Part 6 (1/2)
”Forty minutes! Who cares to eat ice cream? Back into the buzz wagons, all of you. I like the taste of ice cream in my mouth better than the feel of those station boards under my feet for a long stretch of forty minutes. We can go to the Ivy, that little white shop on Linden Avenue.
It is only two blocks from the station. We shall have time and to spare.”
Leila called the latter part of her remarks over her shoulder.
Immediately she had read the notice she turned and started for the station yard. Her companions followed her with alacrity. They were no more in favor than she of a tedious wait on the platform for a belated train.
”One of us had better call time,” wisely suggested Helen, as they flocked into the pretty white and green tea room. ”Otherwise we are likely to overstay our limit. We must be out of here ten minutes before the train is due. You had better, Luciferous. You are infallible.”
”Much obliged.” A faint pink crept into Lucy's fair pale skin. Lucy was secretly proud of her own reliability. Turning her pretty gold wrist watch on her wrist so that she could see the face of it, she watched it with an eager eye from then on. The watch had been a gift to her from Ronny the previous Christmas, and was her most valued possession.
Fortune favored them with prompt service on the part of a waitress. They had only comfortably finished their ice cream, however, when Lucy announced that it was time to go. Returning to the station platform, they found only a sprinkling of students awaiting the coming train.
”What has become of Ethel Laird, I wonder?” asked Jerry. ”I hope she hasn't forgotten she is on this welcoming committee. Suppose about twenty or thirty freshmen stepped off the five o'clock train. It would keep Marjorie and me busy chasing up and down this old board walk handing out welcomes.”
”Now where do you suppose we would be during that time?” demanded Leila.
”Oh, you would be a help, undoubtedly,” conceded Jerry, with a boyish grin. ”I forgot about you folks. I was merely thinking of us from our committee standpoint. We'll have to guess whether these arrivals are fres.h.i.+es or not. I don't know all the Hamilton students and where they belong. It will be about my speed to walk up to some timid-looking damsel and gallantly offer my a.s.sistance only to find out she is a proud and lofty senior.”
”There are few faces at Hamilton which I don't know,” Leila a.s.sured.
”Behave well and stick to me and I'll promise you will not do anything foolish. I can pick a fres.h.i.+e from afar off.”
”Miss Remson told me yesterday that she understood there were one hundred and ten freshmen applications this year,” said Katherine. ”We are to have three fres.h.i.+es at Wayland Hall.”
”One hundred and ten democrats would help our cause along,” remarked Lucy. ”Only we need not expect any such miracle.”
”With the start we now have, if even half of the freshmen were for college equality, it would be a hard blow to the Sans. I wish it might be like that.” Vera clasped her bits of hands, an unconsciously pretty fas.h.i.+on of hers when she earnestly desired something to come to pa.s.s.
”The Sans will fight for every inch of the ground this year. See if they don't,” Katherine Langly spoke with half bitter conviction. ”Do you think for an instant that they will sit still and see democracy win? Leslie Cairns loves power. Joan Myers is determined to have her own way.
Natalie Weymain is vain. Dulcie Vale is vindictive. Evangeline Heppler and Adelaide Forman are thoroughly disagreeable. Margaret Wayne is malicious and scandalously untruthful. There! That is my candid opinion of those seven students. I have always longed to express it.”
”I see you have found your tongue. I congratulate you.” Leila beamed approval of such refres.h.i.+ng frankness on the part of quiet little Katherine.
”We had better enter a conspiracy to spend our spare time rus.h.i.+ng fres.h.i.+es,” proposed Helen. ”When they are with us they will be out of mischief.”
”First catch your hare,” advised Muriel. ”Maybe the fres.h.i.+es would not take kindly to the continuous round of pleasure we arranged for them. I don't believe there is any one infallible method of winning them over.”
”Oh, I wasn't serious,” Helen said, with her roguish, indolent smile.
”While I don't object to helping the great cause along, I am not yearning to become a polite entertainer. I'd probably be a most impolite one before the end of a week, if I had to rush fres.h.i.+es as a steady task. I am afraid few of them would turn out to be as amiable, beautiful, jolly, delightful, agreeable and companionable as good old Jeremiah here.”
”An awful waste of adjectives,” was Jerry's terse reception of this extravagant tribute to herself. ”Here comes the train.” Despite her lack of sentiment, she flashed Helen a smile of comrades.h.i.+p.
The belated express thundered into the station with a force which shook the platform. Instinctively the scattered groups of persons on the platform drew back a trifle as the first three coaches shot past. It was a long train and it did not take more than a second glance down its length to note that the last coach was quite different from the others.
”Private car!” Leila's low exclamation held more than surprise. It was sarcastically significant. ”Behold the Philistines are upon us,” she continued in pretended consternation.
”We needn't mind a little thing like that,” Jerry a.s.sured with a genial smile. ”They won't be met and fussed over by us. I wonder where the mob is who ought to be at the station to greet these celebrated geese?”
”They certainly chose a poor day for a triumphal return.” Muriel indulged in a soft chuckle at the Sans' expense. She broke off in the middle of it with a jubilant cry of, ”Girls; there's Hortense just getting off the train three coaches up the platform!”
”Hooray! Nella and Selma are with her!” This from Leila, whose eyes had picked up dignified Hortense Barlow descending the car steps immediately.