then
Mr. Branch called them to the office, and questioned them, and they
got all muddled up, and----”
“Do you mean they didn’t tell the truth?” Jacquette demanded.
“Well, you know how Bess is, Jacquette. She never had a bad intention
in her life, and she thought she was doing the whole thing for the sake
of Sigma Pi, don’t you see? Marion was her Sigma Pi sister, and in
trouble, and she felt that she just had to answer Mr. Branch in the way
that would help Marion out. But he saw right through the story and now
she’s suspended for a month and Marion Crandall is expelled and Sigma
Pi is disgraced, and the Kappa Delts will just be in clover!”
“Oh, it’s awful!” Jacquette exclaimed. “It makes me wish----” She
stopped short, and closed her lips. “Come, Mary,” she said, gently. “I
don’t blame you. You made a mistake, and we all do that. I want you to
eat something before the bell rings. The rest of you girls had better
do the same, too,” she added over her shoulder as she drew Mary along.
“We can’t live on excitement.”
From that moment until she hurried away from school in the afternoon,
carefully avoiding the possibility of meeting any of the girls, a busy
undercurrent of thinking was going on in Jacquette’s mind. To her
disappointment, when she reached the house, she found it deserted,
but the first thing she did was to get the morning paper and read all
about the action of the Board of Education. Then, after walking back
and forth through the empty rooms, and standing at the window, looking
impatiently down the street, she turned with a sudden impulse and going
to the telephone, called Flo Burton.
Ever since their memorable interview with Mr. Pierce in the principal’s
room, Jacquette had been finding out good qualities in this
harum-scarum girl, and she turned to her now in the hope of sympathy.
Flo had been missing from the council of Sigma Pi sisters at noon and,
remembering that Flo’s classes were arranged, this year, so that she
went home before luncheon, Jacquette thought there might be a chance
of finding her there now, though she knew that most of the girls had
probably flocked to the sorority rooms to talk things over.
Flo answered the telephone, and Jacquette plunged into her subject with
the first words.
“I want to talk with you,” she said. “Do you realise that we’re in
disgrace with the school authorities?”
“You mean on account of Marion and Bess?”
“Of course, that; but I was thinking, just now, about what the Board
has done. Seems to me all fraternities and sororities are in disgrace
from now on, with this rule in force, shutting us out from all the
school honours and privileges.”
“But--Jacquette Willard!” came in a scandalised tone. “Surely you can’t
mean you’d turn traitor to Sigma Pi for the sake of holding a class
office?”
“Turn traitor--no! I’m not thinking about offices. But you know,
yourself, that the boys are planning to collect more money and fight
the Board again, and doesn’t it seem to you, Flo, that it’s a question,
now, of deciding between our sorority and our school?”
“But, Jack,” Flo answered, with tears in her voice. “Surely you’ll
_decide right!_”
There was something so childishly one-sided in this appeal that
Jacquette smiled, and, as she did so, she realised for the first
time that she herself had almost outgrown Flo’s tragic view. But she
understood that view too well to make the mistake of laughing at it.
“Aren’t there two sides, Florrie?” she coaxed. “Oughtn’t we to have a
little of the same feeling toward Marston that college students have
when they talk about their ‘Alma Mater’?”
“_We_ aren’t hurting Marston!” came the retort. “It’s that horrid old
Board that has spoiled the foot-ball team--and everything! It’s just a
case of persecution.”
“Oh, Flo! Why, I don’t see what else the Board could do, if it wanted
to discourage secret societies. It can’t forbid our joining them, you
see, if our fathers and mothers let us, but perhaps it can manage to
make them unpopular, by this rule.”
“Make itself unpopular, I guess you mean.”
“See here, Flo,” Jacquette asked, abruptly. “I want you to tell me
something. If I should decide to give up Sigma Pi, would it break our
friendship?”
