"My mother is coming."
Lilian Moore made the announcement to Peggy in a tone of mingled joy and
reluctance.
The Christmas holidays were over and the fearsome midyear examinations
were things of the past. The dullest of the three terms had settled into
full swing--day after day of white earth and grey sky.
The Ambler House girls had been having a Wednesday evening frolic down
in the parlor, with the piano banging and gay voices shouting out their
musical defiance of dullness in general.
"She writes that she's coming for just a day to see a little bit of
college for herself," went on Lilian. "Peggy--she'll--be disappointed
in--my grandeur. You see, I raved so about everything when I was home at
Christmas time. I guess it may hurt her feelings to see that I'm
not--one of the foremost people in my class."
Lilian essayed a laugh that broke into a sob.
Myra Whitewell, who stood near, impatiently turned away. "I never knew
anybody to be so incessantly humble in my life. You really do make me
tired, Lilian. Haven't we all liked you for a long time----? You young
Stupid, don't you know that we all have to take _some_ steps toward
popularity ourselves? Don't you know that we are _all_ outsiders when we
come here, and it depends at least _partly_ on ourselves whether we ever
become insiders? You are always bringing up the same thing."
Peggy laughed at these two who had never learned to become entirely
reconciled to each other even after all the close association of living
together in the same house. Myra was so impatient and so proud; so well
equipped with a good opinion of herself, while Lilian was almost
maddeningly willing to be trodden under foot on every occasion.
"Mother says maybe she can absorb a little of college for herself,"
Lilian mused, not heeding Myra's cutting comment, for she had grown used
to them.
"When is she coming?" asked Katherine, who glanced around the room of
singing girls, and tried to imagine what impression it might make on one
who was not a girl any longer, and was seeing it for the first time.
"To-morrow," answered Lilian, with that same note of doubt in her voice.
"Well," said Katherine, her eyes still on the shouting young women who
rocked to the music they sang, while the piano did its best to be heard
above them, "I think we can show her a good time."
"Will you help me, girls?" cried Lilian, brightening in sudden
gratitude.
"Why, of course," said Katherine, "any guest of any of us is a guest of
the house--that is, if the one who is entertaining wants it to be so."
"I haven't much for to-morrow," said Peggy quickly. "I know you have
several recitations, Lilian,--we'll see that she is taken care of every
minute from the time she arrives until she leaves us, weeping."
Peggy's enthusiasm was beginning to carry her away.
"Let's go and plan out the hours," she said to the rest of the
group--"just like those schedules they publish in the papers of the way
certain great people--and criminals--spend their days: thus, 9 a. m.,
has breakfast on tray; 10 a. m., sees dressmakers and milliners; 11 a.
m., rides in automobile, under guard----"
Lilian was laughing, all her doubts vanished.
Even Myra entered into the plans with spirit.
And never had a celebrity been met by a more enthusiastic crowd than was
gathered at the Hampton station to meet the frail and fluttering little
woman who stepped down from the 9:10.
Her eyes, shy and yet full of anticipation, were searching for Lilian,
who fairly flew down the platform, the happy bevy of girls keeping close
behind.
After Lilian had kissed her mother, each girl, as her name was spoken,
wrung her hand with such goodwill and welcome that poor little Mrs.
Moore realized that she would probably have rheumatism in her fingers
for days, as a result. But her worn cheeks flushed with pleasure.
Whose would not, at such a reception when she had expected to be merely
a spectator during her single day's stay?
She was borne first to Lilian's room.
Entering Ambler House, her eyes glowed, and she turned her head to look
after a merry group that came running down the steps, their books under
their arms. Through the great hall, the floor shining and smooth, with
handsome rugs to give color here and there--and up the broad stairs the
little procession wended its way.
And Lilian could hardly restrain a cry of surprise as she and her
mother, followed by the faithful escort, stepped inside her room.
On the dresser was an adorable bunch of violets with inviting purple
pins beside it.
"Some one has sent you flowers?" cried little Mrs. Moore, noticing
these, even before she took note of the dainty green and white curtains,
and the green denim couch cover, that Peggy and Katherine had been
inspired to supply.
"No, they didn't," cried Peggy from the doorway. "They didn't send _her_
the flowers,--look on the card!"
And when Mrs. Moore picked up the card that lay beside the pins, she
read aloud, "For Mrs. Moore; welcome to Hampton, from one of Lilian's
friends, Myra Whitewell."
