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CHAPTER VII. – SCENTING MYSTERY
Vera was now bringing the roadster to a stop before the Ivy.
“Hello, old stand-by!” Marjorie raised a cheerful hand of greeting toward the familiar, one-story white stucco building. Its ornamental bungalow effect was made even more attractive by the traits of English ivy which wandered across the front of the shop and were trained above the door and the narrow-paned windows.
“Not another car parked here; glorious! This is a positive streak of luck!” congratulated Vera.
“The Ivy is popular with tourists this summer,” Leila informed Marjorie and Robin as the girls sauntered up the wide white stone walk four abreast. “This is the first time since we came back that we have been able to park in front of the shop.”
Entering the tea room they steered a straight course for one of four alcove tables. During the college year these tables were difficult to secure unless engaged beforehand. All four stood empty now. A brief lull in the mid-afternoon business of the Ivy had found the prosperous shop temporarily deserted.
“Who ever before saw an alcove table at the Ivy empty?” commented Robin as the chums seated themselves.
“It’s almost as still here today as in chapel after Prexy has read out an amazing notice,” declared Vera lightly.
“Observe how soon that chapel-like atmosphere will depart. We are here,” Leila reminded.
“No; this beatific state of sweet silence is due to be shattered this very minute,” Robin agreed.
“Right you are, Robin. It’s a grand palaver we’re about to have. Let us order the luncheon before the gabble party begins,” proposed Leila. “Consomme, chicken à la king, potato straws, cucumber salad and whatever your sweet tooth demands for dessert? Yes?” She turned inquiring eyes on her friends. “And a pot of tea, of course?”
“It suits me. I wish I were going to eat that dandy luncheon this minute. I’m so hungry,” sighed Marjorie.
Vera and Robin echoed Marjorie’s wish. The waitress obligingly promised to hurry the consommé to the hungry quartette and retired briskly kitchen-ward.
“Now who is going to start the gabble ball rolling?” playfully demanded Vera.
“You and Leila. Tell us about the campus.” Marjorie and Robin answered in the same words, and together. They both laughed. “One heart, one mind,” Robin quoted.
“It’s the same dear, green old stamping ground,” Vera answered with proud fondness. “Only it almost gives one the blues to walk from one end of it to another without seeing any of one’s pals. Now for news. Let me see. Kathie is coaching four would-be-freshies who are staying at Acasia House. They’re in for entrance exams. Miss Remson has been away for a month, but she came back to the Hall the day Leila and I put in an appearance there. I sha’n’t tell you a thing about Miss Remson’s vacation trip. She wants to tell you herself. She said so.”
“What an odd busy little woman she is.” Robin smiled at mention of the brisk little manager of Wayland Hall. “I love her funny abrupt ways. She is so original.”
“Jerry named her Busy Buzzy almost as soon as she first saw her when we went to Wayland Hall as freshies,” reminisced Marjorie. “Muriel was quite fascinated by the name and those two villains went on calling Miss Remson Busy Buzzy behind her back for a long while. I was always afraid she might hear them say it, but thank goodness she never did. Muriel used to call Hortense Barlow, her roommate, Mortense. She and Jerry had the naming habit very hard that year.”
Muriel’s name brought a grin to Leila’s face. “That rascal,” she said with a chuckle. “What might she be doing these fine summer days? Is she coming back to college, Beauty? When we asked her last June about it she would tell us nothing. All she would offer was: ‘I can’t say. I’ll have to think it over.’”
“She’s still saying it,” Marjorie echoed the chuckle. “She won’t tell even Jerry and me what she intends to do about coming back. Jerry says she is only trying to tease us, but I think she has a reason for saying she is uncertain about it. She’ll tell us when she is ready and not a minute before. Muriel has always been just so.”
“I’ll tell you all a bit of news,” put in Robin. “Elaine is going to be married. Her engagement will be announced next month. She is – ”
Three voices rippled an astonished “Oh-h-h.” Three faces reflected the smile with which Robin had announced the news. Elaine Hunter, during her four years at Hamilton, had been the most popular girl at Silverton Hall.
