Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College Part 5

Anne nodded and the two girls beat a hasty retreat. Elfreda's calm manner of appropriating things and Miriam's resigned air were too much for them. Once inside their room they gave way to uncontrolled merriment.

"I knew I'd laugh if I stayed there another second," confessed Anne.

"Poor Miriam. I heartily agree with Ma, don't you?"

"Yes," smiled Grace. Then, her face sobering, she added, "I am afraid she is laying up trouble for herself. I wish she hadn't told."

CHAPTER V

AN INTERRUPTED STUDY HOUR

The first two weeks at Overton glided by with amazing swiftness. There was so much to be done in the way of arranging one's recitations, buying or renting one's books and accustoming one's self to the routine of college life that Grace and her friends could scarcely spare the time to write their home letters. There were twenty-four girls at Wayne Hall.

With the exception of four soph.o.m.ores the house was given up to freshmen. Grace thought them all delightful, and in her whole-souled, generous fashion made capital of their virtues and remained blind to their shortcomings. There had been a number of jolly gatherings in Mrs.

Elwood's living room, at which quant.i.ties of fudge and penuchi were made and eaten and mere acquaintances became fast friends.

The week following their arrival a dance had been given in the gymnasium in honor of the freshmen. The whole college had turned out at this strictly informal affair, and the upper cla.s.s girls had taken particular pains to see that the freshmen were provided with partners and had a good time generally. At this dance the three Oakdale friends had felt more at home than at any other time since entering Overton. In the first place, Mabel Ashe, Frances Marlton and Constance King had come over to Wayne Hall in a body on the evening before the dance and offered themselves as escorts. Furthermore, the scores of happy, laughing girls gliding over the gymnasium floor to the music of a three-piece orchestra reminded Grace of the school dances in her own home town. J. Elfreda had also been escorted to the hop by Virginia Gaines, one of the soph.o.m.ores at Wayne Hall, who had a great respect for the stout girl's money, and it was a secret relief to Grace that she had not been left out.

Now the dance was a thing of the past, and nothing was in sight in the way of entertainment except the reception and dance given by the soph.o.m.ores to the freshmen. This was a yearly event, and meant more to the freshmen than almost any other cla.s.s celebration, for the soph.o.m.ores, having thrown off freshman shackles, took a lively hand in the affairs of the members of the entering cla.s.s. It was soph.o.m.ores who under pretense of sympathetic interest wormed out of unsuspecting freshmen their inmost secrets and gleefully spread them abroad among the upper cla.s.ses. It was also the soph.o.m.ores who were the most active in enforcing the standard that erring freshmen were supposed to live up to.

The junior and senior cla.s.ses as a rule allowed their soph.o.m.ore sisters to regulate the conduct of the newcomers at Overton, only stepping in to interfere in extreme cases.

Grace and her friends had met nearly all the members of the soph.o.m.ore cla.s.s at the freshman dance, but in reality they had very few acquaintances among them that bade fair to become their friends.

"I don't suppose we'll have the honor of being escorted to the reception by soph.o.m.ores," remarked Grace several evenings before the event, as she and Miriam strolled out of the dining room. "We'll have to go in a crowd by ourselves and look as though we enjoyed it."

"Why not stay at home?" yawned Miriam. "I'm not as over-awed at the idea of this affair as I might be."

"No," replied Grace, shaking her head. "It wouldn't do. We ought to go.

The dance is to be given in honor of the freshmen, and it's their duty to turn out and make it a success. Are you going to study your Livy to-night, Miriam?"

"If I can," replied Miriam grimly. "It depends on what my talkative roommate does. If she elects to give me another instalment of the story of her life before she came here, Livy won't stand much chance. We have progressed as far as her twelfth year, and I was just on the point of learning how she survived scarlet fever when the doctor didn't expect her to live, last night, when she happened to remember that she hadn't looked at her history lesson and I was mercifully spared further torture."

"Poor Miriam," laughed Grace. "But you could have said you didn't want her the day Mrs. Elwood brought her here. What made you decide to let her stay? I saw by your face something interesting was going on in your mind."

Miriam looked reflectively at Grace. "I don't know I'm sure just why I let her stay. It wasn't because I wished to please Mrs. Elwood, though she is so nice with all of us. I had a curious feeling that I ought to take J. Elfreda in hand. If it had been you whose room she invaded you wouldn't have hesitated even for a second. Ever since you and I settled our differences back in our high school days I've always held you up to myself as an example. Now, honestly, Grace, you would have taken her in without a murmur, wouldn't you?"

"Ye-e-s," said Grace slowly, her face flushing. "I would have said she might stay, I think. But, Miriam, you mustn't hold me up as an example.

I couldn't be more generous and loyal and broadminded than you."