If you could have seen the look of pleasure with which the little woman
lifted those fragrant flowers, and with shaking fingers fastened them to
her girdle! Oh, precious first impression of college! How it crept into
her heart with the fragrance of those violets--quite the nicest thing
that had ever come to her in her care-worn, workaday life!
Lilian's own face was suffused.
That Myra, of all people, should have been so dear and thoughtful! And,
a moment since Lilian had been harboring a rather bitter and unkind
thought against the black-haired freshman.
For Myra was the only one of the Ambler House "crowd" who had not been
at the station to meet her mother. Lilian felt hurt. But now, she
remembered Myra's chemistry laboratory, that was in full session at this
moment--and to her, also, a new feeling came with the odor of those
violets.
She thought, with quick gratitude, that nothing she could ever do for
Myra would be too much now to repay her for that glad and surprised
light in her mother's eyes.
"And now, Mrs. Moore, you're going to be handed from one to another of
us, hour by hour," laughingly explained Peggy. "Your daughter has some
classes that she really feels she _must_ attend. Ordinary classes we
could all cut with pleasure, but Lilian's this morning happen to include
math, and Lilian is--well, she doesn't know a triangle from a piece of
fudge, Mrs. Moore----"
She broke off, giggling, and fled down the corridor to escape Lilian,
who pursued with pretended rage, at her daring thus to lay bare her
mathematical shortcomings to her trusting mother.
"So," Katherine took up the story of the adventures that were to form
Mrs. Moore's great day, "you are to walk with me, please,--if you will,
down Elm street and down West street a bit, and Green street, and then
you will have seen all the part of town that belongs to college life
that is outside Campus--invitation houses, undesirables and all. Then at
eleven I shall turn you over to Peggy and Hazel Pilcher, at the campus
gate, and they will show you through the new library and chapel and the
Art building annex. That's as far into the future as you are allowed to
peep."
"It sounds very alluring," murmured Mrs. Moore, whose eyes were still
bulging, from the sight of her staid and quiet Lilian pursuing and
pounding the fair-haired Peggy.
The company of the girls was more to her than the sightseeing itself,
and she found herself swept along by the gay hilarity of whoever
happened to be her escort. She forgot that her hair was as grey as
theirs was black or golden; she forgot that she had believed her time
for gaiety was over.
In the big library she paused, hushed, before the sight of many graceful
figures bending in silent absorption over the volumes that lay in their
laps or before them on the massive tables. She could not guess, in her
awe of such an intellectual atmosphere, that fully a third of these
diligent readers were bowed over Arnold Bennett and Gilbert Parker,
instead of the volumes of deep learning she fancied.
"I wonder if the matron will let me ask Mother to the House to lunch,"
puzzled Lilian, a little later, when she met them, after the tour of the
campus was complete. "I haven't had time to ask her and there may not be
a place."
"There will be lots of places, but your mother and we won't be there to
fill them," said Peggy quickly. "Gloria has invited us down to Boyd's
for a real party."
"Beef steak and French fried potatoes--and peas?" cried Hazel. "A real
one?"
"That's just it," said Peggy, slightly disappointed that her friend had
been so quick to guess. "How did you know? I was the only one with
Gloria when she telephoned the order."
"How did I know!" scoffed Hazel, "as if anybody that knew what was best
would dream of ordering anything else at Boyd's."
Boyd's was the popular restaurant, where the girls trooped in to
luncheon whenever the allowance from home seemed to justify such a
luxury, where they sat on Saturday evenings, their white shoulders
gleaming above the white silk, green chiffon and blue crepe de Chine of
their very best dresses.
"Are we really--invited by--Gloria?" questioned Lilian, halting before
the luminous name of the freshman president. "Isn't that wonderful of
her to give a party for Mother!"
Gloria, adorable in white furs, met them at the doorway of Boyd's, and
greeted Mrs. Moore with her own delightful impulsiveness.
"I'm so glad to know you, Mrs. Moore," she said with that pretty
earnestness for which Gloria was famed throughout the freshman class.
"It was awfully good of the girls to let me have you for a luncheon
party. You know, mothers are scarce around these parts, and if we can't
have our own, we lie awake nights planning the best way to ensnare
somebody else's, whenever one comes visiting. So please excuse us if we
act as if you belonged to us all instead of just to Lilian."
And Mrs. Moore looked straight into the clear-blue eyes of the tall
red-haired idol of the freshmen, and said she was only too glad to be
adopted by any and all of her daughter's friends.
Something went grey and blank in Gloria's wonderful eyes before her
searching gaze, and the lashes swept down. The tall, graceful figure
drew itself more erect, as if she were on guard in some way. And Mrs.