“Who is Elaine going to marry, Robin?” asked Vera interestedly. “He’ll have to be a wonder to be worthy of her.”
“A delightful young civil engineer. His name is Kingdon Barrett. It is a real romance,” Robin went on eagerly. “When Elaine was a tiny girl and this Mr. Barrett a small boy they used to go to the same beach every summer with their parents. They played together on the sand and were good friends. Then the Barretts went West and Elaine never saw her boy playmate again until Commencement. He was visiting Prexy’s son and saw her name on the Commencement program. He actually picked her out among the graduates. The moment he had a chance he had Prexy Matthews, who knows her family well, introduce him to her. He told her who he was. They promptly fell in love and now they’re engaged. Can you beat that?” Robin spread open both hands in a challenging gesture.
“We can not. Nor is it likely that we shall try. I have no wish to fall in love, for isn’t it true that I might never be able to fall out again? It is a pit that I shall keep my feet well away from,” declared Leila with unsentimental wisdom.
“I can’t imagine you in love, you ridiculous girl,” Vera’s infectious giggle went the round of the table.
“Ah, if I were; and what a fine frenzy I should be in. Like this,” Leila rolled her eyes, put on a lovelorn expression and struck her hand to her forehead with tragic force. She immediately rubbed her hand. “Arrah, but I have a hard forehead,” she remarked ruefully.
The return of the waitress with the consomme put a momentary check on the animated rolling of what Vera had whimsically called the “gabble ball.” The instant the hungry girls began their soup they resumed conversation. While Leila and Vera had many news items germane to the campus to relate, none of them were of moment. Robin had much concerning herself and Phylis Moore, her cousin, now a senior, to tell. Marjorie’s news centered on Jerry’s, Lucy’s, Muriel’s and her own doings during vacation. Of Ronny she had almost no news to relate. She had received but one letter from her since Ronny had sped West to her beautiful ranch home in California. The news of Elaine Hunter’s engagement was, thus far, the banner surprise.
“Oh, girls, have you seen Miss Susanna since you came?” was Marjorie’s concerned question, as the four lingered over the dessert of maple mousse and petit fours. “I’ve been trying to ask you that question from the first, and haven’t.”
“Now what makes you think we have seen her?” countered Leila with an elaborately innocent air.
“That means you have,” Marjorie translated, “and you,” she pointed an accusing finger at Leila, “and you,” the finger moved on to Vera, “are trying to keep something from me. I know you’re not guilty, Robin. You look innocent. But this pair look suspicious; oh, very suspicious.”
“Now, Beauty, on your honor, do I look as though there was anything I could refuse to tell you, provided I knew it?” ingratiated Leila, her bright blue eyes a-twinkle. She appeared to be wrestling with a secret mirth which threatened to overrun her mischievous face. She now made mysterious signs to Vera whose smiles were also in evidence.
“You look too tantalizing for words. So does Vera. Oh, I know you both!”
“So you take us for a precious pair of rogues; eh, Beauty!” Leila made a smiling failure of trying to appear reproachful. “Never mind. Midget and Leila forgive you. Bring forth the mystic writing, Midget. May Beauty’s bad opinion of us fly away on swift wings!”
CHAPTER VIII. – WHITE MAGIC
“So that’s the reason for these nods and becks and wreathed smiles!” Marjorie made an energetic grab at the square creamy envelope which Leila was waving slowly back and forth before her eyes. “I’ll assume it’s for me,” she said as her fingers closed around it. Leila purposely allowed the envelope to slip through her hand.
“Oh, it’s from Miss Susanna!” Marjorie gave a little joyful cry. “Now I know you must have seen her. There’s no stamp on the envelope.”
“Might not Jonas have brought the letter to the Hall?” Leila suggested.
