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PEGGY PARSONS
A HAMPTON FRESHMAN
BY
ANNABEL SHARP
AUTHOR OF "PEGGY PARSONS AT PREP SCHOOL"
M. A. DONOHUE & COMPANY
CHICAGO--NEW YORK
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Contents
- CHAPTER I--MAKING AN IMPRESSION
- CHAPTER II--SUITE 22
- CHAPTER III--PEGGY'S MASTERPIECE
- CHAPTER IV--NEW PAINT AND POETRY
- CHAPTER V--MORNING GLORY
- CHAPTER VI--AS OTHERS SEE US
- CHAPTER VII--CINDERELLA
- CHAPTER VIII--INDIAN SUMMER
- CHAPTER IX--THE HOUSE DANCE
- CHAPTER X--TINSEL AND SPANGLES
- CHAPTER XII--THE AUCTION
- CHAPTER XIII--FEET OF CLAY
- CHAPTER XIV--SPRING TERM
INTRODUCTION
Last year Peggy Parsons and Katherine Foster were room-mates at Andrews
Preparatory School.
Their escapades and their hunger for good times and adventure kept them
from being great favorites of the principal there, but they were loved
by the girls of the school and were soon invested with a degree of
leadership.
"Peggy Parsons at Prep School," the first book in this series, tells how
much happiness they managed to crowd into a single year.
A would-be charitable enterprise of Peggy's is recounted, also. And if
she had never undertaken it, mistaken though she was, she could not have
gone to Hampton, and the present volume would never have been written.
Mr. Huntington, a rich old man, whom people believed to be
poverty-stricken because of the way he lived, became a great friend of
Peggy's as the result of a Thanksgiving dinner party she arranged for
the cooking-class of her school to give him.
She and Katherine were instrumental, through an adventure in playing
amateur detectives, in finding Mr. Huntington's grandson, of whom he had
lost track.
The grandson--the "Jim" of the present book--was an Amherst student
about Peggy's own age.
Katherine Foster had planned to go to Hampton College, but Peggy could
not see her way clear. The room-mates were broken-hearted at the
prospect of not being together for another year. After Katherine had
been assigned another room-mate, Gloria Hazeltine, Peggy gave up hope of
going and could not plan with any interest for any other kind of year.
Mr. Huntington then stepped in and turned over for Peggy's use the
income from a dear little group of bungalows which he had named "Parsons
Court."
So Katherine and Peggy were enabled to look forward to college together
just as they had their prep school.
PEGGY PARSONS
A HAMPTON FRESHMAN
CHAPTER I--MAKING AN IMPRESSION
"Katherine Foster!"
"Peggy Parsons!"
Two suit-cases went banging down on the wooden platform and two radiant
figures hurled themselves into each other's arms, oblivious of the
shriek of departing trains, the rattling of baggage trucks, and the
jostling crowds who were at liberty to laugh at their impulsiveness.
For this was Springfield, where East meets West on its way to half a
dozen New England colleges, and where every fall the same scenes of
joyous greeting are enacted with the annual accompaniment of little
squeals of delighted welcome and many glad kisses.
"Well, Peggy, you look just the same as ever!"
"It's been a perfect _century_, Katherine! Going right up to Hampton?
Taking the 9:10? So am I. Oh, so _much_ to talk about----"
Breathlessly chattering all the while, the two girls in blue serge, who
had been room-mates last year at preparatory school, gathered up their
suit-cases again and crossed the tracks to the other side of the station
to wait for the Hampton train. Engines steamed along before and behind
them, but neither looked away from the other's glowing face during the
crossing, nor did they cease both to talk at once until they were
actually seated in their train some time later, packed in with a mob of
laughing and attractive girls with suit-cases in the aisles, in the
racks over their heads, and in their laps.
"Isn't it wonderful that we met this way?" cried Katherine, while Peggy
was trying to hand the remaining untraveled bits of their tickets to the
perspiring conductor. "We'll see our new rooms for the first time
together, and we'll make a very nice impression on the inhabitants of
Ambler House because we can plan out some kind of grand entry to appeal
to them."