Moore dropped the warm hand she had been holding, with a sigh.
The beautiful hostess led the way upstairs into the dining room and was
shown to a long table that had been reserved for her.
With much throwing aside of velvet coats and furs, the friends seated
themselves around the guest of honor and leaned forward, their elbows
quite frankly on the table.
Every girl was laughing and talking, with the single exception of Gloria
herself. As the little luncheon progressed, with the whole table in a
happy uproar, Gloria's abstraction became more and more noticeable.
Celebrities are entitled to their moods. So no one spoke of Gloria's for
some time.
Then Peggy leaned over and whispered, "Come back to us, won't you?"
And Gloria's face was swept with sudden color.
She turned startled eyes on Peggy's laughing face. Then she shook her
shoulders as if she might free herself from some unpleasant thought.
"I--wouldn't be anywhere else--for a farm," she said.
"Oh, well," murmured Peggy to herself, "it wasn't anything but my
imagination. What could Gloria possibly have to bother her? Maybe she
didn't have her history or her Greek to-day. She's just the one to mind
it a lot, if she didn't always excel in the classroom."
After the wonderful ice-cream and the dear little French pastries had
been consumed, with much delight by the girls and with wistful enjoyment
on the part of Mrs. Moore, the check was laid by Gloria's plate, with
the deferential air the waitresses always used to a very good customer.
Gloria, without glancing at the total, motioned for a pencil, and
scribbled her name and the name of her house across it.
Then she slid into the soft coat Katherine held for her, and while Peggy
and Hazel and Myra were still busy patting Mrs. Moore into her things,
she moved idly toward the stairs, her eyes glancing over the crowded
dining-room as listlessly as if she were not a celebrity at all. Hushed
groups watched her pass and admiration and affection shone in fifty
pairs of eyes.
"Honestly, girls," she caught a distinct murmur, "I just can't talk
while she's going by. Did you ever see anything so wonderful?"
"She's the best-looking girl in college," came the rapt answer from
another girl at the same table.
But this incense drifted past Gloria without making any particular
impression.
The first few days of her presidency she had enjoyed with a frank
egotism that had pleased Peggy and had caused Katherine many amused
smiles.
But she was accustomed to it all now. There is no class in college so
breathlessly eager to bestow devotion as the first class, and when the
admired person is one of their very own, an added quality of loyalty and
unswerving devotion creeps in.
"I just don't believe that girl ever did a mean or silly thing in her
life," the voice followed Gloria as she started downstairs, with the
rest of her party in her wake.
"I don't believe she'd have any use for a _minute_ for a girl who didn't
live right up to her ideals. You know, she's one of the advantages of
college,--she and girls like her--we can see what we _might_ be anyway,
even if few of us really come within a mile of it."
Was there a trace of bitterness about that vivid and gracious mouth of
Gloria's? Did she really hurry a little to be out of earshot of those
praises that, however ridiculous, would once have been sweet?
At the foot of the stairs she waited for Mrs. Moore. She bade her
good-bye prettily, saying she must remain downtown for some shopping,
and that she hoped they'd all see Mrs. Moore in Hampton again--a great
many times.
"My dear, I want to thank you for a _beautiful_ luncheon," Mrs. Moore
smiled up into the lovely face with that quaint way she had. "I do
indeed wish I might stay right now, and live in town somewhere so that I
could get to know the girls better. And I think a sort of
Everybody's-Mother would be a good thing for many of the students."
But if she had hoped to bring a hint of the desire for confidence from
Gloria she was disappointed.
Gloria's eyes took on that odd grey blankness again, and though she
nodded politely and pressed Mrs. Moore's hand warmly, there was not a
trace of that electric circuit between them which it was so easy to
establish with Peggy and Katherine or most of the other girls.
"She's very cold--and proud," mused Mrs. Moore, glancing in a puzzled
way at the retreating back of Gloria.
Lilian was the sort of girl any one could understand. When she felt
badly she would cry, when she didn't she'd laugh. If she liked any one,
she showed it, and if she disliked any one she nearly made faces at
them, her distaste was so apparent.
Gloria Hazeltine was a new specimen to Lilian's mother. She discovered
with her woman's intuition that something was troubling the young girl.
She wanted so much to help her. But she could do nothing before such icy
reserve.
"What--happens to me now?" she turned to Peggy and said, as they went to
the outer door of the restaurant. "I suppose we go back to the college?"
