As a college morning dries all tears and wipes out all resentments of
the night before, the freshmen were only slightly haughty in their
demeanor toward each other next day, and none of the upper classmen had
reason to suspect that they had been going through a period of stress
and disillusionment all by themselves.
Lilian came down to breakfast, ate hurriedly and scurried off to class,
after casting one quick glance of adoration toward Peggy.
Peggy and Katherine became conspirators as soon as she was well out of
the house.
"You have time this first hour to-day, and I have the third," said
Peggy. "So you go down and buy some green and white cretonne and some
silk for pillow tops, and I'll sew them up when I come in."
In the afternoon they hung a "Busy" sign on their door for the first
time, set the percolator perking coffee to inspire them and plunged into
the green and white material in earnest.
"These cretonne curtains will be nearly as pretty as ours, don't you
think so?" asked Peggy, "and ours were made at the store. I'm getting
very proud of us as seamstresses, Kathie."
The plain silk was made into pillow tops of red, blue and yellow.
"The red one will brighten things so," approved Katherine, when she came
to stitch it over a plump pillow, one of three that the room-mates
hadn't needed this year for themselves.
Like culprits, they sneaked down the hall, their gay offerings wadded as
closely as possible in their arms, and knocked in fear and trembling at
Lilian's door. If she had called "Come in," they would have run. But
they received no answer, so Peggy cautiously opened the door, and thrust
her curly head inside.
"It's all right," she whispered in relief to Katherine a moment later,
when she saw that Lilian had not returned from class.
The friends worked quickly, and soon the green and white curtains were
hung at the windows, and the three bright pillows were ranged along the
couch.
"But she hasn't any couch cover at all," wailed Peggy, standing off to
look at the result "And the white bedspread does look so hopeless
showing through those gay cushions. What shall we do, room-mate?"
Katherine's forehead was wrinkled. "You know that old green denim
curtain that hangs before the clothes closet in our bedroom, Peggy?
Don't you suppose that would be better than nothing? It was there when
we came, but it isn't so very ancient looking, and it would be
inconspicuous anyway--and just about the kind of thing you see in lots
of rooms."
With ruthless hands they tore down the big green curtain in their own
suite, snipped off the rough end with scissors, and bore it back in
triumph to Cinderella's apartment.
"I'm going to run over to Gloria's," said Peggy then, "and ask her to
part with one or two of those pictures she got for being elected. She
has two Home-keeping Hearts that I know of, and several pictures that
look like photographs that can't mean much to her, and would just cheer
up our protegee wonderfully, and make her room pass muster with any
guest."
Peggy's tireless feet carried her blithely across the campus to Gloria's
room, and it didn't take her twenty minutes to pick out what she wanted,
with Gloria's help.
"Of course I'm glad to have your little friend have them," said the
obliging freshman president. "And if you want me to, I'll come over and
see her some time and bring a lot of girls from my house--junior
celebrities and senior dramatists and people like that, and it might
have a good effect on those Amblerites that tried to snub her."
"It looks like a different place," Peggy and Katherine congratulated
themselves later when they had done what they could in the way of
changes. "It's changed from a poor little apology of just a place to
sleep, into an inviting and cozy college room--with the brightest
cushions a person could imagine," they summed up boastfully.
Lilian came dragging home from classes, tired circles under her eyes
after the strain of the evening before, and a return of hopelessness
toward her situation. She had Peggy and Katherine for her friends, but
after all these two joyous freshmen went very much their own way, and
were too busy with engagements with more important people, to think of
her much--the girl with the horrid clothes and the wadded-up hair--and
the unattractive room. So she reasoned disconsolately.
She opened her own door listlessly and entered the room.
And then she thought that she had made a mistake. It couldn't be her
room--of course it wasn't--and yet, when she turned in bewilderment to
leave it she beheld her own books on the rickety little table.
Well, it was magic! However it had happened, she accepted it with a
queer choking sense that she was really to live in a room like other
rooms hereafter. College had suddenly come close.
She parted the green and white cretonne curtains and looked out on a new
world; she stroked the bright silk cushions with a new sense of comfort
and luxury.
Then she went over to the dresser and drew out the tear-stained letter
that began "Dear mother," and tore it into bits. A few minutes later her
pen was flying over some clean, fresh sheets in a glowing description of
college, of her room, of her friends.
It was the sort of letter to make a mother think with a sigh of gladness
when she read it, "Well, she is having it all. How nice, that my
daughter can draw about her such friends. How lovely, that she is so
pleasantly situated in such a delightful room--and how, best of all,
that she should not have been deprived of college."
An interested group of girls clustered around the house bulletin board
on the stair landing, and read many times the latest sign that was
pinned there:
"Looks like a nice party to me," speculated Doris Winterbean. "But May
and I haven't a chafing-dish. May, go and borrow one from some
sophomore, because I'm curious, and after last night I certainly want
something cheerful."
Peggy herself knocked at Lilian's door a few minutes later.
"I've got a sign up for a party to-night," she said as soon as a
welcoming voice had called to her to enter, "and I thought maybe you'd
like Kay and me to fix your hair for it--it's pretty hair--and I
thought----"
Lilian tried to say something about the benefits she had already
received at their hands, but Peggy hurried on.
"We have a new electric hair dryer, and Kay has some marcel irons--an
amateur kind, you know--and if you'd like to have us practise them on
you,--I think the result would surprise the girls and send them right
down to Gibot to have theirs done."
"I can't let you," stammered Lilian. "I never _could_ fix my hair well,
but I wouldn't let you bother with it for the world."
