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CHAPTER V. – A WARM RECEPTION

“Hamilton! Hamilton!” Marjorie Dean smiled to herself. Her expressive brown eyes grew brighter as the lusty call echoed through the car. One hand tightened about the leather handle of her traveling bag with the impatience of one who was longing to be free of the limited confines of the car. She peered alertly out of the open window at the familiar railway platform which lay deserted in the warm glory of a mid-summer sun. How strange it seemed to see the good old platform so bare and empty!

“Not a sign of Robin,” was her disappointed reflection. “What’s happened to her, I wonder? I’m evidently first here after all. She can’t have arrived yet or she would surely be out on the platform watching for me.”

The three or four persons, whose destination was also Hamilton were now moving down the aisle toward the car’s upper door. Marjorie did not follow the orderly little line of passengers. She turned and hurried to the opposite end of the car impatient to be out of the train. She was glad to be the only one to leave the car from that end.

“Oh-h-h.” She drew a half sighing breath of sheer loneliness. “What a dismal old place!”

She ran lightly down the car steps, eluding the brakeman’s helping hand, and came to an abrupt stop on the deserted platform. She stood still, casting a faintly disconsolate glance about her. It was hard, indeed, to believe that this empty space with the warm friendly sunshine streaming down upon it was Hamilton station, endeared to her by the memory of many happy meetings and cheerful goodbyes on the part of student friends.

“What had I better do?” was her next thought. “What a goose I was not to tear Jeremiah from the beach and bring her with me. Robin’s missing from the picture. That means I’ll have to be on the watch for her. How I’d like to walk in on Miss Remson at Wayland Hall this afternoon! Wouldn’t she be surprised, though?”

Marjorie cast a meditative glance toward the staid drowsy town of Hamilton. Robina Page, her classmate and partner of the good little firm of “Page and Dean,” as their chums liked to call them, had written that she would meet Marjorie at the station. From her handbag Marjorie extracted Robin’s latest letter to her. She glanced it over hurriedly. Yes; it read: “Friday afternoon, July 25th. I’ll be at the station to meet the three-twenty train. Don’t dare disappoint me.”

“It looks as though I’d be the one to meet the trains,” she murmured under her breath. Always quick to decide she made the choice between waiting patiently in the station building for the next train Robin could arrive on, or seeking the grateful coolness of the Ivy, in favor of the dainty tea shop. The train Robin might be on would not arrive until five-thirty.

Picking up her traveling bag which she had momentarily deposited on the platform Marjorie moved briskly toward the flight of worn stone steps leading to the station yard.

“If Robin shouldn’t be on the five-thirty train I suppose I’d best go to the Congress Hotel and stay there until tomorrow. If I should go on to the campus alone, I’d miss seeing her; that is, if she should arrive tonight. I’ll fairly absorb time tables and meet all the trains tonight except the very late ones,” was Marjorie’s energetic resolve as she swung buoyantly along the smooth wide stone walk. The brief moment of depression which she had felt at sight of the empty station platform had now vanished. She was again her sunny self, animated and bubbling over with the desire for action.

She was so intent upon her own affairs she quite failed to see three laughing faces frame themselves suddenly in a screened window of the station. Almost instantaneous with their appearance they were withdrawn. Their owners made a noiseless, speedy exit from the waiting room and flitted through the open doorway which led to a square of green lawn behind the building bounded by cinder drives.

Giggling softly as they ran the stealthy trio gathered in a compact little group at a rear corner of the building which Marjorie must pass on her way across the yard to the street.

“I’ll relieve you of that bag, lady,” croaked a harsh, menacing voice. The bag was snatched from Marjorie’s hand in a twinkling.

“Hands up!” ordered a second voice, only a shade less menacing than that of the first bandit.

“Boo, boo-oo, woo-oo-oo!” roared a third outlaw. The final “oo” ended in a sound suspiciously like a chuckle.

Completely surrounded by an apparently merciless and lawless three Marjorie had not attempted to retrieve the traveling bag. Instead she had pounced upon the smallest of the bandits with a gurgle of surprised delight.

“Vera Mason, you perfect darling! Where did you come from, Midget, dear?” Marjorie laughingly quoted as she warmly kissed tiny Vera.

“Out of the everywhere into the here,” Vera carelessly waved an indefinite hand and smiled up at Marjorie in her charming, warm-hearted fashion.

