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“She stood beaming her delight of the flower-like group that had invaded her room.”

[Page 57]      [Marjorie Dean Macy’s Hamilton Colony]

Marjorie Dean Macy’s
Hamilton Colony

By PAULINE LESTER

Author of

“The Marjorie Dean High School Series,” “The

Marjorie Dean College Series,” “The Marjorie

Dean Post-Graduate Series,” etc.

A. L. BURT COMPANY

Publishers      New York

Printed in U. S. A.

THE MARJORIE DEAN

POST-GRADUATE SERIES

A SERIES FOR GIRLS 12 TO 18 YEARS OF AGE

By PAULINE LESTER

MARJORIE DEAN, POST-GRADUATE

MARJORIE DEAN, MARVELOUS MANAGER

MARJORIE DEAN AT HAMILTON ARMS

MARJORIE DEAN’S ROMANCE

MARJORIE DEAN MACY

MARJORIE DEAN MACY’S HAMILTON COLONY

Copyright, 1930

By A. L. BURT COMPANY

MARJORIE DEAN MACY’S HAMILTON COLONY

Printed in U. S. A.

MARJORIE DEAN MACY’S

HAMILTON COLONY

CHAPTER I

“Something fine is going to happen, Bean.”

Jerry Macy leaned back in the roomy porch rocker, half-closed blue eyes squinting prophetically up at the turquoise August sky. “Yes, sir; it is.”

“Several fine things ought to happen, but they haven’t.” Marjorie Dean Macy’s emphasis upon the “ought” was energetically wistful.

“Something celostrous is coming this way,” Jerry continued to maintain. “It’s in the air.”

“I wish it would hurry up, and come, then. Captain was to be home from the beach yesterday. She hasn’t happened. Leila owes me a letter. That hasn’t happened yet. I haven’t heard from her for over a month, or from Vera, either. And there is Hamilton Arms, still boarded up and with no sign of Miss Susanna, or Jonas. Where is everybody? That’s what I’d like to know.”

“I’m with you yet, Mrs. Macy,” Jerry reminded pertinently. “And incidentally, you still have a nice kind husband.” She beamed upon the lovely occupant of the porch swing with pretended solicitude.

“Thank you for reminding me of my blessings.” Marjorie nodded laughing gratitude at Jerry. “What do you think is going to happen, wise sooth-sayer?” she asked in the next breath.

“Um-m-m.” Jerry’s eyes opened a trifle wider. She thrust her dimpled chin forward at a ridiculous angle, peering owlishly about her as though about to pick an answer to Marjorie’s question out of the sunlit August air. “Search me,” she said after a moment, then giggled.

“You are a fake.” Marjorie pointed a derisive finger at Jerry.

“Nope. I’m not. I have a pleasant little hunch that we’re either going to see somebody we’ve not expected to see, or else hear from somebody we’ve not expected to hear from. Now, do you get me, Marjorie Bean Macy?”

“Who, I wonder?” Marjorie said speculatively. “Not Ronny. I used to call her the great unexpected. But I needn’t hope, this time, to see her. I received her first honeymoon letter to me only last week. No, Ronny will have to be counted out of your hunch, Jeremiah.” Marjorie sighed regretfully. Her affection for Veronica Lynne, her California comrade and chum, was deep-rooted.

“She certainly handed the Travelers the surprise of their lives last June. I’ll never forget that last spread in her room on Commencement night, and her calm announcement to us that she was going home to be married to Professor Leonard in July at the old mission at Mañana. She was the great unexpected that night, I’ll say. I haven’t got over it yet. I never even suspected those two were miles deep in love, and Jeremiah nearly lost her reputation then and there, for knowing something about everything.”

“Ronny was always a mystery from the first time I met her playing maid at Miss Archer’s. She was always a delightful mystery, too. Somehow, it seemed quite in keeping that she should have given us all such a surprise about Professor Leonard. I’d never even dreamed of Ronny as in love with any man. Perhaps I might have suspected last year how things were between her and Professor Leonard if I hadn’t been so dreadfully unsettled in mind about Hal. I doubt it, though. I’m still surprised that you let it get by you, Jeremiah.”

“And I’m even more surprised that Leila Harper never suspected them as on the brink of love,” Jerry returned.

“I’m going to tell you something, Jerry.” Marjorie was smiling reminiscently. “I promised Ronny never to tell anyone except you, something she told me just before she left Hamilton, and I was not to tell you until after we’d received her announcement cards.”

“Go ahead. Shoot.” Jerry sat suddenly straight in her chair, eyes fastened interestedly upon Marjorie’s smiling features.

“Ronny never even dreamed Professor Leonard loved her until just before my wedding. They were alone together after classes in the gymnasium on the day before my wedding. They had been talking of Hal and me, and—well—suddenly he began to tell her about himself. His mother was a Spanish Mexican of very good family, and his father met her while he was professor in a Mexican university. Professor Leonard told Ronny that he hoped someday to establish a welfare station and school for poor Mexican children in Mexico. Then quite suddenly he told her how dearly he loved her, but would not ask her to share such a life of sacrifice, and perhaps privation, as his future would undoubtedly hold.

“She’d known for quite a while that she cared for him, but thought he hadn’t cared for her in any other than a friendly way. She was so dumbfounded she couldn’t say a word at first. He thought he had displeased her, and she had a hard time trying to make him understand that he hadn’t; that she truly loved him, and wished more than anything else to marry him and help him carry out his great plan. She never said a word to him about his plan being one of her father’s pet dreams, but she wrote her father to come to Hamilton for a flying visit, so as to meet Professor Leonard, and talk with him. He came and stayed in town at the Hamilton house for two days, and, during that time, the three of them came to a perfect understanding of one another. No one except they two knew Mr. Lynne was in Hamilton.”

“Good night!” Jerry thus vented her astonishment. “I know one thing, Ronny would have told you. She’d have included you in that little family confab, too, if you hadn’t been up North, on your own honeymoon.”

“Yes, she told me she would have,” Marjorie admitted, coloring. “But that was only because I was the first friend she made in Sanford, you know.”

“Yep. I know. Bing, bang; here goes a new jingle.” Jerry raised a declaiming hand and recited:

“Oh glorious Bean, why hide your sheen,

Beneath a bushel’s shade.

Your friends all lean on you, good Bean,

On you their hopes are stayed.”

“If your jingle were about someone else, I’d praise it as a triumphant inspiration. Since it isn’t—you’re a ridiculous person, Jeremiah. I think I’ve told you that before now.” Marjorie was regarding Jerry with tolerant amusement. “Kindly repeat that jingle, before you forget it. Oh, yes, and wait until I go for a pencil and paper. I promised Leila faithfully never to let the fruits of your jingling get by me, complimentary to me, or no.”

Laughing, Marjorie sprang from the swing and hurried lightly into the house. She was smiling to herself in pure contentment of spirit as she passed through the reception hall and on into the library. Her new home, to which she had come only two weeks before from a lengthy honeymoon, spent in the Adirondacks, was still a matter of delighted wonder to her. During Hal’s and her absence, Mr. and Mrs. Dean had been happily occupied in putting the new home of the happy pair to rights, against the day when they should turn their faces toward Hamilton Estates.

Readers of the Marjorie Dean High School, College and Post Graduate Series can already claim Marjorie and her intimate girl-associates as old friends. They have followed the fortunes of this particular band of devoted chums through both bright and stormy days.

Marjorie Dean Macy saw the happy culmination of the romance between Marjorie and Hal Macy in her marriage to him, on a balmy May Day evening at Hamilton Arms, the home of her friend, Miss Susanna Hamilton.

It was now the last of August. Marjorie and Hal had taken possession of their new home the middle of August in order to see Mr. and Mrs. Dean off for a two weeks’ stay at their old standby, Severn Beach. Jerry Macy, deep in preparations for her marriage to Danny Seabrooke to take place on the eighth of September, had been unable to resist Marjorie’s affectionate invitation to come to her and Hal’s new home as the first guest to enter the hospitable portals of “Travelers’ Rest.”

“I’ve been here over a week, Mrs. M. D. Macy,” she announced as Marjorie returned to the veranda with a pencil and small leather note book. “I simply must hit the trail for Sanford, not later than day after tomorrow. Danny’ll think I’ve lost interest in the marriage idea, and quit him cold.”

“I know you ought to go,” Marjorie nodded. “I’ve loved having you here with Hal and me.”

“You might have a worse sister-in-law,” Jerry pointed out with a sly grin.

“I couldn’t have a better one. I know that,” came with quick loyalty from Marjorie. “What a lot of wonderful things have happened to the Big Six since they paraded home from high school together in good old Sanford.”

“Um-m-m. I should say there had. But, do you know, Marjorie, I used to hope, back in those days that some day you’d marry Hal, and become my sister-in-law. After we entered Hamilton and you seemed to care nothing at all for him, except as a friend, it made me feel blue as sixty, at times. Honestly, I never believed then you would finally wake up and fall in love with him.” Jerry’s chubby features grew reminiscently solemn.

“I wonder now that I could have been so hard-hearted,” Marjorie made frank reply. “How could I have hurt Hal so deeply? That’s what I ask myself sometimes in the midst of the happiness his love has brought me. I can understand now how Brooke Hamilton must have grieved over Angela. It was his diary that woke me up. And to think! I almost missed love.” Marjorie was looking very sober herself.

“Here we sit, solemn as two owls, talking about what didn’t happen, thank goodness.” Jerry’s roguish smile crinkled her lips. “While we’re on the subject, I’ll tell you a secret. It was the way you turned Hal down that started me to thinking seriously about Danny. I’d always liked Danny a whole lot, but, somehow, I could never take him seriously. Whenever he’d show signs of growing serious, I’d laugh at him. Finally, when you and Hal flivvered, it worried both Danny and me. We did manage one or two serious talks about that. It drew us closer together in sympathy, somehow, and the night we went sailing in the Oriole, you remember that night, I realized that he meant a great deal more to me than I’d believed he could. That very night, while we were at the wheel together, I fell in love with him. And you’re the first person I ever told it to, and you’ll be the last. Believe me, I never let him suspect it, though, until a whole year later.”

“I’m highly honored, Jeremiah.” Marjorie’s words held fond appreciation. “I’m so glad you wished me to know about you and Danny. Frankly, I’d often wondered when and how you and he came to an understanding. You’re such a secretive old dear. I used to imagine you didn’t care the least little bit about Danny. I was sure he cared for you, though.”

“I wasn’t sure,” Jerry made blunt response. “I mean, not until that summer we were at Severn Beach.” Jerry became silent, an absent gleam springing into her merry blue eyes. “And I’m going home day after tomorrow to get ready to be married to Dan-yell,” she suddenly broke out with a half humorous inflection. “Can you beat that?”

“No, I can’t.” Marjorie shook a smiling head. “I think it’s——”

“There’s the mail man!” Jerry sang out, the absent gleam in her eyes changing to one of eager expectation. “Come on.” She sprang up from her chair, and ran down the steps, waving a beckoning arm to Marjorie.

The porch swing rocked wildly as Marjorie left it in a quick rush after Jerry. The pair raced down the wide stone walk to the high arched stone gateway, bringing up, laughing, beside the mail box, fastened to a post, just inside the entrance gates.

“Oh, bother! I forgot the key!” Marjorie exclaimed in mild vexation.

“I have it. I brought it out on the veranda with me. Kindly recall that I’ve been expecting a love letter from my intended,” she reminded, chuckling. “I got ready to grab it.” She fished the little key from a diminutive, lace-trimmed pocket of her frock.

“You’re a life-saver,” Marjorie sighed relief.

Jerry had already busied herself with fitting the key to the lock. “Great guns!” she ejaculated, as she swung open the little door of the box. “Some mail.”

There were eleven letters, according to her pleasantly-excited count.

“Seven for you, two for old Hal, and three for me,” she announced, handing Marjorie her letters and Hal’s. “One of mine is from Mother. I’ll say it’s a ‘Why don’t you come home, Jerry,’ message. One’s from Ronny. It’s high time she wrote me. This one’s from Muriel Harding, and it’s postmarked ‘New York.’ Now what the dickens is she doing in New York? I thought she was at Severn Beach. Curiosity wins. I’ll read hers first.”

Jerry conducted this lively monologue as she hastily tore open an end of the envelope addressed in Muriel Harding’s familiar swinging hand. She extracted the letter from the envelope, glanced quickly down the first page, then gave a funny little shout of surprise.

“Catch me,” she implored. “I’m going to drop dead of surprise. Muriel Harding, you rascal. I told you something was going to happen, Bean. Well, has it happened? I guess, yes.”

CHAPTER II
 
A JOLT FOR LESLIE

“What is it? Hurry up, and tell me.” Marjorie gave Jerry’s arm a playfully impatient little shake, her own letters for the moment forgotten.

“Listen to this,” Jerry began.

“Dear Old Jeremiah:

“When you read this letter I shall be Mrs. Harry Lenox, and on my way with Harry to South America. Some little jolt, Jeremiah, but you’ll survive it. Harry’s father, now Muriel’s highly-respected papa-in-law, has important business interests in the Argentine. It was impossible for him to make the trip to the Argentine at present, so Harry had to fall in line. That meant he would not return to Sanford until next summer. Poor Muriel. She had grown so used to having Harry around. As you know, we expected to be married in November. Harry said, ‘Why not now?’ I said, ‘It does seem as though something ought to be done about it.’ And that’s what it’s all about.

“Father and Mother went to New York with us, and we were married in the parsonage of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church last Monday afternoon, August twenty-fifth. Don’t forget the date. I was married in the ducky pale tan traveling ensemble that I had had made for my November going-away gown. I hadn’t yet decided upon my wedding dress, and it was a good thing.

“I’m not yet over my own surprise at the sudden way all my nice, artistic wedding plans went up in the air. One thing, however, I insisted upon—a great big wedding cake. You and Marjorie, and all my other good little pals, will receive a piece of that glorious cake by parcel post.

“It seems awfully strange to be hurrying away from the good old U. S., adventure-bound. I’d always planned a wonderful wedding, with the big Sanford Six strictly on the job. Love is really a serious matter. There could be only one thing more serious, to me—not to be in love.