“He might have, but he didn’t,” Marjorie cannily retorted. “You’ve been to Hamilton Arms.” Her eyes sparkled with the pleasure of her guess.
“So we have,” Vera corroborated as though quite surprised at the fact.
“Yes, ‘So we have,’” mimicked Marjorie as she hastily tore open the envelope and drew out the letter it contained. “I’m going to read you Miss Susanna’s letter. I shouldn’t, to pay you for teasing me. But, as Muriel loves to say, ‘I’m always amiable when I’m not peevish.’ I’m sure Miss Susanna would like you to hear it,” she added more seriously. She began:
“Dear Child:
“How glad I shall be to see you again. I am looking forward earnestly to your return to Hamilton. I must remind you of your promise to spend at least a part of your time with me at the Arms. I am sending you my greetings and love by two trusted messengers. I wonder if you will be as greatly surprised and delighted to see them as I was? Will you come to the Arms as soon as you conveniently can after you arrive on the campus? Bring Robin Page and Leila and Vera with you. Pardon the fond impatience of
“Your devoted friend,
Susanna Craig Hamilton
“How dearly she loves you, Marjorie,” Robin said unenviously. “But then, how could she help it? So do we all. You have reason to be proud of having annexed the last of the Hamiltons to your train, Marvelous Manager.”
“I had nothing to do with it. No one could annex Miss Susanna to anything,” Marjorie disclaimed, shaking her head in sturdy fashion. “I always loved her from the first. She was like an odd, rare, lonely little bird to me. She was wonderful to me for her own dearness and still more wonderful because she was Brooke Hamilton’s great niece.”
“You’ve had nothing to do with any good work that has gone on on the campus in the past four years,” Leila agreed with satiric emphasis. “So you say. Now tell me, which of us could have softened Miss Susanna’s heart to the college? Never think you are not of small use in the world, Beauty.”
“I decline to think of it at all,” Marjorie evaded. “I’d rather think about when to go to see Miss Susanna. Why can’t we go to the Arms today? We’ve had such a late luncheon. Suppose we hurry along to the Hall, see Miss Remson for a little while then go to Hamilton Arms? By that time it will be six o’clock and Miss Susanna will have had tea. We can stay with her until about eight and stop at Baretti’s to dinner on the way to the Hall.”
“Fine, fine!” applauded Vera, “more marvelous managing by M. M. Dean.” At the same time, happening to catch Leila’s eye the two exchanged significant glances which Marjorie intercepted.
“There, I caught you exchanging eye messages!” she exclaimed in triumph. “You know something I ought to know that you haven’t told me.” She glanced quickly at Robin. “No, Robin doesn’t know this time, either.”
“What is this odd talk I’m hearing?” Leila inquired guilelessly. “Have I a thousand secrets because I give Midget a friendly eye-beam?”
“That was more than a merely friendly eye-beam,” disagreed Marjorie. “Besides, Midget had the mate to it ready.”
“Did she, indeed?” Leila’s black brows lifted with exaggerated interest. “You will have it that we are a designing pair. Only the stars know we’re not that. My luck is poor.” Leila sighed heavily. “How can I prove my words. Not a star will be around until tonight.”
“You’re worse than designing. You’re a fake,” emphasized Marjorie.
Leila received the assertion with the broad, ingenuous smile for which she was famed on the campus. “I believe you, Beauty,” she said with an admiring candor which produced ready laughter.
“We ought to make a start for the campus, girls.” Robin consulted her wrist watch.
“Away we go. Remember this is my feast.” Leila was on her feet, the luncheon check in one hand.
“Remember the Baretti dinner is to be mine,” Marjorie impressed upon her companions. “The Dean Entertainment fund must be used, you know.”
“Don’t forget the grand banquet at the Colonial tomorrow night,” Robin announced in a managerial voice. “You’re not the only person on the campus with an entertainment fund.”
