Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College Part 17

Come to me this afternoon after my last cla.s.s and I will give you my answer."

Grace left the cla.s.s room far more cheerfully than she had entered. Her own vindication had not impressed her half so deeply as Miss Duncan's apparently lenient att.i.tude toward the girl who had been false to herself and to Overton.

CHAPTER XVI

A DISGRUNTLED REFORMER

Grace was not disappointed. Miss Duncan graciously agreed to let the culprit off with a severe reprimand. Grace ran joyfully down the campus to Holland House. She wished to tell Mabel Ashe the good news.

"Horrid little copy-cat! She doesn't deserve it," was Mabel's unsympathetic comment as Grace related what had pa.s.sed between Miss Duncan and herself. "You know who she is, don't you, Grace?"

Grace shook her head. "I haven't the slightest idea," she said soberly.

"I can't believe it was any one at Wayne Hall. You don't suspect any one, do you?"

"No," returned Mabel. "I haven't become very well acquainted with the freshmen this year, so far. I suppose you did right in not exposing this girl. I don't know whether I should be quite as charitable as you. If you hadn't had a witness who saw you write the theme, you would now be under a cloud. What I can't forget is the fact that she went so far as to try to make Miss Duncan believe that you really copied it. Miss Duncan said she insisted that the theme had disappeared from her room.

Think how foolish she must have felt when Miss Duncan confronted her with the truth yesterday afternoon and made her confess!"

"Oh, Mabel!" Grace's distressed tone caused the pretty senior to rise and stand in front of Grace's chair.

"What's the matter, Gracie," she said, taking Grace's hands in hers.

Grace raised her gray eyes to meet the inquiring brown ones bent on her.

"I'm so sorry," she said sadly, "but the girl who took my theme does live in Wayne Hall."

"How do you know?" asked Mabel quickly.

"From what you said," returned Grace. "If she accused me of taking her theme from her room, isn't it highly probable that her room is in Wayne Hall? I wouldn't be likely to go into one of the campus houses to steal a theme, would I? I must have dropped it in the hall or on the stairs that night, and she must have come into the house directly after I did and picked it up. I don't like to believe that one of our girls did it,"

Grace concluded sorrowfully, "but I am afraid it's true."

"Some day you'll stumble upon the guilty girl when you least expect to find her," prophesied Mabel. "Now forget her, and tell me what you and your chums are going to do over Thanksgiving. I am going to a dance on Thanksgiving night with a Willston man. His fraternity is giving it."

"I don't know any college men in this part of the world," sighed Grace regretfully, "therefore I never have any invitations to man dances."

"Wait until my cousin comes up here. He is a Columbia man and you will like him immensely. I know a number of the Willston men, too. Why don't you go with me to the football game Thanksgiving Day? You are not going away, are you? It is only a four days' vacation, you know."

"No, we haven't any particular place to go. Last year we spent our Thanksgiving vacation with the Southards in New York. You knew about that."

"You lucky things," laughed Mabel. "I envy you your friendship with Everett Southard and his sister."

"Some day you must meet them," planned Grace. "They are delightful people. Mr. Southard is appearing in Shakespearian roles in the large cities this season, and Miss Southard is in Florida visiting friends. If they were in New York they would insist on our going to them for the holidays. I must run away now. It is almost dinner time and I promised to hook up Elfreda's new gown. Miriam went over to Morton House with Gertrude Wells, and won't return until late, and Elfreda is going to dine with the Anarchist."

"Really!" exclaimed Mabel. "Elfreda seems to be coming to the front this year, doesn't she!"

"She is turning out splendidly," said Grace warmly. "She stands high in every one of her cla.s.ses, and she is so ridiculously funny that we would feel lost without her. She says things in the same droll way that a young man we know in Oakdale does. But I mustn't stay another minute.

Good-bye, Mabel, I'll see you in a day or two."

Grace darted across the campus and ran rapidly in the direction of Wayne Hall. She loved to run and her fleetness of foot had served her well on more than one occasion. Only that day she had complained to Miriam that it had been years since she had indulged in a good run. Miriam had laughingly accused her of still being a tomboy, and had proposed that they take a long tramp on Sat.u.r.day. "You can run up and down the road to your heart's content when we get far enough away from Overton so that no one will see you and think you have suddenly gone crazy," Miriam had declared good-naturedly.

