THE POLITE FREEZE-OUT.
They had seen the cloisters and the library and the Hall of Science and
all the show places at Wellington, and now Miss Julia Kean and Mr. James
Lufton might be seen strolling across the campus in the direction of the
lake.
It was one of those hazy, mid-autumnal days, neither cold nor hot; a
blue mist clothed the fields and hung like a canopy between sun and
earth.
Judy had changed her best velvet for a walking skirt and a red sweater
and Jimmy Lufton glanced at her with admiration from time to time.
"It's a mighty becoming way of dressing you young ladies have here," he
said. "Those sweaters and tam o' shanters are prettier to me than the
fittest clothes on Fifth Avenue."
"Then you don't agree with Miss Slammer?" asked Judy.
"I probably don't, but, as it happens, I never asked her opinion."
"You don't know what Miss Slammer thinks of college girls, the way they
dress and talk?"
Jimmy hesitated. As a matter of fact he had never seen the libelous
article by Miss Slammer. He had been absent in a remote village in the
mountains writing a murder trial when the article had appeared.
Therefore he was not suspicious of Judy's unexpected question.
"I can tell you what I think of college girls," he went on as they
neared the edge of the lake. "I think they are the jolliest, most
natural, interesting, wholesome, best looking, companionable----"
Judy began to blush. He was looking straight at her as he delivered
himself of this stream of adjectives.
"Would you like to canoe a little?" she asked, changing the subject.
"Would I," exclaimed Jimmy, with the sudden boyish expression that made
his face so attractive. "I should rather think I would. I haven't had
the chance to paddle a canoe since I left college."
It was just the day for canoeing. The surface of the lake was as smooth
as glass except where the paddles of other canoeists stirred its placid
surface into little ripples and miniature waves.
Judy thought it would be nice, too. She was enjoying herself immensely
with this lecturer who looked like a boy without any of a boy's
diffidence.
"Do you lecture often?" she asked, when they had settled themselves in
the canoe and he was paddling with a skill she recognized as far from
being amateur.
"I don't mind making speeches," answered Jimmy. "I made a lot of them
the last campaign. 'Cart-tail' speeches they are called, only our cart
was an automobile. There were four or five of us who toured the East
Side and took turns talking to the crowds."
"I should think you'd be a politician instead of a writer on
anti-suffrage," remarked Judy.
Jimmy grinned as he shot the canoe toward the center of the lake.
"Is that what I'm credited as being?" he asked.
"'A well-known writer on the subject,'" quoted Judy.
"If I had read that note over I think I would have been tempted to
scratch out the 'well-known,'" he said, "especially as the only article
I ever wrote was signed 'A Wife and a Mother.'"
Judy's eyes darkened. Was Miss Slammer to libel them and then send down
an impostor to make fun of them? Her impressionable mind was as subject
to as many changes as an April day and her recent pleasure in Mr.
Lufton's society changed to displeasure as the suspicion clouded her
thoughts.
"You had a good deal of courage to come to Wellington, then," she
observed after a pause. "At least we think you did after what Miss
Slammer wrote about us."
A hunting dog on the scent of quarry was not keener than Jimmy when it
came to scenting out news, and it took about five minutes of careful and
skillful questioning for Judy to explain the entire situation.
"By Jove, but that was like old 'Bee-trice' to send me down here into a
hornet's nest," he thought. "I'll have to get square with them somehow
before the lecture or it will never come off. I assure you I didn't know
anything about the article," he said aloud to Judy. "I only came to
accommodate Miss Slammer. She told me yesterday at the office she was
ill."
"Then you aren't a lecturer or a writer?" broke in Judy.
"Miss Slammer and I work on the same paper. Didn't she say that in the
letter?"
Judy shook her head.
"I'm afraid you'll think I'm an impostor, Miss Kean, but I had no
intention of sailing under false colors. I think I'd better take the
next train back to New York and give up the lecture. It would be better
to run away before I'm frozen out, don't you think so?"
Judy was silent for a moment. Her rage against Mr. James Lufton had
entirely disappeared and she again had that feeling that she would like
to protect him from the wrath to come.
"What is a 'polite freeze-out' exactly?" Jimmy asked.
"Well, while you lecture, you are to look into rows of stony faces and
when you finish, there is not to be a word spoken, not a single
handclap, nothing but stillness as the girls file out of the hall."
Jimmy laughed.
"A sort of glacial exit, I suppose. It makes me chilly to think of it.
Miss Slammer had a lucky escape."