“My treat will be a dinner at Orchard Inn,” Vera promised. “You two girls have never been to Orchard Inn. Wait until you see it.” She grew enthusiastic. “Leila and I just happened to discover it while we were out driving. There; that’s all I intend to tell you about it.”
“Is not Midget cruel?” Leila shook a disapproving head.
“Is not Leila aggravating,” retaliated Vera, imitating Leila’s tone.
“Since you ask outright; yes, to both questions. We couldn’t help thinking it, but we were too polite to say so,” declared Robin. “We’ve a grievance of our own against those two. Haven’t we, Marjorie?”
“I should say we had.” Marjorie laid stress on her reply.
“Ah, no; you only think you have,” retorted Leila.
A flash of familiarity came with the words “you only think you have,” but to Marjorie’s brain only. Now she remembered. That was precisely what Hal had said to her on their last boat ride when he had declared that she had never grown up. Her merry look, born of her companions’ repartee, faded, to be replaced by a faint pucker of brow. To think of Hal meant to recall the hurt expression on his handsome features as she had last seen them.
Quick as they had been to seek the cool inviting hospitality of the Ivy, the re-united friends were now as eager to depart from it upon their light-hearted way to the campus.
“I’m going to hit up a pace,” Vera slangily informed them, swaggering up to the roadster in an exact imitation of a racing motorcyclist she had recently seen.
Under her small practiced hands the smart roadster was presently whisking through the town of Hamilton at a rate just escaping that of speeding. Soon they had left the dignified town to its late afternoon drowsing and were skimming along Hamilton Highway. A short stretch of straight road then the highway began to wind in and out among the collection of handsome private properties known as Hamilton Estates. They were beautiful old-style manor houses for the most part surrounded by green rolling lawns and ancient trees.
“Oh, girls!” Marjorie called from her place on the front seat beside Vera. She and Robin had exchanged places for the ride to the campus. “Doesn’t Hamilton Arms look wonderful? As if it were trying to show summer off at its very best.”
“There’s not another place among Hamilton Estates that compares with the Arms,” was Vera’s positive opinion.
“And why not? Didn’t Brooke Hamilton plan it?” Leila made loyal demand. “Now maybe he knew Nature better than she knew herself. I have sometimes thought so.”
“What a splendid tribute to him, Leila!” was Marjorie’s admiring cry. “I must save that to tell Miss Susanna. How she will love it.”
“Ah-h.” Leila’s affable grin appeared. “Now you begin to take account of my smartness.”
“It seems almost unfriendly not to stop and go to Miss Susanna now, but I hate to disturb her before she has had her tea,” Marjorie commented with concern.
“Don’t worry, Beauty,” Leila said. “We’ll be coming back before long. We’ll not ’phone her from the Hall. She has a taste for surprises. She only knows you are soon to be here. She’ll be highly pleased to have you walk in on her.”
“I’ll surely do it,” Marjorie returned with a decided little nod. She half smiled as she recalled a time when she had waited patiently to receive a summons into the eccentric old lady’s presence. The peremptory invitation to appear at Hamilton Arms on a certain day to tea had filled her with the same sort of pleasant trepidation with which she would have received a summons to a royal court. Hamilton Arms was truly Miss Susanna’s castle, where she reigned supreme, a lonely little chatelaine of a big house.
The smile still lingered on the lieutenant’s lips as the car sped on and made the last turn in the highway before the end of Hamilton Estates was reached. Between the Estates and the campus of Hamilton College which had now come into view lay the strip of land on which was built the row of houses once used by the workmen who had erected the college buildings. Of the four occupants of the roadster Vera’s eyes were the only ones turned away from the territory at the left hand side of the road. The other three girls were gazing in that direction with varying expressions. Leila’s was purely mischievous. She was enjoying the amazement which Marjorie and Robin were showing.
“Why – what – who – ?” Stupefied by what she was seeing Marjorie forgot to greet her old friend the campus in her usual devoted fashion.