“What a question! It would have to, of course. Do you suppose, if it
really came to choosing between Sigma Pi and you, it would take me a
minute to decide? But you’ll never do such a thing. You’re teasing me.”
“No, I’m not teasing,” Jacquette said, in a disappointed voice, and,
after a few minutes more of fruitless discussion, she hung up the
receiver, and sat thinking.
“Miss Jacquette,” said Mollie, the maid, putting her head in at the
door, “the woman that sews for your auntie is here, and wants to speak
to someone.”
“Bring her into the library, Mollie,” Jacquette answered, and, with her
thoughts still on the talk with Flo, she listened to the dressmaker’s
errand, and asked her to be seated until Miss Granville should come in.
“Glad to do it, I’m sure,” Mrs. Waller agreed, as she put back the
floating brown veil which covered her shabby turban, and settled
herself comfortably. “I’m glad of the rest. I’ve walked about fifteen
blocks to see your aunt, and now she’s not here. Just home from
school, aren’t you, my dear? Go to Marston? Say, there’s plenty of
excitement over there to-day, I guess. One of those sororities got into
print, didn’t it? Well, I think they’re a dreadful bad thing for girls,
anyhow.”
“What’s that?” Jacquette’s wandering attention was fixed in an instant.
“I’m a sorority girl myself, Mrs. Waller,” she added rather coldly.
“You don’t say! Well, now, I didn’t suppose your aunt would hear of
such a thing. She’s so sensible, as a general rule! But, of course,
they’re not all off one piece, and yours may be better than most. This
one that’s in disgrace, now, is about the worst, from what I hear. I
sew for one of the teachers over there, and that’s how I come to know
so much about it. She’s good friends with the principal, herself,
so she gets things straight, and she tells me those Sigma something
girls--whatever it is--had a pretty bad name with the faculty before
this thing happened. They toss their heads at rules, and all that, you
know.”
“But that isn’t true, Mrs. Waller,” Jacquette protested, her Sigma Pi
spirit bristling like a porcupine. “I’d like to know which teacher
made that remark. The Sigma Pi girls are as nice a set as there is in
school. Any sorority is liable to make a mistake and take in the wrong
kind of a member, once in a while, and then trouble may come of it, of
course, but that’s no reason to think the rest are all bad!”
“Well, there, now, my dear, don’t get excited! I really couldn’t
mention the name of the teacher that told me. ’Twouldn’t be right. But
she knows the facts. I didn’t dream you had friends among those girls.
It’s real too bad for them, isn’t it? I mean the nice ones--that is, if
there are any nice ones, as you say. For of course ‘Poor Tray is known
by the company he keeps,’ don’t you know?”
The postman’s ring at the door just then gave Jacquette an excuse to
get away without answering, and she walked out into the hall, startled
by the tumult of indignation which Mrs. Waller’s words had roused
within her. “That’s the way it would always be if I should give up
Sigma Pi,” she thought to herself. “At school, they would think I was
queer, and, outside of school, people would just shake their heads and
say what a wicked set those sorority girls must be--because Jacquette
Willard had to cut loose from them! Nobody would ever understand.”
“It’s a letter for you, Miss; that’s all he brought,” said Mollie,
turning back from the door which she had opened, and, as Jacquette took
the envelope, she recognised the big, honest handwriting of Bobs Drake.
For a minute, sorority troubles were forgotten, and a pleased smile
replaced the worried look, while Jacquette, dropping down on the hall
bench, opened her letter and began to read. The first few pages were
full of college news and nonsense, and the dimples played in her
cheeks. Then the tone changed.