“I can’t stop to write any more just now. It is almost ten o’clock, and we have to be on board the steamer by eleven. We are to sail for Buenos Aires on the Maraquita at midnight. There’s no use in trying to tell you how sorry I am about going so far away without having you and the girls on hand to wish me bon voyage. You and Marjorie, my dear comrades of years, can understand, above all others, just how I feel about it. I’ll write you a long letter as soon as I’m settled on shipboard. Be good, Jeremiah, and remember me to Dan-yell. More about everything then, including several pages of regrets at not being able to join your bridesmaid line on the fateful eighth of September. Oceans of love. You’ll hear from me again soon.

“Hastily,

  “Muriel.”

“What do you think of that?” Jerry’s tone conveyed her own feelings. “Muriel was right about the jolt. After all, it’s just about what one might expect of Muriel Harding. Maybe I shan’t miss her, though. We’d planned a lot of things to do in Sanford next winter.” She vented a long, regretful sigh.

“Your hunch came true, Jeremiah. We hadn’t expected to hear from Muriel Harding Lenox, in New York, and all ready to sail for South America. You’re the only one of the Big Six still single. And your fate is sealed. Four of us are married to the boys who were our high school cavaliers. You’re going to marry yours. Susan Atwell is the only one of us who has loved and married far away from Sanford.” Marjorie’s lovely features had grown dreamily reminiscent.

“There’s no use in denying it. We’re getting old, Bean; getting old.” Jerry gave an elaborately disconsolate sniffle.

It set both chums to giggling as whole-heartedly as in the days when they were freshmen at Sanford High, with the future a closed book, the pages of which neither was curious to scan.

“I’ve a letter here from Muriel, too,” Marjorie said. “Let’s go back to the veranda and have a letter-reading bee. One of mine is from Leslie Cairns,” Marjorie was busily going over the envelopes in her hand, “and this one’s from Robin Page. This one looks like a high-class advertisement. Oh, here’s one from Gussie Forbes, postmarked California. Then I’ve a Paris one from Connie, and last and best one from General. That means he and Captain aren’t coming home just yet. Hurry up, Jerry.” She began to tow Jerry speedily up the walk to the house. “I’m in a grand rush to begin the bee.”

Marjorie laid the two letters for Hal on the willow porch stand, hurriedly returning to the swing, there to enjoy her own. Jerry had plumped down again in her rocker and was already perusing her mother’s letter. “What did I tell you?” she commented to Marjorie as she continued to read. “Mother is worrying like mad because I’m lingering longer here than becomes the station of one, Jerry Macy, about to be wed. It’s time for me to hit the home plate. I can see that.”

“Never mind. We’ll all be together again soon,” Marjorie reminded.

“And that rascal, Muriel Harding was to have been my maid of honor,” Jerry groaned. “Why can’t you be my matron of honor, since she’s left me in the lurch. I’d rather have you as a first aid to the altar than anyone else.” She turned coaxingly to Marjorie.

“I’d love to be, except for one thing. I’d rather stand aside in favor of the unmarried girls,” Marjorie said simply. “Let me see. You’re going to have Leila, Vera, Leslie, Lucy, Helen Trent and Robin Page as your bridesmaids.” She wrinkled her dark brows in a reflective frown. After a moment’s silence she spoke: “Jerry, why don’t you have Lucy as your maid of honor? Next to the Big Six, she’s really nearest to us all. It would make her wonderfully happy.”

“Luciferous?” Jerry eyed Marjorie with a contemplative squint. “I never thought of her. I was thinking just this minute that I might ask Helen Trent to take Muriel’s place. Helen was my first Hamilton chum, you know. Lucy——” Jerry became suddenly silent. “Right, as usual, beneficent Bean.” She nodded conclusively. “I ought to ask Lucy to be my maid of honor. I’ll do it, too. Mother says in her letter that the girls’ gowns are finished, and waiting for a grand try-on. Lucy’s will have to be altered, though. She’s considerably shorter than Muriel.”

“You haven’t told me about the dresses yet, Jeremiah,” Marjorie dimpled as she made ingratiating reminder. Thus far Jerry had declined to give details. “I’m going to give you a treat, Bean, so don’t ask questions,” had been her reply.

“And I’m not going to, either,” Jerry came back with her tantalizing grin. “I’ll invite you to the try-on. Curb your curiosity till then, or I’ll compose a jingle about it,” she now threatened.

“You’re awfully mean,” Marjorie’s amused tone belied her words.

“Don’t you want to be delightfully surprised?” Jerry demanded.

“Of course I do. I was only funning, my dear Miss Macy.”

“Glad to hear it. I’d hate to hurt your feelings, Mrs. Macy.”

“Don’t mention it. There ain’t no such animal,” Marjorie retorted.

Smilingly, the two friends again went back to their letters. Jerry was soon lost in the many pages of Ronny’s long friendly message. Marjorie was finding equal pleasure in a long letter from Constance Armitage. Every now and then, one of the pair would read aloud a particular paragraph of her letter for the edification of the other.

Jerry had finished Ronny’s letter before Marjorie had come to the end of the one from Constance. She busied herself with a rereading of Muriel’s, smiling broadly to herself over it.

Marjorie was also smiling, as though she had suddenly come into the knowledge of an extremely pleasant secret. The affectionate sidelong glance she shot at Jerry seemed to indicate that it strictly concerned the latter.

Presently she took up the letter from Leslie Cairns. It was hardly more than a note, phrased in Leslie’s pithy fashion.

“Dearest Bean,” it began. “September’s near, and I’m glad of it. I’ve tried Newport, the Catskills, and various other lady-like resorts just to please Mrs. Gaylord, who is on the job, keeping an eye on Cairns II while Peter is carrying on a snappy financial war with the wolf pack in London. We’re home in little old New York now, and Hamilton will be my next stop. Have you a night’s lodging for a weary Traveler, should the spirit move me to drop down, just like that, upon you? Gaylord is so full of plans concerning what she ought to do, may do, and intends to do, next, she doesn’t know where she’s at. I hope she decides to visit her relatives, pronto. I can then gracefully kiss her good-bye, and beat it for Hamilton. I suppose the campus is looking as lively just now as a ten-acre lot after a circus has moved off it. Nothing doing there yet. What? I’m going to descend on Remson, and good old Fifteen again, though Peter hopes we’ll be housed at Carden Hedge by Christmas. I have a new car. It’s some speedy flash. I let it out the other day for Gaylord’s benefit. She almost lost her breath, and her confidence in Leslie is now missing. What’s the use in trying to write the news? I’d rather tell it to you. You may expect me. Love, as per usual, dear Bean.

“Faithfully (but bored to a frazzle),

                                             “Leslie.”

“Listen to Leslie’s funny letter,” Marjorie commanded.

“I’m listening.” Raising her head from her own letters, Jerry’s eyes strayed toward the pike. With a quick exclamation she sprang to her feet. “Look!” she cried, and rushed across the lawn to the drive.

One swift glance, and Marjorie had dashed down the steps in Jerry’s wake. A station taxicab was just turning into the drive through the open gates. She gave a jubilant little shout as she glimpsed a laughing face peering out of an open window of the tonneau, and re-doubled her pace.

“Leila!” Her voice rose to a happy staccato. “You dear, precious old fake. Whoever would have thought of seeing you today. No wonder I haven’t heard from you.” She was at the opened door of the machine now, grabbing enthusiastically at the tall, blued-eyed Irish girl just emerging from the car.

“It is myself, and none other.” Leila was out of the car now, clinging affectionately to Marjorie. “Ah, Beauty, you are a rare sight to a poor Irish emigrant.”

“Where’s emigrant number two?” Jerry had come up and joined in the embracing. She peered past Leila into the tonneau of the car.

“Right here,” came in prompt tones. Vera Mason’s charming blonde head poked itself into view. She sprang from the car, laughing, a dainty, diminutive figure in her smart gray traveling coat and tight little felt hat.

She was immediately seized and hugged, Marjorie and Jerry exclaiming over the welcome pair, girl fashion. Jerry’s quick eyes had caught sight of a third occupant of the tonneau. The latter, sat huddled in the far corner of the broad seat, face obscured by the folds of a silk scarf, carefully draped over it.

“You can’t fool me. Come out, pronto, and give an account of yourself,” Jerry commanded. Making an agile reach into the tonneau she snatched the concealing scarf from the wearer’s face, revealing Leslie Cairns’ rugged laughing features.

“How are you, Macy?” Leslie made an attempt at a tone of calm nonchalance which ended in a hearty burst of laughter.

“Fine and dandy, Cairns II,” Jerry caught Leslie’s extended hands and began dragging her out of the car.

“Steady, there. You certainly have strong-arm methods.” Leslie came out of the car with a bounce, due to Jerry’s forceful assistance.

“Why, Leslie!” Marjorie’s brown eyes were wide with pleasant astonishment. “You, too! How splendid. I had just finished reading your letter when Jerry saw the taxi turning in at our gate.”

“Gaylord went, and I came. Wait a minute. This taxi man thinks he’s been held up here for an hour.” Leslie paid the fidgeting driver, who had already placed the travelers’ luggage on the drive.

Jerry picked up two of the bags. “More of my strong-arm methods,” she observed.

“I’ll take Vera’s, and mine,” Leslie reached for them.

“Since they seem to love work, why should we interfere?” Leila remarked innocently.

“Why, indeed,” Marjorie gaily agreed.

She and Leila led the way to the house, arms about each other’s waists, talking animatedly as they walked.

“Welcome, Travelers,” she called out as they entered the large square living room. She turned, arms outspread, with a pretty gesture of hospitality. “What does this room remind you of?” she turned to Vera and Leila. She burst into a merry little laugh as a big, gray and white Angora cat sat up, yawning widely, in a deep-cushioned chair. “You old fluffy give-away!” she exclaimed.

“Castle Dean!” both girls cried in concert. “Ruffle!”

“And it’s plain to be seen a good household fairy whisked the castle here from Sanford, Ruffle puss, and all,” Leila declared with an enthusiastic touch of brogue and a fond dive at Ruffle. “The top of the afternoon to you, Ruffle Claws.” She swept down upon Ruffle, gathering him, struggling, into her arms.

“Now, now, now, is this the way to behave? I see you have the same old claws. Have you no welcome, then, for Irish Leila?”

“Nu-u-u.” Ruffle accompanied his loud protest with a wild scramble out of Leila’s prisoning arms. He sprang for his chair, regaining it, and spreading out in it with an air of lofty defiance.

“Never mind. I shall charm you yet with catnip and cunning blarney.” Leila shook her finger at the Angora. “This is the room I loved best at Castle Dean,” she said to Marjorie. “What good fortune to find it again here.”

“We all felt the same about it. Since General and Captain were to make their home ours, and ours, theirs, the four of us got together and decided that we’d better transplant our living room to Hamilton Estates. It forms a link, somehow, between Sanford and here. So many wonderful things have happened in this dear comfy room. You never saw it before, Leslie, but you’ll soon become well acquainted with it.”

Thoughtfulness prompted Marjorie to add this last to her cheery explanation. Despite the fact that she was now on the friendliest of terms with the girls she had once despised, at times Leslie still showed signs of awkward embarrassment when among them.

“I love it already.” The oddly somber look, which had briefly touched Leslie’s dark features, vanished. “It’s the most home-like room I’ve ever stepped into. I’m home-hungry, you know,” she confessed. “I’m going to make a bang-up, homey home for my father at Carden Hedge.”

“We shall all be going there to see you, lucky Leslie. It is only poor Midget and I who have no home. Oh, wurra, wurra!” Leila wailed the last two words soulfully.

“Plenty of noise, but no tears,” Vera commented slyly.

“She knows me,” Leila turned an indicative thumb toward Vera. “Or, it may be she thinks she knows. It is all the same.”

“I hope you will all come and hang around the Hedge—a whole lot,” Leslie said with half wistful emphasis. “Peter the Great and I are planning to be ‘at home’ there by Christmas. I’m going to hold my old stand-by, Fifteen, until our new home is ready. I’m undecided regarding P. G. subjects. I’ll specialize in something—don’t know yet what I want to take up.”

“You had best be satisfied with one subject,” Leila put in. “It is small time you’ll have for more than one after college opens.”

Her eyes on Leila, Marjorie read in the Irish girl’s tone an odd significance which Leslie had missed.

“I shan’t try to mix much in college affairs,” Leslie shook a decided head. “I’ll have time enough on my hands for three subjects, provided I’m ambitious enough to become a faithful study-hound.”

“She says, ‘three subjects.’ Now what do you think of that, Midget?” Leila stared at Vera in pretended wonder.

“What are you trying to do—kid me?” Leslie’s sober features relaxed into a faint smile. Quickly they shadowed again as she said: “You girls can understand why I’m not keen on doing the social side of college. It’s best for me to go quietly about my own affairs on the campus.” A deep flush had risen to her cheeks. She made an abrupt pause, in itself eloquent of her meaning.

“Oh, shucks!” burst impatiently from Jerry. “You don’t know your own worth, Leslie. The social side of Hamilton needs you, in particular, to help make things zip. You’ve already a reputation on the campus——”

“That’s just the trouble,” Leslie interrupted dryly. “Not the pleasant sort of reputation you mean, Jeremiah. It’s the old one—the one that I’ve not yet succeeded in living down. I hope to do it—in time, by hard, unobtrusive work for Hamilton College. That’s the only way it can be done.” Her rugged features settled into purposeful lines.

“Do you hear that, Midget? She is that anxious to be hard-working!”

This time Leslie caught the amused exchange of eye-signals between Leila and Vera.

“See here, you two,” she challenged, “what’s the joke?” For a brief instant a glint of hurt suspicion sprang into her dark eyes. It snapped out as quickly as it had appeared. She said good-humoredly, “Why not tell it to the gang? Then we can all laugh. Is it an Irish joke on Leslie?”

“It is, indeed. Midget and I made it up in Ireland.” Leila flashed Leslie a tantalizing smile.

“Well?” Leslie urged expectantly. “Shoot it at me.”

“Now I warn you, beforehand, that if you should not like our joke it would be a sorry joke on me,” Leila fixed comically-concerned eyes on Leslie.

“I’m already beginning to feel doubtful about it. You’d better shoot,” Leslie warningly advised.