"Just time before dinner," Peggy insisted, whipping a towel from the
dresser and beginning to fasten it around the reluctant shoulders of the
other freshman.
She was led down the hall and Peggy experimented with all the Suite 22
hair-dressing implements. Egg shampoo, alcohol, bay rum, electric dryer,
special French orris powder, and finally the hot curling iron.
Then Katherine dexterously did it up for her--not in an original style
at all, but in the mode that had swept the entire college: so that when
their work was finished and the victim was handed an oval ivory mirror,
she exclaimed with wonder, for there was reflected a nice-looking-girl
just like a hundred others in Hampton, with wonderful ripples of soft
gleaming hair, that made you want to follow the waves with your fingers.
"Is that me?" asked Lilian.
"We'll forgive you for being ungrammatical, since it's all in
recognition of our efforts," said Peggy delightedly. "It is very much
you--the way you ought to have been all along, and will, I hope,
continue to be, now that we've shown you the way. Mercy, Kay, she does
look wonderful! If you and I ever get poor, we'll know of one talent we
have at least whereby we can hope to make an honest living."
So Lilian came that night to the party, very much elated, and entirely
self-confident, instead of shrinking and conscious of making an inferior
appearance.
Those who had chafing-dishes had brought them, those who had not had
borrowed them. Beside each chafing-dish, the hostesses had arranged a
little set of materials.
"Now, two chafing-dishes are prepared to make fudge, one sea-foam, and
one chocolate marshmallow. Will the freshmen kindly pair off and choose
what they want to make? Here are the materials for white taffy over
here, as a prize for the ones that get done first." Peggy made the
announcement, and the girls lit the chafing-dishes and started in with
great zeal.
This was the kind of party to please them all. Nothing but candy--and
all they could make and eat of that!
"This is an anti-climax party," explained Katherine, when the fudge was
bubbling with its rich delicious odor, in the chafing-dish chosen by
Florence Thomas and herself. "Peg and I thought of the awful faults we
all found in each other last night"--_they_ hadn't done any of the
finding, but the others didn't notice that they painted themselves
blacker than they were--"and we have a suggestion to make as to how to
cure them."
The girls were a little displeased--more of that criticism business?
they wondered. Even the tempting odor of the cooking candy couldn't
quite appease them.
"It's just a way to wipe out the faults as soon as possible," said Peggy
with her funny and irresistible little smile. "I thought if we each
cured the faults of the others in our own minds, why--where would they
be?"
There was an alarming simplicity to this.
Doris dropped her fudge spoon.
"What do you mean, Peggy?" she demanded.
"Well," laughed Peggy gleefully, delighted with the discovery she and
Katherine had made, "that party last night did no good, some way.
Everybody went home feeling disgruntled and out of sorts--and
overwhelmed more or less with their own imperfections. If each
fault-finder just--doesn't find fault, you know,--even in her own mind,
there won't be any fault pretty soon to be found."
"Don't see it," said Myra Whitewell.
"If _you_," Peggy turned to her patiently, "if _you_ just wiped out the
notion you had about me--and stopped letting it torment you--that I
wanted to run things, you know,--why, why--then you wouldn't see me like
that, would you? Pretty soon every one in Ambler House would be praising
every one else, and loving every one so much that the other houses would
begin to notice, and would catch the infection. I think it's better to
let our enemies find fault with us, if they must, but not our friends."
"Ambler House would get a wonderful reputation for having the best
freshmen on Campus if we all boosted our house and our classmates
everywhere, I can see that," ventured Florence Thomas eagerly.
"Well, shall we try?" urged Peggy, "shall we just try it out as an
experiment?"
Because it was Peggy, and because the idea was new, and because the
candy was just ready to eat now, and very tempting, the good-natured
freshmen light-heartedly promised to try her plan--and to follow it
faithfully until it had had time to show either some result--or no
result at all.
This was the beginning of an attitude of mind that later became habitual
with that group of freshmen. It wasn't many weeks after this
anti-fault-finding party in Peggy's room that, if a first-year girl
heard that another lived in Ambler House, she was filled with wistful
envy; for the good times the Amblerites had, their gay and loyal
friendship became matters of common college discussion.
Myra Whitewell would not have worked into the system if she could have
helped it. But the others, very much in earnest under the stimulus of
Peggy's sunny example, refused to give heed to her grouches, or to be
hurt at her snubs,--and they never failed to speak well of her outside,
so that this praise of theirs came to her ears at last, and filled her
heart with warmth in spite of herself, and she could not do less than
give them her friendship--yes, and even her warped and selfish love,--in
the end.
There was candy enough left after the spread that night for each
freshman to take a plateful to her particular junior or senior friend.
As they were leaving, their faces glowing with appreciation of the
pleasant evening they had just spent, and in anticipation of the
junior's or senior's delight at their offering, Doris Winterbean drew
Peggy aside and whispered in her ear:
"Well, I don't know, Pegkins, it's rather wonderful, but I've tried your
plan ever since you spoke of it and it's had an uncanny effect. Why, do
you know, I already see the greatest difference in that Lilian girl?
Honestly! Peggy, her hair looks _pretty_ to me now, and I thought it was
horrid last night. And her face and manner--she just seemed as happy and
confident as anybody, instead of so shy and uncomfortable. It's--magic,
Peggy, and you may not believe me, but I really do see her altogether
differently."
And Peggy burst out into a little laugh of enjoyment, and her eyes
followed Lilian with pride. But she did not think it was necessary to
disabuse the mind of Lilian's new admirer by telling her that the
"magic" had a very material foundation.