Ruth Fielding At College Part 22

"I saw her with another hat on to-day," said Ruth, reflectively.

"That's so! It was the one she wore the day she arrived," Helen said quickly. "A summer hat. I wonder what she did bring in that trunk, anyway? She has displayed no such charming array of finery as I expected."

Ruth did not discuss this point. She was more interested in the state of Rebecca's mind, though, of course, there was not much time for her to give to anything but her studies and regular duties now, for as the term advanced the freshmen found their hours pretty well filled.

Scrub teams for certain indoor sports had been made up, and even Jennie Stone took up the playing of basketball with vigor. She was really losing flesh. She kept a card tacked upon her door on which she set down the fluctuations of her bodily changes daily. When she lost a whole pound in weight she wrote it down in red ink.

Their activities kept the three friends well occupied, both physically and mentally. Yet Ruth Fielding could not feel wholly satisfied or content when she knew that one of her mates was in trouble. She had taken an interest in Rebecca Frayne at the beginning of the semester; yet of all the freshmen Rebecca was the one whom she knew the least.

"And that poor girl needs somebody for a friend--I feel it!" Ruth told herself. "Of course, she is to blame for the situation in which she now is. But for that very reason she ought to have somebody with whom to talk it over."

Ruth determined to be that confidant of the girl who seemed to wish no a.s.sociate and no confidant. She began to loiter in the corridors between recitation hours and at odd times. Whenever she knocked on Rebecca's door there was no reply. Other girls who had tried it quickly gave up their sympathetic attentions. If the foolish girl wished for no friends, let her go her own way. That became the att.i.tude of the freshman cla.s.s.

Of course, the soph.o.m.ores followed the lead of the seniors and the juniors, having as little to do with the unfortunate girl as possible.

But the day and hour came at last when Ruth chanced to be right at hand when Rebecca Frayne came in and unlocked her room door. Her arms were full of small packages. Ruth knew that she had walked all the way to the grocery store on the edge of Greenburg, which the college girls often patronized.

It had been a long, cold walk, and Rebecca's fingers were numb. She dropped a paper bag--and it contained eggs!

Now, it is quite impossible to hide the fact of a dropped egg. At another time Ruth might have laughed; but now she soberly retrieved the paper bag before the broken eggs could do much damage, and stepped into the room after the nervous Rebecca.

"Oh, thank you!" gasped the girl. "Put--put them down anywhere. Thank you!"

"My goodness!" said Ruth, laughing, "you can't put broken eggs down _anywhere_. Don't you see they are runny?"

"Never mind, Miss Fielding----"

"Oh! you've a regular kitchenette here, haven't you?" said Ruth, emboldened to look behind a curtain. "How cunning. I'll put these eggs in this clean dish. Mercy, but they are scrambled!"

"Don't trouble, Miss Fielding. You are very kind."

"But scrambled eggs are pretty good, at that," Ruth went on, unheeding the other girl's nervousness. "If you can only get the broken sh.e.l.ls out of them," and she began coolly to do this with a fork. "I should think you would not like eating alone, Rebecca."

The other girl stared at her. "How can I help it?" she asked harshly.

"Just by getting a proper tam and stop being stubborn," Ruth told her.

"Miss Fielding!" cried Rebecca, her face flushing. "Do you think I do this for--for fun?"

"You must. It isn't a disease, is it?" and Ruth laughed aloud, determined to refuse to take the other's tragic words seriously.

"You--you are unbearable!" gasped Rebecca.

"No, I'm not. I want to be your friend," Ruth declared boldly. "I want you to have other friends, too. No use flocking by one's self at college. Why, my dear girl! you are missing all that is best in college life."

"I'd like to know what _is_ best in college life!" burst out Rebecca Frayne, sullenly.

"Friendship. Companionship. The rubbing of one mind against another,"

Ruth said promptly.

"Pooh!" returned the startled Rebecca. "I wouldn't want to rub my mind against some of these girls' minds. All I ever hear them talk about is dress or amus.e.m.e.nts."

"I don't think you know many of the other girls well enough to judge the calibre of their minds," said Ruth, gently.

"And why don't I?" demanded Rebecca, still with a sort of suppressed fury.

"We all judge more or less by appearances," Ruth admitted slowly. "I presume _you_, too, were judged that way."

"What do you mean, Miss Fielding?" asked Rebecca, more mildly.

"When you came here to Ardmore you made a first impression. We all do,"

Ruth said.

"Yes," Rebecca admitted, with a slight curl of her lip. She was naturally a proud-looking girl, and she seemed actually haughty now. "I was mistaken for _you_, I believe."

Ruth laughed heartily at that.

"I should be a good friend of yours," she said. "It was a great sell on those soph.o.m.ores. They had determined to make poor little me suffer for some small notoriety I had gained at boarding school."

"I never went to boarding school," snapped Rebecca. "I never was _anywhere_ till I came to college. Just to our local schools. I worked hard, let me tell you, to pa.s.s the examinations to get in here."

"And why don't you let your mind broaden and get the best there is to be had at Ardmore?" Ruth demanded, quickly. "The girls misunderstand you. I can see that. We freshmen have got to bow our heads to the will of the upper cla.s.ses. It doesn't hurt--much," and she laughed again.

"Do you think I am wearing this old tam because I am stubborn?" demanded the other girl, again with that fierceness that seemed so strange in one so young.

"Why--aren't you?"

"No."

"Why do you wear it, then?" asked Ruth, wonderingly.

"_Because I cannot afford to buy another!_"

Rebecca Frayne said this in so tense a voice that Ruth was fairly staggered. The girl of the Red Mill gazed upon the other's flaming face for a full minute without making any reply. Then, faintly, she said:

"I--I didn't understand, Rebecca. We none of us do, I guess. You came here in such style! That heavy trunk and those bags----"

"All out of our attic," said the other, sharply. "Did you think them filled with frocks and furbelows? See here!"

Ruth had already noticed the packages of papers piled along one wall of the room. Rebecca pointed to them.

"Out of our attic, too," she said, with a scornful laugh that was really no laugh at all. "Old papers that have lain there since the Civil War."

"But, Rebecca----"

"Why did I do it?" put in the other, in the same hard voice. "Because I was a little fool. Because I did not understand.

"I didn't know just what college was like. I never talked with a girl from college in my life. I thought this was a place where only rich girls were welcome."

"Oh, Rebecca!" cried Ruth. "That isn't so."