“It seems that I had.” Leila looked solemnly impressed. “Well, it was this way: One day while Midget and I were wandering around the edge of a deep green bog,” Leila began, story fashion, “I said to Midget, ‘Does it not seem hard to you that your friend, Leila, should have to write plays and be a theatrical manager, too?’ ‘It does,’ she said. ‘I can see you will be in a bog as deep as the one over there when you go back to Hamilton.’ ‘What a comfort you are to me, Midget,’ I said with a deep sigh. ‘I have often thought so,’ she replied gently.”

A funny little treble giggle from Vera broke Leila up in the midst of her recital. She burst out laughing, her companions joining in the wave of mirth that swept the big room.

“Now I have lost the thread of my tale,” Leila declared after two or three mirthfully-ineffectual attempts at continuing it. “Where was I at? Ah, yes, I then said to Midget: ‘I should be one, or the other, but not both.’ She said, ‘Quite true, but don’t ask me to be the one you decide not to be. I cannot write plays, and it is all I can do to manage my own affairs.’ ‘Be aisy,’ I said with a fine touch of brogue. ‘You are not my idea of either.’ ‘Thank goodness,’ she said, not at all peevish. ‘I feel that I was intended to be a playwright,’ I said. ‘I am that temperamental!’ ‘Something like that,’ she said. ‘I have no genius for managing,’ I confessed. ‘I cannot contradict you,’ said Midget. ‘You had best turn that delicate little job over to someone else who has.’”

Leila paused. Her genial smile flashed broadly into evidence. Her eyes strayed inquiringly to Marjorie.

The latter was leaning forward in her chair, a lovely picture of delighted animation. “Oh, Leila!” she exclaimed. “How perfectly splendid!”

“You have guessed something, Beauty. Was it not good advice that Midget gave me? Now to follow it.” Her head made a swift sudden turn from Marjorie to Leslie. “Will you be manager of the Leila Harper Playhouse, Leslie?” she asked practically, then added drolly: “I shall tear my black hair in a fine frenzy if you refuse.”

“Why—I—what?” Seated on the davenport Leslie had been leaning far forward, elbows on knees, hands cupping her chin, her eyes fixed on Leila. The unexpected suddenness of Leila’s question gave her a veritable jolt. She made a startled forward movement, slid off the edge of the davenport and sat down smartly on the floor.

CHAPTER III
 
LESLIE AND LEILA

“Can you blame me?” Leslie had finally managed to make herself heard above the gale of laughter that had attended her mishap. She still sat on the floor, regarding her laughing companions with half sheepish reproach.

“No-o,” Leila made mirthful answer. “Let us be assisting the new manager to rise, Jeremiah, since we are the strongest of this crowd.”

“Thank you. I can assist myself.” Leslie sprang to her feet, resuming her former seat on the davenport. “You certainly have handed me a jolt, Leila Harper. It’s the last thing I ever thought of.”

“Then let it be the first now.” There was a vibration of earnestness in Leila’s reply. “Summed up in three little words: ‘I need you.’ There’s no other girl on the campus so well-fitted as you for the job. You’re a good business person, Leslie. Better still, you’re thoroughly cosmopolitan.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.” Flushing at the praise, Leslie shook her head. “It’s my self-assured manner that gives me the impression of knowing a whole lot more than I really do,” she explained frankly.

“Rubbish!” came energetically from Vera. “You are what you are, Leslie Cairns—clever as—as,” she groped mentally for a fitting comparison,—“as Leila.”

“Listen to that.” Leila made Vera a killingly appreciative bow.

“Nothing like it. I wish I were,” Leslie said regretfully.

“Let us have a contest, so that we may learn whether you are more clever than I, or, I than you,” Leila proposed blandly. “If you will have pity on a distracted Irish playwright, and help her out, then we shall both be in a fair way to out-do each other in cleverness.”

Leila had scented refusal of the honor she wished to do Leslie in the latter’s undecided manner. She now proposed to give her no chance to refuse. “We shall have fine times consulting together since we shall be near each other at Wayland Hall,” she smoothly pointed out.

“I’d love to manage the Playhouse, and I know Peter the Great would be delighted to have me do it, except for one thing.” Leslie spoke in her direct way. “There’d surely be ill-natured criticisms raised about it. Suppose it was said that Peter hadn’t been disinterested in giving the Playhouse to Hamilton College; that he had given it with the idea of making me foremost, and important, in campus affairs. Probably more spiteful remarks than that might be circulated.”

She stopped, staring half moodily at Leila. “‘The way of the transgressor is hard.’” She gave a short mirthless laugh. “Those first three years of mine on the campus were a mess. I behaved like a villain. Now it’s up to me to stand the gaff.”

“No, Leslie, it isn’t.” Marjorie cut in decidedly. “You have more than retrieved whatever mistakes you made during your first three years at Hamilton by what you did last year. Leila needs you this year. You would be an ideal manager for the Playhouse. Don’t allow anything else to matter. Depend upon it, Leila has already thought up some nice way of arrangement for you. I can see it in that beaming smile of hers.”

“I have fine arrangements for all occasions.” Leila was now grinning broadly. “When college opens I shall write an article for the ‘Campus Echo,’” she continued. “In it I shall outline the policy of the Playhouse, and give a resumé of what I intend to do in the way of plays during the college year. I shall also state that I have asked Leslie to assume the managership of the theatre, because of her extreme capability. Then let anyone start anything, and watch Irish Leila take the field, five feet at a bound, shillalah in hand.”

“Give us an imitation now of that five-foot bound,” coaxed Jerry.

“Not until I have first practiced it in private,” Leila declared with canny firmness. “And I suppose all is now settled, as amiably as you please, and the Playhouse has a new manager.” She turned ingratiatingly to Leslie, who could not help smiling, despite her doubts.

“I don’t know.” Leslie still demurred. “I——” she glanced about her at the little group of friendly, interested faces. She understood that her friends were hoping she might say “yes.” “I guess—so,” she said uncertainly. “Yes, I’ll accept the honor, mostly, though, to please you girls, and—Peter the Great.”

“Hurrah, hurray, hurroo!” Leila sent up a jubilant little cheer. “The world shall yet hear of us. Cairns and Harper, the greatest living promoters of high-class campus drama. That is what people will presently be saying about us.”

“Nothing succeeds like nerve,” Jerry declared.

“And it is experience that teaches the truth of that fine sentiment,” Leila came back with an innocent air that raised a general laugh at Jerry’s expense.

“I am a most thoughtless and inhospitable hostess!” Marjorie exclaimed as the wave of laughter subsided. “I should have told Delia to make ready a feast, and then——”

“Delia!” came in a concerted, delighted shriek from Leila and Vera.

“Of course. How could the Deans and the Macys ever get along without Delia? She’s our own, heart and soul.”

“Lead us to her,” begged Leila. “We’re not famished, Beauty. We bumped into Leslie on the train, and the three of us had luncheon together. Ah, but there was a happy pow-wow when we met, subdued and ladylike you may be sure. So it is not Delia’s delectable eats, but delectable Delia herself we are bent upon seeing.”

“Come along then.” Marjorie waved them kitchenward.

The visiting party burst into the kitchen upon Delia who sat placidly in her kitchen rocker shelling peas and humming to herself.

“I knew you’d be askin’ right away for me, Miss Leila.” Delia sprang up, hastily dumping a lapful of pea shells into a nearby splint basket. She came forward to meet Leila, her face bright with beaming confidence. “I saw you from the kitchen garden when the taxi stopped on the drive. I just thought then how surprised Miss, I mean, Mrs. Macy must be to see you.” Delia giggled at her own slip of title. “I can’t remember to call Miss Marjorie by her married name,” she confessed.

“I’m not quite used myself to my new name,” was Marjorie’s laughing comment. “Once in a while Jerry calls me Mrs. Macy, but not with proper respect. I’m very fond of my Bean name.” She dimpled at Leslie whose answering smile was a mixture of amusement and confusion.

“The tea is ready now, Mrs. Macy. Everything’s on the tea wagon in the pantry. I thought you girls would need a little bit to eat until dinner. I was just goin’ to wheel the lunch into the livin’ room when you come out here. I feel so glad to think you come to see me,” Delia looked her pleased pride of the invasion.

“It’s here we shall take our tea, in honor of you,” Leila said. “I am the one to pour it, and we shall all wait on you.”

“Fine.” Jerry dashed for the pantry, to return trundling the tea wagon.

Vera was already bowing Delia back into her rocker. “Stay seated most magnificent and highly-esteemed Delia,” she directed grandly.

“Te, he, he,” Delia chuckled at the flowery encomium.

“Oh, Delia! I forgot you’d never before met Leslie. This is Leslie Cairns, Delia. Leslie shake hands with Delia.” Marjorie gaily performed the introduction. “Leslie is going to be our neighbor at Carden Hedge, at Christmas, Delia. Won’t that be fine?”

“It will,” Delia nodded, all smiles. “The more of Miss Marjorie’s friends that come to live near her, the better it is for her. I’m glad to know you, Miss Leslie.”

Leslie shook hands warmly with Delia, pleased by the maid’s friendly sincerity. She could not help mentally contrasting her present democratic attitude with that of her former snobbish contempt for persons in humbler circumstances than herself. “Cairns II, you’re improving,” was her whimsical thought. “There’s a lot of room yet for improvement, though, so don’t get chesty.”

The tea party proved to be a hilariously happy event, with Delia the guest of honor, despite her half-abashed, good-natured expostulations.

“I’m going to tear you all away from Delia now,” Marjorie finally made firm announcement. “I’m going to see you safely to your own little corners of Travelers’ Rest. Then I must come back to the kitchen and help Delia, or you won’t have any dinner tonight.” She shot Delia a mischievous glance.

“Oh, now, Miss Marjorie——” Delia began. “Jus’s though I couldn’t get along without Alice. It’s Alice’s day out,” she explained to the newly arrived guests, referring to the absent maid.

“Jerry can keep on playing porter. Only, I’ll be kind to you, and help you with the girls’ luggage, Jeremiah.”

“I’m the one to be helpin’ with the luggage,” Delia insisted.

“Be aisy.” Leila lapsed purposely into brogue. “It’s ourselves’ll be after luggin’ our own luggage up the stairs.”

They were soon ascending the broad open staircase at the back of the reception hall, their happy voices blending in cheerful harmony.

Having triumphantly established Leslie in her room, the rest of the gay party went on to the room which Leila and Vera were to occupy together.

“Close the door, Beauty; and close it softly,” Leila drew a long breath of sheer contentment as the four chums, who had stood shoulder to shoulder, through both adversity and joy, at Hamilton, were once more alone together. “Not that I love Leslie less, but Beauty and Jeremiah more,” she added in light explanation. “Try as I may, I am not yet altogether used to Leslie Cairns as one of us. I’m glad she is, but there’s still an odd strangeness about it. Who could possibly have guessed when we waged war against the San Soucians, for democracy’s sake, that we should one day capture and tame their ringleader?”

“I get you. I feel about the same as you sometimes in regard to Leslie,” Jerry said quickly. “How about you, Vera?”

“I like her immensely,” Vera responded with a little emphatic nod. “I believe she has tried, harder than any other student who has ever enrolled at Hamilton, to conquer her faults. Leila feels the same, only she’s handicapped by a certain sardonic sense of humor.”

“It is the truth,” Leila affirmed solemnly, then she began to smile. “I look at her as she is now, and for the life of me I cannot help remembering the dance she led us for three years about the campus. And it is at her amazing reform that I am ignoble enough, at times, to grin. Only, I shall have a care to grin over it strictly in private,” she finished, her broad, humorous smile still in mischievous evidence.

“Just the same it is splendid in you to wish Leslie to be manager of the Playhouse.” Marjorie spoke with admiring warmth. “Think what it will mean to her, girls.” She turned to Jerry and Vera. “Her father will be so proud of her.”

“And think of the hard work it will save me,” Leila adroitly shunted off Marjorie’s compliment.

“Don’t try to slide out of your good deeds, Leila Greatheart. You’re the same slippery person, when it comes to that, you always were.” Marjorie made one of her funny little-girl rushes at Leila, arms widespread. She caught Leila about the neck and gave her a bear hug.

“Now I thought I had changed for the better.” Leila cocked her head to one side, looking down at Marjorie with her own particular quizzical air. “But you, Beauty, I see little sign in you of the sedate dignity of a Mrs. with a newly-acquired husband, and a manor house.”

“Bean is Bean,” Jerry cut in, “so much the same old Beanie that I was inspired to chant a jingle to her this afternoon.”

“Where then is the jingle?” Leila held out a demanding hand for a copy of it.

“Now you know perfectly well I never set down my works of genius. Apply to Marjorie for it. She got it before we both for-got it.”

“I saved it for you, Leila,” Marjorie assured.

“Uh-h-h.” Leila received the assurance with a gratified gurgle.

“Oh, girls, it’s so satisfying to see you both again, and the four of us have such a lot to talk about,” Marjorie said with a happy little intake of breath, “but,” she paused, her eyes unconsciously roving in the direction of Leslie’s room. “It’s a case of ‘Remember the stranger within thy gates.’” She went on brightly. “We’ve plenty of time before dinner for one of our famous confabs, but it’s apt to be more or less noisy. If Leslie should hear us laughing and talking, it might make her feel—well, rather out of things here. She’s grown as sensitive as she used to be hard since she found herself. We must make it our special pleasure to show her we like to have her with us.”

“The confab is hereby postponed, but it will keep.” Leila nodded understandingly.

“We were going to shoo you two out of here, anyway,” Vera mercilessly announced. “If you were to continue to hang around in here until we unpacked our bags you might see”—she put on a mysterious air,—“well, something that you’re not to see, until later.”

Before Marjorie could reply in kind the loud honk, honk of a motor horn came up to the four friends from the drive.

“Oh, that’s Hal. He’s home earlier than I had expected. I won’t wait to be shooed out of here.” The color had deepened charmingly in Marjorie’s pink cheeks. A warm tender light had leaped into her brown eyes. “Pardon me, children. I’ll see you again in a little while.” She was at the door as she spoke.

An insistent repetition of the call sent her scurrying down the stairs and on to a side door of the house that opened upon the drive.

“Come here, girls, if you want to see—er—well—my ideal of perfect love.” Jerry had crossed the room to one of the windows, which looked down upon the drive, and was beckoning to Leila and Vera.

