BEGINNING TO GROW UP
“Can that be Leslie Cairns?” marveled Leila. “You will now kindly tell
me a great many facts about her recent history which I have somehow
missed. You intended to tell me about them, did you not?” She regarded
Marjorie with laughing suspicion.
“I had not intended to tell you or anyone else that she attended the
Romp,” Marjorie said emphatically. “I never even mentioned it to Jerry.
You see what a good secret keeper I am. Since you have heard a part of
the story from the heroine herself, I may as well tell you the rest.”
“Leslie Cairns’s wits are as ready as Jerry’s when it come to giving out
names,” was Leila’s comment after Marjorie had informed her of the set
of circumstance at the Romp in which Leslie had so prominently figured.
“Jerry and Muriel named Miss Peyton the Prime Minister. That was
appropriate enough last fall when she tried so earnestly to dictate a
policy of her own to we poor timid P. G.’s. It seems she has practiced
screeching as well as dictating. And she looks like an owl!” Leila’s
intonation was full of false enthusiasm.
“I made up my mind not to tell Miss Cairns about Miss Peyton and Jane
Everest. It wasn’t necessary. She is worried now for fear Miss Monroe
may be blamed. It seems odd, Leila, that Leslie Cairns should have shown
consideration for another. I say it candidly; not spitefully. She ought
to be protected if only for that change toward growth.” Marjorie was
very earnest in her conviction regarding Leslie.
“It is a nine days’ wonder to me.” Leila was impressed in spite of her
earlier impulse to be skeptical. “If nothing is brought up against
Leslie Cairns now on the campus, nothing will be later. The time of
interest for a rumor is just before, at the time, or just after
something supposedly happens. The Romp is now almost a memory. Soon
along will come something new and amusing to crowd that memory out.”
“There is still the other side of it, Leila.” Marjorie grew grave. “It
was against good taste in Leslie Cairns to step into the social side of
Hamilton College under cover of a mask. She had forfeited the right to
do so when she left Hamilton two years ago.”
“Still it is the most harmless piece of mischief that she ever carried
out. And she dragged no one else into it,” Leila said thoughtfully.
“Precisely the point, Leila. I’ve felt so about it ever since I went to
the door of the gym with her that night.” Marjorie spoke her mind
forcefully. “I couldn’t regard her lark as anything but a lark. Her
costume was so funny and she behaved in such a funny, original way. She
was more like a child than a young woman. It was as if she had slipped
through the gate of a high fence, and into a forbidden yard. She acted
as if she were having a fine time playing. Perhaps she went over a
rustic road to childhood that night, and when she came back found
herself changed?” Marjorie made fanciful suggestion.
“It may be so. All the fairy tales are not hatched in the Emerald Isle.”
Leila cast a sly smile toward her fanciful chum. “More’s the pity that I
instead of she should be given credit for her costume. For that I shall
see to it that she gains in another direction. Ah-h-h!” Leila gave the
wheel an inspired jerk which sent the car bumping into a rut. “I have
just thought of a plan to keep the Screech Owl from screeching on the
campus.”
“Have you? I’m glad to hear it.” There was a hint of grim enthusiasm in
the reply. “What will you do?”
“I shall have to try it out on her first and tell you my method
afterward. It is only the ghost of a plan yet.” Leila made evasive
answer.
Marjorie did not inquire further into Leila’s “ghost” of a plan. “All
right. Keep it to yourself. I only hope it will be effective. It’s hard
to believe, isn’t it, that we should be planning now to protect Leslie
Cairns? When one stops to remember that she—”
“Never did anything but harass and torment us,” supplied Leila, “it is
that amazin’.” Her accent became strongly Hibernian.
“That’s not quite what I meant to say, but it’s true. We can afford to
be generous to her, Leila.”
“Ah, yes. It is more becoming to old age,” sighed Leila, then chuckled.
“As ancient, tottering P. G.’s we are so merciful!”
“That’s one explanation. It will do as well as another,” laughed
Marjorie.
“We have an old Irish saw that runs: ‘What is the gain in beating a
knave after the hangman has him?’” Leila lightly quoted the quaint
Celtic inquiry.
“What is the use? That is exactly the question,” Marjorie smiled in
sympathy with the pertinent old query. “Leslie Cairns has made things
far harder for herself than for us.”
The two girls fell silent after Marjorie’s remark. Both were thinking of
the past five years in which Leslie Cairns had figured so unpleasantly.
Neither cared to continue the conversation with Leslie as the chief
topic. The lure of Spring had chained them both to dreamy admiration of
her budding beauty.
The automobile had swung into the last lap of the road to Orchard Inn
which wound in and out like a pale brown ribbon among orchard belts of
fragrant pink and white bloom. Orchard Inn itself to which they would
presently come, was a staunch brick relic of colony days, set down in
the midst of thick-trunked, gnarled apple trees. Just then they were
burgeoning in rose and snow, scented with Spring’s own perfume.
Marjorie had always been a devoted worshipper at the shrine of Spring.
The glorious resurrection each year of earth, which had lain stark and
drear under winter’s death-like cloak, seemed to her the mystery of
mysteries. Today the very sight of brown fields turning to emerald,
apple, pear and cherry trees rioting in ravishing bloom, the twitter of
nesting birds, busy putting the last touches to their tiny homes, filled
her with retrospection. Sight of a peach tree, a luxuriant bouquet of
vivid pink gave her a sensation of unutterable sadness.
She understood dimly that her mood of wistful sadness was born of more
than her ardent love of Spring. She was still gripped by the supreme
tragedy of Brooke Hamilton’s love story. She almost wished she had not
read it. She was sure that she could never bear to read it over again.
In the next breath she made sturdy resolve that she would. She would not
allow herself to be affected to such an extent even by a story as sad as
was Brooke Hamilton’s.
Then, without invitation, Hal invaded her thoughts. She was no nearer
being in love with him than she had ever been, she reflected with an
almost naughty satisfaction. Nevertheless, the moment she began to think
about love, he appeared, a blue-eyed image of her mind, always regarding
her in the same sorrowful way, in which she had caught him viewing the
portrait of the “Violet Girl.”
Marjorie had no suspicion that she had changed a great deal in mind
since the evening at Severn Beach when she and Hal had walked together
with their friends along the moonlit sands and Constance had sung
“Across the Years.” She had listened to the sadly beautiful song, which
had breathed of blighted hopes and love’s misunderstandings without
either sentimentality or sentiment of mind. Hal had characterized her
faithfully when he had told her that she had not yet grown up.
Neither he nor she knew that the growing-up miracle had begun when she
had laid her childishly curly head on the study table and cried out her
heart over Brooke Hamilton’s tragic love affair.
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