EXPECTATIONS
"I expect she'll be a haughty, stuck-up thing," declared Edith Phelps,
with vigor.
"'Just like _that_,'" drawled May MacGreggor. "We should worry about the
famous authoress of canned drama! A budding lady hack writer, I fancy."
"Oh, dear me, no!" cried Edith. "Didn't you see 'The Heart of a
Schoolgirl' she wrote? Why, it was a good photo-play, I assure you."
"And put out by the Alectrion Film Corporation," joined in another of
the group of girls standing upon the wide porch of Dare Hall, one of the
four large dormitories of Ardmore College.
The college buildings were set most artistically upon the slope of
College Hill, each building facing sparkling Lake Remona. Save the
boathouse and the bathing pavilions, Dare and Dorrance Halls at the east
side of the grounds, and Hoskin and Hemmingway Halls at the west side,
were the structures nearest to the lake.
Farther to the east an open grove intervened between the dormitories and
the meadows along the Remona River where bog hay was cut, and which were
sometimes flooded in the freshet season.
To the west the lake extended as far as the girls on the porch could
see, a part of its sparkling surface being hidden by the green and hilly
bulk of Bliss Island. The shaded green lawns of the campus between Dare
and Hoskin Halls were crossed by winding paths.
A fleshy girl who was near the group but not of it, had been viewing
this lovely landscape with pleasure. Now she frankly listened to the
chatter of the "inquisitors."
"Well," Edith Phelps insisted, "this Ruth Fielding was so petted at that
backwoods' school where she has been that I suppose there will be no
living in the same house with her."
Edith was one of the older sophomores--quite old, indeed, to the eyes of
the plump girl who was listening. But the latter smiled quietly,
nevertheless, as she listened to the sophomore's speech.
"We shall have to take her down a peg or two, of course. It's bad enough
to have the place littered up with a lot of freshies----"
"Just as we littered it up last year at this time, Edie," suggested May,
with a chuckle.
"Well," Edith said, laughing, "if I don't put this Ruth Fielding, the
authoress, in her place in a hurry, it won't be because I sha'n't try."
"Have a care, dearie," admonished one quiet girl who had not spoken
before. "Remember the warning we had at commencement."
"About what?" demanded two or three.
"About that Rolff girl, you know," said the thoughtful girl.
"Oh! I know what you mean," Edith said. "But that was a warning to the
sororities."
"To everybody," put in May.
"At any rate," Dora Parton said, "Dr. Milroth forbade anything in the
line of hazing."
"Pooh!" said Edith. "Who mentioned hazing? That's old-fashioned. We're
too ladylike at Ardmore, I should hope, to _haze_--my!"
"'My heye, blokey!'" drawled May.
"You are positively coarse, Miss MacGreggor," Dora said, severely.
"And Edie is so awfully emphatic," laughed the Scotch girl. "But she
will have to take it out in threatenings, I fear. We can't haze this
Fielding chit, and that's all there is to it."
"Positively," said the quiet girl, "that was a terrible thing they did
to Margaret Rolff. She was a nervous girl, anyway. Do you remember her,
May?"
"Of course. And I remember being jealous because she was chosen by the
Kappa Alpha as a candidate. Glad _I_ wasn't one if they put all their
new members through the same rigmarole."
"That is irreverent!" gasped Edith. "The Kappa Alpha!"
"I see Dr. Milroth took them down all right, all right!" remarked
another of the group. "And now none of the sororities can solicit
members among either the sophs or the freshies."
"And it's a shame!" cried Edith. "The sorority girls have such fun."
"Half murdering innocents--yes," drawled May. "That Margaret Rolff was
just about scared out of her wits, they say. They found her wandering
about Bliss Island----"
"Sh! We're not to talk of it," advised Edith, with a glance at the fat
girl in the background who, although taking no part in the discussion,
was very much amused, especially every time Ruth Fielding's name was
brought up.
"Well, I don't know why we shouldn't speak of it," said Dora Parton, who
was likewise a sophomore. "The whole college knew it at the time. When
Margaret Rolff left they discovered that the beautiful silver vase was
gone, too, from the library----"
"Oh, hush!" exclaimed May MacGreggor, sharply.
"Won't hush--so now!" said the other girl, smartly, making a face at the
Scotch lassie. "Didn't Miss Cullam go wailing all over the college about
it?"
"That's so," Edith agreed. "You'd have thought it was her vase that had
been stolen."
"I don't believe the vase was stolen at all," May said. "It was mixed up
in that initiation and lost. I know that the Kappa Alpha girls are
raising a fund to pay for it."
"Pay for it!" scoffed some one. "Why, they couldn't do that in a
thousand years. That was an Egyptian curio--very old and very valuable.
Pay for it, indeed! Those Kappa Alphas, as well as the other sororities,
are paying for their fun in another way."
