The junior bent nearer to speak in lower tones; but Lila and I could not help hearing. "Mary, something is wrong with us too," she whispered. "Did you know that to-day at our mock election some of the soph.o.m.ores pretended to be corrupt voters and wardheelers? They intimidated voters, challenged registrations, played at buying votes, tried to stuff the ballot-boxes. There was a most disgraceful scrimmage! To turn such crimes into a joke! How could they? How could we?"

Miss Benton straightened herself with a movement that was sorrowful and angry and discouraged all at once. She drew a deep breath.

"I will tell you what is wrong with us as well as with the entire country. Our ideal of honesty is wrong. With us here at college the trouble is in little things; with the world of business and politics the evil is in great matters too. But the principle is the same. We are not honest. We condemn graft in public office. Is it not also graft when a student helps herself to examination foolscap and takes it for private use? Is the girl who carries away sugar from the table any better than the government employee who misappropriates funds or supplies in his charge? We cry out in horror at revelations of bribery. Ah, but in our cla.s.s elections do we vote for the candidate who will best fill the office, or for our friends? I have known a girl who desired to be president of the Athletic a.s.sociation to bargain away her influence to another who was running for an editorship."

"And some of us travel on pa.s.ses which are made out in other names."

Miss Benton did not hear. "We exclaim--we point our fingers--we groan over the trickery of officials, scandals, bribery, treachery, lawlessness. And yet we--is it honest to bluff in recitations--to lay claim to knowledge which we do not possess? Is it honest to injure a library book and not pay for the damage? Is it honest to neglect to return borrowed property? Some of us rob the maids of strength by obliging them to work overtime in waiting on us at the table. Our lack of punctuality steals valuable time from tutors and teachers and each other.

We cheat the faculty by slighting our opportunities and thus making their life work of inferior quality to that which they have a right to expect.

By heedless exaggeration we may murder a reputation--mutilate an existence. We wrong each other by being less than our best. We are unscrupulous about breaking promises. Down town this afternoon at the corner of Main and Market Streets I saw a freshman waiting in the cold.

She was walking to and fro to get warm. Her teeth chattered,--she was crying from nervous suspense. When I spoke to her and advised her to return to college before dark, she shook her head, and said no, somebody had promised to meet her, and she had to stay. Now that girl, whoever it was, who broke that engagement, is responsible----"

I leaned forward and clutched Miss Benton's shoulder.

"She hasn't come back yet," I cried; "do you think she is there still? I forgot--I thought it didn't matter. I didn't mean to--"

Miss Benton turned around her head to look up at me, and the others near us looked too, and down at the foot of the stairs the crowd packed in front of the bulletin board sort of quieted for a minute and seemed to be listening and watching us. And up on the wall over their heads the big clock went tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, and its long pendulum swung to and fro.

Then swish, swish, swish, the lady princ.i.p.al came hurrying through the reception hall beyond, with her silk skirts rustling, and her face quite pale. And the girls turned their heads toward her. She raised her hand and said in her soft voice: "Are Miss Martha Reed's roommates here?"

And then some more girls with their hats and coats on came running up the steps from the vestibule. The crowd was buzzing like everything when Lila and I pushed our way through to tell Mrs. Howard we were there. We caught sc.r.a.ps of sentences flying hither and thither.

"Run over?"

"Lying in the road----"

"Who found her?"

"Yes, right there in the loneliest part."

"Such a timid little thing----"

"Frightened and fell maybe----"

"Queer she didn't take the car."

"Is she dead?"

Lila pushed ahead, thrusting the girls right and left from her path. I couldn't see her face, but her shoulders kept pumping up and down as if she were smothering. You know she's more sensitive than I am, and I felt badly enough.

Mrs. Howard took her hand and said, "Miss Reed wishes to see you both and leave a message."

Of course such a speech would make anybody think she was dying. I rubbed my sleeve across my eyes and shut my teeth together and swallowed once, for the other girls around were gazing after us. Lila walked on with her head up. I couldn't see anything but the line of her cheek, and that looked sort of cold and stony. We followed on over the thick rugs into the second reception room. There sitting in a big chair, leaning back against a cushion kind of limp and pale but not dead at all--there was Martha.

"Did you get the money?" she asked.

Lila didn't answer. She just dropped on her knees and hid her face against Martha's dress.