“And you, Leila Greatheart! So you’ve turned highwayman! I am pretty sure that I am the first victim. Very likely you planned with your partners in crime to practice on me. Give me my bag, you old villain.” Marjorie shook a playful fist at Leila.

The widely smiling Irish girl merely reached out her strong arms, gleaming whitely against her dark blue gown, and gathered Marjorie into them. She kissed her on both cheeks, then placed a finger under Marjorie’s chin and gazed admiringly at her.

“Beauty is Beauty, at home or abroad,” she declared lightly. “And it’s myself that has longed for a sight of you, little, beautiful lieutenant.”

“Don’t monopolize the victim,” protested an aggrieved voice. Robin Page now made an attempt to pry Marjorie free from Leila’s close embrace.

“Robin Page, you wicked girl! So this is the way you meet me at the station!” Marjorie hugged and kissed Robin with fresh enthusiasm.

“You will kindly blame these two rascals here for the hold-up,” laughed Robin. “This pair, Lawless Leila and Vera, the Midge, are quite capable of dark deeds. Aren’t those names I made up for them dandy? I’m going to write a play this year, a real melodrama, and have them play the leads under those very names. That’s an inspiration born of this hold-up,” she added in her bright fashion.

“And to think I was ever sad a minute over you three blessed geese!” Marjorie looked from one to another of her chums, her eyes bright with affection. “I thought of you all as I was leaving the train and was so sorry that you were, as I supposed, so far away. And all the time you were hanging around a corner fairly aching to hold me up. Oh, I’m so glad to see you! I’ve been looking forward to seeing Robin, but I never dreamed such good fortune as this was in store for me.”

“She means us.” Vera gave Leila a significant nudge.

“She does that,” Leila purposely lapsed into a brogue. “And it’s something grand I’ll be saying to her yet, but not till I know myself what I’m going to say.”

“Oh, never mind the blarney. Just tell me how you happen to be here,” begged Marjorie, tucking an arm into Robin’s. “Not one letter have I had from either of you since the Dean family went down to Severn Beach, and only one apiece since college closed. I may not be a prompt correspondent, but – ”

“Tell me nothing.” Leila put up a defensive hand. She was laughing behind it. “Isn’t it I who know my own failings?”

“You ought to know by this time that you are a flivver as a correspondent,” Marjorie condemned with pretended severity. “I thought, when I did not hear from you, that you and Midget had really gone to Ireland for the summer. You know you talked of taking the trip last spring. I supposed – ”

“I was busy pointing out the Blarney Stone to Midget and capturing banshees and leprechauns for her to play with,” interposed Leila. “No, Beauty; not this summer. Truth is truth. We did talk about a visit to the Emerald Isle during the summer, but Commencement morning changed all that. Midget and I planned then to come to Hamilton instead and give you a mid-summer welcome. Why, Midget and I said to each other, should we go gallivanting about old Ireland when the good little firm of Page and Dean would be working their dear heads off at Hamilton?”

“Why, indeed?” echoed Vera. “We’re here to stay as long as you and Robin stay.”

“We’ve been at Wayland Hall for a week waiting for you two promoters to appear. We didn’t know the exact date of your appearance, or which one of you would appear first,” Leila informed Marjorie.

“You talk as though Robin and I were a couple of rare elusive comets,” Marjorie joked.

“You’re a couple of rare, elusive P. G.s whose present mission is to lighten and gladden Leila’s and my declining years,” retorted Vera. “That’s the real reason you came to Hamilton this July, though you may not have suspected it. Of course, while you’re here, and we’re here, we won’t object to your doing a few kindly little stunts for our Alma Mater.” Vera endeavored to appear extremely condescending. Instead she looked so utterly happy that Marjorie wrapped her arms about the dainty little girl and embraced her all over again.

“I reached here just one train ahead of you, Marjorie,” Robin now said. “I was held up, too, and forced into a conspiracy against you. It happened to be more convenient for me to take an earlier train. I intended to meet yours anyway – you know the rest.” Robin gestured eloquently toward Leila and Vera.

“Yes, I know the rest,” Marjorie repeated fondly. “I also know something else. I was bound for the Ivy when three footpads waylaid me. Just to show you what a forgiving spirit I have I will invite those three footpads to a feast at the Ivy. I’ve had nothing to eat since early this morning and I’m famished. There was no dining car on the train.”

“Ah, let me be the Irish lady to give the feast,” wheedled Leila. “My gold burns in my pocket when it’s too long there. Midget has far more money than she ought to have. All week we have led a cat and dog life, grumbling and sputtering about which of us should treat.”

