"It was your friends who elected me, Constance, not mine. I am in no danger of making any mistake on that point. Do you suppose that I do not know how you have been working for me?"

"What of that?"

"If you had been as poor as I, how much influence would you have had? I am not ungrateful to you--please do not think that--but I have been treated to such a succession of slights all of my life, that I cannot help feeling a wee bit bitter. I was not elected tonight because of any grat.i.tude or liking that the girls have for me, but merely because you--Constance Van Gerder, who will one day be one of the richest women in this country--have chosen to befriend me, and so asked those girls to vote for me. If it were not a cowardly thing to do, I should go away from here to some other college. I would take care to proclaim my full history the very first day I was there, and I would not attempt to make a single friend."

"That would be a cowardly thing to do. Next year neither Abby Dunbar nor Grace Chisholm will be here. They will never manage to get through the soph.o.m.ore work. They are the only ones who are your active enemies, and they are such, merely through spite and jealousy. You are a good student, Meg; do your best for your mother's sake and for mine, too.

I want you to carry off some honors on Commencement Day."

"I will do my best for you; you have done so much for me that I could not refuse to try, at least. I think I shall get permission to run down and see my mother for an hour. Professor Newton may think it too late to go, but I would like to tell Mother that I was elected. I should not have let you propose my name at all, if it had not been for her."

"Then you would have been a big simpleton. I am positive, Meg, that Professor Newton will not listen to your going out tonight, but you can telephone to your mother. Will not that do?"

"And have Abby Dunbar and all the other girls hear me? I couldn't possibly. If the telephone were not just inside the reception room where the entire college can hear what is said, I might do that."

"I see. Don't trouble yourself. It is out of the question for you to go to town tonight at this hour. Professor Newton would consider you crazy to ask, but I can appreciate your mother's anxiety, and I am going to telephone to her. It will give me great pleasure to do this, and the more of Abby's friends that are within hearing, the better."

"You are very kind, but--"

Constance had gone unceremoniously, and Margaret's expostulation was cut short.

As Constance had predicted, the little tempest created by the revelation of Margaret's family history soon died down. Of course, it was only Constance's strong influence which brought about this result; none of the girls wished to cut themselves off absolutely from her acquaintance, and Constance made it very plain that those who showed the least discourtesy to Margaret were no friends of hers.

Poor Mrs. Hamilton had been almost heartbroken when she first learned of Margaret's troubles, but Margaret herself had made as light as possible of them, and the fact that she was now Constance's room-mate, reconciled Mrs. Hamilton to everything.

The soph.o.m.ore year was generally conceded by both the students and the faculty, to be the hardest year at Westover College. While the girls whom we know managed to have some good times in a quiet way, they found themselves, for the most part, kept very busy.

Mary Sutherland drew more and more into her sh.e.l.l, as Beth and Dolly grew more intimate with Margaret and Constance. Dolly complained of it repeatedly to Professor Newton. "Mary acts as if we did not have love enough to go around. Just as if Beth and I couldn't care for her now, because we like Margaret and Constance Van Gerder. I wonder if she thinks that love is measured out by the quart, Professor Newton, and that Beth and I have exhausted our supply?"

"You must be patient with my stubborn little niece, Dolly dear; she is her own worst enemy. Neither you nor I can say anything to her now. She is wilfully losing lots of enjoyment out of these college days. She has made no new friendships, for she thinks too much of you and Beth to do that. In truth, she is jealous and unreasonable, but she fails to see it.

She might as well demand that G.o.d's blessed sunshine shall illumine only a few places. Some things grow by the using. Our power of loving is one of those things, Dolly. G.o.d's love reaches all the infinity of His creatures, and yet its depths are boundless. It is immeasurable.

Sometime Mary will learn this."

At Thanksgiving time Dolly carried Mary off to her own home. Beth could not be persuaded to stop this time. She thought of last year, when she had had no desire to go home at all, and could not but marvel at the difference in her feelings now. In truth, Beth was making up for all those years of repression and coldness, by the wealth of love which she lavished upon her own people. And they returned it a thousandfold.

Dearly as Mrs. Newby loved her own dainty little Nell, she knew that this child was no dearer to her than was Beth.

Mary had gone home with Dolly half under protest, but Dolly would listen to no excuses, and Professor Newton urged her so strongly to accept the invitation, that Mary finally went. Dolly felt confident that this brief visit would serve to clear away the clouds that had come between them; but in this she was disappointed. Some way she saw little of Mary, after all. Did Fred monopolize Mary's society--the two were certainly together a great deal--or, had she enjoyed d.i.c.k Martin's indolent witticisms and quiet humor so much that she had neglected Mary? She felt rather uneasy about it, and promised herself to atone at the Christmas holidays. But when the Christmas holidays came, there were new plans for all.

Margaret was to go home with Constance for the entire vacation. She had demurred about leaving her mother, but Mrs. Hamilton had insisted strongly that she should go for the whole time. "It is not as if you were where I could not see you every day, dear. Of course, I would love to have you with me, but just now I would much rather have you visit Miss Van Gerder." And Margaret, seeing that her mother really meant what she said, yielded the point, and went home with Constance.