Peering down, the three girls were just in time to see the meeting between the two who had once so nearly drifted apart forever, but had at the last found love in all its tender glory.

Marjorie had run down the steps of the veranda in the same instant in which Hal had sprung from the driver’s seat of the roadster. They met midway on the walk, catching hold of hands, and laughing like two children. No embrace passed between them, other than the cling of hands, but there was a light upon both young faces that told its own story.

“You know whereof you speak, Jeremiah.” It was Leila who lifted the brief silence that had fallen upon the three unseen watchers at the window after Hal had taken Marjorie by an arm and piloted her fondly up the steps and into the house. “There is an old Irish saying,” she continued: “‘Love is like a four-leaved shamrock, hard to find, but of great good luck to the finder.’ And it’s easy to point out the two lucky finders.”

CHAPTER IV
 
TRUE LOVE’S OWN SYMBOL

“My dear child, I’m going to say good-bye now to Jerry Macy and take myself off downstairs so as to be ready to be among the first to say, ‘Good fortune to Jerry Seabrooke’.”

Miss Susanna Hamilton folded Jerry in her arms, kissing her gently upon both cheeks, and then upon her lips. The little old lady, charming in her gown of ecru satin and duchess lace, was smiling at Jerry, a world of affection in her small bright eyes.

“Dearest Goldendede.” Jerry returned the embrace with fervor. “I love you bushels as Jerry Macy, and when I’m Jerry Seabrooke, I’ll go on loving you, even more than bushels.”

“That’s worth looking forward to.” Miss Susanna wagged her head with amused appreciation.

“I’m next, Jerry, dear.” Mrs. Dean now claimed Jerry. “It seems hardly more than yesterday since you and Marjorie went raiding the Dean kitchen after school on a hunt for chocolate cake. Romance was far from your thoughts then. Marjorie found hers, and you yours. We are all happy in your happiness tonight.” Mrs. Dean’s tones bespoke her love for Jerry. “Wonderful things have befallen the Dean Army.”

“I think I’m the luckiest girl in the world, Captain.” Jerry brought a hand to her forehead in playful salute. “Besides Father and Mother and Hal I’ve you and General and Miss Susanna as special superior officers to wish me happiness. Some honor for Lieutenant Macy, I’ll say.”

“And you never counted me in.” Marjorie shook a finger at Jerry. Seated on a chaise longue she had thus far been a contentedly-smiling, silent spectator to the fond little scene of which Jerry formed the center.

“Oh, you’re my brother officer. I take you for granted,” Jerry assured her.

It was half-past seven by the busily ticking Dresden clock on Jerry’s chiffonier. At eight o’clock that evening Jerry was to be married to Danny Seabrooke in the Macy’s beautiful salon-like drawing room downstairs. She had been dressed for half an hour for the momentous journey she was soon to take down the grand staircase, and on her flower-decked way to keep a high tryst with Danny, her devoted cavalier of high school days.

Mrs. Dean, Miss Susanna and Marjorie had been spending an intimate half hour with the bride-to-be in accordance to her forceful plea: “For goodness sake stick to me.” The two older women now left the room to take their places among the guests. Only Marjorie remained with her chum, knowing that Jerry wished her to do so.

As the door closed upon Miss Susanna and Mrs. Dean, Jerry walked over to the long triple-plated floor mirror and began a critical survey of her resplendent self in it. Marjorie sat watching her with proud, admiring eyes. She thought she had never before seen Jerry look so pretty.

“Well, Bean,” Jerry presently turned away from the mirror to fix round, inquiring blue eyes almost solemnly upon Marjorie, “what’s the verdict? I mean, how does Jeremiah look?”

“You are so lovely in your wedding dress, Jerry.” Marjorie gave a sigh of delighted admiration.

“Honestly, and truly am I—do I look as nice as that?” Jerry’s cheeks grew pinker at the tribute.

“Honestly, and truly you are—you do,” Marjorie assured with amused emphasis. “You know I’ve always liked best to see you wear white. But tonight—you are positively stunning, Jeremiah. Your wedding dress is a dream, and so are you in it.”

“Oh, gee, but I’m glad of it,” Jerry gave a sigh of profound relief. “Since it’s you who is saying it, I have to believe it. I’d like to look—um-m, something celostrous, all on Danny’s account. I want him to be properly impressed by my—ahem—resplendent beauty,” Jerry giggled, her sense of humor ever to the fore. There was, nevertheless, something of girlish wistfulness in her joking words.

“He will be,” Marjorie devotedly predicted. “What do you think of yourself in your wedding finery?” she continued mischievously.

“Oh, pretty fair, Bean; just middling.” There was a pleased gleam in Jerry’s eyes, however, as she turned once more to the mirror.

She made a charming picture standing before it, looking taller and slimmer than was her wont in the straight beautiful lines of her ivory satin wedding gown with its garniture of pearls and rare old lace. The lace-trimmed court train, falling from the shoulders, the long tight sleeves and the V-shaped pearl-embroidered neck also served to heighten the stately effect of her costume.

“I shan’t put on my veil until the last minute,” she announced matter-of-factly. “Just let me tell you this, Bean, it’s a whole lot more trouble to dress for one’s own wedding than it is for some one else’s.”

Mindful of her snowy finery she sat down carefully on the edge of her bed and viewed Marjorie with a half abashed, half impish air. “How’s that for a sweetly sentimental thought to trot along to the altar?” she asked.

“It’s strictly a la Jeremiah, only you’ll forget it the instant you hear the wedding march.” A reminiscent gleam had appeared in Marjorie’s eyes.

“I guess you know what you are talking about.” Jerry fell into sudden silence. Apparently unsentimental Jerry was not lacking in either sentiment, or emotion. She was feeling deeply the tension of the moment, but was endeavoring to hide it, even from Marjorie. “I only hope I keep in step with it,” she added with a reflective air.

“In step with what?” Marjorie came suddenly out of her moment of dreaming.

“The wedding march, of course,” Jerry replied with a faint chuckle.

“Oh,” Marjorie had to laugh with her. She understood Jerry, and the way she was feeling, also the facetious effort her chum was making to conceal her real feelings.

“I never did like having a lot of fuss made over me.” Jerry rose and walked to a side table on which reposed her wedding bouquet of lilies of the valley and white orchids. “Isn’t it beautiful?” she said, lifting it up almost reverently. Her humorous expression had vanished into one of girlish seriousness.

“I love it. It’s so perfect”—Marjorie paused—“as perfect as love. It’s true love’s own symbol.”

“True love,” Jerry repeated musingly. “I never dreamed for a minute when Danny and I used to squabble and play jokes on each other as high school pals that I’d ever love him enough to marry him. You know I always said I was never never going to be married.” For a moment she bent her face over the mass of exquisite white blooms, hiding it from view. She presently raised it from the bouquet with: “Times have certainly changed, Beanie. They certainly have changed.”

“It looks that way, Macy,” Marjorie gaily agreed. Gradually her smile faded. “Jerry,” she began slowly, “you know you and I have never talked much to each other about Hal—and—and—the way things were for so long between us before—well—before I discovered that I really had a heart for love. At that time I was relieved because you tried never to let me think you were disappointed because I didn’t then love Hal. I felt that you were, and I often wished to have a talk with you about him. Somehow I couldn’t bring myself to speak of him, even to you. I was so sure that I could never learn to love him in the beautiful way I believed he loved me. Captain was the only one I confided my troubles to.”

“You weren’t to blame because you didn’t know your own heart,” Jerry made loyal defense. “I used to feel a little out of patience with you at times. It hurt me like sixty to see Hal try to buck up, determined not to show what a crusher you had handed him. Still, I couldn’t blame you, either. Love’s the world’s great mystery, even if it is love that sends the old ball dizzying around,” Jerry finished with slangy philosophy.

In spite of her practical tone Marjorie glimpsed a glint of tenderness in her chum’s eyes as she gently deposited the white armful of fragrance upon the table again.

“I’ve not yet forgiven myself for having hurt Hal so. Whenever I think of how nearly I lost him forever by my own blindness, it sends my heart away down for a minute. It will take a lifetime of devotion on my part to make it up to him. We’re so happy together now. It doesn’t seem as though I deserved such happiness,” Marjorie ended half wistfully.

“Shucks,” was Jerry’s comforting opinion. “You deserved happiness more than any one of us did.”

“Oh, no,” Marjorie shook her head gravely. “No one deserves to be happier than you and Danny are going to be. You two just simply drifted beautifully into love. There haven’t been any misunderstandings, or heartaches, in your romance. It’s been ideal.”

“That’s so.” Jerry considered Marjorie’s assertion with a half embarrassed flush. It was the witching, intimate hour for confidences between the chums. “I guess we began to miss each other a lot at about the same time. I missed Danny dreadfully during my senior year at Hamilton. When we came to compare notes, last summer at Severn Beach, we found we weren’t crazy about having to be so far away from each other and—that’s the way it all happened,” she confessed half shyly. “Danny wanted to ask me to marry him on that night when we went for a sail in the Oriole and Hal sang the ‘Venetian Boat Song’ with a kind of heart-break in his voice that he hadn’t the least idea was there. You missed it entirely, but it got both Danny and me. I’ll never forget that night as long as I live.” Jerry made an eloquently reminiscent gesture. “He told me after we became engaged that he hadn’t the courage to ask me that night to marry him, for fear I might turn him down as you had Hal.”

“That was a night I had some very sad memories of, long afterward, when I came to a realization that I really loved Hal, but too late. I surmised he was going to ask me to marry him before I went back to Hamilton, and I was determined not to give him an opportunity. Wasn’t I stony-hearted though?” Marjorie laughed rather tremulously.

“You’re bravely over it now, and that’s what counts,” was Jerry’s sturdy philosophy. “I think that when——”

“Jerry, dear, the girls will be here in a minute.” Mrs. Macy’s hurried entrance into the room broke up the confidential session. A plump dainty little figure in her handsome gown of pearly gray and white, her bright blue eyes adoringly took in the charming spectacle of Jerry in her brave white array. “Shall I help you with your veil?” She nodded briskly toward the beautiful, voluminous veil of brussels net which swept fairy-like folds across the foot of Jerry’s bed.

“Please do, Mother.” The two exchanged fond smiles.

Mrs. Macy lifted the misty, exquisite lace cloud from the bed and trotted over to Jerry with it. Jerry stood very still while her mother placed the coronet-like cap, with its garniture of pearls and orange blossoms, on her head, and adjusted it to her critical satisfaction.

The pretty service performed, Jerry placed her hands on her mother’s cheeks and kissed her on the lips. “Thank you, Mother,” she said. The uncontrollable impulse toward humor overcoming her she pulled a fold of the veil over her face and peered owlishly through the lace meshes at Marjorie. “It’s too late for regrets,” she quavered in a doleful tone. “Good night, Jerry Macy.”

“Do try to behave well during the ceremony, at least, Jerry,” was her mother’s laughing advice as she circled about her irrepressible daughter in anxious mother-proud survey.

“I will,” Jerry promised in a hollow voice that set the trio laughing. A murmur of voices outside her door, and she added encouragingly: “Here come the girls. Kindly note my exemplary behavior from now on. Jeremiah is going to step strictly into line for the great occasion.”

CHAPTER V
 
ALL ON ACCOUNT OF JEREMIAH

“Don’t hand me all the verbal bouquets. Keep a few for your own use.” Surrounded by an enthusiastic bevy of bridesmaids Jerry had at last managed to make herself heard above the buzz of admiring compliments they had been hurling at her from all sides. “Talk about a rosebud garden of girls. I’ll say you’re it.” She stood beaming her delight of the flower-like group that had invaded her room.

Jerry had had pronounced ideas of her own concerning the color scheme for her wedding. She had elected that it should be a rose wedding, since the rose was both Danny’s and her favorite flower. Moreover, Danny had a preference for a certain apricot-tinted variety of rose, deep apricot in bud, but shading when open to a delicate pink. “Marvel” was the name the originator of the variety had bestowed upon the rose, and it had quickly come into fashionable popularity. Jerry, in search of an attractive color scheme for her wedding had hit upon the plan of using the dainty Marvel rose for her purpose.

She had made a careful study of the exquisite apricot-pink shading of the rose with the result that her maid of honor and six bridesmaids, now gowned in the stunning dresses she herself had designed and had made for them, bore delightful resemblance to a bouquet of “Marvels.”

Lucy Warner, brimming with happiness over the unexpected privilege of serving as Jerry’s maid of honor, wore a frock of deep-tinted apricot tulle over apricot silk with apricot satin slippers and stockings to match. Beneath a wreath of tiny Marvel rosebuds her small earnest features looked demurely out, giving her the semblance of the rosebud she was dressed to represent. A large bouquet of the tight-petaled buds added the final artistic touch to her costume.

Leila Harper and Leslie Cairns, as bridesmaids, wore frocks of slightly paler apricot tulle, their wreaths and bouquets of half open Marvel buds exactly matching the shade of their gowns. Helen Trent and Phyllis Moore continued further to carry out the color scheme in still paler-shaded apricot tulle, worn over silk underslips of a delicate pink. Their wreaths and bouquets were of Marvel roses, well-opened, but not full blown.

Vera Mason and Robin Page completed the color scheme in frocks of pale pink tulle with wreaths and bouquets of the full-blown Marvel roses. The two tiny flower girls, Reba and Nella Macy, kiddie cousins of Jerry’s, wore bouffant frocks of chiffon, many-skirted and of the four shades of the rose in which the maid of honor and the bridesmaids’ gowns had been carried out. They had long-handled, ribbon-tied baskets filled to over-flowing with half-blown and full-blown roses and wore rosebud wreaths upon their curly golden heads.

As Jerry happily took in the gorgeous human flower garden about her she could not forbear teasing Lucy a little. Fixing her eyes upon the latter with a certain ridiculous expression which always made Lucy giggle, she said: “Luciferous Warniferous, you are positively stunning. You are enchanting, imposing, arresting, resplendent—wait a minute till I think up a few more glowing terms. Oh, yes, you are celostrous, Luciferous, absolutely and undeniably celostrous—and that lets you out. Be very very careful of yourself this evening. Some worshipping young man may fall hard for you, and try to kidnap you.”

