"Well, here we are at the same old stand again." Leslie Cairns yawned,
stretched upward her kimono-clad arms and clasped them behind her head.
Lounging opposite her, in a deep, Sleepy-Hollow chair, Natalie Weyman,
also in a negligee, scanned her friend's face with some anxiety.
"Les, do you or do you not intend to try to make a new stand this year
for our rights? I think the way we were treated last year after that
basket-ball affair was simply outrageous. I don't mean by Miss Dean and
her crowd, I mean by girls we had lunched and done plenty of favors
for."
"If you are talking about the freshies they never were to be depended
upon from the first. Bess Walbert stood by us, of course. So did a lot
of Alston Terrace kids. She did good work for us there."
"Every reason why she should have," Natalie tartly pointed out. She was
still jealous of Leslie's friendship with Elizabeth Walbert. "You did
enough for _her_. She certainly will not win the soph presidency, no
matter how much you may root for her. She was awfully unpopular with her
class before college closed. I know that to be a fact."
"Why is it that you have to go up in the air like a sky rocket every
time I mention Bess Walbert's name?" Leslie scowled her impatience. "You
wouldn't give that poor kid credit for anything clever she had done, no
matter how wonderful it was."
"Humph! I have yet to learn of anything wonderful she ever did or ever
will do," sneered Natalie. "I am not going to quarrel with you, Leslie,
about her." Natalie modified her tone. "She isn't worth it. You think I
am awfully jealous of her. I am not. I don't like her because she is so
untruthful."
"Why don't you say she is a liar and be done with it?" 'So untruthful!'
Leslie mimicked. "That sounds like Bean and her crowd." Displeased with
Natalie for decrying Elizabeth Walbert, Leslie took revenge by mimicking
her chum. She knew nothing cut Natalie more than to be mimicked.
"All right. I will say it. Bess Walbert _is_ a liar and you will find it
out, too, before you are done with her. Besides, she is treacherous. If
you were to turn her down for any reason, she wouldn't care what she
said about you on the campus. I have watched her a good deal, Les. She's
like this. She will take a little bit of truth for a foundation and then
build up something from it that's entirely a lie. If she would stick to
facts; but she doesn't."
"She has always been square enough with me," Leslie insisted.
"Because you have made a fuss over her," was the instant explanation.
"She knows you are at the head of the Sans and she has taken precious
good care to keep in with you. She cares for no one but herself."
"Oh, nonsense! That's what you always said about Lola Elster. I've never
had any rows with Lola. We're as good friends today as ever."
"Still Lola dropped you the minute she grew chummy with Alida Burton,"
Natalie reminded. "Lola was just ungrateful, though. She has more honor
in a minute than Bess will ever have. She isn't a talker or a
mischief-maker. She never thinks of much but having a good time. She
hardly ever says anything gossipy about anyone."
"I thought you didn't like Lola?" Leslie smiled in her slow fashion.
"I don't," came frankly. "Of the two evils, I prefer her to Bess. My
advice to you is not to be too pleasant with Bess until you see what her
position here at Hamilton is going to be. I tell you she isn't well
liked. You can keep her at arm's length, if you begin that way, without
making her sore. If you baby her and then drop her, look out!" Natalie
shook a prophetic finger at Leslie.
"We can't afford to take any chances this year, Les. With all the things
we have done that would put us in line for being expelled, we have
managed by sheer good luck to slide from under. If we hadn't worked like
sixty last spring term to make up for the time we lost fooling with
basket-ball we wouldn't be seniors now. I don't want any conditions to
work off this year."
"Neither do I. Don't intend to have 'em. I begin to believe you may be
right about keeping Bess in her place." Natalie's evident earnestness
had made some impression on her companion.
"I _know_ I am," Natalie emphasized with lofty dignity. "Are you sure
she doesn't know anything about that hazing business? She made a remark
to Harriet Stephens last spring that sounded as though she knew all
about it."
"Well, she does not, unless someone of the Sans besides you or I has
told her of it." Leslie sat up straight in her chair, looking rather
worried. "I must pump her and find out what she knows. If she does know
of it, then we have a traitor in the camp. Mark me, I'll throw any girl
out of the club who has babbled that affair. Didn't we doubly swear,
afterward, never to tell it to a soul while we were at Hamilton?"
"Hard to say who told Bess," shrugged Natalie. "Certainly it was not I."
"No; you're excepted. I said that." Leslie's assurance was bored. She
was tired of hearing Natalie extol her own loyalty. It was an everyday
citation. "That hazing stunt of ours doesn't worry me half so much as
that trick we put over on Trotty Remson. I am always afraid that Laura
will flivver someday and the whole thing will come to light. If it
happens after I leave Hamilton, I don't care. All I care about is
getting through. If I keep on the soft side of my father he is going to
let me help run his business. That's my dream. But I have to be
graduated with honors, if there are any I can pull down. At least I must
stick it out here for my diploma."
"What would your father do if you flunked this year in any way?"
"He would disown me. I mean that. I have money of my own; lots of it.
That part of it wouldn't feaze me. But my father is the only person on
earth I really have any respect for. I'd never get over it; _never_."