Peggy laughed. "It's an awfully _big_ place we're going to," she said,
looking about at the swaying crowds of girls. "I'm just beginning to
realize it. It will take more than our planning to make any impression
at all, I think. And maybe nobody will _ever_ notice us. It won't be
like Andrews."
"You're still Peggy Parsons, aren't you? And I'm still your room-mate,
Katherine Foster. _And_ we're going to live in one of the grandest
suites on campus--oh, I don't believe they will pass us by altogether."
And Katherine gave a little swaggering motion of her head that sent
Peggy into gales of laughter.
"You're conceited and snobbish, friend room-mate," she giggled. "The
summer has spoiled you."
But Katherine smiled back complacently into her eyes.
Suddenly there was a curious stir all about them. The girls who had been
standing in the aisle were all pushing toward the end of the car, and
those seated were struggling up from under their luggage, their faces
bright with anticipation.
"Katherine," whispered Peggy, "I think we're there!"
Oh, the world of meaning in that one sentence. The hopes, the
expectations, the pleasures and good times for four whole years were
summed up in it, and Katherine silently nodded her head, unable to
speak.
The brakeman was already calling out something that he meant for
"Hampton," and he rounded out his shout with the long-drawn wail, "Don't
leave any articles in the car!"
As if any of those precious and bulky suit-cases could be forgotten! The
stampede began in earnest as soon as the train stopped, and Peggy and
Katherine found themselves swept out to the platform and jostled down
the steps and thrust forward toward the station of their own college
town.
The girls from the train rushed this way and that, and other girls from
the college rushed to meet them. Katherine spied a taxi that had still
two vacant seats.
"Come, taxi,--quick," she gasped in Peggy's ear. And the two went
running forward, their suit-cases bumping and thumping against their
knees. Before they reached the machine they saw that they were racing
with a mob of other girls, all frankly eager to be the first to secure
places in the last cab with a vacancy.
In every direction other taxis were whirring off, filled to overflowing
with girls and bags, and here and there the rumble of hoofs mixed in, as
a pair of horses drawing an old-fashioned cab likewise laden dashed off.
Peggy and Katherine were panting. It had become a very exciting race. A
taller girl, with a lighter suit-case, sprinted ahead of them and
reached the taxi first. But she stopped to ask the driver his price, and
while she was doing so Katherine and Peggy piled in.
The taller girl turned to take her rightful place and saw two hot and
beaming young ladies in the exact corner she had run so hard to claim.
She stepped back with a chagrined laugh, and Peggy and Katherine laughed
too, with the utmost good nature, now that they had attained what they
sought. They heard the other two occupants of their car murmuring the
names of college houses to the chauffeur, and with a thrill of pride
Peggy said, "Ambler House."
"And you, miss?" the driver asked Katherine.
"Why, Ambler House, too, of course," she said, and then blushed scarlet
for fear the other girls would think her an idiot, for at the moment it
had indeed seemed to her that even a taxi-cab driver ought to know that
she was going to live in college wherever Peggy was.
The quaint, prim streets of the New England town were nothing but so
much colored confusion to the eyes of the four in the cab. Each one had
a consciousness that this perhaps was the height of life: that they
would never touch anything better than this again. Riding along thus,
packed tight in a taxi, through Hampton, to college for the first time.
They felt as if all previous experiences were washed away--and all
future ones unknown and unguessed at. Everything was before them--the
glory of being young singing in their hearts and going to their heads
like wine--what wonder that they felt life had been made just for them
and was already beginning to yield its fruits into their eager hands!
The cab went grating up a hill, and in a moment there was a bright
stretch of green before them, with any number of red brick buildings on
it, some of them covered with ivy. Hampton College was spread before
their gaze without any warning to prepare them. But each girl knew, as
if she had seen it often, that this was really College.
Katherine and Peggy craned their necks quite frankly out of the window,
and when they drew their heads in, the other girls followed their
example shamelessly.