"No," said Peggy, peering anxiously down the street outside. "No, your
sightseeing goes on from here. But I don't see--what ought to be here."
"Have you ordered a machine, Peggy?" asked Lilian in awe and happy
expectation.
Peggy's laugh rang out. "Well, not exactly ordered it," she explained,
"but hinted for it. It's Jim's, and he promised to bring it over from
Amherst and meet us here at 2 o'clock. He's five minutes late.
That's--oh, there he is. Come on, Mrs. Moore, come on, Lilian and
Katherine and Myra Whitewell and Doris Winterbean. Hazel, I'm sorry you
have classes."
Unselfishly she handed Mrs. Moore into the front seat beside Jim, sure
that it would add to the interest of everything for her, to have this
good-looking young man explain things and deferentially point out new
attractions.
"Only an hour and a half, Jim. I want to get Mrs. Moore back to go to
Thirteen with me, and Lilian has biology at that time. You don't think
that's so good a show class as Thirteen, do you, Lilian?"
"Mercy, no," hastily answered Lilian. "Not so good a show class as any
other. You don't want to see grasshoppers cut up, do you, Mother?"
Mrs. Moore protested that she had no interest in grasshoppers under any
circumstances, so the plan to hear Thirteen stood.
"We just want to show you as many of the dear places we love to visit as
possible," said Katherine, crossing her arms on the back of the seat
Mrs. Moore occupied. "We could never walk to more than one, but with the
machine you can see a number. Only you mustn't suppose that we have
machines when we see them. No, indeed, we walk or we hire a nice old
poky horse and runabout from the livery stable. The horse may be almost
an extinct animal in other places, but he's still a great favorite up
here."
Thus she was whirled along the river road, through their favorite picnic
spots, from hamlet to hamlet while tea-house after tea-house flashed
into view and were pointed out with accompanying tales of affectionate
or funny reminiscences by the Hampton girls.
At one, a large and ugly cat was always to be expected at every party.
The woman who ran the tea-house had taken for her motto, "Love me, love
my cat," and its baleful green eyes watched hungrily every mouthful that
passed through the patrons' lips.
Doris remembered an afternoon when she and Gloria and the great Mary
Marvington, of the Junior class, had taken tea there, and Gloria had
unwittingly put her foot on the cat's tail under the table, the cat
howled, and Gloria sat stonily, her face white, trying to think what
that _awful_ sound could be.
"The cat _wouldn't_ stop howling, of course, because Gloria _didn't_
lift her foot, and Mary Marvington was in _hysterics_, so I leaned under
the table and removed poor Gloria's foot from the poor cat's tail, and I
think old Tabby is running yet."
Lilian, Katherine and Peggy screamed with delight at Doris' very much
embellished story.
Mrs. Moore's eyes were sparkling now, and she almost had to pinch
herself to realize that she was, for the first time in her life, in
college.
When Jim set them down outside the big recitation hall, where she was
actually to attend class with Peggy, she smoothed her coat with happy
anticipation, and perhaps the full wonder of Thirteen came to this
shabby little woman, with grey in her hair, as radiantly as it came
twice a week to these Hampton girls, who picked up snatches of
everything under the sun, and who learned without the miserable grind,
an easy style of writing that set them apart from the girls who had
never had Thirteen.
"If all their classes are like this," thought Mrs. Moore, "I should
think they'd rave in their letters about the school part of it more than
anything else."
But alas! Their classes all like that! Only one was like it. The others
were too apt to be nightmares of mathematics or agonies of Greek tragedy
and Lyric poets or merciless written lessons in medieval history.
Dinner at Ambler House was the next thing on Mrs. Moore's program, and
she listened to that roar of conversation and laughter that always began
as soon as grace had been said in the dormitory dining-rooms.
Fifty-four girls, all talking and joking at once, and yet one never
heard a loud voice.
"They are nice girls," thought Mrs. Moore.
After dinner it had been planned that Lilian should have her mother
alone until theater time, when they were all going to a musical comedy
which happened to be in town that night, direct from New York.
But Mrs. Moore, who noticed that Peggy was already dressed for the
theater, asked her quietly to come also.
"It's about your friend; I hoped I'd have a word with you," little Mrs.
Moore began when she and her daughter and Peggy were comfortably propped
against the cushions.
"Myra?" asked Peggy, doubtfully, for she was the only person who might
possibly occasion the sad and foreboding expression in the older woman's
eyes.
"Myra!" echoed Mrs. Moore in astonishment, fingering the violets at her
waist, which had been revived for wear to the play. "Myra! No, indeed.