“Oh-h, Jeremiah Macy,” Lucy brandished her bouquet at Jerry, laughing, but looking half vexed. “You are—well—you are——”

“What am I?” Jerry inquired with a quizzical grin.

“The same ridiculous old tease,” Lucy retorted. “When first I caught sight of you in your wedding dress, with your lovely veil, I felt positively impressed by your grandeur and dignity. Now I don’t feel in the least like that about you,” Lucy ended with a faint chuckle.

“Never judge by appearances, my child. A bran span new wedding dress and veil may cloak an awful disposition. Try to regard me, Luciferous, as your former friend and razzberry, Jerry, Jeremiah, Geraldine Macy, and none other. I’m going to continue to be her to the very last minute.”

“The last minute is not far off, dear,” Mrs. Macy now broke in. “It’s a quarter to eight, children. Marjorie and I must go downstairs.” She cast a covertly significant glance at Marjorie who returned it with an equally guarded flash of brown eyes. “You had best form in line, girls, as soon as we are gone so as to be ready on the dot. I’ll leave the door open as we go. Remember, as soon as you hear the first notes of the wedding march you must begin to move forward to the stairs.”

With these final solicitous directions Mrs. Macy went to the door and opened it wide. From below stairs the wedding party now caught the harmonious throb of violins softly entuning an old Italian wedding song. It was a marvelous old song, full of impassioned harmony, which had been one of Laurie’s “finds” during his and Constance’s first year abroad. Virtuoso Stevens was playing it now, accompanied by Uncle John Roland, his foster brother-musician, Charlie Stevens, and four other of the musicians who had helped to form the little orchestra, so dear to the Sanford High School boys and girls of former days. These were the musicians Jerry had chosen to make the music at her wedding.

Mrs. Macy paused for an instant in the open doorway, smiling. Her eyes roved again to the clock, now showing almost ten minutes to eight, then again to Marjorie. The latter, radiantly lovely in a sleeveless evening frock of orchid satin, a great cluster of orchids, brought her by Hal, nestling against one dimpled shoulder, stood near Jerry, head bent a trifle forward, an expression of expectant listening upon her face.

Above the overtones of the violins there suddenly arose the sweetness of a high soprano voice, taking up the ancient wedding song. A hush had already fallen upon the lately buzzing girl company with the first sound of the orchestra music. The stillness deepened as the golden voice sang on, soaring, lark-like to entrancing heights. Then Jerry shattered the spell with an exultant shout of “Connie, Connie! It’s Connie singing! I know it is! Oh, you Marjorie Dean.” She whirled about and pounced joyfully upon Marjorie, catching her by the shoulders and gently shaking her. “You knew she was coming—knew all the time, and never said a word.”

“Hands off. You’ll rumple your veil, and crush my orchids.” Marjorie wriggled free of Jerry’s lightly pinioning hands.

“I’m going to shake Mother next.” Jerry made a laughing dive at her mother. “You’re just as guilty as Marjorie. You knew it, too.”

“We’ll steal one more minute to explain, then we must run. We did not know surely till this morning that Connie and Laurie would be here to the wedding. They managed to catch a fast boat home from Havre, and arrived here only an hour ago—all on account of Jeremiah. We wanted you to have a last Jerry Macy surprise. Dearest pal,” Marjorie’s arms enfolded Jerry, regardless of her own recent admonition of “Hands off!” She kissed Jerry on the lips, saying, “You know all I wish for you,” then released her and scampered for the stairs in Mrs. Macy’s wake.

Silence fell again in the room with Marjorie’s and Mrs. Macy’s exit. Constance had begun the second verse of the song. Presently the glorious voice had ceased with a last high, dulcet note. A sighing breath of appreciation rose from the charmed listeners in Jerry’s room. Still under the spell of the song and the singer, no one spoke. Then, in the midst of the stillness, the orchestra below began the Mendelssohn wedding march, very softly at first with a gradual increase of volume as the march was continued.

Came a quick scurrying into place, accompanied by soft exclamations and subdued laughter, then the bridal procession had formed and begun to move down the hall to the grand stairway.

At the foot of the broad staircase Jerry’s father awaited her. On his arm she continued her little journey of love, attended by her faithful maids. Across the wide reception hall, through a ribboned aisle, which continued on into the salon, and down the middle of the long apartment to its southern end, the bridal procession swept. Its objective was a gorgeous bank of palms and roses in front of which Jerry and Danny were to make their vows. Everywhere in the salon roses were massed in fragrant profusion. The scent of the queenly flower hung over the room like sweet incense.

The clergyman who was to perform the ceremony had been the one to baptize both Jerry and Danny as infants. He had already taken his place before the rose bank. Near him Danny, accompanied by his brother, Robert, his best man, awaited the coming of the bride. Danny’s serious moments of life had been thus far rare. His impish smile was more apt than not to be in evidence wherever he went. There was now no sign of it on his gravely-earnest features as he stood waiting for Jerry. Seriousness vastly became frolicksome Danny, making him handsome in spite of his freckles.

As the white-robed bride, the little girl with whom he had grown up, came toward him in her brave snowy array, the eyes of the pair met. Jerry saw the light of love leap into her bridegroom’s eyes like a flashing, sacramental flame, and was blushingly content. She had at last succeeded in making “some impression” upon Danny.

CHAPTER VI
 
THE HIGH TRYST

The space on each side of the ribboned aisle from its beginning at the foot of the staircase to its terminus in front of the rose bank was thronged with guests. Came a subdued murmur from the friendly assemblage and a great craning of necks as the bridal cortége passed through the ribboned lane on its way to the altar.

The musicians had been stationed just inside the wide double doorway between the hall and the salon. Despite the stellar role which had been assigned to Jerry in the drama of Romance she managed to turn her head toward the orchestra, sending a fleeting, affectionate glance toward the slender golden-haired young woman smiling radiantly at her from a seat among the musicians.

Immediately the procession had passed the orchestra, Constance and Laurie rose and followed in order to join a certain small group of persons who were standing a little at the right of the altar. It comprised Mrs. Macy, Mr. and Mrs. Dean, Mr. and Mrs. Seabrooke and Jerry’s Sanford married chums, together with their husbands. There was Irma Linton, now Irma Norwood, and her ever devoted cavalier of high-school days, the “Crane.” Connie and Laurie, Marjorie and Hal, and Susan Atwell, now Susan Armstrong, with her tall bronzed western mate. Of the original sextette of Sanford youngsters who had been such famous pals Muriel Harding Lenox and her husband alone were missing. Jerry and Danny had been united in their desire to have near them during the ceremony those who had ever been, and would ever be, to them, their nearest, and dearest.

Followed the breathless hush which invariably precedes the momentous interval between the cessation of the wedding march and the beginning of the sacred ceremony of marriage. Followed the minister’s deep, resonant enunciation of “Dearly beloved,” as he took up the solemn words of the ceremony.

Marjorie alone heard Hal’s “Dearest,” murmured in her ear as one of his hands closed tenderly over her slim fingers. She returned the fervent pressure, a quick mist of tears blurring her eyes. Hal had put an infinity of meaning into that one murmured word of endearment, given to her alone to understand.

“My own dear wife,” Danny was saying to Jerry as he kissed her with a smile which Jerry ever after fondly cherished as the most beautiful smile she had ever seen on a man’s face.

A moment more, and she was receiving the congratulatory embraces of her father and mother. Next Hal kissed her, then passed her on to Marjorie. The smiling group of dear ones now hemmed the bridal pair in, eager to wish them good fortune.

Jerry and Connie met with wide-open arms, hugging each other with delighted vigor.

“You certainly put one over on me, you rascal!” Jerry exclaimed with slangy disregard for her newly-fledged title of Mrs. Daniel Seabrooke. “Oh, Connie, you can’t possibly guess how glad I felt to hear your dear voice singing the wedding song! I wanted to rush downstairs, then and there, and hug you. We’d given up hoping you and Laurie might be here at the wedding, and Danny was awfully blue about it. He had counted on Hal and Laurie and the ‘Crane’ as his special standbys.”

“I had no idea you esteemed me so highly, Dan-yell.” Laurie’s laughing voice broke in. He had fixed mischievous blue eyes upon Danny, face alight with the old love of teasing which had never yet failed to draw his freckled-faced pal into good-natured argument.

Danny’s becomingly serious expression had now vanished in a challenging grin. He could not resist the joy of a verbal tilt with Laurie.

“You know it now, but don’t let it turn your head,” he cautioned. “Absence caused me to think kindly of you. Now that you are here, my future good opinion of you will depend entirely upon the way you treat me. As a bran-new, extremely well-behaved husband I am entitled to your profound respect. As yet I see no flourishing signs of it in your manner toward me. I shall hope for the best, however,” he ended with mock encouragement.

“Here’s hoping.” Laurie showed white teeth in a broad smile.

“Matters look far from hopeful to me. Never mind, Mr. Armitage. Your wife at least respects me. Such being the case, I will overlook your decidedly disrespectful grin.”

“How about the one you’re sporting?” Laurie affably inquired.

“You must be seeing things.” Danny whisked the smile from his face in a twinkling, gazing at Laurie with wide-eyed solemnity.

“I see marriage hasn’t changed you,” Laurie retorted.

“It’s too early in the game to pass an opinion. A wise man would never do it,” Danny made reproving reply.

Thereupon both young men burst into laughter and wrung each other’s hands all over again.

“Believe me, I’m glad to have a grip on that good old hand,” Danny said seriously as he gave Laurie’s hand a final shake.

“Same here,” Laurie made warm response.

Further friendly exchange of pertinent pleasantries between them was cut short by the congratulatory demands upon Danny’s attention. Laurie and Connie also came in for a rush of cordial greeting from numerous old friends present at the wedding.

As a pretty courtesy to the guests, Reba and Nella, the little flower girls now circulated among them, giving them the roses from their baskets. There was to be a wedding supper in a huge tent that had been put up on the lawn, and also dancing in the ball room. Jerry and Danny would not leave on their wedding trip until after midnight in time to board a one-o’clock train that was to take them to the Adirondacks, where they had elected to spend their honeymoon in Hal’s camp.

“I’m going to have my wedding party just like the parties Hal and I used to give,” Jerry had said. “The minute the ceremony’s over—good-bye formality. Danny and I have arranged to go away on a late train, purposely, so that we can stay a while with the crowd and have a dandy good time.”

The first animated rush of congratulation having spent itself, Jerry and Danny separated briefly. Danny’s three Sanford pals had claimed him for their own for a few merry minutes of conversation. Jerry had a mission of her own to perform in which her bridesmaids were buoyantly interested. Each was hopeful that she might be the one to catch the bridal bouquet which Jerry was presently to throw among them.

Jerry-like she was now laughingly refusing to tell her watchful attendants just when, and from what point, she intended to cast the flowery token among them.

“Follow me, and see what happens,” she teased as she began a slow walk down the salon, and toward the reception hall, surrounded by a laughing, expostulating seven.

“Don’t worry. You couldn’t lose us if you tried,” Helen Trent assured the bride.

“You ought to give Robin and me a special tip-off, Jeremiah. What chance have we against five tall, long-armed ladies?” Vera complained plaintively.

“Pay no attention to Midget,” counseled Leila. “What she lacks in height she makes up in quickness. If she does not snap up the bouquet from under our very noses it will not be for lack of trying.”

“It’s sportsmanlike to try out this grab game, but if it means ‘Leslie, you’ll be married next,’ then I hope I miss,” Leslie confided to Leila in an undertone. “I’ve contracted to keep house for Peter the Great for the next few years, so that lets me out,” she averred with her slow smile.

“I am fondling no hopes in that direction, either,” Leila murmured. “My ideal is a nice, white-haired old gentleman who will defer to me on all occasions; one who will enjoy being unmercifully bossed.” She rolled her blue eyes drolly at Leslie, who giggled softly.

“When you find him, don’t forget to invite me to your wedding,” she stipulated.

“You shall be my maid of honor,” Leila made affable promise. “By then, we shall be old and gray, I am afraid, and be wearing bonnets and spectacles.”

Jerry and her alert following had now reached the foot of the grand stairway. She set one slim, satin-shod foot upon the first step of the staircase as though about to begin the ascent of the stairs. Then she suddenly whirled about and tossed her bridal bouquet high in the air, well above the heads of the eager group of girls. A wild scramble for it ensued, accompanied by excited feminine cries. An instant, and a shout of gay laughter ascended from the animated group. Came a merry chorus of: “Leila’s going to be married next. Leila’s going to be married next.”

CHAPTER VII
 
CONSPIRATORS OF HAPPINESS

“Who is he, Leila?” Helen Trent teasingly called out.

“Yes, who is he, and where did you first meet him?” Leslie Cairns, usually the most silent among the group, could not refrain from joining in the teasing.

“A fine Irish gentleman, of course,” Robin said with elaborate positiveness.

“I must begin practicing old Irish airs,” Phil supplemented with an energetic nod. “I may be asked to play at the wedding.”

“It is valuable time you will be wasting in the practice,” came in ironic tones from behind the big bouquet. The bride’s flowery insignia had dropped squarely into Leila’s open arms at the second when she had dashed forward with the others. Her arms still enwrapping the floral grace, she had ducked her black head until only the crown of it showed above the top of the bouquet.

“Don’t pretend to be so shy! We know you aren’t blushing,” Vera exclaimed.

“How can you know when you can not see my face?” came pithily from behind the white shelter. Leila’s face popped up above the flowers. She peered over them at her tormentors with an expression of such ludicrous shyness as to produce a gale of laughter.

“Now laugh at me,” she said reprovingly, “and that after you have had a fine time making fun of me. And it’s that embarrassed I am. I am all but tongue-tied from bashfulness.”

“We’d never have suspected such a thing. So glad you told us.” Even staid Lucy felt impelled to join in the merry badinage.

“Let me tell you more. If I am the one to be married next, then none of the rest of you will ever be married. So you may practice your Irish airs and play them to me, Phil, for my wedding day is like an Irish myth, something that will never come true.”

“Such a cheerful prediction,” commented Robin Page.

“Is it not?” beamed Leila.

“You really can’t expect us to take you seriously, you know,” Helen said with regretful scepticism.