Once, at this point along the straggling meadow road, dignified by the name of the street, had stood a shabby row of weather-stained houses. They had extended for a distance of what might be measured as two city blocks. An equally straggling cross lane divided the row almost in halves. Those above the cross lane looked more uncompromisingly ugly and faded than ever under the afternoon sun.
Those below the cross lane! Where were they? Where they had once stood were now huge heaps of broken brick, plaster, boards and the debris which always attends the tearing down of buildings. The ringing sound of many hammers in motion, the snapping of yielding wooden beams, the rattle of falling brick and plaster was in the air.
Above the cross lane the upper block of houses stood intact in its dingy loneliness. They appeared to frown upon the wreck of their companions of years.
Simultaneously Robin and Marjorie had raised a cry of astonishment. Vera promptly stopped the car in order to give them a chance to view the surprise at leisure. She dropped her hands from the wheel and with Leila enjoyed their amazement.
“Robin Page, can you believe your eyes?” Marjorie’s voice achieved bewildered heights.
“Seeing is believing. How did it happen? That’s what is bothering me.”
“These two know.” Marjorie turned in her seat, including Vera and Leila, in a comprehensive wave of the hand. “Now I understand what you two were so full of laugh about. I knew you had something else on your mind besides giving me Miss Susanna’s letter. There’s a new firm on the campus, it seems, Harper and Mason. And they’ve been very very busy!”
CHAPTER IX. – THE FAIRY TALE PRINCESS
“Never blame us,” Leila said. “Weren’t those houses but a rubbish heap the day we came, Midget?” She appealed to Vera for corroboration.
“Why, of course they were,” emphasized Vera. “We thought you’d be surprised to see them torn down. We were.”
“Surprised?” Marjorie repeated exultantly. “I’m simply amazed, astounded, dumbfounded, flabbergasted, stupefied by such a piece of good fortune. It’s just what both Robin and I wanted.”
“We worried during Commencement week because we hadn’t the time then to see a firm of Hamilton contractors about having those houses torn down. You and Vera knew that, Leila Harper. You’re implicated in this surprise somehow,” Robin accused.
“My word as an honorable Irishman, I had not a thing to do with it,” protested Leila, though she laughed.
“But you haven’t said you didn’t know who had. Never mind. I know. It was Miss Susanna. It must have been either she or President Matthews. He wouldn’t have had – ” Marjorie paused to think of a phrase which would describe the stately president’s disinclination to intrude upon their project.
“The nerve,” Vera supplied with a giggle.
Marjorie fell suddenly silent as she watched the busy workmen moving to and fro in their task of demolishment. The work, hers and Robin’s great enterprise, had begun. She was thrilled by the thought of it.
“Time to be going, Midget.”
Leila’s voice broke into Marjorie’s dream of the glory of work and the romance of worthy deeds. Marjorie could not tear her glance from the fascinating scene of labor. Yes; she and Robin had Miss Susanna to thank for this unexpected lift in their program.
“No one but Miss Susanna could have thought of this and then gone ahead and done it,” Vera now said in a tone that partook of reverence as she started the car. “She wanted you and Robin to see what had been done as soon as you set foot in Hamilton. She told us to make it our business to lead you to it.”
“Oh, wait until I see her!” Marjorie looked happy anticipation. Now they were coming into full sight of the velvety green campus. “Dear first friend, how are you?” she cried, stretching a hand of greeting toward the spread of living green.
Vera smiled in sympathy of the whimsical fancy. “You’re as full of whimsies as Leila,” she said. “She can almost convince one that Ireland is full of leprechauns and banshees.”
From the beginning of the campus wall the distance to the central gates of the college was quickly covered by Vera’s car. In the tonneau of the car Robin was still busy expressing her wonder to Leila of the surprise Miss Susanna had given them. Marjorie, however, remained silent as the roadster neared the main entrance. She was in the grip of many emotions. Her mind reverted to a day when she and her four Sanford chums had entered the gates of Hamilton College for the first time as explorers, seeking the treasures of an unknown region.
