Peggy Parsons a Hampton Freshman Part 20

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 pa.s.s 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 cla.s.s in college so breathlessly eager to bestow devotion as the first cla.s.s, 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 cla.s.ses."

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 cla.s.s as Thirteen, do you, Lilian?"

"Mercy, no," hastily answered Lilian. "Not so good a show cla.s.s as any other. You don't want to see gra.s.shoppers cut up, do you, Mother?"

Mrs. Moore protested that she had no interest in gra.s.shoppers under any circ.u.mstances, 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 pa.s.sed through the patrons' lips.

Doris remembered an afternoon when she and Gloria and the great Mary Marvington, of the Junior cla.s.s, 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 cla.s.s with Peggy, she smoothed her coat with happy antic.i.p.ation, 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 s.n.a.t.c.hes 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 cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.ses 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 cus.h.i.+ons.

"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."