“I expect nothing else except that you will be making me a sad lot of future trouble by teasing me on all occasions. I shall soon have no comfort at all, at all,” Leila made rueful forecast.

“Never mind,” Lucy lightly sympathized. “You have the bouquet. I was hoping I’d catch it, just because it is so beautiful.”

“A fine bunch of posies it is,” Leila lapsed into brogue, “but it’s yourself that may be catching a bridegroom wan of these days, Luciferous, without the catching of the wadding bo-kay.”

“I guess not,” Lucy made vigorous protest. “Oh, there’s Miss Archer.” She bolted from the group with heightened color for a point across the hall where the principal of the Sanford High School stood talking with Mrs. Dean. A subdued ripple of merriment followed her escape from further teasing on Leila’s part. It was privately conceded among her Hamilton chums that President Matthews’ son was in love with Lucy. Whether, or not, Lucy cared for him was a matter for cogitation among them. Never by word or sign had she betrayed, even to Marjorie, anything other than an ordinary friendly interest in the young man.

“Just the same, she blushed,” Vera said triumphantly, laughing eyes following Lucy’s prompt rush across the hall.

“She’ll soon be in line to blush some more. Donald Matthews is here, somewhere about, only Lucy hasn’t yet happened to see him. President and Mrs. Matthews couldn’t come to the wedding on account of a previous engagement at a house party. Lucy took it for granted that Donald wouldn’t be here, either. I didn’t tell her he was coming. She is so—well, you girls know how she is. I was afraid she’d balk at being maid of honor out of pure shyness, no matter how much she cared about it. Lucy cares about Donald. I’m almost positive she does. You see I still know something about everyone even though I’m no longer Jeremiah Macy,” Jerry wound up with a droll air of wisdom.

Lucy’s green eyes opened wide, when, during her chat with Miss Archer, a tall figure loomed up beside her, speaking her name with politely-concealed eagerness. She was so fully engulfed by the pleasant embarrassment of the moment that she failed to note the battery of affectionately amused eyes bent upon her from the bridal group she had so lately deserted.

“Come on, girls, let’s vanish before she happens to look this way,” Jerry proposed. “She nearly fell dead with surprise, as it was, when she saw her future husband. Let’s not add to the shock.”

The little group promptly moved on into the salon. There they became immediately separated. Jerry was quickly hemmed in by further numbers of well-wishers. Leila, Vera, Helen, Phil and Robin were warmly hailed by Sanford friends they had made while spending holiday vacations with Marjorie and Jerry.

From the midst of a knot of Sanford friends Marjorie’s roving glance took in Leslie, standing at the edge of an animated group, her dark brows drawn together in a frown. “Leslie feels out of things,” was her instant thought. Excusing herself to her friends she hurried over to Leslie, with intent to take her in tow.

“Oh, Bean. I’m glad to get hold of you.” Leslie’s frown disappeared in an expression of patent relief. “I simply had to see you about something, but I hated to butt in on you and your Sanford friends.”

“What is it, Leslie?” Marjorie asked with quick concern. She was yet far from understanding Leslie’s complex nature.

“I’ve done something, Bean, something I thought would be nice for Jerry and Mr. Seabrooke. I’ve got away with the first half of the stunt—and,” Leslie paused, looking half abashed, “now I wonder how I’m going to get away with the last half. I thought it would be easy, but—well—I find it isn’t. It’s just struck me that Jerry and her husband may think I have a colossal nerve to—to——” Leslie stopped, coloring. “You’ll have to help me out, Bean,” she said desperately, with a short laugh.

“Of course I will. Tell me what you’d like me to do for you. I know you’ve planned something lovely for Jerry and Danny,” encouraged Marjorie.

“Maybe.” Leslie still looked doubtful. “All right. Here goes. You see since my father went to London there’s no one except me to use his private car on the railroad. I knew Jerry and Mr. Seabrooke were going to the Adirondacks on their honeymoon, so I thought it would maybe please them to go there in Peter’s car. If I had thought of it sooner, I’d have told Jerry about it. It never occurred to me until day before yesterday, and I’ve had to do some little hustling to get the car here in time. Believe me, I’ve kept the wires hot between here and New York. The car’s here; it came in at two o’clock this afternoon, and I was right there at the station yard to welcome it. I dropped out of the gang this afternoon, but they were all so busy they didn’t miss me. Now that’s part one—very nice and easy. What?” Leslie’s deliberate smile showed itself.

“Yes; What? You delightful plotter of happiness.” Marjorie’s face was alight with appreciation of Leslie’s plan. “Now that you’ve planned the surprise, and had all the trouble to make it come true, you want me to tell them about it. No, siree; you’re going to tell them about it yourself.”

“I can’t. I won’t. I thought once I could, but I’ve got cold feet now. Please tell them, Beanie Bean. I haven’t the nerve.”

“You’ve always said you had nerve enough for anything,” came Marjorie’s smiling retort.

“I know it. I say a great many foolish things,” Leslie admitted with a faint chuckle. “Are you going to stand by me, or are you going to quit me cold?”

“I’ll help you a little,” Marjorie conceded teasingly. “I’ll find Jerry and Danny and steer them into the library after the company have mostly gone upstairs to the ball room. Then you are to break the news to them.”

“Oh, no, I——”

“Oh, yes, you must. You haven’t the least idea of what a fine surprise you are going to give Jerry. She’d like to hear it from you, Leslie. She is very fond of you.”

“But she used to hate me like poison, both she and Leila Harper. I know they like me now,” Leslie went on quickly. “They’ve shown that much. Jerry, by asking me to be one of her bridesmaids, and Leila, by asking me to be business manager of the Playhouse. I’m beginning to feel at home with Leila, but with Jerry, somehow, it seems almost as though there was a barrier still standing between us. I get it dimly that she hasn’t, perhaps, ever forgiven me for the contemptible things I once tried to put over on you. I felt really pleased with myself about this car business, until I began thinking that she might not be pleased at all. You understand what I mean. It’s hard to try to explain.” Leslie fixed suddenly somber eyes upon Marjorie.

“Yes, I understand, and I also understand that you are a big goose, Leslie Adoree Cairns,” Marjorie made cheering response. “Let me tell you something. Jerry would not be your friend today unless she had entirely forgiven and forgotten anything she might have once laid up against you. She would have held herself aloof from you in spite of yours and my friendship. Nothing I might have said to her in your favor would have induced her to change her mind. There; does that give you more nerve?”

“Some,” Leslie brightened visibly.

“All right. Go on into the library, and wait for us. I’ll bring Jerry and Danny there as soon as I can.” Marjorie caught Leslie by the hands with a friendly little pressure, then sped away on her pleasant errand. At the doorway of the salon she turned to cast a reassuring smile at Leslie who stood gazing soberly after her.

Leslie’s hand went up in acknowledging gesture, then she started slowly for the library which was situated on the opposite side of the house from the salon.

“Leslie would like to see you and Danny in the library,” Marjorie presently murmured in Jerry’s ear during a brief lull in the new tide of congratulation that was holding the bridal pair captive in the salon.

“Yours truly,” Jerry returned in an undertone. “This ‘wish you joy’ stunt will soon be over. Tell Leslie she may expect us. Now what’s on her mind?”

“Wait, and learn,” Marjorie cryptically advised. Unauthorized by Leslie she gathered together Leila, Vera, Robin, Phil, Helen Trent, and, lastly, Lucy Warner, who stood talking to Donald Matthews with the serious air of a sage.

“You’re needed in the library to attend a special session of the Travelers,” she told each girl in turn. “Come along with me.” Nor would she give out a word of information regarding the import of the special session.

Outside the library doorway she called a halt in the procession. “We’ll wait here for Danny and Jerry. Keep back out of sight of Leslie. She’s in the library, but I’d rather she wouldn’t see you just yet.”

“What is it all about? As your business partner I think I’m entitled to an explanation. Page and Dean aren’t supposed to have secrets from each other,” Robin made plaintive plea.

“She is that aggravating.” Leila raised disapproving hands. “Wurra, wurra! What shall we do with her?”

“Pull down her curls,” Vera made a playful dive at Marjorie.

“Steal her orchids.” Phil made a pretended grab at the cluster of orchids nestling against Marjorie’s shoulder.

“Powder her nose till it looks floury,” Helen whisked a gold compact from a tiny inside pocket of her corsage and advanced upon Marjorie.

In the midst of the pretended struggle, carried on amid much subdued mirth, a calm voice inquired: “What’s going on out here?” Leslie, tired of her own company, as she continued to wait in the library for Marjorie and the Seabrookes, and strolled to the door, attracted by the sound of familiar voices, gleeful with laughter. She stood surveying the group, a trace of her former quizzical aloof attitude toward the Travelers in her face and bearing.

“Now see what you’ve done.” Marjorie merrily declared as she extricated herself from Helen’s grasp. Helen, at least, had determined to carry out her part of the punishment. “You’re discovered, and all because you made so much noise. Very well. You may now escort Leslie with all pomp and ceremony into the library. She has done something perfectly dear for Jerry and Danny. I took the liberty of bringing you girls here because I thought they would like you to share the surprise that’s coming to them, with them.”

She turned to Leslie, laying a soft little hand on the other girl’s arm. “Do you mind, Leslie? We’re all Travelers together you know, sworn to share each other’s joys and sorrows. If you do, then——”

“No, I don’t; not the least bit.” Leslie was smiling now. “I thought for a minute I did; but not now. The gang will support me during the ordeal,” she concluded humorously.

“Now it seems we know something of what we are about to be doing, and still not much of anything. Let us do ourselves proud as escorts, and then see what happens.” Leila made a sweeping bow to Leslie, crooking an inviting arm. “Will you kindly be taking my Irish arm, Miss Cairns?” she said gallantly.

“Take mine, too,” petitioned Phil, ranging herself on Leslie’s other side.

“Robin and I are going to walk ahead of Leslie, backwards, into the library, bowing all the way, and chanting her praises,” Vera announced grandly.

“Then I’ll be advising you to watch your step, or you find your two selves sitting down very suddenly,” was Leila’s mirthful warning.

“We might as well bring up the rear,” Marjorie told Helen and Lucy. “All the best positions have been snapped up.”

Leslie had hardly more than been bowed to the big leather davenport, invited by her flamboyantly polite escorts to be seated, when Jerry’s voice was heard outside the room.

“Here we are,” she called out cheerily as she and Danny entered the library. Her quick glance took in the group awaiting her with a flash of surprise. Marjorie had merely said that Leslie wished to see Danny and herself in the library. “We came down the back stairs and through the kitchen so as to dodge the crowd. What’s stirring?” she asked lightly, but her eyes directly sought Leslie’s face.

“Nothing much.” Leslie’s dark eyes were bent on Jerry with smiling friendliness.

A brief instant of silence ensued. The other bridesmaids were wondering pleasantly what it was all about. Danny was showing attentive interest, though Marjorie read complete mystification on his composed features.

“Peter,” Leslie began abruptly, then laughed, “I mean my father, is in London, you know. His private car on the railroad isn’t doing anyone any good, just at present. I thought you two,” she nodded toward the bride and groom, “might like it for your trip to the Adirondacks. I wired for it, and it’s down at the railroad yard now, ready to go out with the one-o’clock train. It will be at your disposal during your honeymoon trip, if you’ll accept the use of it. If you wish to go to any other place in it from the mountains, wire me at Hamilton twenty-four hours before you start, and I’ll gladly make arrangements for you. Our houseman, Emil, will be aboard to make you comfortable. That’s all, except that it would make both my father and me very happy to have you use it,” she ended almost humbly.

“Leslie,” Jerry put out both hands impulsively to Leslie who caught them in a close warm clasp. “You take my breath. What a lot of trouble you have been to just on purpose to make Danny and me happy. Isn’t it perfectly celostrous, Danny?” she turned eagerly to her husband.

“It is.” Danny’s hand went out to Leslie. “It’s a knock-down,” he said, his roguish smile breaking out. “I can’t think of anything to say except ‘Thank you, Leslie. You’ve surely added tonight to our happiness.’”

“Rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah!

Rah, rah for Leslie and her private car!”

Phil’s hands waved themselves above her head like triumphant banners as she sent up this joyful tribute. The other Travelers immediately took it up with a will. As a result more than one guest’s head poked itself through the arched doorway to be as quickly withdrawn with the chagrined knowledge that the cheering going on in the library seemed to be a strictly intimate matter of rejoicing.

“It’s time we were moving on, Travelers tried and true,” Marjorie presently said after the hub-bub of buoyant talk and laughter had died out. “I should like to have at least one dance with the groom before these two,” she smilingly indicated Danny and Jerry, “have run away from us; provided he should ask me for a dance,” she added innocently.

“Will you please trot a trot with me, Mrs. Macy?” Danny grinningly rose to the occasion.

“I will; I’d love to,” Marjorie came back with equal promptness. She knew Danny was feeling far more pleasantly embarrassed than appeared on the surface at Leslie’s good will offer.

“If you were a bride in old Ireland you would have to dance with every man who came to your wedding,” was Leila’s cheering remark to Jerry as the library party started for the ball room.

“Good night! I certainly have something to be thankful for,” was Jerry’s emphatic opinion.

Up the familiar two flights of stairs to the ball room, a climb now doubly endeared by memory to the Sanford contingent of the light-hearted group, an evening of further jollity awaited them.

Dancing had already begun, and a fox trot was in full swing when they entered the ball room, soon to be whirled into the ever favorite amusement of the dance. Jerry and Danny had a dance together, then did not meet again until over an hour later when they led the merry van downstairs to partake of the wedding supper which would be served in the mammoth tent on the lawn.

The bridal table was a thing of beauty in the way of decorative art, and at the many smaller tables roses formed the center decoration with a rose at each place. There were favors for the feminine fair of satin-covered, rose-topped powder boxes in delicate evening shades, and for the men there were cunning Japanese rose jars filled with delightful rose pot-pourri.

The bridal table seated the bride and groom, Mr. and Mrs. Macy, Mr. and Mrs. Seabrooke and the groomsman, Robert Seabrooke, Mr. and Mrs. Dean, Hal and Marjorie, Miss Susanna Hamilton, Irma, Susan and Constance together with their husbands, the six bridesmaids, the maid of honor, and last, but not least, Delia. Jerry had ranked Delia as among her “best pals,” declaring that Delia was too thoroughly a part of the Dean menage to be separated from it at the wedding supper.

