"My Morning Glory," thought Peggy, in her heart as she stood among the
auction guests.
A feeling of loyalty filled her as she found with her glance the subject
of the disagreeable conversation that had just taken place outside the
door.
The freshman president, all unconscious of impending disaster--or at
least of its nearness--was in the act of taking off the wonderful high
button shoes that she wore because one of the girls had expressed a
desire to buy them.
She was laughing at the incongruity of it, and the light was dancing in
her rose-shadowed blue eyes.
"The clothes off our backs," she was saying gayly, "anything to please
our customers----"
And Peggy looked at the beautiful silk stockings that gleamed on her
feet when the shoes were removed.
"Look out, Morning Glory," shouted a merry Junior, "there are some of
your freshmen worshippers present--and they say all idols have clay
feet!"
Peggy's heart skipped a beat, and Gloria seized the shoes uncertainly as
if to put them on again. The room burst into a shout of laughter, and
Gloria ducked her flaming head gracefully and laughed with the rest.
"My shoes!" she cried, with the laughter still in her voice, as she held
them up for sale, "right off the clay feet----"
"Gloria!" cried Peggy reluctantly.
"In just a minute," answered the beautiful girl, "I'm busy selling
_these_. Do you want to bid something? Then----"
"Gloria," urged Peggy again, for she had caught a faint but impatient
tap on the door at her back. She held the knob, and she felt it turn
under her grasp. She knew she was not as strong as the horrible woman
outside.
"There's--somebody waiting to see you."
Gloria paused, swaying on the uncertain heap of cushions, with a flush
of annoyance coloring her face. Then all at once she looked directly
into Peggy's eyes, and understood.
"I'll come," she said, quickly, dropping the shoes with a thud on the
floor, and descending from the teetering platform.
"You haven't sold those shoes to any one yet," reminded Zelda Darmeer;
"they still belong to you."
"That's so," assented Gloria abstractedly, and slipped into them.
With their button sides loose and flapping grotesquely against her
silken ankles, she shuffled with what dignity she might towards the
door. Peggy took her hand from the knob, and Gloria disappeared into the
corridor.
There was silence in the room for a second after she had gone.
Then the babble began again, not of bidding this time, but of
conjecture, laughter and jests.
"Mystery!" observed Zelda Darmeer, hunching up her shoulders.
"Who _is_ out there, Peggy?" some one demanded. "Don't keep us in
suspense."
"Yes, who's there?" cried the others.
"The--the matron," said Peggy, truthfully. "She came up and----"
"Well, she needn't blame Morning Glory for this auction," Zelda Darmeer
started up; "I got up this auction, with two of the people from the
first floor, to sell off our old duds. We didn't even know Glory was
coming into it, but when she heard it she seemed to be keen about it,
so--but it isn't her fault and I'll tell Mrs. Ormsby so----"
She was forcing her way through the crowd in good earnest. The six rows
of girls were stepped on and trodden under foot ruthlessly as she
proceeded towards the door.
Peggy again sprang into position as guard. "Don't," she cried out, and
then added in a more natural voice: "You've got us all here, now go on
with the auction."
"Oh," said Zelda, mystified, but amenable, "all right. I suppose she'll
be back in a minute, and Ormsby can't do much anyway."
The auction went merrily forward, but Gloria didn't come back.
After an hour or so, when Peggy was sure the woman must have gone and
the trying interview, whatever it was, must be over, she slipped from
the room and went fearfully down the hall toward Number 20.
She knocked on the door, and entered when a cold "Come" sounded.
Gloria was seated shoeless on the couch, her red-gold hair in disarray,
a frightened, harassed look in her wide eyes.
"Gloria," stammered Peggy, "do you want to talk to me?"
Gloria shot her a quick glance, searching, appealing and yet at the same
time resentful.
"It depends," said Gloria. "Do you like me very much?"
"Very much," returned Peggy simply.
"Well, then," flung out Gloria unexpectedly, "I sha'n't tell you."
"Sha'n't tell me--because I like you?" cried Peggy indignantly. "Why, I
never heard of such a thing!"
"Do you like me as well as you do Katherine?" the strange girl pursued.
A vision of Katherine, familiar, dear, loyal,--her own room-mate, rose
mistily before Peggy's eyes.