“Remember the stranger within thy gates,” she was thinking. At first no one had “remembered” them, to their grieved chagrin. Then had come Helen Trent and then Leila and Vera. Their kindly offices had marked the beginning of fellowship at a college where snobbery had been the order of things instead of democracy which the founder, Brooke Hamilton, had made every effort to establish. Now, at the beginning of her fifth college year, she was returning to a Hamilton in which democracy had become a watchword. She experienced a swift exultation of spirit in thinking of the blessed change.
As the car passed between the massive stone gate posts Vera slackened speed and continued more slowly along the central campus drive. Came a turn to the left. Wayland Hall raised its handsome gray stone height only a few yards distant. Against the emerald of its short cropped lawn brilliant-hued verbenas, zenias and salvia flaunted beds of luxuriant bloom. Later in the season, cannas, gold and scarlet, and summer’s queen, who arrives late, the ever popular dahlia, would have sway. Still later, hardy chrysanthemums would carry on the scheme of beauty.
Over one side of the veranda a late-flowering, creamy-pink climbing rose trailed its double fragrant clusters. At an end of the veranda purple and white clematis stars wove a mantle against a background of green. The spicy scent of garden pinks and tiger lilies was in the air. Wayland Hall rejoiced in a riot of flowers of which Miss Remson, its energetic little manager, took tender care. The buzzing of a select delegation of bees engaged in a honey-hunting expedition seemed the drowsing, humming voice of mid-summer itself.
On the veranda a small, wiry, familiar figure was watching the approach of the automobile and waving a preliminary greeting. Miss Remson’s thin pleasant face grew brighter with welcome as she stood at the head of the steps, her eyes on the car as it slid onto the open space before the house.
Marjorie was the first one out of the car. It had hardly stopped when she skipped agily from it and ran toward the erect waiting figure. Miss Remson came half way down the steps to meet her and the two embraced with joyful vigor.
“My dear Marjorie, you are so very welcome. How I have missed you and all of my girls this summer.” Miss Remson still held Marjorie’s hands in hers. “So glad you are to stay at the Hall with Marjorie, Robina.” She offered a cordial hand to Robin. “I am proud to have the illustrious firm of Page and Dean under my roof.”
“And what of the firm of Harper and Mason?” demanded Leila. “Ah, there’s a firm of note! Now tell me – where can you find it’s equal?”
“Where, indeed?” was Miss Remson’s question.
“They’re a couple of bandits. They held me up behind the station and Lawless Leila snatched my bag,” Marjorie accused. “While my supposed partner, here,” she indicated Robin, “helped the daylight robbers.”
“Shocking!” Miss Remson did not look in the least shocked. She entered into the spirit of teasing with zest. “I must be careful not to allow them inside the Hall. I’ll have their luggage brought down and set out on the lawn. I had no idea I was harboring two such desperadoes.”
“Arrah, don’t be hard on us now!” Leila became coaxingly Hibernian. “You should be thinking of how lonely you were before Midget and I came wandering into the Hall. Had you even a long-faced, would-be freshie for company? You had not.”
“I can afford to leave ‘lonely’ out of my vocabulary, now that I have some of my old household back again.” Miss Remson exulted.
“And for that you may escort our old friend, Bean, as Leslie Cairns would have it, into the Hall,” Leila graciously permitted. “Midget and I will be doing the same for our old friend Page.” Leila possessed herself of Robin’s traveling bag. Vera doughtily insisted on carrying Marjorie’s bag.
“Set the bags in the hall, girls, and come into the dining room,” Miss Remson directed as they entered the house. “I made a pitcher of tutti-frutti nectar, your old favorite, and Ellen baked three-layer cream cake this morning. Don’t tell me you have just had luncheon.”
“But we have,” Robin said regretfully. The others swelled the chorus. Vera had an inspiration. It dawned while the tall frosted glasses were being filled.