No, it was Gloria Hazeltine I was troubling over."
Peggy laughed. "Oh, it would be very foolish troubling over _her_," she
said; "she's freshman president, you know----"
"Yes, I know."
"And the prettiest girl in Hampton."
"Undoubtedly."
"And she's the best dressed----"
"Of course, my notions of dress are old fashioned, but even I could see
that."
"And she's rich----"
"Well, I can't help it, Peggy; I saw into that girl's heart to-day--a
mother can--even though I'm not her mother--and she's not happy."
"Mother!" cried Lilian. "Why, Gloria is simply bubbling with happiness.
Don't you think anybody would be perfectly _radiant_ who had all she
has?"
"I wonder if you couldn't find it out, Lilian, and see if you couldn't
help her in some way--she----"
Peggy brushed away the thought of the incongruity of Lilian Moore, very
much one of the masses in Hampton, acting as confidante and comforter to
the lofty Gloria, whose position set her up to twinkle before the
worshipful freshmen, star fashion.
"I don't think anything is really bothering Gloria," she said gently,
"and there'd be no way for any of us to find out what it was if there
were."
And she changed the subject to the entertainment before them.
Ambler House had taken the first row in the balcony, for from this
vantage point the girls, their bare arms leaning on the polished rail,
could stare down and pick out their faculty friends and their celebrity
acquaintances, and, also, they got a better view of the stage, and could
hear the music to better advantage than from any other seats.
One of the girls of the house was given an orchestra ticket and was thus
bought off from her position in the theater's "rubber row," as their
chosen place was most inelegantly called.
"Now, Mrs. Moore, I'll just take your coat and then you lean over and
look at anybody you like. Nobody minds being stared at. Everybody's used
to it, and if a girl downstairs is wearing an especially good-looking
dress, she'll stand up and turn around and gaze about the audience for a
moment so that we can be sure to get its effect. That's what _always_
happens," Peggy explained blithely to their guest.
Mrs. Moore hadn't been to the theater often, anywhere. So that, in
itself, was a pleasure. But to sit in a theater crowded with girls, all
in evening dress as they would have gone to a ball, their throats and
arms white in the glare of the electric lights, was a
never-to-be-forgotten experience.
The play was a dashing affair, all beauty and melody, and the
irrepressible audience hummed the catchy airs between acts.
Also there was the customary promenade during the intermission.
The girls from the balcony went downstairs, and, threading their way
through the crowded aisles in which the girls were chatting, found the
seat of some friend and leaned gracefully near her for a few moments.
And the talk usually ambled along something like this:
"My dear! Aren't you crazy about it? Honestly I never heard anything
like that chorus--hm, hm, hm, hm,----"
"Those costumes! My dear, did you ever see anything so fragile?
Perfectly hectic! But the colors--I'd give anything to have a winter
suit made on that grey and silver _motif_----"
"Her voice!"
"His eyes!"
"That step they did was perfectly beautiful--don't you think we could
work it out by ourselves? Watch carefully if they bring it in again; I
can follow it all up to that little kick she does and the half turn in
the air----"
"What a perfectly stunning gown! Why in the world didn't you save it for
Junior Prom? Well, you may have others, but I'm sure I never saw you in
anything more becoming--it's a _darling_, Dotty; look at Helen's _cute_
gown!"
"They say this made an awful hit in New York--do you think it's true
that May Hastings is really going on the stage when she graduates? Why,
I should think her people would feel terribly. But it would be a
thrilling life, wouldn't it?"
With a final burst of music, the entire company crowded the stage in one
of those hurrahing finales, and the girls from Ambler House gathered up
their wraps and made all haste for the stairs.
Outside Peggy summoned a taxi, and Mrs. Moore, Lilian, Katherine and
herself climbed in.
"The station in time for the 11:10!" she called to the chauffeur, and in
an instant Mrs. Moore was being whisked away from her one bright day of
college.
For she had not felt like incurring the extra expense of staying longer,
and Peggy and Katherine had been unable to think of a tactful means of
arranging that part of it themselves. So they had simply crowded all
they could for her into one day so that she would have a typical picture
of the rush of college life to take back to her small town with her.
"Well," said Peggy, holding up her face to be kissed just as the train
came in, "how did you like college? What impression did it make on you?"
And little faded Mrs. Moore clasped her hands before her while her eyes
shone mistily.
"Why, I think"--her voice came huskily mingled with the throb of the
engine--"it is better than any of my dreams, and you dear girls have
been the best of all." And then she kissed Peggy.