"Well, you will go to our house-dance, won't you?" begged Babbie.

"Oh, you must," seconded Bob. "I've told piles of people you were coming."

"We shall die of disappointment if you don't," added Babe feelingly.

Mary laughed good-naturedly. "All right," she conceded, "I'll come. Only be sure to get me lots of dances with freshmen. Then I can amuse myself by making them think I'm one, also, and I shan't be bored."

On the way back to the campus the girls discussed Mary's amazing att.i.tude toward the pleasures of college life.

"She must be awfully used up," said Roberta, solemnly. "Why, she used to be crazy about plays and dances and 'eats.'"

"No use in coming up at all," grumbled Katherine, "if she's only going to lie around and sleep."

"She doesn't look one bit tired," declared Betty, "and she seems glad to be back, only she doesn't want to do anything. It's certainly queer."

"She must be either sick or in love," said Madeline. "Nothing else will account for it."

"Then I think she's in love," declared little Helen Adams sedately. "She has a happy look in her eyes."

"Bosh!" jeered Bob. "Mary isn't the sentimental kind. I'll bet she feels different after the spread."

But though the spread was quite the grandest that had ever been seen at Harding, and though Mary seemed to enjoy it quite as heartily as her guests, who had conscientiously starved on campus fare for the week before it, it failed to arouse in her the proper enthusiasm for college functions.

On Tuesday "after partaking of a light but elegant noontide repast on me," as Katherine put it, Mary declared her intention of taking a nap, and went to her room. But half an hour later, when Babbie tiptoed up to ask if she really meant to waste a glorious afternoon sleeping, and to put the runabout at her service, the room was empty, and Mary turned up again barely in time for the grand dinner at Cuyler's.

"We were scared to death for fear you'd forgotten us," said Madeline, helping her off with her wraps. "Where have you been all this time?"

"Why, dressing," explained Mary, wearing her most innocent expression.

"It takes ages to get into this gown, but it's my best, and I wanted to do honor to your very grand function."

"That dress was lying on your bed when I stopped for you exactly fifteen minutes ago," declared Bob triumphantly. "So you'll have to think of another likely tale."

Mary smiled her "beamish" smile.

"Well, I came just after you'd gone and isn't fourteen minutes to waste on dressing an age? If you mean where was I before that, why my nap wasn't a success, so I went walking, and it was so lovely that I couldn't bear to come in. These hills are perfectly fascinating after the city."

"You little fraud," cried Madeline. "You hate walking, and you can't see scenery----"

"As witness the nestle," put in Katherine.

"So please tell us who he is," finished Madeline calmly.

"The very idea of coming back to see us and then going off fussing with Winsted men!" Babe's tone was solemnly reproachful.

But Mary was equal to the situation. "I haven't seen a Winsted man since I came," she declared. "I was going to tell you who was with me this afternoon, but I shan't now, because you've all been so excessively mean and suspicious." A waitress appeared, and Mary's expression grew suddenly ecstatic. "Do I see creamed chicken?" she cried. "Girls, I dreamed about Cuyler's creamed chicken every night last week. I was so afraid you wouldn't have it!"

Her appreciation of the dinner was so delightfully whole-hearted that even Roberta forgave her everything, down to her absurd enthusiasm over a ponderous psychology lecture and the very dull reception that followed it. At the latter, to be sure, Mary acted exactly like her old self, for she sat in a corner and monopolized Dr. Hinsdale for half an hour by the clock, while her little friends, to quote Katherine Kittredge, "champed their bits" in their impatience to capture her and escape to more congenial regions.

The next night at the Westcott House dance Mary was again her gay and sportive self. If she was bored, she concealed it admirably, and that in spite of the fact that her little scheme of playing freshman seemed doomed to failure. Mary had walked out of chapel that morning with the front row, and, even without the enormous bunch of violets which none of her senior friends would confess to having sent her, she was not a figure to pa.s.s unnoticed. So most of the freshmen on her card recognized her at once, and the few who did not stoutly refused to be taken in by her innocent references to "our cla.s.s."

She had the last dance but one with the sour-faced Miss b.u.t.ts, who never recognized any one; but Mary did not know that, and being rather tired she swiftly waltzed her around the hall a few times and then suggested that they watch the dance out from the gallery.

"What cla.s.s are you?" asked Miss b.u.t.ts, when they were established there. "My card doesn't say."

"Doesn't it?" said Mary idly, watching the kaleidoscope of gay colors moving dizzily about beneath her. "Then suppose you guess."

Miss b.u.t.ts considered ponderously. "You aren't a freshman," she said finally, "nor a soph.o.m.ore."

"How are you so sure of that?" asked Mary. "I was just going to say----"

"You're a junior," announced Miss b.u.t.ts, calmly disregarding the interruption.

Mary shook her head.

"Senior, then."

Mary shook her head again.

"I didn't think you looked old enough for that," said Miss b.u.t.ts. "Then I was mistaken and you're a soph.o.m.ore."

"No," said Mary firmly.

Miss b.u.t.ts stared. "Freshman?"

"No," said Mary, who considered the befooling of Miss b.u.t.ts beneath her.

"I graduated last year."

"Oh, I don't believe that: I believe you're a freshman after all,"

declared Miss b.u.t.ts. "You started to say you were a few minutes ago."

"No, I graduated last June," repeated Mary, a trifle sharply. "Here's Miss Hildreth coming for my next dance. You can ask her. I'm her guest this evening. Didn't I graduate last year, Babbie?"

Babbie stared uncomprehendingly for a moment. Then she remembered Mary's plan.

"Why, you naughty little freshman!" she cried reprovingly. "Have you been telling her that?"

Miss b.u.t.ts looked dazedly from the amused and reproachful Babbie to Mary, whose expression was properly cowed and repentant.

"Are you really a freshman?" she asked. "Why, I don't believe you are.

I--I don't know what to believe!"

Mary smiled at her radiantly. "Never mind," she said, "you'll know the truth some day. Next fall at about this time I'll invite you to dinner, and then you'll know all about me. Now good-bye."

Babbie regarded this speech as merely Mary's convenient little way of getting rid of the stupid Miss b.u.t.ts, who for her part promptly forgot all about it. But Mary remembered, and she declared that the sight of Miss b.u.t.ts's face on the occasion of that dinner-party, with all its rather remarkable accessories, was worth many evenings of boredom at "girl dances."

It was not until Friday, that Mary's "little friends" caught her red-handed, in an escapade that explained everything from the size of her trunk to the puzzling insouciance of her manner. They all, and particularly Roberta, had begun to feel a little hurt as the days went by and Mary indulged in many mysterious absences and made unconvincing excuses for refusing invitations that, as Katherine Kittredge said, were enough to turn the head of a crown-princess. Friday, the day that had been reserved for the expedition to Smuggler's Notch, dawned crisp and clear, and some girls who had had dinner at Mrs. n.o.ble's farm the night before brought back glowing reports of the venison her brother had sent her from Maine, and the roaring log fire that she built for them in the fireplace of her new dining-room. So Roberta and Madeline hurried over before chapel to ask Mary to reconsider. But she was firm in her refusal. She had waked with a headache. Besides, she had letters to write and calls to make on her faculty friends and the people she knew in town.

The emba.s.sy returned, disconsolate, and reported its failure.