“Jack, I hope you won’t think I’m turning preacher,” Bobs wrote,
“but there’s something on my chest that I wanted to say before
I came away, and I didn’t have the sand. It’s about the way you
fell down on that sorority resolution.” (Jacquette’s eyebrows
lifted.) “I say ‘fell down’ because inactive membership isn’t
the same as what you planned to do, by a long sight. And here’s
the point: If it isn’t good for you to be an active member of a
sorority, why is it good for other girls? Your health isn’t so
much more delicate--you don’t require so much more time for your
lessons--than the general run of girls. Of course they can’t
all be inactive, as you are now, and escape the bad effects of
the thing, that way, and yet, by wearing your pin and keeping
your position more or less of a secret, you’re all the time
influencing other girls to get into the very things that you made
up your mind it was best for you to get out of. What you write
about the four Maries, for instance, especially that little one
you like so much, makes it plain that you have a great influence
with some of the girls.
“I would have said all this before I left, only I didn’t like
to disturb you when you were so happy about the arrangement you
had made with the girls. But I have a teacher, here--the finest
man I ever knew--and talking with him about some other things
to-night, got me to feeling that I was a coward unless I gave you
straight goods on this. The fact is, Jack, things that seemed
mighty important in high school begin to dwindle when you get
to college, especially if you have the luck to know a man like
Prescott. I’ll tell you more about him when I see you.
“Always the same old
“Bobs.”
“P. S.--I had a letter from Clarence Mullen, to-day, the second
since I’ve been here. You’d be surprised to read it. That
military school is a fine thing for him.
“R. S. D.”
Jacquette’s hands, with the letter in them, fell into her lap. Things
were happening strangely to-day.
“What--going, Mrs. Waller?” she said, with a start, as the dressmaker
appeared in the hall, buttoning her coat about her.
“Yes, my dear. I’m rested, now, and it may be a long time before your
aunt comes in. I think I’ll just run along and ’phone her this evening.”
As Mrs. Waller went down the steps, old Mr. Granville came up,
supporting himself with his cane.
“Now, Grandpa Granville!” Jacquette reproached him lovingly, as she
drew him to his easy chair, and sat down on a stool at his side.
“Didn’t you say I was your gold-headed cane, and that you couldn’t take
walks without me? What made you go before I got home?”
He smiled at her tenderly. “It wasn’t fair,” he admitted, brushing back
her soft, bright hair. “And this ivory-headed cane doesn’t compare with
the gold one either. But I was restless, my dear--I was restless. Sula
had to go out, and I got to worrying.”
“I know why,” Jacquette murmured, laying her cheek against his
shoulder. “You were bothered by those articles about Sigma Pi in the
paper to-day.”
“You’ve seen them, then?”
“Yes, indeed! It’s the only topic there is, over at school. Did Tia
feel bad?”
He nodded. Then he asked solemnly, “Was it true, dear, that any of our
sorosis did those dishonest things?”
“‘Our sorosis!’ Oh, grandpa, you darling!” Jacquette exclaimed, between
laughing and tears. “Who cares if you do call it sorosis, as long as
you say ‘our,’ that way! Yes, it was true, but it isn’t quite so bad
as it looks in the paper. You see in the first place we made a mistake
when we initiated Marion Crandall. We didn’t take time to know her well
enough. We were too anxious to get more new members than the Kappa
Delts--that was the trouble. But she’s expelled from Marston, so she’s
out of Sigma Pi, and as for Bess Bartlett, she just didn’t realise that
she was doing anything wrong, at all. I know how she is. She’s a nice
girl, but thoughtless.”
Mr. Granville sighed, without answering.
“Here’s a letter from Bobs Drake,” Jacquette went on with determined
cheerfulness. “I want you to hear something he says.” And she read
aloud what Bobs had written about her inactive membership.
As she finished, her grandfather lifted his white head and looked her
straight in the eyes. “Well?” he asked.
“Well,” she answered, steadily, “I was trying to keep it to tell Tia
first, but you’re so blue, I think she’d want me to----”
“Here they are, girls,” a bright voice cried, just then, and Aunt Sula,
still in her outdoor wraps, walked into the library followed by Mary
Barnes and Marie Stanwood and Mary Elliott. “I found three forlorn
girls outside, Jacquette, trying to make up their minds whether they
should come in or not, so I brought them with me.”