They were paddling now in the very center of the upper lake, but so
absorbed were they in their conversation that they had scarcely noticed
a canoe in front of them.
Suddenly there came a cry, a splash and then a moment of perfect
stillness followed by a confused sound of voices from the shore. The
next instant Judy saw in front of them an upturned canoe and two heads
just rising above the water. Before she had time to realize the danger,
Jimmy Lufton had torn off his coat, flung his hat into the bottom of the
canoe and, with a carefully planned leap, had cleared the side of the
canoe, sending it spinning over the water, shaking and quivering like a
frightened animal. And now Judy beheld him swimming with long strokes
toward the place where the two heads had appeared, disappeared and once
more reappeared. In that flash of a moment she had recognized the blonde
plaits of Margaret Wakefield and the wet curls of Jessie Lynch. As she
mechanically paddled toward the struggling figures, she remembered that
Jessie could not swim a stroke and that Margaret could only swim under
the most favorable circumstances in a shallow tank.
[Illustration: Before she had time to realize the danger, Jimmy Lufton
had torn off his coat.--_Page_ 132.]
"He can't hold them both up at once," thought Judy, with a throb of fear
as she frantically beat the water with her paddle in her effort to reach
them.
For a moment Jimmy himself was in a quandary. It looked as if he would
have to let one girl go to save the other, when he saw one of the canoe
paddles floating within reach. He gave it a swift push toward the
struggling Margaret.
"Put that under your arms and go slow," he shouted, and made for Jessie.
In two strokes he had caught her by her coat collar and was swimming
swiftly toward the upturned canoe.
"Even in the water, Jessie's irresistible attraction had prevailed," the
girls said afterward when they could discuss this almost tragic event
with calmness.
"Hold on tight to the canoe, little girl," he said, and turned toward
Margaret, who was all but exhausted now. He caught her just as she was
sinking, and held her up until a row boat from shore reached them.
Margaret was pulled in, with much difficulty owing to her large bulk,
and at last Jimmy, feeling a trifle weary himself, returned to Jessie
and helped her into another boat. She was still sufficiently herself to
achieve a smile of thanks to the handsome young man who had saved her
life.
It was all over in a flash, and yet it seemed as if the entire college
of Wellington could be seen running across the campus to the lakeside.
By the time the half-drowned trio reached land Miss Walker herself was
there looking frightened and pale. The girls were to go straight to the
Quadrangle, be rubbed down with alcohol and put to bed. As for the brave
young man who had saved their lives, he was to be taken to the infirmary
where he could be made comfortable while his clothes were being dried.
When Jimmy Lufton, dripping like a sea god, found himself in the center
of a group of beautiful young ladies all eager to show him honor as
they hurried him along to the infirmary, he gave a low, amused chuckle.
"I hope I've squared myself with them now," he thought, "and there'll be
no polite freeze-out for me and no lecture, either, thank heavens."
While a delegation of three went to the village inn and ordered his suit
case sent up to the infirmary, another delegation made him a hot
lemonade in the infirmary pantry, and a third went to the flower store
in the village and purchased a huge bunch of violets. This was laid on
his lunch tray with a card, "From the Senior Class of 19--in grateful
recognition of your brave deed."
And so the world goes. He who is down one day is up the next and Jimmy
who was to have been the victim of a blighting freeze-out by the
Wellington students was now an object of tender attention.
There came to Mr. Lufton that afternoon a note stating that if he were
quite recovered--("Meaning my clothes," thought Jimmy)--the students of
the Quadrangle would be glad to have him dine with them that evening at
six-thirty.
"I do feel like a blooming hypocrite," he exclaimed to himself
remorsefully. "Here I came down to Wellington at their expense to give
them a fake lecture and they are treating me like a king."
But he accepted the invitation, trusting to luck that his clothes would
be dry and tipping the infirmary cook to press his trousers and black
his shoes.
At half past six, then, Jimmy appeared at the Quadrangle archway. He
wore some of the violets in his buttonhole and his keen, dark eyes shone
with suppressed humor. A delegation of seniors met him and conducted him
back to the dining-hall, where several hundreds of young persons all in
their very best stood up to receive him. A seat of honor was given to
him at the end of the long table and every girl in the room liked him
immensely, not only for his broad jolly smile, but because at the end
of dinner he arose and, without the slightest embarrassment, made the
most deliciously funny speech ever heard. Then the walls resounded with
the college yell, ending with "What's the matter with Mr. Lufton? He's
all right. Who's all right? Lufton--Lufton--James Lufton." Never was one
unknown and entirely unworthy individual more honored.