"Bea!" she answered, "I am going to give a tea for my Aunt Sarah. Do you think Sue Merriam will come if I invite her?"

CHAPTER II

ENTER ROBBIE BELLE

Now it happened one evening in the early fall, while Bea and Lila were learning to live together, that the Students' a.s.sociation held a meeting to appoint corridor wardens for the year.

In the throng that came pouring out of chapel afterward, Bea, who had an eel-like rapidity in gliding through crowds, found herself at the doors some yards in advance of Lila. Halting to wait in the vestibule, she overheard a junior instructing a new freshman officer in her duties.

"It is very simple. Oh, no, Miss Sanders, no, indeed! There is nothing meddlesome about it. You're not expected to spy upon the girls in your neighborhood. The aim is merely to preserve a certain degree of quiet.

Girls are often thoughtless about being noisy in the corridors. Simply remind them now and then in flagrant cases that they are disturbing those who wish to study. Of course you must be tactful, though it is rarely that a student wilfully disregards the rights of others."

Bea peered around the edge of her particular door in order to catch a glimpse of this freshman so distinguished. It was the tall, fair-faced child with the splendid long braid, who lived at the end of Berta's transverse. Now the sweet mouth was drooping disconsolately, and the big eyes looked dewy with anxious tears.

"I--I don't think I'd like to," she said.

"Oh, but it is something that must be done, and you have been selected as the one in that vicinity who strikes us as best fitted for the duties of the position. It is really, you know, a case of public service. Every one at some time or other ought to be willing to make sacrifices of personal desires for the good of the community, don't you think? But forgive me for preaching. I didn't mean to. By the way, how do you like college, Miss Sanders?"

"It isn't so much fun as I had expected," said she. Bea's head popped around the door again. The junior was smiling with an air of amused superiority.

"Ah, yes, I understand. Probably you used to have a sister or cousin at college, and from her letters you supposed that the life was composed chiefly of dancing, fudges and basket-ball with a little work sandwiched in between. Is it not so? And now----"

"I don't mind the work," here Bea's head popped out a third time to contemplate this interesting cla.s.smate, "but----"

"Beatrice," called Lila at her other ear, "Berta says to hurry or we'll miss the best of the fun. It's to be a sheet-and-pillow-case party to-morrow, and a lot of the girls are coming in to learn how to do the draping. Berta has an idea. Come along quick!"

Robbie Belle Sanders stared after them wistfully. "Those girls live near me," she said, "they have fun all the time."

The junior's keen glance spied in the open countenance something that kept her lingering a moment longer. "This is a democratic place," she said in a more sympathetic tone, "every girl finds her own level sooner or later. The basis is not money or social rank of the families at home.

It is not brains or clothes or stuff like that. It is simply that the same kind of girls drift together. They're congenial. It seems to be a law. A general law, you understand. Of course," she hesitated for an instant before being spurred on by her sense of scrupulous honesty, "there are exceptions. Once in a while a girl fails to find her special niche. Maybe she rooms off the campus and is not thrown in contact with her own kind. She may be abnormally shy--that hinders her from making friends. Or perhaps she does something that queers herself first thing."

"Queers herself?" echoed Robbie Belle, "how does a person queer herself?"

"Oh, I don't know." She paused to reflect. "She does outlandish things.

And still it isn't what she does so much as what she is. Her acts express her character. If her character is queer, she behaves queerly, and the others fight shy of her. After all, I dare say she does find her own level, and there is n.o.body else there. So she goes along solitary through the four years."

Robbie Belle looked frightened. "I wish I knew what things are queer,"

she said.

"Oh, being different from the other girls, for instance, awfully different, so different that everybody notices it. Not just original, you know, but actually queer. Watch the girls, particularly those who always go around alone, and you'll learn. Good-night, Miss Sanders. I must congratulate you again on the honor of being appointed freshman warden.

Good-night."

Robbie Belle walked slowly down the corridor to her room. "I wonder if I am queer," she thought. "I am almost always alone." She halted before a door that displayed a small square of white paper pinned in the middle of its upper half. Robbie Belle, her hand on the k.n.o.b, regarded the sign hopelessly. "If you have a roommate who never takes down her ENGAGED, and she doesn't like company and she won't go anywhere with you herself, maybe you can't help being queer."

Robbie Belle entered softly. It was a large room and seemed quite bare because of the absence of curtains, rugs, and cushions. The unsociable roommate was sitting beside the centre table, her elbows propped on its shiny surface that was innocent of any cover and ignorant of the duster.

