Peggy Parsons a Hampton Freshman Part 4

"Yes," agreed Katherine once more, "that's all you'd have to go on. _I_ think you are good at writing, but then I think you can do anything. I can't write myself, so my opinion really isn't so very valuable. You'd have to do it without encouragement."

"I want her respect, Katherine; I want to have her think in the end that I'm the best writer that ever took Thirteen, but-it would mean giving most of my time and all my energies to my English-and I might not turn out any good in the end."

"True," Katherine again attacked her room-mate's problem, "and if you never touch pen to paper again" (the phrase had them both) "you can soon forget this hurt to-day and you need not put yourself in a similar position again, and your main work can go to-well, to math or anything else."

Peggy paced up and down the room and Katherine, never doubting but that this was the most serious problem that had ever been fought out in college, followed her room-mate's figure with eyes that brimmed with sympathy and a heartful of affectionate loyalty that longed to be of help and could not.

"Say, Peggy," she said suddenly, "I want to take a note over to the note-room for one of the girls in my Latin cla.s.s. Don't you want to come along? This doesn't have to be decided all at once, does it?"

Peggy silently slipped on her sweater again and the girls ran across the campus to the big recitation hall and thence down the bas.e.m.e.nt steps to the note-room. Crowds of girls were swarming into and out of this place where, on little boards-one to each cla.s.s-the girls left their communications for each other under the proper initials. In so large a college it was necessary to have some easy and direct means of reaching each other without delay or the expense of telephone or postage. Every girl went to the note-room once every day-and a particularly popular one ran down after each cla.s.s to gather in the sheaves of invitations, business notes, and club meeting announcements that were sure to be hers.

Peggy and Katherine squeezed through the crowds, greeting many other freshmen as they were suddenly brought face to face, and at length they stood before the freshman bulletin and Katherine stuck her note in the rack at the letter R, while Peggy glanced, from habit, back to her own initial. There were many little important-looking notes stuck upright over the letter P, and Peggy fingered them over listlessly. Delia Porter, Helen Pearson, Margaret Perry and so on, until all at once from the most inviting looking of all leaped her own name, Peggy Parsons, in perfectly unfamiliar writing-writing almost too a.s.sured to be that of a freshman at all.

Wonderingly she unfolded the little square, and then, jammed in by the other girls as she was, she flung her arms around Katherine's neck and cried out with a sob of joy, "Oh, kiss me, Katherine!-they want my poem for the _Monthly_!"

From dull gray the world leaped to glowing radiance. For a freshman to be invited to give a poem to the _Monthly_! Her great problem was solved automatically, and Peggy would be an author from that time forth until she should be graduated.

"Let's see your note," urged Katherine, when they were out of the crowd once more. "I want to look at it myself."

Peggy eagerly unfolded the precious thing again and read, while Katherine looked over her shoulder:

"_My dear Miss Parsons_-or wouldn't it be more like college to say Peggy?-I'm writing to ask you if we may not have for the _Monthly_ that little poem of yours that was read in Thirteen to-day? There are some changes in four of the lines, and if you'll come over to my room this afternoon, I want you to make them yourself so that there will be as little as possible of my scribbling in it. Hoping to see you,

_Ditto Armandale_, _Monthly Board_, _Room 11, Macefield House_."

"Why, Peggy, do you remember that Ditto Armandale we met that day last year while you were standing under the waterfalls? And it was the sight of her and all those other Hampton girls that first made you want to come here! Miss Armandale invited me to come and see her that day, when I should get to Hamp, and she said you were just the sort that ought to come here-oh, isn't it _fine_, Peggy!"

"Yes, but look here," said Peggy, who was still reading over her note, "she says 'changes in four of the lines.' There were only four lines _in_ it, Katherine, you remember."

"That's queer. But I'd go anyway."

"Of course I will,-I don't suppose she'll remember me, but I'm glad she's the one, she looked so nice and considerate that day."

"What are you going to wear?"

"It's an invitation house. I suppose a person ought to be awfully dressy," Peggy said doubtfully.

"I don't know," murmured Katherine. "I shouldn't think it would be necessary to dress much if you were just one of the mult.i.tude like me.

But being one of the youngest authors in college, it's different with you."

With arms around each other's shoulders, the room-mates strolled back across the campus toward Ambler House. The sunlight shone over the campus and over the moving army of girls going in every direction across it, for it was just at the end of recitation hour. None of them wore hats, so that the light gleamed down on their hair. Most of them wore white sweaters or sport coats, and under the arm of each was tucked a notebook or a stack of study volumes.