There was to be a house party at Constance's for the last week of the vacation. Dolly and Beth were invited as well as Hope Brereton and Hazel Browne.

"I don't know Miss Sutherland well enough to ask her to be of our party," Constance said to Dolly. "She is so far away from home that I would like to ask her if I felt better acquainted. I don't see how you ever came to know her. She absolutely repels all advances."

Dolly laughed, although she was inwardly provoked with Mary. What good times she was cheating herself of! Could she not recognize genuine goodness when she saw it? What made Mary so blind and obtuse in these days? "Mary is just like a chestnut-burr on the outside," she replied now to Constance. "Sometime she will get tired of p.r.i.c.king all of her friends, and then everyone will see what a genuine heart of gold she has."

"I hope she will shed the burr soon, for her own sake. People do not like to get stung and p.r.i.c.ked when they approach her in a friendly manner."

"I have preached until I am tired. We must leave her alone now. I am going to take her home with me, and Mother intends keeping her after I go on to your house. She is quite in love with Mother, and is as nearly demonstrative with her, as it is possible for Mary to be with anyone. We shall be a very congenial party at your house, Constance. You always do manage to get together people that suit."

"I am afraid that you will take back that remark when you know of one more invitation that I want to give today."

"What in the world do you mean?"

"Don't be stunned, but I want to have Margery Ainsworth. Shall I?"

"The idea of asking us whom you shall invite to your own home! How absurd!"

"But you don't like Margery."

"I hadn't known that you did either," Dolly said frankly.

"I have felt a little sorry for her lately. We have seen more or less of each other all our lives; we both live in New York, and as children we went to the same kindergarten, and we have seen each other with some frequency during all the in-between years. Just now Margery is not having an easy time. Instead of being a junior, as she would have been in the ordinary course of events, she is only a freshman, but I have learned that she is doing extra work and has taken some extra examinations. She hopes to come into our cla.s.s as a full soph.o.m.ore after Christmas."

"I wonder what has roused her so. She was never a student in any sense of the word, last year."

"She knows that her father is earnest in his determination to have her complete her course here, and so she is resolved to get through as quickly as possible. She has lost one year, but there is no reason why she should lose two. She is discovering unsuspected capabilities for study in herself; you must have noticed that she takes no recreation and has no friends. She is settling down into a mere 'grind.'"

"Margery Ainsworth, of all people!"

"It is strange. She does not love study any better than she once did, but she has an indomitable perseverance when her will is aroused. Just now she is determined to get through college as soon as possible, and to maintain a good standing. I cannot see why Mr. Ainsworth is so resolved that she shall graduate from here. She is an only child, and her mother is an invalid. He must have some weighty reason for sending her off, when she would be such a comfort to her mother."

"It must hurt her pride fearfully to be under constant supervision, not to be able to go where other girls go, and to feel that she is not trusted."

"It is hard, most certainly, but Margery brought all that on herself.

One cannot do wrong without meeting the penalties for it, in some way or other, even in this life. But if she succeeds in making the soph.o.m.ore cla.s.s, she will come into it with a clean page turned. I happen to know that the faculty means to give her a chance to wipe out old scores."

"And you want to help the girl? Well, you don't suppose that any of the rest of us would be so mean-spirited as to make objections? If you think that, you had better withdraw our invitations."

"Don't talk nonsense, my dearest Dolly," Constance said indolently.

"I am too fatigued to argue with you."

"Then come and have a walk, Con. Beth is working away at some problem in her advanced trigonometry that it would make me ill even to read over.

I have come to have an added respect for Beth this year, when I see how deliberately she picks out all the mathematical courses. It would not be possible for me to do that. It tasks all of my mathematical resources just to keep account of my own allowance."

Con laughed. "You excel Beth in some other things, so that you may consider yourself even. By the way where is Margaret? I would like her to go with us."

"We might look into the library. She may be there," and Dolly made a mental note of Constance's unfailing watchfulness and care for her room-mate.

As they drew near to the library, it became evident that Margaret _was_ there. The other occupants of the room were Abby Dunbar and her immediate coterie of half a dozen friends. For the most part, Abby had preserved a haughty coldness toward Margaret, although she indulged in petty meannesses and flings at her, whenever she imagined that she could do it without Constance's knowledge. She had no intention of cutting herself off absolutely from Miss Van Gerder's acquaintance.

Today, however, she had just chanced to learn of the house-party at Constance's home. She was not invited, and Margaret was! She was so full of wrath and indignation, that she forgot her usual caution. She commenced talking to her friends in a tone which would easily reach Margaret, and she contrived to put all the bottled up venom of the past term into her words. To all appearances Margaret heard not a syllable.

Just as Constance and Dolly approached the library, Abby turned, not seeing them, addressing a remark directly to Margaret.

Margaret turned toward her, a quiet scorn in her brown eyes. "Miss Dunbar, if you were unaware of some things when you invited me to your house, we are certainly quits, for I have since learned facts concerning your family which would have prevented my ever putting a foot inside your house had I known them before."