Marjorie Dean, College Senior

Sounds of singing followed by a burst of rather loud laughter and high-pitched conversation drew their gaze simultaneously toward the door. A crowd of perhaps a dozen girls now entered the large room, still talking and laughing boisterously.

The central figure among them was a girl well above the medium height and rather heavily built. Hatless, her short brown hair curled about her face in a manner suggesting its natural non-curliness. Her face was full and her color high. Her bright brown eyes, though large, contained a boldness of expression that rather marred their fine shape and size. Her nose was retroussé and her mouth too wide for beauty. The ensemble of features was dashing; not beautiful. She wore a one-piece frock of pale pink wash satin, a marvel as to cut and design. Her whole appearance indicated the presence of wealth. She looked not unlike a spoiled, overgrown baby.

“Freshies, and they act it,” muttered Jerry.

The party arranged themselves at two tables, keeping up a running fire of loud-toned repartee. Signor Baretti, now seated at one end of the restaurant, perusing an Italian newspaper, peered sharply over it at the disturbers. The little man knew, to a dot, the difference between natural high spirits and boisterousness.

Hardly had they seated themselves when the tall girl stood up and called out, “Attention, everybody!” She waved an inclusive arm over the two tables occupied by the flock she appeared to be leading.

“Sit down Gussie!” giggled a small girl with very light hair, a snub nose and freckles. “You are making a lot of noise in the world. Didn’t you know it?”

“Who cares.” The tall girl tossed her short-cropped head. “Already now with the Bertram yell. Let’s show folks where we came from. When I raise my arm – go ahead and whoop!”

Highly pleased with herself and utterly regardless of proprietor and diners, she raised a rounded arm, bare almost to the shoulder, with a grandiose air.

Immediately lusty voices took up a yell ending in a long drawn “Ber-t-r-a-m! That’s us!” This was repeated three times. As it died away the enterprising leader resumed her chair, apparently careless of what impression she and her companions had made.

Two meek Italian waitresses now approaching to take their order, they hesitated and hung back a little. The yelling having subsided, they rose afresh to duty and went over to the party. There they continued to stand, unheeded by the revelers. The exuberant freshmen now had their heads together over the menu, babbling joyously.

“Are we ready to go?” Leila glanced inquiringly around the circle. “Let us leave these little folks to their merry shouts and laughter. Two of those youngsters, the tall one and the little tow-head, are at Wayland Hall. I mentioned them a while back as noisy. Have you reason to doubt me?”

“We could never doubt you, Leila Greatheart,” lightly avowed Marjorie. She was eyeing the rollicking freshmen with some amusement.

“I guess Bertram must be a prep school. Hence the loyal howls for their little old kindergarten,” surmised Jerry.

“They have a whole lot to learn,” smiled Vera. “A few well-directed remarks from the faculty will soon calm their joyous ardor. Perhaps we shouldn’t criticize. We were rather noisy ourselves not many minutes ago.”

“Yes; but in moderation,” reminded Jerry. “All our rejoicing together wasn’t as loud as one whoop from the freshies. Not that I care,” she added genially. “I can stand it if Giuseppe can.”

“Bertram?” Lucy questioningly repeated. “Where is it?”

“Not far from New York City,” Vera answered. “I knew two girls who entered Vassar from there. One of them told me it was more like an exclusive boarding school than the regulation prep. She called it the Baby Shop. She said the girls there behaved like overgrown youngsters. That was four years ago. Maybe the Bertramites have grown up since then,” she added in her kindly way.

“Again, maybe they have not.” Leila glanced skeptically at the Bertramites. They were now engaged in all trying to order at once, a proceeding quite bewildering to their servitors.

“I hate to get me gone from here,

Oh, my stars, I’m glad I’m going!”

hummed Leila under her breath. “Now that is as fine an old Irish song as you’d care to hear. Do I shout it at the top of my breath and disturb the peace? I do not. I keep my lilting strictly within bounds.” For all her criticism, Leila was half amused at the noisy freshmen.

“Subdued like, as it were,” supplemented Muriel with a killing smile.

“You have a fine understanding.” Leila beamed with equal exaggeration.

In this jesting mood they rose from the table. Leila had already pounced upon the dinner check. On the way to the cashier’s desk, they became aware of less noise at the freshmen’s tables. The concentrated interest of the newcomers had become centered on the departing upperclassmen.