A green shade over her eyes connected a blur of nondescript hair with a rather long nose beneath which a pair of pale lips in the glow of the drop-light was rapidly gabbling over some lines in Greek scansion.

Without looking up, she waved one hand forbiddingly; and Robbie Belle obediently shut her mouth over the few words that were ready to be uttered in greeting. She stood waiting in her tracks, so to speak, until the final hexameter had wailed out its drawling length, and Miss Cutter pushed back the green shade.

"Well," she demanded, "what was the important business before the meeting? I could not spare valuable time for self-government foolishness to-night."

"They appointed corridor wardens," answered Robbie Belle.

"Oh, indeed! It is certainly time, I must say. In theory it is all very well to make the rules a matter of honor, but when you happen to live in a nest of girls who behave as if they were six years old, I insist that something more forcible than chapel admonitions is required. Who is the warden for this neighborhood?"

"I am," said Robbie Belle.

"You are!" Miss Cutter pushed the green shade farther up on her high forehead. "Well, I must say!" She surveyed her roommate with new interest. "How exceedingly extraordinary!"

Robbie shifted her weight to the other foot. "I didn't want to be," she said.

"No, of course not, and you nothing but a child yourself. It must be your height and that grave way you have of staring. With that baby-face, couldn't they see that your dignity is all on the outside?"

Robbie said nothing, but if Miss Cutter had not been quite so near-sighted she might have spied deep in the violet eyes a glint of black remotely resembling anger.

"Think of appealing to a sixteen-year-old infant--really you are literally in-fans, which is to say, one without the power of speech!

Fancy me applying to you to compel quiet in the halls! Imagine that boisterous crowd trailing after Miss Abbott and Miss Leigh et al.--Hist!"

She lifted her head like a warhorse sniffing battle near. "There they are now."

Robbie Belle lifted her head too and listened, although indeed the noise would have penetrated to the most inattentive ears. A mult.i.tude of feet were marching lock-step past the door to a chorus of giggling, stifled squeals and groans, while at intervals a voice choking with emotion rose in shrill accents: "There was an old woman all skin and bones, o-o-oh!"

When it faltered and collapsed on the o-o-oh, the other voices joined in and dragged out the syllable to lugubrious and harrowing length. Then some one giggled hysterically and another squealed. The soloist took up the verse: "She went to the church to pray, o-o-oh!" The chorus wailed and moaned and croaked and whimpered and groaned in concert. Miss Cutter regarded Robbie Belle sternly.

Robbie Belle's shoulders rose and fell over a deep breath. She stepped across to the door and closed the transom softly just as the next weird line hissed out above the tumult and then sank into its smothering welter and moan of vowels. Robbie spoke more loudly.

"One of them said that they were going to dress up in sheets and pillow-cases to-night. They are practicing for the Hallowe'en party. It's only fun."

Berta's voice--it was Berta who did the solo--here rose in a quavering shriek that halted not for keys in their holes or transoms in their sockets: "The worms crawled in and the worms crawled out, o-o-o-oh!"

Miss Cutter rose to her indignant feet. "Roberta Sanders, as you are the corridor warden for this neighborhood, I appeal to you. I make formal complaint----"

"They've gone." Robbie Belle smiled in relief and sat down rather quickly. The lock-step had receded into the m.u.f.fled distance and the ear-splitting wail wafted back in tones that grew steadily fainter.

Miss Cutter took off her gla.s.ses, rubbed them bright, put them on again, and contemplated Robbie Belle.

"I do believe that you would rather I suffered than that they became offended with you. You are afraid to rebuke them."

Robbie's eyes fell and the guilty color rose slowly through the delicate skin of throat and brow. But Miss Cutter did not see it. She had pulled down the green shade and propping her elbows in their former position had returned to her scansion. She had wasted too much time already.

Conscience-smitten Robbie Belle slid silently through the door and stood at loss for a minute in the deserted corridor. It was Friday night.

n.o.body studied on Friday night except girls who were queer or who roomed with superior special students like Miss Cutter. On her first day at college Miss Cutter had remarked that there might be a vacant seat of congenial minds for Robbie at her table. Somehow the grave young freshman who was hoping for fun failed to find them satisfying. She had not won a real friend yet, and here it was the end of October.

Robbie Belle was not conceited enough to feel sorry for herself, or else she might have perceived a certain pathos in that listless journey of a lonely child from her worse than solitary room to the deadly quiet of the library. One of the hilarious ghosts who were weaving spells under the evergreens happened to glance in through a great softly shining window and recognized the drooping head above a long deserted table between the shelves of books.

"There's our n.o.ble warden," whispered Bea, "studying on Friday night!