Leslie's loose features showed a tightened intensity utterly foreign to
them. Her hands took hold on the chair arms with a grip which revealed
something of the nervous emotion the fell contingency inspired in her.
The two girls had arrived on the seven o'clock train from the north that
evening. They had stopped at the Lotus for dinner and had reached the
hall shortly before the beginning of the serenade. Leslie had been
Natalie's guest at the Weymans' camp in the Adirondacks. Thus the two
had come on to college together instead of accepting Dulcie Vale's
invitation to journey from New York City to Hamilton in the Vales'
private car, as they had done the three previous years. Since the hazing
party on St. Valentine's night, Leslie and Dulcie had not been on
specially good terms. Leslie was still peeved with Dulcie for not having
locked the back door of the untenanted house as she had been ordered to
do. Had she obeyed orders the Sans would not have been put to
panic-stricken flight by unknown invaders. While those who had come to
Marjorie's rescue might have hung about the outside of the house, they
could not have found entrance easy with both back and front doors
properly locked.
"I don't know what is the matter with me tonight." Leslie rose and
commenced a restless walk up and down the room, hands clasped behind her
back. "That music upset me, I guess. I wonder who the singers were.
Serenading Bean and her gang. Humph! Nobody ever serenaded us that I can
recall. I suppose Beanie arrived in all her glory this afternoon, hence
those yowlers under her window tonight."
"They really sang beautifully. Whoever played the violin was a fine
musician. I never heard a better rendition of 'How Fair Art Thou.'" Fond
of music, Natalie was forced to admit the high quality of the
performance, even though the serenade had been in honor of the girl of
whom she had always been so jealous.
"I don't care much for music unless it is rag-time or musical comedy
stuff. Sentimental songs get on my nerves. I hate that priggish old
'Hymn to Hamilton.' I hope Laura got out of here without being seen."
Leslie went back to the subject still uppermost in her mind. "It was
risking something to send for her to come over here, but I was anxious
to see her and find out if anything had happened this summer detrimental
to us. I didn't feel like meeting her along the road tonight."
"Oh, I don't believe anyone saw her," reassured Natalie. "It was after
eleven when she left here. The house was quiet as could be. I noticed it
when I went out in the hall before she left to see if the coast was
clear. Not more than half the girls who belong here are back yet. Bean
and her crowd had gone to bed, I presume. You wouldn't catch such angels
as they even making a dent in the ten-thirty rule."
"That's so." Leslie made one more trip up and down the room, then
resumed the chair in which she had been sitting. "Well, I'll take it for
granted that Sayres made a clean get-away. One thing about her, she will
stand by us as long as she is paid for it. Besides, she would get into
more trouble than we if the truth were known. That's where we have the
advantage of her. She has to protect herself as well as us. What I have
always been afraid of is this: If Remson and old Doctor Know-it-all ever
came to an understanding he would go to quizzing Sayres. If she lost her
nerve, for he is a terror when he's angry, she might flivver."
"Don't cross bridges until you come to them," counseled Natalie. She was
beginning to see the value of assuming the role of comforter to Leslie.
One thing Natalie had determined. She would strain a point to be first
with Leslie during their senior year. She had importuned Leslie to visit
her for the purpose of regaining her old footing. She and Leslie had
spent a fairly congenial month together in the Adirondacks. Now Natalie
intended to hold the ground she had gained against all comers.
"I'm not going to. I shall forget last year, so far as I can. I
certainly spent enough money and didn't gain a thing. Our best plan is
to go on as we did last spring. If I see a good opportunity to bother
Bean and her devoted beanstalks, I shall not let it pass me by. I am not
going to take any more risks, though. If I manage to live down those
I've taken, I'll do well."
"I know I wouldn't _raise a hand_ to help a freshie this year," Natalie
declared with a positive pucker of her small mouth. "Think of the way we
rushed the greedy ingrates! Then they wouldn't stand up for us during
that basket-ball trouble."
"Put all that down to profit and loss." Leslie had emerged from the
brief spasm of dread which invariably visited her after seeing Laura
Sayres. "We had the wrong kind of girls to deal with. There were more
digs and prigs in that class than eligibles. That's why we lost. I am
all done with that sort of thing. If I can't be as popular as Bean,"
Leslie's intonation was bitterly sarcastic, "I can be a good deal more
exclusive. As it is, I expect to have all I can do to keep the Sans in
line. Dulcie Vale has an idea that she ought to run the club. Give her a
chance and she'd run it into the ground. She has as much sense as a
peacock. She can fan her feathers and squawk."
Natalie laughed outright at this. It was so exactly descriptive of
Dulcie.
Leslie looked well pleased with herself. She thoroughly enjoyed saying
smart things which made people laugh. It was a sore cross to her that
after three years of the hardest striving she had not attained the kind
of popularity at Hamilton which she craved. Yet she could not see
wherein she was to blame.
Gifted with a keen sense of humor, she had tricks of expression so
original in themselves that she might have easily gained a reputation as
the funniest girl in college. Had good humor radiated her peculiarly
rugged features she would have been that rarity, an ugly beauty. Due to
her proficiency at golf and tennis, she was of most symmetrical figure.
She was particularly fastidious as to dress, and made a smart
appearance. Having so much that was in her favor, she was hopelessly
hampered by self.