The gaze of the tall, dashing girl, who had led the others in the Bertram yell was now traveling with peculiar eagerness from face to face. Her expression was a mixture of curiosity, defiance, admiration and envy. Her glance rested longest on Ronny. She devoured every detail of Ronny’s smart tweed traveling suit, gray walking hat and gray buckskin ties. A gleam of respect showed itself in her bold brown eyes.

The freshman Leila had described as a “tow-head,” after an equally deliberate inspection of the departing group, caught the tall girl by the arm and began a rapid flow of talk. Not for an instant as she talked did she remove her gaze from Marjorie and her chums.

Jerry was the first to note they were being thus observed by the other crowd of students. A decided scowl appeared between her brows. She always resented being stared at.

“Those freshies have mistaken us for a part of the exhibits in the Hamilton Museum, I guess, let loose for an hour or two of recreation,” she grumbled. “I object to being rubbered at. What?” She mimicked Leslie Cairns’ affected drawl.

Her manner of expression, rather than her remarks, induced the laughter of her companions. Nor did she realize that she had turned her eyes upon the freshmen as she spoke, with a look of bored endurance far from flattering to them. Unfortunately the tall girl happened to catch it, as well as the ripple of laughter. Her face darkened. Her retroussé nose elevated itself even higher.

“Isn’t that girl with the big brown eyes simply gorgeous?” exclaimed a pert-looking freshman with shrewd black eyes. The girls they had been watching were now out of sight.

“A regular dream of beauty,” praised another. “Her complexion was like a magnolia petal.”

“My, but you two are crushed on that – well, quite pretty girl,” the tall leader said in a slightly miffed tone. “My eyes are larger than hers,” she added.

“Oh, no, Gus, they certainly aren’t a bit larger,” flatly contradicted a stolid-looking girl with eyeglasses.

“They certainly are,” maintained the tall girl.

“Don’t grab all the bouquets, Gus,” lazily advised Calista Wilmot, the black-eyed girl. “Leave a few for someone else.”

“Sha’n’t. I want ’em all myself.” The reply was careless rather than ill-humored. “Anyhow there was nothing startlingly beautiful about that one girl you folks are raving over.”

“Oh, I think there was,” differed the freshman with the eyeglasses, with a positiveness that courted argument.

“Do you suppose they were freshmen?” A plump blonde girl with a pleasing face tactfully propounded this question. Anna Perry, the stolid freshman, and Augusta Forbes never agreed on anything. Charlotte Robbins purposed to nip rising argument in the bud if she could.

“No, indeed,” Augusta assured. “The tall one with the black hair is a post graduate. I inquired about her. She rooms three doors up the hall from Flossie and me. I haven’t seen the others before. I don’t care to again.” A glint of wounded pride appeared in her eyes as she made this announcement.

“Why, Gus?” demanded three or four voices.

“Because they are snippy. Didn’t you see the disgusted way that one girl in light blue looked at us? Much as to say, ‘Oh, those silly freshmen!’ They are all upper class girls. I don’t admire their manners. They were making fun of us, I’m sure. They have no time for mere freshmen.”

“Gus talks as if it were a positive crime to be a freshman in the eyes of the upper class students.” Calista Wilmot lifted her thin shoulders. “I’ve always heard they go by preference rather than class in taking up a freshman.”

“They do not.” Augusta seemed determined to oppose her companions. “The juniors and seniors at college are awfully high and mighty. I have been told that they are very patronizing to the freshmen. They shall not patronize me. I won’t submit to it. This business of the freshmen having to defer to upper class students is all nonsense. I shall assert myself from the start.”

CHAPTER VI – THE REBUFF

“Leila, do you think we should have spoken to those freshies and extended the hand of friendship?” Marjorie inquired half doubtfully as the party, now seven strong, loitered along their way to the Hall. The balminess of the still September night made them reluctant to go indoors.

“Not tonight,” Leila reassured. “Plenty of time for that. Did I rush into your pocket the first time I saw you, Beauty? I did not. Remember Selma, Nella, Vera and I were at Baretti’s when you five girls walked in there on your first evening at Hamilton.”

“Give us credit. We didn’t whoop like a war party of Comanches, did we?” This from Jerry, who had not yet brought herself to a tolerant view of the noisy party of freshies.