“Let us drink Miss Remson’s health in the nectar now and keep the cake for a spread when we come home tonight. Shades of the ten-thirty rule! We can’t even remember what you sound like.”
“There ain’t no such animal,” asserted Robin. “I thought we were to dine at Baretti’s but the mind of this aggregation seems to have changed.”
“That sounded like Jerry. Wish she were here. Giuseppe will have to miss seeing us tonight,” Vera said lightly. “I’m in favor of a spread instead of dinner. I know the rest of you are or I’d have been drowned out with objections when I proposed it.”
“The spread will be spread right here in the dining room,” Miss Remson announced. “I’ll expect you when I see you. You’ll find me in the office. As soon as you’re here the party will begin.”
“You are as good as gold to us, Miss Remson,” was Marjorie’s appreciation. Taking up her glass of delicious amber-colored punch with its tempting dashes of plump scarlet cherries she proposed a toast to their kindly friend.
“We forgot to tell you where we were going, Miss Remson,” Marjorie said apologetically when the commotion attending the drinking of the toast had subsided. “We’re going to Hamilton Arms to see Miss Susanna. Robin and I feel as though we could hardly go there soon enough to thank her for her latest perfectly splendid kindness to us. You must know about it?” She fixed inquiring eyes on the manager.
“Yes; Leila and Vera told me. We thought you would go to see her first of all.”
“I wish you were going with us,” Marjorie said regretfully.
“This isn’t the age of miracles,” the manager retorted with dry humor.
“Some have come to pass. There are sure to be more some day.” Marjorie chose to take this hopeful view. She knew of no two persons whom she would rather bring together than Miss Remson and Miss Susanna Hamilton. She wished each to discover and appreciate the other’s manifold virtues. Miss Susanna, however, refused to extend her acquaintance on the campus. Aside from the two or three formal interviews she had had with President Matthews none but the nine girls who were Marjorie’s intimates had been accorded her favor.
“Into the midst of the toast drinking now dashed a slender, brown-haired girl in a white linen frock. Her color ran high with happy anticipation; her eyes were dancing. Marjorie set her half-filled glass of nectar on the table in time to prevent a spill and gathered in the newcomer.
“Katherine Langly, and such a whirlwind! Who’d ever suspect you of being faculty?” she cried. “Leila was going to telephone you.”
“Who told you to come here? Now I know you met a leprechaun hiding behind a tree on the campus and he whispered in your ear and slipped away.” Leila looked uncanny wisdom.
“I never saw sign of one, but I did see old Amos. I was over at Wenderblatts and he came there to mow the lawn. He’d been mowing the campus just below the Hall and he told Lillian and me that he had seen Miss Dean and some more young ladies getting out of a car in front of the Hall. As soon as I heard I ran for the Hall. Lillian had callers so she couldn’t come. She sent her dearest love.” Katherine poured forth this explanation with an animation she had never possessed in her freshman and sophomore days at Hamilton.
Marjorie watched her in fascination. She was well content with the change in Katherine. Once she had been a sad, subdued, retiring mouse of a girl. She had now blossomed into a lively, high-spirited young woman. The youngest member of the faculty she was respected by her colleagues for her brilliant mentality. She had also won high honors in the Silver Pen, a literary sorority, as an author of unusual promise.
Kathie’s arrival was the signal for a second round of nectar.
“I’ll have to be it, much as I hate to,” Vera presently mourned her tone particularly despairing.
“What is it you must be? Nothing your Celtic friend can save you from,” was Leila’s solicitous but rash promise.
“A time clock,” sighed Vera. “I’m the only one of this fivesome who has any idea of the value of time. If we don’t start for the Arms soon it may be Miss Susanna’s bedtime before we arrive there.”
“You must go with us, Kathie,” declared Marjorie. “The more Travelers, the merrier. We’re five of the old crowd, and I think it’s great to have even that number together again.”
