Jane Allen, Junior Part 4

"My freckles might float away like powder from the b.u.t.terfly's wings," with a weird fluttering of Dozia's long arms.

"But hair!" exclaimed Judith. "Think of turning me into a golden blonde with eyes like blue-bells under dewiness----"

"It cannot be! It cannot be!" moaned Dozia. "Instead we must raid the place and banish the traitor. How about that for stunt night with the sophs?"

"Wonderful!" sang out Juliette De Puy. She had listened and waited with a certain reserve for which this capable Juliette was famous, but now that the story was told she deigned to add that one word "wonderful." Everyone looked at her suddenly.

"And have you tell the sophs," blurted out Nettie Brocton. "Dozia Dalton you have spoiled it all. Didn't you see we had company?"

"Never noticed the lovely Juliette. Never mind Julie, you may tell the crowd all you've heard," condescended the redoubtable Dozia. "We enjoyed having you and it is perfectly all right."

"Thanks. Come over to our camp some night and I'll do as much for you. I just came in this afternoon, you know, to sub on the ball team."

"Instead of which you subbed on the gossip club," finished Jane, jumping up. "I've got to go back to my room. Don't let me hurry anyone," she said indifferently. Then, just as a strange figure turned from the big boxwood b.u.mper into the lane, Jane escaped.

She hurried to meet Shirley Duncan.

CHAPTER V

THREATS AND DEFIANCE

The girl approaching was not so easy to appraise as her unusual costume proclaimed her to be. Jane realized this; country girls are apt to make such mistakes, and even dinner gown tags on school day togs would hardly be proof positive of inferiority, Jane reflected.

Shirley Duncan swung along with a careless stride, but even the pose might cover embarra.s.sment. Jane sent a welcome smile out to meet her and the stranger jerked her head rather saucily in recognition.

"Have I kept you waiting?" asked Jane in the best of humor.

"Well, rather," replied the freshman, "but I knew better than to break in on that crowd," with an arm sweep toward the ball field.

"Can we go up to your room for a few minutes?"

Jane thought quickly. To go to her room might mean an interruption from Judith; also it might mean the danger from an undisciplined voice.

"I have been indoors so much today," she replied, "and our lovely days are flying so, suppose we go over to the rose summer house? We won't be interrupted there and we will both have the benefit of a longer time out of doors. I suppose you feel it, freshmen usually do." They were moving toward the rustic house that looked rather desolate in its coat of faded rose leaves.

"Oh, freshmen feel everything, I suppose," replied the other, "but I can't see why we should be openly abused for all that. I heard there was no more hazing allowed in colleges?"

"We have never hazed at Wellington," Jane said rather indignantly, "and Miss--Miss Duncan, I am sure no one will ever attempt the least abuse even in a spirit of fun at this college."

"They won't, eh?" type broke out in that challenge. "Well, that is just what I wanted to see you about. I suppose I'm not good enough to go to your rooms." Lip curled, nostrils quivered and head jerked up impertinently with that accusation.

"Why, Miss Duncan--" floundered Jane.

"Why don't you call me Shirley? Isn't that a swell enough name?"

interrupted the other.

Jane dropped down on the summer house seat with a thud. Here was a problem surely. Antagonism fairly blazed in the girl's dark eyes.

Yet she was a stranger--actually Jane's guest.

"Shirley is a very sweet name and I have always loved it," replied Jane frankly. "But my dear young lady, we must not quarrel. We shall never get acquainted that way."

"Oh no, the juniors may do all the quarreling. We freshies must just turn the other cheek of course. But I suppose you know that long lanky friend of yours, they call some foolish name like Doses, hit me on the head with her hammer the other night?"

"You mean Dozia Dalton--yes, she told me her hammer slipped--"

"Slipped indeed!" more scorn and lip curling. "She deliberately dropped it on my head--"

"And you threw it at the mirror," broke out Jane, weary of acting the angel without gaining the slightest return from this rude girl.

"Yes, I broke it and I'm glad of it! Now what are you going to do about it?" Two hands not really pretty, dug deep into the satin skirt pockets, and Shirley Duncan towered over Jane Allen defiantly.

"What am I going to do about it?" repeated Jane. But the irony was lost on her companion. "You did not ask to see me just to be offensive?" parried Jane.

"No indeed, I wanted to remind you I am in this college because your father gave a scholarship, and I suppose that would mean you might be nice to me at least."

"I'm sure I want to be," Jane quickly toned down. "But no girl can make friends with another when she insists on quarreling. I am willing to pay for the broken mirror--"

"You don't need to trouble yourself; if it is to be paid for I'll do it myself. My folks wouldn't let me--sponge on anybody."

"Sponge," repeated Jane, frowning with something like disgust.

"Please don't use such horrible slang."

"Oh my! I suppose a scholarship girl must be a mouse or a kitten.

Well, when I took it I understood no one in Wellington was to know about it and that the scholarship girl had equal rights with every other girl."

"So she has and no one here does know who wins the scholarship."

Somehow Jane stumbled over the word. It was fraught with terror in the hands of this impossible creature.

"Well, I don't believe it" (no regard for Jane's veracity), "but I'll hold on awhile and see." (Condescending, thought Jane.) "My folks always wanted me to go to college and I just came to satisfy them. I don't give a snap for all the high brow stuff and I might as well tell you I am nearly dead with homesickness." (She didn't look it, Jane observed.) "But I'm no quitter, so I intend to stick. Now let's get back to the girl who hit me. Can you make her apologize?"

"No," said Jane flatly, "and what's more I have no intention of trying to. You brought trouble on yourself by going into Dozia's room without being invited. You should know that the younger girls, the freshmen, are not supposed to take such privileges. Then when you annoyed my friend" (Jane almost kissed the word) "she told you outright she was busy and did not want to be bothered. Next thing, you deliberately sat under her stepladder. Do you like to get in the open path of tack hammers?"

"Love to," sneered Shirley. "And I'm crazy about playing ball with them when mirrors are up for back stops. All right, go ahead, as far as you like. I believe now what I heard about the Jane Alien crowd.

A lot of goody goodies, too stuck up to bother with country girls."

Jane jumped from her seat and gasped at an interruption but did not succeed in sustaining it. "But I've got friends around here who know the ropes. They are not freshies either, so don't bother about me, Miss Allen. I'll see about the looking-gla.s.s and the girl who hit me with her hammer."

Jane let her go, was actually glad to see the last of the satin skirt as it swished out into the winding path, nor did she immediately follow it. Instead she sat there, tearing little red rose hips from the tenacious vines and tossing them away regardless of their artistic value as decorative winter berries.

"Tragic," she muttered, "positively tragic. And that is what my darling dad wasted a perfectly good scholarship on." Thoughts of "dad" mercifully intervened and saved the girl's temper further violence. "But what puzzles me is how that girl ever won the scholarship?" Jane silently questioned, and in that unspoken sentence she unconsciously shaped the key to fit the mystery.

How did this girl win the scholarship? For some moments longer Jane sat there. She went over again the incident of Dozia's tack hammer.

That she could depend absolutely on Dozia, and knew this strange girl had done more than sit in the path of the showering tack hammer was irrefutable.

"Dozia was a little bit reckless of course," admitted the mentor, "and she did seem to coddle the fact that her hammer fell on Shirley's head. I recall she even said she was glad it hit her and hoped the blow would send the freshie home to her 'maw.'"

Jane wanted to laugh but she refrained. There was a strange proctor in office this year to be considered. If dear old Miss Weatherbee were still in charge it might be much easier to explain the accident.