“You did not. We four made more noise than you. That was nothing compared to these Bertramites,” Leila’s criticism held indulgence.

“You said the tall one and the ‘tow-head’ were at the Hall. It would not surprise me to find the whole aggregation there. The others may have arrived while we were marching around the campus, making calls on people who were not at home. I see our finish.” Jerry groaned loudly. “The majority of the sixteen freshmen Miss Remson spoke of!”

Jerry’s surmise proved correct. The same group of girls they had encountered at Baretti’s on the previous evening trooped into the dining room the next morning just as the Lookouts were finishing their breakfast.

“The strangers within our gates,” announced Jerry. “It’s up to us to remember ’em. What? I’m really growing fond of that ‘What?’ I can understand why Miss Cairns was so fond of it.”

“I think it is a foolish expression,” condemned Muriel, her eyes twinkling.

“Then never indulge in it, my dear Miss Harding,” cautioned Jerry. “May I venture to inquire what the pleasure of this distinguished company is today?”

“Unpack, if our trunks come,” returned Ronny and Marjorie together. “I wish Helen would hurry up and get here,” Marjorie continued. “We all ought to go over to Hamilton Arms to see Miss Susanna. I’d not care to go without Helen, though.”

“What’s a journey without the ninth Traveler?” propounded Ronny. “Have you any idea when she’ll be here?”

No one had. At eleven o’clock that morning, however, Jerry signed for a telegram. She hustled up stairs with it to impart the good news that Helen Trent would arrive on the four-ten train from the North. The trunks having been delivered shortly before ten o’clock that morning, unpacking was in full swing.

“We’ll all go to the station to meet her,” planned Jerry. “Only eight of us can’t very well squeeze into Leila’s roadster. Four of us will have to go in a taxi.”

“I’d better call Kathie on the telephone and tell her and Lillian to be ready,” was Marjorie’s spoken thought. “Lillian isn’t a Traveler, but she ought to be asked to join us. She has been so dear to Kathie and Lucy especially, and to us, too.”

“We might as well be the Ten Travelers as the Nine,” agreed Jerry. “I’d like Lillian to meet Miss Susanna, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes; only we can’t take her with us to Hamilton Arms without having first explained all about her and asked permission to bring her.”

“I know it. Do you believe our little old Travelers’ club is really important enough to leave to Hamilton as a sorority? It was different with the Lookout Club. We were regularly organized with constitution and by-laws, etc. This is very informal; secret, one might almost call it.”

“I have thought about that, too,” Marjorie replied. “I’ve also thought we ought to ask Robin and Portia to join – in fact the Silvertonites who have stood by us since our freshie days. There are Ethel Laird and Grace Dearborn, too. They have been devoted to us.”

“Don’t forget Eva Ingram and Mary Cornell,” added Jerry. “They certainly stood by us when we had that row with the Sans during our freshman year.”

“I meant to count them in,” Marjorie nodded. “Once, this past summer, I made a list of names. There were nineteen, counting the original nine of us. I didn’t count Phil or Anna Towne or Barbara Severn. They are still to come. If we leave the club as a sorority to the next senior class, they will be the first girls chosen.”

“The Nineteen Travelers.” Jerry critically tried out the title. “That sounds as well as the Nine Travelers. I don’t know but better.”

“We really need the whole nineteen if we are really going to accomplish laying a foundation for a dormitory,” was Marjorie’s energetic declaration. “I mean that figuratively. If we manage to get the site for a dormitory this year we’ll have done well. We don’t even know whether those boarding house properties are for sale.”

“If they aren’t, we might find another site, even better. There is plenty of open ground below them.”

“Yes; but it belongs to the Carden Estate and isn’t for sale. I asked Miss Susanna about it last June. She knows all about the land near the college and Hamilton Estates. She explained to me the reason for that row of houses along that little street. You know we wondered why they were there.”

“It always looked to me as though a couple of city blocks of third rate houses had been picked up and dumped down just outside the campus limits for no particular reason,” was Jerry’s view of it.

“Well, there’s a reason,” smiled Marjorie. “The workmen who built Hamilton College lived in those houses while the work was in progress. It took almost five years to build our Alma Mater, Jeremiah. By the workmen, I mean the foremen and more important of the builders. I don’t know where the laborers lived. In the town of Hamilton, I presume. Those houses were considered very sizable and comfortable in Mr. Brooke Hamilton’s day, Miss Susanna said.”

