AN EVIL INSPIRATION
Due to the heavy rain storm on Thanksgiving Day, Leslie Cairns’ plans
had gone considerably “aglee.” To parade the Dazzler, the white car she
had loaned Doris, with Doris in it and clothed in expensive white furry
finery, had been an impossibility. In consequence a very much
disgruntled Leslie Cairns had telephoned Doris that “it was all off” and
to meet her instead at the Colonial at two o’clock.
Before the two girls had reached their Thanksgiving dessert they had
come perilously near quarreling. Leslie was in bad humor because of the
inclement weather. She had the fierce hatred of being disappointed
common to utterly selfish persons. The news that Doris would grace the
hop on the Saturday evening following Thanksgiving Day and take charge
at the door of the admission fee to the frolic had not pleased Leslie.
“You should have known better than to take that job, even though it does
give you a chance to show off your looks,” she had upbraided Doris in a
surly tone. “You say you can’t endure Bean and her crowd. Then—bing!—you
whirl about and let them make a silly of you. Page is Bean’s partner and
one of the celebrated Beanstalks. That didn’t hinder you from being as
sweet as cream to Page and saying, ‘yes,’ in a hurry when she asked you
to be a little pet donkey and collect the fees at the hop.”
“Leslie!” Doris had said in a low, furious voice, “you shall not talk to
me in that tone, or call me a donkey. I won’t stand it. You are simply
in a rage with everything and everybody today because things didn’t go
to suit you. Besides, it was Miss Wenderblatt not Miss Page who asked
me. You are rude and boorish.”
“I’ll say what I please. I’ve a perfect right to express an opinion.”
Leslie had flung back with equal fury. “What you’ll have to do is to go
and tell that smug Dutch prig, Wenderblatt, that you won’t be able to do
the tax-collection stunt Saturday night. You have another engagement.
You _have_, you know. One with _me_. We’ll go to the Lotus to dinner and
wander into that select rube recreation palace known as the Hamilton
Opera House.”
“I do not intend to tell Miss Wenderblatt any such thing,” Doris had
retorted with belligerent independence. “Just remember she is Professor
Wenderblatt’s daughter. This stunt I am to do at the hop will boom me a
lot on the campus. I have a perfectly ducky dress to wear. Besides Miss
Peyton and Miss Barton are going to try to start a beauty contest at the
hop. There is no doubt but that I shall win it.”
“Your chances _are_ fair since Bean’s taken her precious self to dear
Sanford, the place where Beans and Beanstocks grow,” Leslie had sneered.
“You are so impossible today, Leslie. I sha’n’t lower myself by
quarreling with you,” had been Doris’s ultimatum, delivered in offended
haughtiness.
“You’d never win a prize for amiability. You’re the most selfish
proposition, Doris Monroe, that I’ve ever met,” Leslie had retaliated.
“Get acquainted with yourself,” Doris had sarcastically advised.
The ending of their Thanksgiving dinner had been punctuated freely with
other similar pleasantries. The two self-willed girls had left the
Colonial hardly on speaking terms. It was nearing half past three
o’clock when they had stepped outside the tea room. The rain having
stopped Doris had sulkily announced her intention to walk to Wayland
Hall instead of allowing Leslie to run her there in the car. Leslie had
snapped back: “Don’t care what you do. You’re too selfish to consider
me. You know I counted on you to help me amuse myself tonight in that
dead dump of a town. Go to the dance. I hope you have a punk evening.”
“In going to the hop I’m only doing what you asked me to do quite a
while ago. You told me then that you wanted me to make myself popular on
the campus. Well; this is the way to do it. Think it over. You’ll find
I’m right,” had been Doris’s parting shot as she separated from her
ill-humored companion.
Determining to teach Doris a lesson, Leslie let the rest of the week go
by without holding any communication with the sophomore. She had spent a
lonely Thanksgiving evening and blamed Doris heavily because of it. She
was also dreadfully miffed at the partial failure of her contemptible
plot against the dormitory girls’ welfare. When she had awakened on
Thanksgiving morning, to see violently weeping skies that promised an
all-day deluge, she had smiled contentedly. She had effectually blocked
Bean’s plans for the day. And for a good many days to come! Such was her
belief, when, after having posted herself in the palm-screened window of
the florist’s shop to see that Sabani kept his word and ran no busses,
she had frowningly witnessed the arrival of Phil, Barbara and Robin on
the scene and what followed as a result of their timely arrival.
When Leslie had had the galling experience of seeing the Thanksgiving
part of her plot far on the way to failure she had flung out of the
florist’s in a rage, jumped into her car and set off for the campus
without any definite reason whatever for going there. The main point had
been to keep “rag, tag and bob-tail,” as she had ironically named the
off-campus girls, from getting to the “free feed” at the “dago’s hash
house.” She had failed to do this. The “beggars” had managed to reach
Baretti’s in spite of the rain. They would return to town in the same
way that they had come. Leslie felt particularly spiteful toward Robin
Page. So very spiteful that she indulged her rancor in “splashing” Phil
and Robin when the opportunity chanced to offer itself.
On the Sunday afternoon following Thanksgiving while the Travelers, old
and new, had gathered in Marjorie’s room in serious confab over the
momentous happenings of the Thanksgiving holiday, Leslie Cairns had sat
lazily stretched in an easy chair in her hotel room, eyes half closed,
her dark mind wholly concentrated on an idea which had just introduced
itself to her. It was an evil inspiration, born of a group of headlines
she had glanced at in one of the Sunday papers.
“I wonder why I never thought of that before,” she had said half aloud
as she dipped a hand into a box of nut chocolates on the table beside
her and thoughtfully nibbled a cream nut. “I wish I dared ask _him_ to
help me. He could do what I want done as quickly as a wink. He couldn’t
kick, either, for he has handled more than one such stunt. I think I’ll
write him. ‘Nothing venture nothing have.’ I’ll wait a few days until I
see how the bus scheme works out, then I’ll write. I’ve never written
him since he—since he—.” Leslie’s voice had faltered. She had sat
staring into the ruddy embers of the open fire looking less like a
malicious mischief-maker and more like a sorrowful young woman than ever
before. There was only one person in the world who had ever commanded
Leslie’s respect and tenderness. That one was her father.
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