"No," she said, truthfully, "of course not."
"Oh," Gloria answered, "then it isn't like the rest. Perhaps I can talk
to you anyway. I know that it was your efforts that made me president,
though, in the first place. Why did you do that?"
"Because I knew you were the girl for the place."
"But I wasn't."
"I think you have proved yourself to be all we hoped, and more."
"But you don't--know about things."
"I know a good deal. The freshmen swear by you. They would follow your
example----"
"My example!"
"Yes, and they couldn't have a better pattern, Gloria."
"Oh, well, you are as bad as the rest. Please go and leave me. There's
no use. I haven't anybody--go quickly, please----"
"Now, Gloria, you've been saying the strangest things. From your very
odd remarks I gather that if I--didn't like you much, you'd think that
made me a better confidante. Now, I can't hate you even to please you. I
like you--awfully much--and did from the moment you came into our room
at the beginning of the year----"
"It has nothing to do with my being president?"
"Not a thing in the world!"
With a little shuddering sob, Gloria reached for Peggy's hand, and in an
instant her shaking shoulders were held fast in Peggy's reassuring
clasp.
"Everybody looks up to me so----"
"Yes," said Peggy, "and they ought."
"They ought not! Peggy, it wasn't good for me, such sudden prominence!
At home where I lived I was just one of a good many. I went abroad and
traveled around and did not have an opportunity to establish much of a
place for myself with any group. My father and mother are indulgent, but
I've often heard my mother say she wished I didn't have red hair. And
here the girls are crazy about it----"
Peggy smoothed the radiant hair in question, while a sudden smile curved
her crooked little mouth.
"Oh, Gloria, child," she laughed, "I can see your trouble isn't going to
be such a bugaboo after all. Go on and tell me now."
"And I've never managed my own money----"
"Now we're coming to it," thought Peggy.
"And, Peggy, you may not believe it, but we aren't so very rich, after
all. I know that everybody says I'm a millionaire, but--we haven't
anything so very much, really. And I was always the first one asked to
contribute to everything--and I had to give quite a bit as
president----"
"Ye-es," mused Peggy, "I never thought of that side of it."
"And I was expected to wear the most wonderful clothes--I heard the
girls make the remark that Glory Hazeltine never wore the same evening
dress twice--and--and I was vain. I've seemed indifferent, Peggy, I
know, but in my heart I was vain. I'm just beginning to find myself
out."
"You've found yourself out wrong," mused Peggy aloud, "and you are no
vainer than any other girl would be in your position and with your
assets."
"Well, then, I'm sorry for the others."
"Your story is that you were fiendishly extravagant, isn't that all?"
"All? Oh, Peggy!"
"Well, most of us have that failing to fight--and some have reasons to
make it harder to win. But anyway, girlie, that doesn't seem very awful,
after all. You know how the stores are? The dressmaking shops run after
the popular girls and beg for their trade and offer them special prices
and say, 'Oh, my dear, I shouldn't bother about paying now--just let it
go on the account.' And the account seems so elastic--and you just order
a gown or suit whenever you imagine you need one, and they are forever
calling you up by phone and saying they have something extra nice----"
"I don't know," said Peggy thoughtfully; "I've found most of the stores
in this town wonderfully lenient. They will carry an account on and on,
and if you pay once a year they're satisfied. It must be a great
inconvenience to them to handle such erratic accounts, but they know the
college girls are _all_ honest and will pay sometime."
"And I could have paid _sometime_--but I dare not tell dad. He would
think running such accounts was awful. This dressmaking place is not
like the other concerns. They--they hound--you----"
Terror filled the baby-blue eyes.
"Well, you should have told somebody when you found it getting beyond
you. I have quite a bit of money each month, and I don't know anything
I'd rather----"
"Oh, but I shall not need it now." Gloria even smiled in her
realization. "You see, I've sold everything I had for what it would
bring, and--it made enough, I am thankful to say."
"Did you tell the woman?"
"Not how I got it, no. I endorsed Doris' check and handed it over to her
as if I had been a princess----"
"I know your manner. Was she properly overcome?"
"Well, no. In fact she said, 'This is but a drop in the bucket. I'll
have you persecuted.'"
"She must have said 'prosecuted,' Gloria."