As the two busied themselves with their unpacking, they continued to talk over the project of enlarging their little circle to nineteen members. Until their particular allies had returned to Hamilton nothing could be done.

“Wait until college has opened, then I’ll call a meeting. We’d best have it in Leila’s and Vera’s room. It is larger than ours. Between you and me, Jeremiah, what ought we to do about the freshies?” Marjorie straightened from her trunk, her arms full of wearing apparel, and stared dubiously at Jerry.

“What?” This time the ejaculation came involuntarily. On her knees before her trunk, Jerry’s head and plump shoulders had been temporarily eclipsed, as she dived into the trunk to fish up the few remaining articles at the bottom. “Oh, yes, I got you.” Jerry had comprehended a second after Marjorie had spoken.

“What you said at breakfast about the strangers being well within our gates, made me feel that we ought to begin to try to get acquainted with them. We promised Miss Remson to help them get settled, if we could. I don’t mind their being noisy.” Marjorie paused.

Jerry eyed her quizzically. “You think they are too much like the Sans to be a positive comfort around the house, now don’t you?”

“They seemed a little that way to me,” Marjorie admitted. “The Sans were older by a year or two than these girls when they entered Hamilton. These freshies are very juvenile acting.”

“They acted last night as though they didn’t care a button whether they met anyone else or not. A sufficient-unto-themselves crowd, you know. Still, if we hold off from them, they may feel that we are puffed up over our senior estate. The best way, I guess, is to cultivate them. We can be friendly, but a trifle on our dignity at the same time.”

“We’ll probably meet them in the halls and on the veranda during the next day or so. That will start the ball rolling. I’d rather not make any calls until I’ve had one or two chance encounters with some of them. Being on station duty is different. It is a detail.”

“I hate to butt into a stranger’s room, freshie or no freshie,” Jerry agreed. “You know how we felt when the three Sans came to call before we had hardly taken off our hats.”

In spite of Marjorie’s ever ready willingness to be of service when needed, she still retained a certain amount of shyness which had been hers as a child.

“I am not afraid of being snubbed by these lively freshie children,” she presently said, with a trace of humor. “I don’t care to intrude on them unless I am truly sure they want to know us.”

“They don’t know what they want or what they don’t want,” calmly observed Jerry. “I am not enthusiastic over them, Marvelous Manager. I’ll try to be a conscientious elder sister to them, but it will be an awful struggle.”

Marjorie laughed at this. Jerry chuckled faintly in unison. The unexpected invasion of Lucy, Katherine Langly and Lillian Wenderblatt put an end to confidence. The will to labor also languished and was lost in the ardor of meeting and greeting.

Invited to stay to luncheon, the ringing of the bell found Jerry’s and Marjorie’s room in a state of temporary disorder. Every available space was piled with feminine effects.

“Things are in an awful uproar.” Jerry waved her arm over the chaotic array. “The worst is over with our unpacking done. It won’t take long after luncheon to put this stuff where it belongs. Glad you girls came to the Hall. It saves us the trouble of going after you.”

Ronny and Muriel now appearing, the seven girls went happily down to luncheon. As a result of Jerry’s and Marjorie’s talk regarding the freshman arrivals at Wayland Hall, both were prepared to be conscientiously friendly on sight.

A trifle ahead of their companions in descending the stairs, at the foot of the staircase they encountered Augusta Forbes, Calista Wilmot and Florence Hart, the “tow-head,” just entering the hall from the veranda. The eyes of the two sets of girls met for an instant. Marjorie smiled in friendly, unaffected fashion, intending to speak. Jerry emulated her example. To their surprise Augusta Forbes put on an expression of extreme hauteur; Florence Hart stared icily out of two pale blue eyes. Calista Wilmot, however, smiled cheerfully, taking no notice of her companions’ frozen attitude.

It was all done in a second or two. Marjorie’s color heightened. She felt as though she had received a slap in the face. The smile fleeing from her lips, she treated the haughty pair to a steady, searching glance. Then she quietly withdrew her gaze.

CHAPTER VII – MAKING SURE PROGRESS

“Now what was the matter with them?” Jerry demanded, as she and Marjorie entered the dining room. “Were we properly snubbed? No mistake about it. They must have heard what I said about them last night.”

“I don’t recall that you said anything very dreadful about them,” returned Marjorie.

