“Hamilton! Hamilton!” Marjorie Dean smiled to herself. Her expressive
brown eyes grew brighter as the lusty call echoed through the car. One
hand tightened about the leather handle of her traveling bag with the
impatience of one who was longing to be free of the limited confines of
the car. She peered alertly out of the open window at the familiar
railway platform which lay deserted in the warm glory of a mid-summer
sun. How strange it seemed to see the good old platform so bare and
empty!
“Not a sign of Robin,” was her disappointed reflection. “What’s happened
to her, I wonder? I’m evidently first here after all. She can’t have
arrived yet or she would surely be out on the platform watching for me.”
The three or four persons, whose destination was also Hamilton were now
moving down the aisle toward the car’s upper door. Marjorie did not
follow the orderly little line of passengers. She turned and hurried to
the opposite end of the car impatient to be out of the train. She was
glad to be the only one to leave the car from that end.
“Oh-h-h.” She drew a half sighing breath of sheer loneliness. “What a
dismal old place!”
She ran lightly down the car steps, eluding the brakeman’s helping hand,
and came to an abrupt stop on the deserted platform. She stood still,
casting a faintly disconsolate glance about her. It was hard, indeed, to
believe that this empty space with the warm friendly sunshine streaming
down upon it was Hamilton station, endeared to her by the memory of many
happy meetings and cheerful goodbyes on the part of student friends.
“What had I better do?” was her next thought. “What a goose I was not to
tear Jeremiah from the beach and bring her with me. Robin’s missing from
the picture. That means I’ll have to be on the watch for her. How I’d
like to walk in on Miss Remson at Wayland Hall this afternoon! Wouldn’t
she be surprised, though?”
Marjorie cast a meditative glance toward the staid drowsy town of
Hamilton. Robina Page, her classmate and partner of the good little firm
of “Page and Dean,” as their chums liked to call them, had written that
she would meet Marjorie at the station. From her handbag Marjorie
extracted Robin’s latest letter to her. She glanced it over hurriedly.
Yes; it read: “Friday afternoon, July 25th. I’ll be at the station to
meet the three-twenty train. Don’t dare disappoint me.”
“It looks as though I’d be the one to meet the trains,” she murmured
under her breath. Always quick to decide she made the choice between
waiting patiently in the station building for the next train Robin could
arrive on, or seeking the grateful coolness of the Ivy, in favor of the
dainty tea shop. The train Robin might be on would not arrive until
five-thirty.
Picking up her traveling bag which she had momentarily deposited on the
platform Marjorie moved briskly toward the flight of worn stone steps
leading to the station yard.
“If Robin shouldn’t be on the five-thirty train I suppose I’d best go to
the Congress Hotel and stay there until tomorrow. If I should go on to
the campus alone, I’d miss seeing her; that is, if she should arrive
tonight. I’ll fairly absorb time tables and meet all the trains tonight
except the very late ones,” was Marjorie’s energetic resolve as she
swung buoyantly along the smooth wide stone walk. The brief moment of
depression which she had felt at sight of the empty station platform had
now vanished. She was again her sunny self, animated and bubbling over
with the desire for action.
She was so intent upon her own affairs she quite failed to see three
laughing faces frame themselves suddenly in a screened window of the
station. Almost instantaneous with their appearance they were withdrawn.
Their owners made a noiseless, speedy exit from the waiting room and
flitted through the open doorway which led to a square of green lawn
behind the building bounded by cinder drives.
Giggling softly as they ran the stealthy trio gathered in a compact
little group at a rear corner of the building which Marjorie must pass
on her way across the yard to the street.
“I’ll relieve you of that bag, lady,” croaked a harsh, menacing voice.
The bag was snatched from Marjorie’s hand in a twinkling.
“Hands up!” ordered a second voice, only a shade less menacing than that
of the first bandit.
“Boo, boo-oo, woo-oo-oo!” roared a third outlaw. The final “oo” ended in
a sound suspiciously like a chuckle.
Completely surrounded by an apparently merciless and lawless three
Marjorie had not attempted to retrieve the traveling bag. Instead she
had pounced upon the smallest of the bandits with a gurgle of surprised
delight.
“Vera Mason, you perfect darling! Where did you come from, Midget,
dear?” Marjorie laughingly quoted as she warmly kissed tiny Vera.
“Out of the everywhere into the here,” Vera carelessly waved an
indefinite hand and smiled up at Marjorie in her charming, warm-hearted
fashion.
“And you, Leila Greatheart! So you’ve turned highwayman! I am pretty
sure that I am the first victim. Very likely you planned with your
partners in crime to practice on me. Give me my bag, you old villain.”
Marjorie shook a playful fist at Leila.
The widely smiling Irish girl merely reached out her strong arms,
gleaming whitely against her dark blue gown, and gathered Marjorie into
them. She kissed her on both cheeks, then placed a finger under
Marjorie’s chin and gazed admiringly at her.
“Beauty is Beauty, at home or abroad,” she declared lightly. “And it’s
myself that has longed for a sight of you, little, beautiful
lieutenant.”
“Don’t monopolize the victim,” protested an aggrieved voice. Robin Page
now made an attempt to pry Marjorie free from Leila’s close embrace.