Bounding up the steps two at a time, Grace reached the front door of Wayne Hall without drawing a laboring breath. "I'm certainly in good condition," she laughed to herself, inhaling deeply and inflating her chest. "I hope I'll be chosen to play on the team this year." She rang a third time before the door was opened by Emma Dean, who grumbled at her repeated ringing and then announced that she had rung six times that afternoon before any one had condescended to let her in. "Have you seen Elfreda?" flung back Grace on her way upstairs.

"You'd better hurry," called Emma after her. "I heard her growling to herself as I pa.s.sed her door."

"I began to think you were never coming," greeted Elfreda, as Grace burst into the room, her eyes bright and her cheeks becomingly flushed from her recent run across the campus.

"Why didn't you ask some one else to hook you up?" retorted Grace mischievously, throwing down her gloves and beginning on the top hook.

"Because I wanted you to see how nice I looked in this new frock,"

replied the stout girl. "If I had not stipulated that you were to perform this extremely important service for me, you would have in all probability absented yourself from my immediate vicinity, unmindful of the rare exhibition of youth and beauty that was being prepared for you in my room."

"If I had closed my eyes I could have sworn it was Miss Atkins," laughed Grace. "Even she herself couldn't fail to recognize that impersonation.

It's ridiculously funny, Elfreda, but I wish you wouldn't do it." As Grace and Elfreda were standing with their backs directly away from the door neither girl saw the tense little figure that stood rigid, one hand on the door casing, listening with eyebrows drawn fiercely together. An instant later it had vanished. Grace, after triumphantly placing the last hook in its eye, began helping Elfreda find her handkerchief and gloves. "Now you have everything you need," she declared, holding up the stout girl's coat. "Do you wait here for your dinner partner or does she call for you?"

"She is coming in here for me," answered Elfreda. "I wish she would hurry along. I haven't had even a cracker to eat since luncheon and I'm famished."

"I think I'll go if you don't mind. I'm hungry, too. I must see if Anne has come in yet. Miss Atkins will be here in a moment. Good-bye. I hope you will have a nice time. I am so glad she invited you."

Grace crossed the hall to her own room. Anne was rearranging her hair preparatory to going down to dinner.

"I think I'll do my hair over again," decided Grace. "That run across the campus shook most of my hairpins loose. It will be at least ten minutes before the bell rings, so I shall have plenty of time." But her hair proved refractory and the clang of the dinner bell found her tucking in a last unruly lock. "I'm going on downstairs, Grace," called Anne from the doorway.

"All right," answered Grace. As she pa.s.sed Elfreda's room she heard her name uttered in a sibilant whisper. Wheeling at the sound, Grace stepped to the stout girl's door. Elfreda drew her in and, closing the door, said nervously: "What do you suppose has happened? I waited and waited for the An--Miss Atkins and she didn't appear, so I went down to her room and found the door closed. I knocked at least a dozen times, until my knuckles ached, but not a sound came from within. Then I came back to my room and waited. She hasn't materialized yet. I went down to her door just now and knocked again, but, nothing doing." In her agitation Elfreda dropped into slang.

"That is strange," agreed Grace. "Do you suppose she has been taken suddenly ill?"

"Search me," declared Elfreda wearily. "She ought to be called the Riddle. She is past solution, isn't she? I'm hungry, and if she doesn't appear within the next five minutes I'm going to put on my old brown serge dress and go down to dinner. I'm not used to being invited out to dine and then deserted before I've even had a chance to look at the bill of fare."

"Never mind," comforted Grace. "I'll ask you to dinner at Martell's next week and won't desert you either. Wait a minute. I will go down to the dining room and see if by any chance she could be there. Then I'll come upstairs and let you know. If she isn't there you had better change your gown and go downstairs with me."

"She isn't there," reported Grace, five minutes later. "Miss Taylor is, but her roommate is missing."

"'Parted at the altar,'" quoted Elfreda dramatically. "Will you please unhook me?"

For the second time that night Grace busied herself with the troublesome hooks and eyes. Elfreda jerked off the new gown. Her temper was rising.

"This is what comes of cultivating freaks," she muttered, lapsing into her old rudeness. "I might have known she'd do something. Catch me on any more reform committees!"

"The way of the reformer is hard," soothed Grace, as she picked up the gown Elfreda had thrown in a heap on the floor, and folding it, laid it across the foot of the stout girl's couch.

Elfreda, who was reaching into the closet for her brown serge dress, wheeled about, regarding Grace solemnly. "Too hard for me," she declared. "Hereafter, the Anarchist can attend to her own reformation.

The Briggs Helping Hand Society has disbanded."

CHAPTER XVII