“I compared them to Comanches and expressed my general disapproval of their howls,” confessed Jerry cheerfully. “Only they didn’t hear me say anything. Leila said as much as I. Neither of us meant to be ill-natured. You know I usually say outright whatever I think in a case of that kind.”

“Those two freshies acted as though they were angry with us for some unknown reason or other.” Marjorie knitted her brows. “They’d hardly have behaved like that simply because they didn’t know us and resented our smiling at them on that account.”

“That would be the height of snobbishness,” replied Jerry. “We’d better tell the girls. They may try to be helpful and get a snubbing, same as we did.”

Seated at table, Jerry proceeded to tell the others of the incident. Be it said to her credit she made no attempt to retail it as gossip. She bluntly stated what had happened and warned them to keep their helpfulness at home.

“That’s too bad,” Lillian Wenderblatt said sympathetically. “It puts you all at sea as to what to do next. You say the one girl returned your smile. Perhaps when you know her better you can find out what ails the other two.”

“They can’t have a grievance against us when they don’t know us,” Marjorie said. “I shall let those two alone for the present and confine my attention to some of the other freshies.”

With this she dropped the incident from her thought and speech. After luncheon, as she redressed her hair to go to the station, it recurred to her disagreeably. She half formed the guess that Elizabeth Walbert might have made the acquaintance already of these two freshmen and prejudiced them against herself and her friends. Miss Walbert could not possibly have a just grievance against her. Their acquaintance had been too brief. As a former friend of Leslie Cairns, however, she probably held rancor against the Lookouts.

Marjorie sturdily dismissed this conjecture as not in keeping with her principles. She felt it unfair to accuse Elizabeth Walbert, even in thought, of such an act. She resolved to take Lillian Wenderblatt’s advice and cultivate the acquaintance of the black-eyed girl who had shown signs of affability. She might then, eventually, learn wherein lay the difficulty.

A rollicking afternoon with her chums, crowded with meeting and welcoming at least twenty seniors who had returned to college on the same train as Helen Trent, drove the disquieting incident from her mind. Helen was the last one of the nine girls, who had long been intimate friends, to return to Hamilton. Lillian now added as the tenth “Traveler,” the band of friends were in high feather. Helen was triumphantly escorted to the Lotus from the station and there feted and made much of. Arriving at ten minutes past four o’clock, it was after six before she saw the inside of Wayland Hall. Three rounds of ices apiece had also dampened the ardor of all concerned for dinner.

“These joyful ice cream sociables are appetite killers. There goes the dinner gong and yours truly is listening to it without a snark of enthusiasm. I think I’ll forego dinner and finish straightening my traps,” declared Jerry. Now returned to her room, Jerry viewed her still scattered possessions with distinct disfavor.

“You had better go down and eat something,” advised Marjorie. “You will be ravenous about bedtime, if you don’t. We haven’t a thing here to eat except candy. As a late feed it’s conducive of nightmares, Jeremiah.”

“Wise and thoughtful Mentor, so it is,” grinned Jerry. “I’ll take your advice.”

“If I see that black-eyed girl who smiled at me downstairs I shall speak to her and start things moving,” Marjorie said with decision. “I won’t ask her the very first thing what was the matter with her friends, but I’ll do so as soon as I am a little bit acquainted with her.”

Marjorie found no opportunity to put her resolve into execution that evening. The freshman in question was seated at a table the length of the room from the one at which she sat. The two freshmen who had shown such utter hauteur had seats at the same table as their black-eyed friend. Marjorie had not even an opportunity to catch the other girl’s eye.

The following morning, as she started across the campus with Ronny for a stroll and a talk in the warm early autumn sunshine, fortune favored her. Seated on a rustic bench under a huge elm tree were two of the freshmen she was anxious to come into touch with. One was the black-eyed girl, the other the plump blonde.

“It’s a splendid opportunity, Ronny.” Marjorie took Ronny by the arm. “Come along. I am going to speak to them. No time like the present, you know.”

“All right, lead the way.” Ronny obligingly allowed Marjorie to propel her toward the bench where the duo were seated.

“Good morning.” Marjorie stopped fairly in front of the rustic seat, her brown eyes alight with gentle friendliness. “Isn’t the campus wonderful today? This is one of its happy moods. I always say it changes in expression just as persons do.”