It was close to midnight when the last toast to the bride and groom had been drunk down and the big tent had emptied itself of its merry assemblage, the majority of elder guests to take their leave and the younger set to return to the ball room for another hour of dancing.

“What Danny and I ought to do is to duck out the back way, cut and run,” Jerry told Marjorie in the privacy of her room to which she and Marjorie had slipped away from the throng after supper, there to make ready for her wedding journey. “Make up your mind there’ll be rice enough thrown at us to stop a famine in China. There’ll be confetti, too. Make no mistake about that. By the time the Seabrookes dash into their car it will be hard to say which they resemble most, the tag end of a Mardi Gras parade, or a couple of rice stalks in full crop. Anyhow, we aren’t going to duck. Danny and I are agreed upon that point. Nothing like giving our friends a chance at us,” Jerry grinned philosophically as she slipped into the smart beige colored ensemble she had chosen as a traveling costume.

When at half-past twelve she and Danny boldly essayed their departure by way of the broad flight of steps which led down from the port cochere to the drive the rice storm set in in earnest. Amid showers of rice and confetti, and a frantic hub-bub of gay-spirited farewells, the besieged couple fled across the narrow space of stone walk, gaining the welcome shelter of their waiting car. A moment, and William, the Macy’s chauffeur, had sent the trim roadster shooting forward down the drive. Jerry and Danny were started at last upon their real journey through life.

CHAPTER VIII
 
A “QUEER CATCH”

“And from today on we shall be driven slaves, bound by the order of good-intentioned Travelers to the ill-fare and welfare of Hamilton,” Leila Harper proclaimed dramatically to Leslie Cairns as she entered Room 15 at Wayland Hall in answer to Leslie’s call of “Come.”

“I can stand it if you can,” Leslie returned imperturbably as she gave a final pat to her smartly-coiffed head and viewed the effect with commendable satisfaction. “Thanks to a permanent wave. I’m not quite so ugly as I used to be,” she told Leila with a half sardonic smile.

“Tell me nothing. I am admiring you more each time I see you,” Leila spoke lightly, but there was an undercurrent of seriousness in her reply which brought a quick tinge of color to Leslie’s cheeks.

“I used to think I looked better in tailored clothes and mannish coats and hats than in ‘girlie’ stuff.” Leslie glanced down at the soft folds of the imported chiffon frock she was wearing. Silver gray, flowered with twisting sprays of scarlet poppies, with here and there a touch of scarlet satin, the dress had a peculiar individuality which was ever noticeable in Leslie’s choice of clothes.

“It was Marjorie Dean who revolutionized my ideas of how to dress,” she confided. “Even in the days when I couldn’t even think about her without hating her, I was crazy about her clothes. They were just like her—perfectly beautiful. I took a violent fancy to one dress I saw her wear. It was a peachblow silk evening frock and I made a sketch of it and had it duplicated as nearly as I could by a New York modiste. It was just before I went home from my soph year here. I intended the dress for wear at Newport. When the dress was delivered to me, in New York, I tried it on. I looked a fright in it. I was so angry over it that I sat down and tore it to shreds and then bundled the wreck into my waste basket.”

“A desperate deed,” was Leila’s light comment. Her keen mind flashed her an inkling of what Leslie was going to say next.

“I couldn’t understand then why that peachblow dress was such a frost on me. It wasn’t either the style, or the color that was unbecoming. It was the general effect of the confounded dress. It was not until long afterward, when I had come to know Marjorie, and to love her, that I found out the reason for that frock flivver. It was the combination of dress and wearer that had caught my fancy. She had given the dress its remarkable individuality. I was entirely out of harmony with her. You can understand——” Leslie paused, brows drawn in a frown.

“Yes,” Leila nodded. “It would be different now, if you were to try the same thing again as an experiment.”

“I couldn’t do that again. You see I’m different now. I’m trying to be true to myself; to express that new self even in dress. I used to think of nothing but snatching the prettiest and best of everything that happened to please me. I was crazy to be thought very individual, and all the time my true individuality was being submerged fathoms deep beneath selfishness. That peachblow dress flivver gave me a frightful jolt, I was sore over it for weeks. But it didn’t wake me up. I only wish it had,” Leslie finished with a rueful shrug.

“Are you ready?” Vera’s breezy entrance into the room precluded the possibility of any further confidence that Leslie might have felt an impulse to impart to Leila.

Leila had listened to Leslie’s unexpected revelation with inward surprise. Leslie was inclined to be silent rather than talkative when in her company, and usually impersonal in her conversation. She broke away from her own surprised thoughts with a little start to answer Vera’s question. “We are, Midget. What about the cars?”

“They’re both out on the drive; I had one of the garage men drive yours over when I went to the garage for mine.” Vera, daintily diminutive in a white pongee ensemble, waved a comprehensive hand in the direction of the drive. “I saw your roadster out in front, Leslie. Good work.”

“Yes; I brought it from the garage early this afternoon. I’ve been so busy arranging, disarranging, and then re-arranging the furniture in this room that I haven’t felt the wheel under my fingers for the past two days. I’m through here, at last. How do you like the lay-out?” she asked with a touch of concern.

“It’s lovely.” Vera glanced about her with appreciative eyes: “I adore the mulberry color scheme. Marjorie and Jerry were going to have 15 done over in fawn and blue the last year they were here. Then they went to the Arms to live, and it never happened.”

“Glad you like it. I’m going to leave it as it stands when I go home to the Hedge at Christmas—as a last good-will offering to old Wayland Hall, you know,” she explained whimsically.

“It’s by far the grandest room in the house now,” Leila said with an approving glance about her. The thick velvet rug, painted willow study table with its oval glass top, the silk-cushioned wicker chairs had all been done in a rich mulberry color. The chiffonier, dressing table and day bed were of Circassian walnut. The bed was upholstered in the same soft silk as the chairs and piled with mulberry silk cushions, corded and embroidered in dull gilt. The effect of luxurious grandeur of the rehabilitated room, however, was pleasingly lessened by the wealth of college banners and trophies, framed photographs of classmates and other treasured college souvenirs which decked the pale tan, mulberry-bordered walls.

“The Wayland Hallites will all be tumbling over one another in a wholesale rush upon Miss Remson for 15 when you are through with it,” Vera made laughing prophesy.

“I shan’t be here to see it,” Leslie commented with a faint smile. “When I leave the Hall for the Hedge I’m going to do the Arab tent-folding stunt. Nobody except you two, Doris and Miss Remson, will be in the know. Maybe I’ll will the stuff in this room to some one. Don’t know. It will all depend upon what may happen. Let X, the redoubtable sign of the unknown quantity, stand for this year’s college madness. Who knows the answer?” Leslie made a gesture of light futility.

“Who, indeed? I am no sooth-sayer of such mysteries, but I know this,” Leila pointed significantly to Leslie’s chiffonier clock, “it is twenty minutes past five, and the five-fifty train is on time. Come, let us be up, and at it.” She cast a quick appraising glance in the long wall mirror near her at the smart figure in white wash satin reflected there, then walked toward the door.

Five minutes later the three cars of the self-constituted freshie-welcoming committee were eating up the few miles of smooth pike that lay between them and the railroad station of the town of Hamilton.

“Five minutes to spare, and an almost empty platform.” Vera scanned the station platform the trio had just gained with a half disappointed pucker of brows. “I had hoped we’d see some of the old guard from Acasia House, or Silverton Hall.”

“Too early in the game. These freshies we are here to meet are early birds. I’ve been wondering, whether or not, they constitute a gang; on the order of the Sans, you know. Miss Remson showed me the list of names. I noticed that ten of the addresses were New York suburban, and two Philadelphia suburban. That looks rather pally. What?”

“That is something I gave little thought to.” Leila looked interested. “I saw the list, and jotted down the freshies’ names, but paid small attention to the addresses. Then, too, I am not familiar with New York City as you know it, Leslie.”

“Let us hope——” Vera checked herself, coloring.

“That this new aggregation won’t turn out to be a second edition of the Sans,” Leslie finished the sentence for her.

“Yes, that is what I half said,” Vera admitted, laughing.

“Go as far as you like. You won’t ruffle my feelings,” Leslie assured with an air of amusement. “If history should repeat itself, it would be one on me. Now wouldn’t it?”

“It’s far more likely to be the other way. None of the twelve may ever have heard of one another.” Vera took an optimistic view of the matter. “Hamilton has always had a large enrollment from New York City.”

“We shall soon know.” The long, sharp, echoing whistle of the incoming train from the East shrilled out upon the still afternoon air. Far down the track the five-fifty New York express shot into sight from around a curve.

Three pairs of alert eyes roved quickly up and down its length as it came to a final jarring stop in front of the station. The few persons issuing from the train were a signal disappointment to the welcoming delegation. No one of them could possibly be hailed as even an arriving student to Hamilton.

“Flop! Just like that!” Leslie simulated disappointed collapse. “Nary a freshie in sight, and the train’s getting ready to shoot.”

“Wait a minute. There’s a girl coming down the train steps, away up front.” Vera had spied a possible “catch.” “Oh, no, it isn’t,” she went on half dejectedly. Second glance had revealed the traveler as a youngster of presumably thirteen, or fourteen. “She’s just a little girl.”

In the instant of Vera’s exclamation the small figure had skipped nimbly down the last two steps of the car to the platform, laden though it was with a leather dressing-case and a good-sized black leather traveling bag.

“Upon my word! What?” broke in low, surprised tones from Leslie. “Give her another once-over, and walk out of the midget class, Vera. You have, at last, a deadly rival.”

“Why, the very idea!” Vera exhibited signal amazement. “You’re right, Leslie. She’s not a child, and she must be at least two inches shorter than I.”

Down the platform toward the astonished trio of post-graduates the diminutive figure of a girl was advancing at a brisk walk. Dressed in a pleated frock of bright green pongee which missed her knees by at least an inch, a close-fitting green hemp hat pulled down over her ears, she came on, confidently, surveying the three Hamilton girls with a pair of bright, jet-black eyes.

“Good afternoon,” she saluted with an air of calm assurance. Her bright, bird-like eyes continued to rove from one to another of the three post-graduates. “You are upper-class students, aren’t you? Awfully sweet in you to come to meet me.”

“Thank you.” Leila became spokesman, her face a courteous mask. “We are——”

“Seniors,” interposed the little girl eagerly with a quick nod of her green-capped head.

“No.” Leila’s “No” was enigmatic. “We are post-graduates. We are from Way——”

“Oh, that’s better still.” The black-eyed girl dropped her luggage to the station platform and shot forth a small deeply-tanned hand. “Shake,” she said. “Glad to meet you, I’m sure.”

“Thank you.” Leila tried to put friendliness into the handshake. Her canny Irish nature had already arrayed itself against the tiny freshman, and her too-assured manner. On the other hand, she could not help feeling amused by the newcomer to Hamilton College. “I am Miss Harper, of 19—. This is Miss Mason, also of 19—, and Miss Cairns of 19——”

“Why, you and Miss Mason have been graduates from college for three whole years, haven’t you?” exclaimed the girl, her black eyes rounding in a kind of condescending surprise. “Oh, I know. You are both of the faculty. Some honor for me, to be met at the train by faculty.” This, as she nodded acknowledgment of Leila’s introduction, shaking hands in turn with Vera and Leslie. “Pardon me, I didn’t catch your name,” she said as her hand dropped away from Leslie’s light clasp.

“I am Miss Cairns,” Leslie returned imperturbably, “but we are not——”

“My name is Jewel Marie Ogden, and I’m entering the freshman class at Hamilton College from Warburton Prep. It’s a toppo prep school not far from New York City,” interrupted the girl. “You must have heard of it.”

“I know Warburton.” Leslie’s tone was pleasantly enigmatic.

“Do you know any girls from there?” Miss Ogden asked eagerly.

“I have met a few Warburton girls.”

“Tell me their names,” persisted the curious freshman.

Leslie mentioned the names of three girls, New York acquaintances whom she had known in the old, more lawless days of her college career. She was relieved when her persistent questioner indifferently declared, “I’ve never even heard of them.”

“You would hardly know any of them, as they were graduated from Warburton several years ago.”

“How many years ago?”

“At least five, or six.” Leslie made her answer politely evasive. She was self-vexed at having unthinkingly mentioned her former Warburton acquaintances.

“Let us help you with your bags.” Leila came to Leslie’s rescue. She picked up the heavier of the freshman’s two leather bags.

“Oh, all right. So kind in you, I’m sure. I appreciate your interest in me. How far is it from the station to the campus?”

“Three miles. I must explain to you——” Leila began.

“Do you drive your own car?” calmly pursued Miss Ogden.

“Yes.” Leila’s vague sense of irritation at the inquisitive newcomer disappeared in a wild desire toward laughter. The confident assurance of this newest stranger within the gates of Hamilton challenged her ever ready sense of humor.

“We’ll have to draw lots to see with which of us Miss Ogden will ride,” Vera said gaily. To Miss Ogden she said: “We three drove to the station in separate cars. We expected to meet a crowd of twelve freshmen who were due to arrive here on the five-fifty express. They certainly failed to arrive.” She waved a significant hand at the station platform, deserted now of persons other than themselves and two or three station employes, methodically going about their business.

“Twelve freshmen. Mm-m-m. Where were they to come from?”

“Ten of them from New York, or near New York; two from Philadelphia,” Leila patiently informed.

“Let’s move on.” Leslie had possessed herself of the freshman’s other bag. She spoke with a touch of impatience. “Too bad the freshies didn’t arrive. Miss Remson will be disappointed. She——”

“Is Miss Remson the registrar?” quizzed Miss Ogden.

“No-o.” Leslie could not repress a chuckle.

“Why do you laugh?” The freshman’s tone was decidedly nettled.

“I beg your pardon,” Leslie apologized. “If you knew Miss Remson as we do you would comprehend the joke. She is the manager of Wayland Hall, and——”

“I’m going to live at Hamilton Hall,” Miss Ogden interrupted. “I gave the Hamilton bulletin a once-over, and decided that much, first thing. From the picture of it, it looked far more toppo to me than any of the other campus houses; really swagger, you know. I’ve brought myself up to believe in choosing the best, and that the best is none too good for me.”