"In the words of J. Elfreda, 'let's change the subject,'" said Miriam hastily. "Where's Anne?"

"Anne is out visiting the humblest freshman of them all," replied Grace.

"Her name is Ruth Denton. Anne singled her out in English the other day, sc.r.a.ped acquaintance with her, and found that she has a room in an old house in the suburbs of the town. She takes care of her own room, boards herself and does any kind of mending she can get to do from the girls to help her pay her way through college. Anne only found her last week, but I have promised to go to see her, too, and I want you to go with me."

They had paused at the door of Miriam's room. Her hand on the door, she said earnestly, "I'd love to go, Grace. I might know that you and Anne couldn't rest without championing some one's cause."

"What about you and J. Elfreda?" questioned Grace slyly.

"Oh, that's different," retorted Miriam. Opening the door she glanced about the room. Her own side was in perfect order, but J. Elfreda's half looked as though it had been visited by a cyclone. The cover of her couch bed was pulled askew and the sofa pillows ornamented the floor.

Shoes and stockings were scattered about in wild disorder. Her dressing table looked as though the contents had been stirred up and deposited in a heap in the center. From the top drawer of the chiffonier protruded a hand-embroidered collar, and a long black silk tie hung down the middle of the piece of furniture, giving it the effect of being draped in mourning.

Catching sight of this Grace pointed to it, laughing. "It looks as though she were in mourning, doesn't it?"

"For her sins, yes," replied Miriam grimly. "Isn't this room a mess, though? I've picked up her things ever so many times, but I'm tired of it. Come in here to-night, Grace. I want to see how it seems to have my dearest friend in my room, all to myself."

"All right," laughed Grace. "I'll get my books."

Five minutes later she reappeared and, cosily establishing herself in the Morris chair that Miriam insisted she should occupy, the girls began their work. For the time being silence reigned, broken only by the sound of turning leaves or an occasional question on the part of one or the other of the two. Finally Miriam closed her book triumphantly. "That's done," she exulted. "Now for my English."

"I wish I was through with this," sighed Grace, eyeing her Livy with disfavor. "I never do learn my lessons quickly. I have to study ever so much harder than you and Anne. Now, if it were basketball, then everything would be lovely. Still, you're a champion player, too, Miriam, so you've more than your share of accomplishments. Anne, too, excites my envy and admiration. She can act and stand first in her cla.s.ses, too, while I have to work like mad to keep up in my cla.s.ses and am not a star in anything. Perhaps during this year I shall develop some new talent of which no one suspects me. It won't be for study, that's sure."

Miriam smiled to herself, but said nothing. She knew that Grace already possessed a talent for making friends and an ability to see not only her own way clearly, but to smooth the pathway of those weaker than herself that was little short of marvelous. She knew, too, that before the end of the school year Grace's remarkable personality was sure to make itself felt among her fellow students.

"What are you smiling to yourself about, Miriam?" demanded Grace.

But at this juncture the door was burst violently open and J. Elfreda Briggs dashed into the room, threw herself face downward on her disordered bed and gave way to a long, anguished wail.

CHAPTER VI

A DISTURBING NOTE

Miriam and Grace sprang to their feet, regarding the sobbing, moaning girl in blank amazement.

"What on earth is the matter, Elfreda," said Miriam.

The answer was another long wail that made the girls glance apprehensively toward the door.

"She'll have to be more quiet," said Grace, "or else every girl in the house will hear her and come in to inquire what has happened." Going over to the couch, she knelt beside Elfreda and said almost sharply, "Elfreda, stop crying at once. Do you want all the girls in the house to hear you?"

"I don't care," was the discouraging answer, but in a lower tone, nevertheless; but she continued to sob heart-brokenly.

"Tell me about it, Elfreda," said Grace more gently, taking one of the girl's limp hands in hers. "Something dreadful must have happened. Have you had bad news from home?"

"No-o-o," gasped the stout girl. "It's the soph.o.m.ores. I can't go to the reception. They won't let me." Her sobs burst forth afresh.

Grace rose from her knees, casting a puzzled glance toward Miriam. "I wonder what she means." Then placing her hands on Elfreda's shoulders she raised her to a sitting position on the couch and dropping down beside her put one arm over her shoulder. Miriam promptly sat down on the other side, and being thus supported and bolstered by their sympathetic arms, Elfreda gulped, gurgled, sighed and then said with quivering lips, "I wish I had taken your advice, Grace."

"About what?" asked Grace. Then, the same idea occurring to them simultaneously, Miriam and Grace exchanged dismayed glances. Elfreda had come to grief through reporting the two mischievous soph.o.m.ores to the registrar.

"About telling the registrar," faltered Elfreda, unrolling her handkerchief from the ball into which she had rolled it and wiping her eyes.

"I'm so sorry," Grace said with quick sympathy.