When Edith's brother Philip came in from College to spend Sat.u.r.day and Sunday, Edith's house was apt to be a rendezvous for the other girls.

Not that Philip was likely to waste much time with mere girls. Not he!

He was a Harvard soph.o.m.ore, and realized his own importance quite as much as the girls did. But still there was always the chance that he would come into the room just for a minute, and tell them some of the latest Cambridge news. He would have scorned to call it gossip. If there was any one thing in the world he hated--so he said--it was girls' talk, this jabbering about nothing. For his part he wouldn't waste his time _that_ way. Yet, when he had an appreciative audience,--and girls generally appreciated what Philip said,--he would often spend as much as half an hour talking about the fellows--how beastly it was Jim Dashaway couldn't row on the crew, and he would grow almost enthusiastic when describing the tussle between Ned Brown and Stanley Hooper over the respective merits of Boston and New York in which Hooper, the New Yorker, was terribly beaten.

"And upon my word," he concluded, "I wasn't sorry, for the New York set is getting just unbearable. I wouldn't so much mind fighting Stanley Hooper myself about New York and Boston. I guess I'd show him that New York isn't the whole world."

"I should say not," exclaimed Nora; but Belle, who had some New York cousins, was silent. Brenda, however, noticing Belle's expression, and not feeling disposed to side completely with Nora, said,

"You're terribly narrow, Nora, to think that n.o.body's any good unless he comes from Boston."

"I didn't say so," replied Nora.

"No, but that's what you mean, and I'm surprised, Philip Blair, that a boy should be so awfully one-sided."

"Well, you'd better talk, Brenda Barlow," broke in Nora again. "Just see the way you treat Julia. If she'd been born in Boston----"

"I don't treat her," interrupted Brenda.

"No, that's just it, you don't treat her decently."

"Oh, I say," said Philip, from his place in front of the mantelpiece, "how queer girls are; do you always fight like this when you're together?"

"We don't fight like you boys," answered Edith, good-humoredly. "We don't knock each other down and run the risk of breaking one another's noses."

Philip looked over his shoulder in the gla.s.s. There was nothing the matter with his own shapely nose, and I doubt that he would have run any such risk as Edith suggested. Perhaps this was the reason why Philip was not a fighter. There was one good thing about the little disputes in which Brenda and Belle indulged. They very seldom lasted long. In the present instance the girls were ashamed of having shown temper before Philip. The latter, however, did not dwell on their weakness.

"Oh, say, did you hear about the time Will Hardon had with the d.i.c.ky, last week?" he asked.

Nora nodded. She, too, had a brother in College.

"What was it?" asked Edith. "You haven't told _me_, Philip."

"How funny you are, Edith," said Belle. "You never hear anything. Hasn't anyone told you how the other fellows made him run blindfolded in his shirt sleeves down Beacon Street?"

"No, really?"

"Of course, really!"

"And then they led him up the steps into Mrs. Oxford's when she was giving an afternoon tea, and when they took the bandage off his eyes there he was in his shirt sleeves, without his hat, and his hair all tumbled, and everybody looking at him."

"Oh," said one girl, and "Ah," said another; and "How silly!" they all cried together.

"If girls amused themselves like that what fun you'd make of us!" said the practical Nora.

"I shouldn't think there'd be much fun in making anybody uncomfortable."

"Oh, it gives a fellow a chance to show what kind of stuff he's made of," explained Philip, "whether he has good manners, and whether he's clever--and all that."

"There must be better ways of showing bravery," said the practical Edith. "I don't believe you know a bit more about Will Hardon's bravery than you did before."

"We knew something about his manners."

"What?"

"Why, when he saw where he was, he didn't run away, or flunk out. He only looked a little sheepish, the other fellows said, but he just bowed to the ladies, and saying politely that he was sorry to have disturbed them, he walked off as nice as you please."

"Wasn't he mad at the two fellows for taking him there?"

"Of course not; that's a part of the thing. Why, there are fellows in Cambridge who would go through fire and water, or stand on their heads in front of a pulpit for the sake of getting into the d.i.c.ky. I tell you we make some of them suffer."

Philip said "we" with a rather important air, although he had belonged to the ill.u.s.trious organization a very short time.

"Well, I think you're perfectly horrid," cried Brenda, "I mean the d.i.c.ky. I've heard about the way you make people suffer, branding them with hot cigars, and making them run barefoot winter nights, and doing all sorts of useless things."

"If you went to College you'd see more use in them."

"I'm glad girls don't go to College."

"Oh, some do!"

"Not girls we know."

"I'm sure I can't tell," said Philip rather crossly, "there are a lot of girls studying in Cambridge now at the Annex, and the fellows don't like it at all."

"Well, I declare," exclaimed Nora, "I'd like to know what difference it makes to them."

"Oh, they hate to see these girls going about with books, and trying to get into Harvard."

"Yes, trying to break down the walls," said Nora, sarcastically.

"Oh, see here, it would just spoil everything to have women in the cla.s.ses with us."

"Are you afraid they'd get ahead of you?" asked Edith, gently.

"Now, look here, Edith, I don't want you to talk that way," responded Philip with brotherly authority. "There isn't any danger of girls getting ahead of us."

"Why, I heard," said Nora, "that one of the professors----"

"Oh, yes, I've heard it too," interrupted Philip. "I've heard that some professors say that their Annex cla.s.ses do better work than ours,--but anybody can tell that that's all rot."

"I believe it's all perfectly true," said Nora.

"Well, I wish myself that our English instructor hadn't such a fondness for reading themes to us that the girls have written. He makes out that they are better than ours, but I can't say that I see it myself."

"Who gets the best marks?"

"I'm sure I can't say. He gives us such beastly marks that I dare say he makes it up with the girls. But I wouldn't let a sister of mine go to College," he concluded inconsequently.