"It was a centerpiece I thought Mother would like. I chose it in the shop-window there at the corner while I was waiting. Maybe it will get there almost in time if it is mailed to-morrow, but the doctor says I must go to the infirmary for a day or two. If you would please send it away for me in the morning--if you have the money to buy it, Lila,--I'm sorry."

The doctor walked in alert and brusque as usual but gentle too.

"Now for my captive," she said, "time's up. Life in a study with two soph.o.m.ores is hard on a freshman's nerves. A few days of the rest-cure will about suit you."

Martha glanced at me, for Lila was still hiding her face.

"It was silly of me," she explained shyly, "but I grew so nervous when you didn't meet me that I cried and that made it worse. I watched every car and both sides of the street, and I waited till after dark. You see, I didn't have any money for car-fare. After they began to light the lamps, I started to walk out here to the college. Everybody was eating supper, and I was all alone on the road with dark fields on both sides. I could not help thinking of those dreadful robbers and maniacs and tramps----"

"What?" cried the doctor.

I drew a deep breath. "We told her," I said. "I--I'm afraid we exaggerated. I--I thought it would be more interesting."

"Oh!" said the doctor. It was such a grim sort of an oh that I repented some more, though indeed it was not necessary.

Martha smiled at me. I always did consider her the dearest, most sympathetic little thing. "It was my fault," she said, "I am such a coward anyhow. And then when I ran past a rock, I imagined I saw something move and jump toward me. I lost my wits and ran and ran and ran till I twisted my ankle and fell. I must have struck my head on a stone.

I'm sorry. It was silly of me to run. Please don't worry."

"That will do for the present," said the doctor.

Then they carried her over to the infirmary. Lila and I walked out past the crowd in front of the bulletin board. They were cheering.

"Listen, Lila," I said, "good news from somewhere."

"We promised to meet her," said Lila.

I hate regrets. "Well," I said, "that's all over and done with. There is no use in bothering about it now. But the next promise we make----"

Berta rushed up to us. "Oh, girls!" she exclaimed, "did you catch that last return? Reform is sweeping the country. Hurrah!"

CHAPTER VII

FOUR SOPh.o.m.oRES AND A DOG

The last recitation of the winter term was over, and the corridors were alive with girls hurrying this way and that, pinning on their hats, b.u.t.toning jackets, crowding into the elevator, unfurling umbrellas, and chattering all the time.

"Hope you'll have the nicest sort of a time!" "Don't stay up too late!"

"Good-bye!" "Oh, good-bye!" "Be sure to get well rested this vacation!"

"Awfully, awfully sorry you wouldn't come home with me, Gertrude, you bad child! But I know you won't suffer from monotony with Berta and Beatrice in the same study." "Hurry, girls, there's the car now. Just hear that bell jingle, will you!" "Good-bye, Gertrude, and don't let Sara work too hard!" "Oh, good-bye!"

Gertrude felt the clutch of arms relax from about her neck, and managed to breathe again. This was one of the penalties--pleasant enough, doubtless, if a person were in the mood for it--of being a popular soph.o.m.ore. For a minute she lingered wearily in the vestibule to watch the figures flying down the avenue to the Lodge gates. How their skirts fluttered and twisted around them, and how their hats danced! Their suit-cases bounded and b.u.mped as they ran, and their umbrellas churned up and down in choppy billows before the boisterous March wind. There! the last one had vanished in a whirl of flapping ends and lively angles beyond the dripping evergreens.

As she was turning languidly away, a backward glance espied two girls emerging from one of the dormitories far across the flooded lawn. They came skipping over the narrow planks that had been laid in the rivers flowing along the curving walks. The first was Berta swathed in a hooded waterproof; and the second, of course, was Beatrice, a tam flung askew on her red curls, her arms thrust through a coat sleeve or two, a laundry bag swinging from one elbow, and a tin fudge pan clasped tenderly and firmly beneath the other, while with the hands so providentially left free she stooped at every third step to rescue one or the other of her easy-fitting rubbers from setting out on a watery voyage all by itself.

"Hi!" she gasped after a final shuffling dash, as she caught sight of immaculate Gertrude, "I wore your overshoes. Hope you don't mind. They're not very wet inside, and I brought over your things so that we can move into our borrowed study right off now."