"It looks--nice," ventured Peggy, with a long sigh of satisfaction.
"It looks just--the way I thought it would," answered one of the
strangers, and then gave a little embarrassed laugh because her voice
had sounded so thrilled.
The taxi made a sharp turn, and they were actually inside the sacred
precincts of Campus--there on each side were the rows of college houses,
and in the distance was a magnificent structure of stone. The morning
sun shone over it all. A sense of homelikeness and a strange comfortable
feeling of love for it came, even at this first view, into their hearts.
"We are to live in one of these houses," Peggy rapturously reminded
Katherine. "In a moment the taxi will stop and it will be _our_ house.
Katherine, pinch my arm. It all seems so queerly familiar, maybe I'm
just dreaming it after all."
But the taxi did stop in a minute or two, and the driver was opening the
door and saying "Ambler House" in a matter-of-fact tone. The two other
girls nodded good-bye to Peggy and Katherine. Katherine stepped down and
was handed her bag. Peggy was conscious that the long porch of the brick
house before which they had drawn up was filled with girls interestedly
watching for freshman newcomers. She thought of their plan to make a
good initial impression, and descended as gracefully as might be, with a
charming little smile of eagerness and anticipation that was not assumed
at all.
The driver was lifting down her heavy suit-case. And then quite
unexpectedly came the fall that follows pride. Only, while the pride had
been Peggy's, the fall was her suit-case's.
Thump! Thud! it went smashing down to the ground, and its bulging sides
flew apart, and hair-brushes, mirrors, nightgown, kimono, and powder
boxes and tooth paste all shot out in every direction and rolled
ignominiously about on the campus lawn, in full view of the crowded
porch of Ambler House.
Peggy's crimson ears caught shrieks of laughter, her tear-filled eyes
saw girlish figures doubling up in mirth--and under her feet and round
about, the ground was white with powder, redolent with oozing perfume
and strewn with her most intimate belongings.
There was something about it all that had the awful publicity of a
nightmare. Such things couldn't really happen. Oh, if she could only
melt away--or wake up or even crawl back into the taxi and hide.
"Shall I help you pick the things up?"
"I'm afraid this powder can never be scraped up again. I've put some
back into the box, but there's quite a bit of grass and gravel mixed
with it."
She was completely surrounded by helpful girls, who had flown out from
the porch, their laughter still on their lips, and were now kneeling and
stooping everywhere about the scene of the catastrophe.
"Your clean shirtwaist," cried one of these helpers sympathetically, as
she pulled a fragile bit of dimity and Cluny lace from under the
taxi-cab where it had fluttered. "It won't be good for very much now
until it's laundered."
Into the suit-case the things were tumbled with despatch but not
neatness. The taxi driver was contrite, but he did not offer to touch
any of the scattered feminine luggage and insisted quite audibly that
there had been "too many things in there anyway."
Katherine paid him, eying him reproachfully, and he chugged away,
leaving the two heart-broken freshmen greatly discomfited by the mishap.
Thus it was that the two girls who had hoped to make so attractive an
impression slunk into Ambler House with a straggling procession of merry
followers behind them carrying odds and ends that refused to be crammed
back into the damaged suit-case. And thus it came about also that they
looked about Suite 22 with blind eyes and failed to realize that it was
one of "the grandest suites on Campus" and overlooked Paradise.
Peggy sat down in a little heap on the window seat in their living-room
and didn't even appreciate that it _was_ a window seat, and one of very,
very few at college.
"I'm glad it--didn't happen in Springfield," was the first thing Peggy
said.
"Ye-es," admitted Katherine, standing uncertainly in the middle of the
room. And then she added irrelevantly: "I think there are awfully nice
girls in this house."
Peggy buried her little burning face in the upholstery of the window
seat. "Do--you?" she asked in muffled tones. "I didn't dare look at
them."
"I thought they seemed a very--_jolly_ set," pursued Katherine
tentatively.