“All right. You’re so smooth. I can’t resist you, this once. I hereby invite you all to dinner at Baretti’s tonight,” stipulated Marjorie. “I’ve gold of my own to spend. Just as General put me on the train this morning he put an envelope in my hand. I opened it after the train had started. In it were two fifty dollar notes and a funny short letter from him telling me to call the money the Marjorie Dean Entertainment Fund. He ordered me to spend it just for good times. I must obey my general, you know. When I come back to Hamilton next – ”

A sudden jubilant clamor from her chums drowned her voice.

“Aha!” Leila paused in the middle of the walk and waved a triumphant arm. “What do I hear?”

“Uh-h-h; but that’s good news!” Robin made a show of collapsing from sheer relief.

“Is it really settled. Marvelous Manager?” Vera cried with some anxiety.

“Now you may tell me, Beauty, what I said last June you would say.” Leila was radiant at the good news.

Marjorie laughed. “You are a soothsayer, Leila Greatheart,” she said, obeying Leila’s joyful command. “Yes; it has all been settled.” Her own features reflected the good cheer of her friends. “I’m coming back to the campus in the fall.”

CHAPTER VI. – IN LOVE WITH WORK

“To the boldest bandit belongs the spoils.” Leila lifted Marjorie’s traveling bag from the walk, took hold of her arm and began steering her across the grassy station yard to where a smart grey car stood on the drive.

“I’ll let you tug it along to punish you for being a desperado. It’s a heavy old thing. Fifteen minutes ago I didn’t know where it and I would stop for the night. Now, thank goodness, and you girls, we can all go to Wayland Hall.” Marjorie smiled over her shoulder at Robin and Vera who were walking behind them.

“What a love of a car!” she exclaimed as they neared the trim gray roadster. “I’ll make a guess. It’s Vera’s. Somehow it suggests her.”

“Yes, it’s Vera’s. Have you noticed? My eyes are turning green with envy of Midget,” Leila declared darkly, then showed her strong white teeth in a roguish smile. “Her father sent her this dream of a car from Paris. He’s been painting at his Paris studio since early last spring. The roadster came the week after we left Hamilton. I was with Vera in their New York house. We were trying to decide what we should do to amuse ourselves until time for our trip here. Then the car came. We were so proud of it! We wanted the world to see it and us in it. We went on a motor trip to the Adirondacks. We stayed for two weeks with Vera’s aunt at her camp. She was horrified because we came in the car without a chaperon. And I must tell you the truth! Neither of us remembered there was any such person to be considered when we started out with the car.” Leila threw back her head and laughed.

“We didn’t have one going back, either.” Vera had caught what Leila was saying. “Luckily for us, my father thinks Leila and I can be trusted to take care of ourselves. We motored back to New York City and from there to Hamilton.”

“So we did. And it’s here we are stopping again, like a set of statues in the sun, when we might be on our way to the Ivy.” By common consent the four had again grouped themselves on the walk opposite the roadster. “Come with me. Don’t be dwadling here when there’s news to be told and news to be heard,” Leila rallied. She motioned Marjorie to the car and ceremoniously opened a rear door for her.

“Right-o!” Robin exclaimed, preparing to take the front seat of the roadster beside Vera. “I’m simply perishing for a real opportunity to talk. It seems ages and ages since college closed. Yet it is only a month. I have scads of things to tell you girls. Phil wanted to come with me. We had the trip all planned and her trunk was partly packed. Then three girl cousins descended upon the Moores for a visit. Poor Phil had to stay home and help entertain them. I’ll tell you more about her when we are at the Ivy.” Robin turned in the seat to say this much as Vera started the car.

As the roadster sped away from the station drive and swung into Herndon Avenue, Hamilton’s main thoroughfare, Marjorie glanced slowly from one side of the street to the other. A happy little smile played upon her lips. Next to Sanford, her home town, she loved the staid college town of Hamilton. She loved it for its wide ornamental streets and stately green-lawned residences. Like all else which bore the name of Hamilton it seemed in some strange elusive way to partake of the fine character of its founder, Brooke Hamilton.

Presently she reached up and removed the white straw hat she wore. She gave a satisfied little intake of breath as the cool afternoon breeze blew gently in her face, lifting the thick clustering curls which framed it and blowing them back from her forehead. Her lovely features wore the untroubled, child-like expression which had ever made them so beautiful. Behind that beautiful untroubled face, however, was the resolute, indomitable spirit of a pioneer. It was that very spirit of endeavor which had made her a force for good at Hamilton College since her enrollment as a student of that institution.