All of them walked in pairs, as Katherine and Peggy were doing, or in laughing groups that gathered numbers as they went on.

Peggy and Katherine began to have an intimate sense of belonging to it all. Hampton was becoming _their_ college in a way it had not been before. This campus and those red brick buildings, those laughing crowds of girls, their hair blowing in the wind-these things were to represent their whole world for four years, and, tightening their hands on each other's shoulders, they were glad it was to be so.

And Peggy held crushed in her free hand a tiny wad of paper, the tangible evidence that this first year promised success to her.

CHAPTER IV-NEW PAINT AND POETRY

A summons to visit an invitation house!

And on such a gratifying mission! Peggy smiled as she slipped into her rose-colored taffeta, and Katherine, watching her with pride, decided that "the poet's look" had come back.

"Well, good luck, room-mate," she called as Peggy went out the door, and she received one radiant glance in answer from the departing young bard.

The pleasantly warm tone of the rose-colored taffeta buoyed up the new genius' spirit all across the campus until she came out into Green Street and beheld the imposing reality of Macefield House directly before her.

She had the fleeting and sn.o.bbish wish that all the girls of her cla.s.s could see her turning thus a.s.suredly up the walk to the famous senior house. To be sure, she couldn't help casting a cold look of disapproval at the porch-it was the messiest porch she had seen anywhere in Hampton, but she supposed the celebrity inhabitants of Macefield were all too busy with their dinners and dances and social duties generally to notice how careless and extremely-impromptu-the approach to their home appeared.

The campus house porches all had chairs out on them and comfortable magazine tables-there were still a lot of hot fall days to look forward to-but on the Macefield House porch there was nothing. And somebody had carelessly left an old ladder lying down right in front of the steps!

Peggy had a very hard time scrambling over it. Perhaps it was just as well the other Freshman girls weren't there to see her after all. She must admit there was considerable loss of dignity involved in scrambling over an old paint-specked ladder that was so completely in her way.

Her face was flushed to the color of her dress when she finally climbed the steps. Even in her confusion she noticed that the porch floor looked strangely _new_ and that it seemed to have a tendency to cling a little and impede her footsteps.

"It's probably because I'm getting scared that I imagine my feet stick to the boards," she mused uncomfortably. "I don't know how a person should act at an invitation house. Whether you're supposed to walk right in or--"

That part of her problem was settled immediately, for she found the door locked. Gathering what self-confidence she could, she pressed the bell.

Uneasily she shifted from one to the other of the sticking feet. No one came. She knew it was rude to ring twice, but she felt she would never have the heart to come again if she didn't see the great editor of the Monthly now and get everything arranged. So she pressed a shaking finger nervously against the bell, and held it so until she heard a rustling inside the house. The door opened-just a crack-and a surprised head poked itself into view. Peggy had a jumbled and confused impression all at once. She was aware of the speechless amazement in the eyes, also that the face was not that of a girl at all, but belonged to a rather severe looking and decidedly middle-aged woman.

With a little jump of her heart she realized that she was meeting the gaze of the matron of Macefield House. Campus house matrons were regarded in the light either of common enemies or motherly souls, whose hearts responded to all college-girls' troubles. But what might the matron of an invitation house be like? Peggy thought she must be something incomparably greater.

"Is Miss Armandale in?" she asked weakly.

"She may be, but she'd be up in her room," answered the head ungraciously enough, while its owner apparently did not intend to admit the enemy within the fortifications, since no move was made to open the door wider.

"Well--" murmured Peggy, with a sudden realization that she was standing in wet paint,-"shall I-go up-and-and find out?"

"By the back door if you wish," said the head witheringly. "If you came in this way, you'd _Track in the Paint_."

Peggy's heart leaped. A crimson tide went over her. She shut her eyes before the accusing and indignant gaze of the matron.

So that was what the ladder had been for, and any stupid but she would have known! With dread she looked back along the porch the way she had come and there, sure enough, was a procession of marring footprints in the new grey of the flooring!

She had climbed with great difficulty over the barrier that had been deliberately placed there to prevent such a thing.

And Ditto and the other girls of the house would have to have the porch all done over on account of a silly freshman. For the girls in the invitation houses carried their own expenses, leasing their houses and then conducting them like any tenants.

"I will go 'round the back way, then," she gasped to the glowering matron. Her one thought was to escape the baneful glare of those eyes.