CHAPTER IX
 
THE MISSING TWELVE

A moment of breathless silence followed Jewel Marie Ogden’s confident statement. Three pairs of eyes fixed themselves resolutely upon the complacent freshman. The three astonished post-graduates dared not so much as glance at one another. Leila was the first of the trio to command speech which should convey no hint of the mirthful state of her feelings.

“You have made a mistake about Hamilton Hall,” she said in her direct fashion. “It is not a campus boarding house. It contains only President Matthews’ and the registrar’s offices, and a number of recitation rooms.”

“Oh-h-h.” For the first time since her arrival on the station platform the cocksure stranger exhibited signs of confusion. Chagrin swept a flood of red to her round cheeks. Instant with it, she frowned, casting a suspicious glance at Leila. “You are surely not trying to kid me, are you. It seems to me that as members of the faculty, you should——”

“We are not trying to mislead you. Hamilton’s upper classmen are above such things. Furthermore, we are not members of the faculty. We——”

“But you gave me the impression you were,” flashed back the black-eyed girl half crossly. “Why couldn’t you have said in the first——”

“Pardon me. Permit me to finish what I had begun to say to you.” The courteous dignity of Leila’s tone checked the other’s discourteous speech midway in utterance. “We are post-graduates, and live at Wayland Hall, one of the campus houses. We are always glad to be of service, when we may, to entering freshmen. You have evidently made a mistake regarding Hamilton Hall. Perhaps we can help you.”

“Yes; I’ve made a stupid mistake.” The freshman pettishly shrugged her slim, green-clad shoulders. She made no effort at explaining her mistake to the nonplussed trio of would-be helpers. After a tiny interval of frowning hesitation she shot at them the brisk question: “Which of the campus houses is the best; the highest price, I mean; the one with the most class to it, you know?”

“So far as general excellence is concerned the campus houses rank the same. Wayland Hall is a trifle higher-priced than the others,” Leila answered levelly, fighting back her own rising desire to frown.

“Then I shall go there to live,” Jewel Marie Ogden announced with a decisive wag of her head. “Since you live there, you can tell me all about it. I shall ask for a single, of course. I simply can’t endure the thought of a roommate. I had a single at Warburton. Do you each have a single?”

“Miss Mason and Miss Harper room together. I have a single.” Leslie’s politely immobile features underwent a sudden purposeful tightening. She had decided to “hand the annoying freshman one” straight from the shoulder. “There are no vacancies at Wayland Hall,” she said. “I should advise you to go directly to Hamilton Hall and explain your mistake to the registrar. She may be able to secure you a room, or at least half a room, in one of the other campus houses.”

“I shall go to Wayland Hall first, and meet your Miss Remson. I imagine I can persuade her to make room for me there. I usually get whatever I want, when I make up my mind to go after it. It still lacks a week before the opening of college. A great many things may have happened by then.” Miss Ogden’s self-confidence had evidently returned with a rush.

“We are all at your service to run you up to the Hall.” This time it was Leslie who fought back a frown. Never possessed of a goodly stock of patience, she was already “fed up” with Jewel Marie.

“You may take me to the campus in your car, if you will be so kind,” was a gracious concession on the part of the freshie which Leslie accepted without enthusiasm.

“Pleased to be of service to you,” she returned briefly.

“Suppose we hurry along, then,” Vera suggested good-naturedly, “then we won’t be late to dinner. Too bad to keep Miss Remson waiting while there are so few of us in the house.”

“Your friends are awfully nice, but I choose to ride with you because I took a fancy to you,” were the freshman’s first words as Leslie presently started her roadster on the short run to the campus.

“You’d hardly say that if you knew us better,” Leslie replied a trifle coolly. “Miss Harper is considered the cleverest student who ever enrolled at Hamilton, and Miss Mason is tremendously popular.”

“Really? How nice. I’m sure I appreciate their interest in me.” The little girl’s glib reply smacked of insincerity. “Still, it was you who interested me most. You have an air about you. You’re so awfully swagger. And your dress—pardon me for mentioning it—it looks imported. Do you send to Paris for your clothes? I suppose you have been across often. You have so much individuality. I was in Paris all summer. I brought back acres of lovely clothes, too. Did I guess right? Have you been abroad often?” she inquired eagerly.

“Several times. Not as often as Miss Harper has been, though.” Leslie found secret satisfaction in her answer. “She comes from Ireland. Her father’s estate there is one of the largest in the country.”

“Ireland isn’t much of a country, though,” was the freshman’s unimpressed opinion. “She looks quite American.”

“Yes?” Leslie busied herself with her driving, vouchsafing no other reply. She was thinking that she would be better pleased to drop Miss Ogden at the Hall than she had been to meet her. She was not regretting the fact that there were no vacancies at Wayland Hall.

“Suppose I should be unable to secure a room at Wayland Hall.” Jewell Marie had begun on a new tack. “In such case, I shouldn’t mind rooming with you, if you would be willing to take me as a roommate.”

“What?” Sheer surprise brought Leslie’s pet ejaculation to her lips. She shot the car forward with a sudden jolt by way of relieving her feelings.

“Have you a large room? Is it second, or third floor; front or back?” quizzed the other girl.

“I—I—It would be impossible.” Leslie’s voice held finality. “I prefer to room alone. In the event that I should take a roommate, she would be a certain particular friend of mine, a senior, who also lives at the Hall. She is on her way to the U. S. now from Paris. Half of her room became vacant when her roommate left college last June, but I believe she and another senior have made arrangements to room together this year.”

“I’m sorry you feel like that about it. At Warburton the girls there were crazy to room with me, but I felt then just about the way you seem to feel in regard to taking a roommate. Oh, never mind. I daresay I shall have no trouble getting into Wayland Hall,” was the lofty, half piqued assertion. “Of course, I may not like the Hall. It will depend upon whether it appeals to me or not.”

“The part of the country we are now passing through is called Hamilton Estates.” Leslie was glad of an opportunity to change the subject. “We are coming to Hamilton Arms now. It was the home of Brooke Hamilton. He founded Hamilton College. His great-niece, Miss Susanna Hamilton, still lives at the Arms.”

“Is that so? I recall seeing something about Brooke Hamilton having founded the college in the bulletin I sent for. I didn’t bother myself about reading it. That sort of thing bores me dreadfully.”

“Then you are likely to be bored frequently as a freshman at Hamilton.” Leslie spoke with faint satire. “You will hear a great deal about Brooke Hamilton on the campus, and see the result of his steadfast work and genius at every turn.”

“I shall let it go in one ear and out the other,” Miss Ogden waved a dismissing hand. “I’m not interested in the historical side of Hamilton College. It’s the social side that appeals to me. I’ve heard there were more millionaires’ daughters enrolled at Hamilton than at any other college for girls in the United States. Is that true?” The bright black eyes of the freshman fastened themselves eagerly upon Leslie.

“Really, I couldn’t say. I have never stopped to think about any such thing,” Leslie answered rather brusquely.

“But you must know most of the students at Hamilton,” came insistently from the other girl.

“I know the majority of the students at Wayland Hall, but, with the exception of a few friends, such as Miss Harper and Miss Mason, I know little of their personal affairs, or financial circumstances. The social side of Hamilton is delightful, at the same time, it is decidedly democratic. Cleverness, and initiative, count for more at Hamilton than does money.”

“That sounds awfully, well—dreadfully prissy, and pokey. ‘True worth will win,’ and ‘Every day we are growing better, and better,’ and all that sort of twaddle. One hears it generally about most colleges, though.” Miss Ogden’s shoulder-shrug was eloquent of her contempt of such a state of affairs as Leslie had briefly outlined to her. “I can tell in a few days whether, or not, I’m going to like Hamilton. If it doesn’t appeal to me I shall pick another college.”

Sight of the campus momentarily turned the self-centered strange attention from her own particular aims and ambitions. “It’s a bully campus,” she exclaimed with some warmth. “It has a lot of class.” As the roadster sped on toward the entrance gates she continued to voice approval of the majestic stretch of green, stately Hamilton Hall, and its accompanying handsome campus houses.

Neither Leila’s nor Vera’s car showed on the drive leading up to Wayland Hall. Leslie guessed that they had driven to the garage, since they had preceded her on the return from the station. It therefore became her duty to escort Miss Ogden to the Hall, and there introduce her to Miss Remson. Her responsibility as one of the welcoming committee of the afternoon would then cease, she was thankfully reflecting, as she accompanied the diminutive freshman up the steps.

“Well, Leslie,” greeted the brisk little manager as Leslie entered Miss Remson’s office with her afternoon “catch,” “you are back from the station in good season. I delayed serving dinner on account of the arriving freshmen.” She rose from her desk chair and stepped forward, smiling at the new arrival in her kindly fashion.

“They never arrived, Miss Remson,” Leslie said. “This is Miss Ogden, also a freshman. She came in on the five-fifty, and we promptly captured her. The freshie twelve we went down there to meet must either have missed the train, or else changed their plans. At any rate, they failed to appear. Miss Ogden would like to talk with you about securing a room at the Hall. You will pardon me, Miss Ogden, if I leave you now. I will see you again at dinner, or else, afterward.” Leslie bowed to the freshman and made a quick escape from the office.

She went out on the veranda, there to await the coming of Leila and Vera from the garage. Her own car she had decided to leave parked on the drive in case she wished to go for an after-dinner spin. She dropped into one of the big porch chairs with an audible sigh of relief, mentally characterizing Jewel Marie Ogden as a “Razzberry.”

“Where is she? What have you done with her?” Vera Mason’s voice, low, and suspiciously near laughter, suddenly interrupted the mental analysis of the pert little freshie which Leslie was endeavoring to make.

“What?” she raised a surprised head from the hand that cupped her chin. “Where did you blow from? I never even heard you.”

“Oh, we came cross-lots, and then around the corner of the house. Where is she, Leslie?” Vera repeated, eyes roving toward the opened, screened door.

“In there, having a go with Miss Remson.” Leslie jerked her head toward the manager’s office, the beginning of her slow smile on her lips. “I introduced her to Miss Remson, then fled.”

“I should say so.” Vera’s small hands spread themselves in a gesture of comic hopelessness. “She’s a positive curiosity. I never before met another girl quite like her. What a find she would have been for a crowd of mischievous sophs. She surely would have read of herself afterward in the grind book. I didn’t dare look at either of you girls while she was talking to us.” Vera dropped, laughing, into a convenient rocker.

“She was lucky to have been met by three staid, old persons like us,” was Leila’s humorous opinion. “I am still full of pride and vainglory at having been taken for one of the faculty. And Miss Remson has yet to hear that she was guessed to be the registrar. But for the life of me, I cannot understand why Jewel Marie, and grant me, that is some name, should have made such a ridiculous mistake about Hamilton Hall. I do not understand the girl at all, and I have often thought myself an Irish lady of some understanding.”

“What I can’t understand is this. As a graduate of prep school she should be thoroughly familiar with college conditions. Hamilton Hall is sufficiently described in the Hamilton bulletin so as to differentiate it from the other campus houses. I simply couldn’t feel sympathetic with her when she admitted she had made a stupid mistake.” Vera made honest confession. “She had been so—so—well disagreeably inquisitive and self-centered. It’s not charitable to discuss her, even to you two, who saw her as I saw her, but——” Vera paused with a helpless little shrug.

“Her present manners will not carry her far at Hamilton, provided she should enroll here. I have my doubts whether she knows her own mind about it, and I have further doubts that she will be able to secure even half a room on the campus. It is a foregone conclusion that she will scorn the dormitory,” Leila predicted. “What was your opinion of her, Leslie?”

“A human interrogation point,” Leslie said laconically, then laughed. “Her college ideals seem to be about on a par with those of the Sans. Somehow, I felt sorry for her. If she stays at Hamilton she will gather some violent jolts. She’s far from stupid, but she’s a young vandal; her own worst enemy.” Leslie had decided against repeating, even to Leila and Vera, the conversation which she had held with the freshman on the way to the campus. It had been in her opinion, too trivial for repetition. She had already summed up Miss Ogden in her own mind as a social climber, ill-bred, and altogether too self-assertive. She had known plenty of such girls in the old days, when she, also, had been a law unto herself. “Jewel Marie has come to the right place to learn—about herself,” Leslie paused briefly, then went on. “She’s awfully sure she knows herself now, but she’s going to find out differently, if she sticks here at Hamilton.”

“What happened to the twelve freshies, I wonder?” Leila commented irrelevantly.

“Oh, they’ll probably bob up tomorrow. Let’s go to dinner. I’m hungry, in spite of our bitter disappointment,” Vera declared facetiously.

“Yes, we’d best beat it for the dining room. Miss Remson kept the dinner back on their account. It must be on now.” Leslie rose from the porch rocker. Her gaze straying idly toward Hamilton pike she gave vent to a quick exclamation. “Look,” she cried, pointing toward the pike. “Some little gas party stirring.”

A long line of automobiles had appeared on the pike, coming from the direction of Hamilton Estates, moving in a slow procession past the stone wall of the campus. While Hamilton Pike was a much traveled road for motorists, the line of cars moving along in slow succession was an unusual sight.

A united exclamation ascended from the three post-graduates as the smart black roadster, leading the van, turned in at the campus gateway.

“Now what do you suppose that procession means?” Vera had clasped her small hands together in astonishment.

“Search me. The driver of the head car doesn’t seem to know quite where she’s bound for.” Leslie had focussed her gaze upon the girl driver of the first car in the line. The latter had brought her roadster to a slow stop on the drive a few yards from the gateway, as she turned to address, over one shoulder, the solitary occupant in the tonneau of the machine. The high treble of her tones was carried to the three watchers on the veranda, though they could not understand what she was saying.

A moment’s further pause, then the roadster moved forward again, arriving on the main drive at the point where it diverged into its several approaches to the campus houses. The driver of the roadster headed into the Wayland Hall drive, slowing down to a quick stop at the edge of the broad graveled space in front of the Hall.

“I’ve guessed the answer,” Leslie said in an excited undertone. “I’ve counted the cars in that line. There are twelve buzz-buggies. The freshies have arrived, the missing twelve are on the job at last.”