“I was afraid you wouldn’t want to see us, because you didn’t wait for
me to walk home with you,” Mary Elliott explained, crossing the room
to Jacquette.
“Of course I want to see you,” Jacquette answered, slipping one arm
around her. “Don’t I always want to see my Maries? Sit down, girls,”
she added, as Aunt Sula, motioning them to chairs, took one herself.
But the girls glanced at Mr. Granville and his daughter. “It’s about
Sigma Pi,” Marie Stanwood hinted mysteriously.
“Talk it right out before Grandpa and Aunt Sula,” said Mary Elliott,
with unusual decision, and she glanced lovingly from one to the other
of the relatives she had adopted in the speech. “It’s all about me, and
I want to know what they think.”
So, while Jacquette stood by her grandfather’s chair, with one arm
round Mary’s waist, Marie Stanwood told them of Mr. Elliott’s stern
decree, and went on to present the reasons why it was too much to
expect that Mary should obey him.
“We’ve been to Miss Billings--my Latin teacher,” she said, “and she
thinks no father would ask such a thing of his daughter if he knew what
it meant. She belongs to a college sorority herself, but she’s fair
to both sides. She says a high school sorority probably does sway a
girl away from study toward--society, and if she had a daughter, she’d
try to keep her out of such things until she went to college, but she
thinks the getting out, after you’re once in, is a different matter.
A girl that would turn against her sorority--this is just what she
said--would be despised and boycotted by the whole school, as much by
the non-fraternity and non-sorority crowds as by the others. And we
girls think, Jacquette,” she concluded, “that you can talk the best of
any of us, and that if you’d just go to Mary’s father and tell him how
things are at Marston, he’d feel differently. What do you say?”
Jacquette’s hand stole down into her grandfather’s, and she drew Mary
closer. Then she spoke, with a sweet, womanly ring in her voice.
“I’m glad you came, girls. I was just going to tell my grandfather
something that I’d like to say before all of you. I’ve made up my
mind that the Board is right--that we’d all be better off without
sororities, and I don’t think I ought to hide that belief behind
inactive membership another day. To-morrow I’m going to tell the girls,
and give up my place in Sigma Pi, once for all. Mary, will you be
afraid to come--with me?” she asked, smiling down into the upturned
face which had suddenly grown luminous.
“Now, Tia, don’t you look sorry this time, when you want to be glad!”
she went on, turning to Aunt Sula. “It isn’t tragic the way it was
before. Then, I was doing it because you thought it was right, but now
I know it’s right myself, and I’m happy about it, too. Why, even if
the girls decide that they’ll have to ‘dishonourably expel’ Mary and
me, I guess we can stand it, as long as we know we’re doing right!”
“Bravo!” cried old Mr. Granville, bringing his cane down on the floor,
while Jacquette, with a shining face, caught Aunt Sula in her arms
for a hug and then turned to the bewildered girls, with both hands
outstretched.
“Don’t think I’m breaking the vows easily,” she said, reading the doubt
in their faces. “I’m not, girls. It’s only because a ‘bad promise is
better broken than kept!’ And, even if you can’t follow your Queen in
this, I know you’ll never make Mary and me feel like outcasts when we
see you at Marston High.”
“Outcasts!” ejaculated quiet Mary Barnes, opening her lips for the
first time during the interview, and speaking up stoutly. “Why,
Jacquette Willard, you’re the splendidest girl I ever saw in my life!
Marie, I don’t know how you feel, but I’m going to follow the Queen!”
A little later, as three loyal Maries started down the steps together,
Mary Elliott lingered to throw her arms around Jacquette’s neck and
whisper happily,
“Remember what I wrote you this morning: ‘The night she’ll hae but
three’? I thought I was going to be the one left out, and there it was
poor Marion Crandall, all the time!”