"But, anyway," said the quiet girl, "it was a terrible experience for
Miss Rolff."
"Unless she 'put it on' and got away with the loot herself," said Edith.
"Oh, scissors! _now_ who's coarse?" demanded May MacGreggor.
But the conversation came back to the expected Ruth Fielding. These
girls had all arrived at Ardmore several days in advance of the opening
of the semester. Indeed, it is always advisable for freshmen,
especially, to be on hand at least two days before the opening, for
there is much preparation for newcomers.
The fleshy girl who had thus far taken no part in the conversation
recorded, save to be amused by it, had already been on the ground long
enough to know her way about. But she was not yet acquainted with any of
her classmates or with the sophomores.
If she knew Ruth Fielding, she said nothing about it when Edith Phelps
began to discuss the girl of the Red Mill again.
"Miss Cullam spoke to me about this Fielding. It seems she has an
acquaintance who teaches at that backwoods' school the child went
to----"
"Briarwood a backwoods' school!" said May. "Not much!"
"Well, it's somewhere up in New York State among the yaps," declared
Edith. "And Cullam's friend wrote her that Fielding is a wonder. Dear
me! how I _do_ abominate wonders."
"Perhaps we are maligning the girl," said Dora. "Perhaps Ruth Fielding
is quite modest."
"What? After writing a moving picture drama? Is there anything modest
about the motion picture business in _any_ of its branches?"
"Oh, dear me, Edie!" cried one of her listeners, "you're dreadful."
"I presume this canned drama authoress," pursued Edith, "will have
ink-stains on her fingers and her hair will be eternally flying about
her careworn features. Well! and what are _you_ laughing at?" she
suddenly and tartly demanded of the plump girl in the background.
"At you," chuckled the stranger.
"Am I so funny to look at?"
"No. But you are the funniest-talking girl I ever listened to. Let me
laugh, won't you?"
Before this observation could be more particularly inquired into, some
one shouted:
"Oh, look who's here! And in style, bless us!"
"And see the freight! Excess baggage, for a fact," May MacGreggor said,
under her breath. "Who _can_ she be?"
"The Queen of Sheba in all her glory had nothing on this lady," cried
Edith with conviction.
It was not often that any of the Ardmore girls, and especially a
freshman, arrived during the opening week of the term in a private
equipage. This car that came chugging down the hill to the entrance of
Dare Hall was a very fine touring automobile. The girl in the tonneau,
barricaded with a huge trunk and several bags, besides a huge leather
hat-box perched beside the chauffeur, was very gaily appareled as well.
"Goodness! look at the labels on that trunk," whispered Dora Parton.
"Why, that girl must have been all over Europe."
"The trunk has, at any rate," chuckled May.
"Hist!" now came from the excited Edith Phelps. "See the initials, 'R.
F.' What did I tell you? It is that Fielding girl!"
"Oh, my aunt!" groaned the plump girl in the background, and she
actually had to stuff her handkerchief in her mouth to keep from
laughing outright again.
The car had halted and the chauffeur got down promptly, for he had to
remove some of the "excess baggage" before the girl in the tonneau could
alight.
"I guess she must think she belongs here," whispered Dora.
"More likely she thinks she owns the whole place," snapped Edith, who
had evidently made up her mind not to like the new girl whose baggage
was marked "R. F."
The girl got out and shook out her draperies. A close inspection would
have revealed the fact that, although dressed in the very height of
fashion (whatever _that_ may mean), the materials of which the
stranger's costume were made were rather cheap.
"This is Dare Hall, isn't it?" she asked the group of girls above her on
the porch. "I suppose there is a porter to help--er--the man with my
baggage?"
"It is a rule of the college," said Edith, promptly, "that each girl
shall carry her own baggage to her room. No male person is allowed
within the dormitory building."
There was a chorused, if whispered, "Oh!" from the other girls, and the
newcomer looked at Edith, suspiciously.
"I guess you are spoofing me, aren't you?" she inquired.
"Help! help!" murmured May MacGreggor. "That's the very latest English
slang."
"She's brought it direct from 'dear ol' Lunnon'," gasped one of the
other sophomores.
"Dear me!" said Edith, addressing her friends, "wouldn't it be nice to
have a 'close up' taken of that heap of luggage? It really needs a
camera man and a director to make this arrival a success."
The girl who had just come looked very much puzzled. The chauffeur
seemed eager to be gone.
"If I can't help take in the boxes, Miss, I might as well be going," he
said to the new arrival.
"Very well," she rejoined, stiffly, and opening her purse gave him a
bill. He lifted his cap, entered the car, touched the starter and in a
moment the car whisked away.
"I declare!" said May MacGreggor, "she looks just like a castaway on the
shore of a desert island, with all the salvage she has been able to
recover from the wreck."
And perhaps the mysterious R. F. felt a good deal that way.