After four years at Sanford High School, Marjorie Dean and four of her intimate girl friends had chosen Hamilton College as their Alma Mater. What happened to them as students at Sanford High School has been recorded in the “Marjorie Dean High School Series,” comprising: “Marjorie Dean, High School Freshman,” “Marjorie Dean, High School Sophomore,” “Marjorie Dean, High School Junior” and “Marjorie Dean, High School Senior.”

The account of their doings at Hamilton College may be found in the “Marjorie Dean College Series,” comprising: “Marjorie Dean, College Freshman,” “Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore,” “Marjorie Dean, College Junior,” “Marjorie Dean, College Senior.”

During Marjorie’s senior year at Hamilton College she and her particular friends became interested in a plan to provide Hamilton students in less fortunate financial circumstances than themselves with suitable quarters in which to live. The fact that such students were making great personal sacrifices in order to obtain a college education had aroused the sympathy of Marjorie and her associates.

What began as the raising of a fund by which to make the way easier for the strugglers gradually led to a more ambitious plan on the part of Marjorie and her allies. They dreamed of a free dormitory for needy students which they determined by steady conscientious effort should some day be realized.

With the coming of Commencement which had seen Marjorie and her loyal supporters graduated from Hamilton College had come also the unexpected gift of a valuable piece of property as a site for the new dormitory. The donor, Miss Susanna Hamilton, was the great-niece of the founder of Hamilton College, Brooke Hamilton. While the eccentric old lady had been prejudiced for many years against the college board, she was, on the other hand, a warm friend of Marjorie Dean. During Marjorie’s sophomore year she and Miss Susanna had met by accident. Later, Miss Hamilton had learned to love the sunny, gracious lieutenant. As a result of that love had come Miss Susanna’s amazing concession.

During their senior year in college Marjorie and Robin had turned their attention to the giving of plays, concerts and other pleasing entertainments. These amusements had been welcomed by the Hamilton students and the two successful promoters had reaped a goodly sum of money for the dormitory project. The Nineteen Travelers, a confidential little band which included Marjorie and Robin, had also contributed several hundred dollars to the dormitory fund by the curtailing of personal expenses, elimination of all but a few luxuries and the practicing of self-denial in the matter of dinners and spreads.

The presentation by Miss Susanna Hamilton of the site for the dormitory had made the way clear for the erection of the building in the not far distant future.

At the time of her graduation Marjorie had been fully aware that hers and Robin’s beloved enterprise would require their presence on the campus the following autumn. The real work of their project was yet to come. Robin was free to return to Hamilton. Marjorie had not been certain that her general and her captain would be willing that she should remain away from home another winter. She had left college for Sanford unable to assure her classmates who were to return the next autumn as post graduates that she would be then among them.

“So my prophetic Celtic bones did not lie,” Leila said with teasing good humor. “Ah, Beauty, but was not Leila the wise Irish woman? Did I not prophesy that your general and your captain would be sending you back to college?”

“Of course you did. Your prophetic Celtic bones told you how utterly unselfish they were,” Marjorie returned warmly. “We didn’t exchange a word about my coming back as a P. G. while they were on the campus during Commencement week. One evening soon after we were home Jerry and Lucy came over and General said he had very important orders for the Army. He read us a ridiculous notice, ordering us to report at Hamilton College for post graduate duty, not later than October first, by order of General and Captain Dean. Jerry and Lucy made such a racket over it that General threatened to lock them in the guard house for boisterous conduct.”

Leila listened, immensely tickled by Mr. Dean’s army tactics. Marjorie continued to tell her of Jerry and her doings. She said nothing, however, of Jerry’s brother. Entirely fancy free, Marjorie had never spoken confidentially of Hal to any girl save Constance. Jerry would not have ventured to ask Marjorie a personal question concerning him, intimate as the two girls were.

“Why, Leila,” Marjorie said presently, going back to her superior officers, “after the girls went home that night I had a long talk with General and Captain. I found they considered it my first duty to come back to college. General pretended to be very threatening. He dared me to try to stay at home and see what would happen. I don’t like to be away from them, Leila, but I love my work. And it’s only begun on the campus. It will take us a long time to pay for the dormitory. I may be old as the hills by the time it is paid for,” was her jocular prediction. “If I’m a tottering last leaf when that happens, at least I will have grown old in a good cause.”