“Robin Page, you wicked girl! So this is the way you meet me at the
station!” Marjorie hugged and kissed Robin with fresh enthusiasm.
“You will kindly blame these two rascals here for the hold-up,” laughed
Robin. “This pair, Lawless Leila and Vera, the Midge, are quite capable
of dark deeds. Aren’t those names I made up for them dandy? I’m going to
write a play this year, a real melodrama, and have them play the leads
under those very names. That’s an inspiration born of this hold-up,” she
added in her bright fashion.
“And to think I was ever sad a minute over you three blessed geese!”
Marjorie looked from one to another of her chums, her eyes bright with
affection. “I thought of you all as I was leaving the train and was so
sorry that you were, as I supposed, so far away. And all the time you
were hanging around a corner fairly aching to hold me up. Oh, I’m so
glad to see you! I’ve been looking forward to seeing Robin, but I never
dreamed such good fortune as this was in store for me.”
“She means us.” Vera gave Leila a significant nudge.
“She does that,” Leila purposely lapsed into a brogue. “And it’s
something grand I’ll be saying to her yet, but not till I know myself
what I’m going to say.”
“Oh, never mind the blarney. Just tell me how you happen to be here,”
begged Marjorie, tucking an arm into Robin’s. “Not one letter have I had
from either of you since the Dean family went down to Severn Beach, and
only one apiece since college closed. I may not be a prompt
correspondent, but——”
“Tell me nothing.” Leila put up a defensive hand. She was laughing
behind it. “Isn’t it I who know my own failings?”
“You ought to know by this time that you are a flivver as a
correspondent,” Marjorie condemned with pretended severity. “I thought,
when I did not hear from you, that you and Midget had really gone to
Ireland for the summer. You know you talked of taking the trip last
spring. I supposed——”
“I was busy pointing out the Blarney Stone to Midget and capturing
banshees and leprechauns for her to play with,” interposed Leila. “No,
Beauty; not this summer. Truth is truth. We did talk about a visit to
the Emerald Isle during the summer, but Commencement morning changed all
that. Midget and I planned then to come to Hamilton instead and give you
a mid-summer welcome. Why, Midget and I said to each other, should we go
gallivanting about old Ireland when the good little firm of Page and
Dean would be working their dear heads off at Hamilton?”
“Why, indeed?” echoed Vera. “We’re here to stay as long as you and Robin
stay.”
“We’ve been at Wayland Hall for a week waiting for you two promoters to
appear. We didn’t know the exact date of your appearance, or which one
of you would appear first,” Leila informed Marjorie.
“You talk as though Robin and I were a couple of rare elusive comets,”
Marjorie joked.
“You’re a couple of rare, elusive P. G.s whose present mission is to
lighten and gladden Leila’s and my declining years,” retorted Vera.
“That’s the real reason you came to Hamilton this July, though you may
not have suspected it. Of course, while you’re here, and we’re here, we
won’t object to your doing a few kindly little stunts for our Alma
Mater.” Vera endeavored to appear extremely condescending. Instead she
looked so utterly happy that Marjorie wrapped her arms about the dainty
little girl and embraced her all over again.
“I reached here just one train ahead of you, Marjorie,” Robin now said.
“I was held up, too, and forced into a conspiracy against you. It
happened to be more convenient for me to take an earlier train. I
intended to meet yours anyway—you know the rest.” Robin gestured
eloquently toward Leila and Vera.
“Yes, I know the rest,” Marjorie repeated fondly. “I also know something
else. I was bound for the Ivy when three footpads waylaid me. Just to
show you what a forgiving spirit I have I will invite those three
footpads to a feast at the Ivy. I’ve had nothing to eat since early this
morning and I’m famished. There was no dining car on the train.”
“Ah, let me be the Irish lady to give the feast,” wheedled Leila. “My
gold burns in my pocket when it’s too long there. Midget has far more
money than she ought to have. All week we have led a cat and dog life,
grumbling and sputtering about which of us should treat.”
“All right. You’re so smooth. I can’t resist you, this once. I hereby
invite you all to dinner at Baretti’s tonight,” stipulated Marjorie.
“I’ve gold of my own to spend. Just as General put me on the train this
morning he put an envelope in my hand. I opened it after the train had
started. In it were two fifty dollar notes and a funny short letter from
him telling me to call the money the Marjorie Dean Entertainment Fund.
He ordered me to spend it just for good times. I must obey my general,
you know. When I come back to Hamilton next——”
A sudden jubilant clamor from her chums drowned her voice.
“Aha!” Leila paused in the middle of the walk and waved a triumphant
arm. “What do I hear?”
“Uh-h-h; but that’s good news!” Robin made a show of collapsing from
sheer relief.
“Is it really settled. Marvelous Manager?” Vera cried with some anxiety.
“Now you may tell me, Beauty, what I said last June you would say.”
Leila was radiant at the good news.
Marjorie laughed. “You are a soothsayer, Leila Greatheart,” she said,
obeying Leila’s joyful command. “Yes; it has all been settled.” Her own
features reflected the good cheer of her friends. “I’m coming back to
the campus in the fall.”