"Well, one or the other, the effect is the same. She _has_ been
persecuting me."
"Well, and then did you give her the rest?" asked Peggy, desirous of
hearing all of the story.
"Yes, I poured into her hands the full amount the bidders had given me
in return for all my beautiful kimonos, gowns, waists and underwear."
"Sounds like an elevator call in a department store."
"Doesn't it? But she didn't know. She counted it out and returned me two
dollars and said I'd given her too much. I was thankful there had been
enough. Oh, Peggy, Peggy, Mrs. Ormsby saw it all. She is a brick. But I
feel so mean, so mean----"
"You needn't. Now you've learned, and you can go around here in
sackcloth and ashes and you will be the 'freshmen's handsome president'
still. That's what the upperclass girls call you. So it will come out
all right. And nobody guessing anything."
"You know," Gloria was laughing through her tears, "the reason I
wouldn't tell you was because I couldn't bear to risk seeing your stare
of disillusionment and loss of faith--in case you felt about me as some
of the others do. I don't know why they should, but they act as if I
were sort of superhuman. And all my worry about your attitude for
nothing! I've just been plain Gloria Hazeltine to you all the time,
haven't I, Peggy? And to Katherine. I'm--kind of glad. It's awful to
have people holding such ridiculous ideals about you."
"No, it isn't. When you're graduated, you will look back on it as
something very precious--and very wonderful. It is one of the best
things that can come to any one--such idealization as you have met with
at the hands of our class. And the only way to do is to live up to it,
to make it as true as truth."
"That's what I was doing, in a way," explained Gloria woefully. "But
only to the most material side of it. I wanted to live up to their ideal
of me in wonderful clothes--in generous subscriptions, and all that kind
of thing."
"Well, young lady, now you right-about face and live up to the other
side of it. They would follow you and love you if you were as shabby as
our wash-lady. So you can go as simply dressed as you want, and they
will do nothing but imitate you. It's a wonderful power you have,
Gloria."
Gloria brushed back the straying hair from her tear-stained face.
"I never thought of that, really, Peggy," she said. "Do you suppose
there is really a little something worth while in me to call forth such
feeling on the part of the class?"
"A good deal," said Peggy. "But not--exactly what they think. You can be
even finer than they believe, though, if you'll set about it."
"I wish I were like you, Peggy," wailed Gloria.
"Like me! Now, Gloria Hazeltine, you know you don't. Nobody expects me
to be anything very remarkable. They love me but they have to love a lot
of faults along with me. So they love me and look _down_, and you and
look _up_."
"You've helped, Peggy. Instead of being sorry and ashamed of myself and
realizing that I'm not as nice as they think, I'm going to turn that
energy to _being_ as nice. Do you think I can do it?"
"I'm not from Missouri--but I cling to their motto, and I do believe you
can fulfill it for me."
"All right, I _will_ show you. You and all of them. I'm going to
surprise you, Peggy Parsons!"
Peggy left her room with a little sigh.
"I've come to collect Katherine," she poked her head into Zelda
Darmeer's abode and said.
Katherine came hastily out to her, and the two made their way to Ambler
House, the several purchases they had made carried loosely in their
arms.
When they were comfortably enwrapped in the dear, restful, homelike
atmosphere of their own suite, Peggy gave Katherine a sketchy report of
her interview with Gloria.
"We've had to have our finger in two college pies of very different
flavors, Kathie," she mused when the tale was done. "Our first case was
a girl who didn't have recognition _enough_--was swamped under the
weight of indifference and criticism that met her here. The other has
too much and couldn't stand it. She fell to pieces under the burden of
worship the girls insisted on placing on her. It's funny, isn't it,
Katherine?"
"Such weeps, such weeps," laughed Katherine, not without sympathy in her
tone. "If only everybody in college could have things evened up for them
as we have. We're neither too high nor too low. We have a lovely
suite--each of us has a--nice room-mate" (Katherine smiled as she flung
this little inclusive compliment at herself), "and people like us a good
deal, but not so much that they expect more of us than is humanly
possible."
"But I don't think we'd be any different in any situation," judged
Peggy. "Do you know, friend room-mate, I'm afraid we're hopelessly
commonplace."
"I believe you're right," Katherine agreed stoutly, "and I'm glad _of_
it!"