She was rewarded by a rueful chuckle from the figure on the window seat.
"And anyway," Katherine followed up her advantage, "they _did notice_
us,--more than they do most freshmen. Paid rather particular attention,
in fact."
That was too much for happy-go-lucky little Peggy and she laughed until
she shook, even while the contradictory tears ran forth from her swollen
eyes and trickled through her fingers onto the green leather
seat-cushion.
"I--I'll--never go down to luncheon, Kathie," she protested between a
laugh and a sob. "I'll never go outside this room again. I can't
possibly bear to look them in the face."
Rap-tap-tap!
Katherine whirled toward the door and Peggy sat up.
Rap-tap-_tap_! It was more insistent this time, and the knob of the door
turned even as Peggy called out a none too cordial "Come" that broke
pathetically in the middle.
A dark-haired girl entered impetuously, a sparkle in her friendly eyes.
Peggy remembered her with an inward qualm as one of the most
appreciative spectators on the porch a few moments ago.
"Aren't you folks _crazy_ about your rooms? Have you seen the view over
Paradise? It's wonderful. I've been wondering who would have these. I
live right across the hall--and I--I----"
Those sparkling eyes fairly danced now, and Peggy became aware of a tiny
package being thrust forward by the pretty visitor.
"I saw yours was trampled, so I brought you some tooth-paste!" finished
the girl, to their amazement.
She had scarcely left them, swinging mentally between indignation and
bewildered gratitude, when a pair of girls came unceremoniously in upon
them without knocking at all, and stood hesitating before them, arms
entwined about each other and holding something half out of sight.
"I always think it's a ghastly thing to be without powder," one of them
finally mustered the courage to say, "and I came away with two boxes.
It's rice powder, flesh tint,--I hope you like that as well as white;
and I brought you some--and a chamois. Yours was muddy. I picked it up,
but I parted with it again. I knew you wouldn't possibly want it,--it
couldn't make your face anything but _black_."
"And here's a--waist." The other was speaking now. "I thought you might
be--traveling light, and--since nobody's trunks have come, please wear
this down to luncheon. It's my _best_ one, so I won't deprecate it at
all. I think it's a darling, and if you'll give it its first wearing,
I'll be only too happy."
Katherine glanced across at Peggy and smiled. Her room-mate was wiping
away the last gleam of moisture from her eyes, and the inner sunlight of
her spirit was beginning to shine through the gloom.
She rose and went toward the girls, but they laid their offerings on a
chair and withdrew. While Peggy was looking after them appreciatively,
another stranger entered on a similar mission.
For fifteen minutes, while Peggy and Katherine were making themselves
presentable for luncheon, the gift-bearers kept coming, leaving their
present on the dressing-table in the bedroom or the window seat in the
living-room, sometimes saying nothing at all, and sometimes a great
deal.
"You won't mind going down now?" Katherine asked.
"N-not so much," admitted Peggy, putting dabs of perfume out of various
bottles here and there on her cheered-up countenance, on her fluffy
gold-brown hair, and on the new waist, contributed.
For at least six girls had brought perfume and loyal Peggy meant to have
one represented just as truly as another, so she followed this neutral
course of using all,--with a resulting odor that was anything but
neutral.
As she went into the big dining-room, each giver could distinctly
discern the pervading sweetness of her own scent bottle and was
satisfied.
It seemed to Peggy that every face was lifted and turned toward her as
she and Katherine came in. There was a temptation to walk with lowered
eyes, and sink into the seat the head waitress might indicate, without
meeting a single person's gaze.
But casting this desire aside, she went in bravely, her eyes taking in
the whole room. And every girl smiled back at her with the very essence
of friendship and proprietorship, for there was hardly a girl in the
room who had not contributed something that the radiant freshman was
even then wearing, or had just made use of.
So Peggy did not have to wait until the others in her house had learned
to love her, but she was taken from the first day into their hearts. And
she felt the warmth of their love around her even while she went through
so prosaic a ceremony as the partaking of a meager college luncheon.