"No," said Grace with a guilty start. "I've been having such a good time I forgot her. Let's go and find her now."

The two began a slow promenade of the room in search of the missing girl. Suddenly Grace clutched her friend's arm. "Look over there, Miriam!" she exclaimed.

Seated on a divan beside Mabel Ashe and surrounded by half a dozen soph.o.m.ores was J. Elfreda. She was talking animatedly and the girls were urging her on with laughter and cries of "Now show us how some one else in Fairview looks."

"What do you suppose she is saying?" wondered Miriam. "Let's go over."

They neared the group just in time to hear Elfreda say, "The president of the Fairview suffragist league." Then her round face set as though turned to stone. Her eyes took on a determined glare, and drawing down the corners of her mouth she elevated her chin, rose from the divan and shrilled forth "Votes for Women" in a tone that fairly convulsed her hearers. Then suddenly catching sight of Grace and Miriam she sat down abruptly and said with an embarra.s.sed gesture of dismissal, "The show's over. I see my friends are looking for me. I'll have to go."

"You funny, funny girl!" exclaimed Mabel Ashe. "What a treasure you'll be when we give college entertainments. You'll make the Dramatic Club some day."

"Nothing like it," returned Elfreda, resorting to slang in her embarra.s.sment.

"Where did you ever learn to mimic people so cleverly?" asked one soph.o.m.ore.

"Oh, I don't know," replied Elfreda almost rudely. "I've imitated folks ever since I was a kid--little girl," she corrected. "You said you'd waltz with me to-night, Miriam, so come on. That's a Strauss waltz, and I don't want to miss it. Please excuse me," she said, turning to the a.s.sembled girls. She was making a desperate effort to be polite when she preferred to be rude.

"Mabel Ashe, you're the dearest girl," Grace burst forth as the little crowd dissolved and strolled off in different directions. "You have been lovely to Elfreda, and instead of her evening being spoiled, you know what I mean, she has actually made a sensation."

"I am not the only one who has been looking out for J. Elfreda's interests," reminded Mabel. "I am glad that she has this talent. It will help her to make friends with the girls, and if nothing more is said about the registrar affair she will soon have a following of her own."

"Do you think anything more will be said?" asked Grace anxiously.

"Not if I can help it," was the response.

It was almost midnight when, after seeing Ruth Denton home, the four girls climbed the steps of Wayne Hall.

"It was lovely, wasn't it, Anne?" declared Grace as she slipped into her kimono and began taking the pins from her hair.

"Yes," said Anne with a half sigh. She was deliberating as to whether she had better tell Grace a disturbing bit of conversation she had overheard. After all it wasn't worth repeating. She had simply heard one freshman say to another that she had been prepared to like Miss Harlowe, but something she had heard had caused her to change her mind. Anne suspected that in some way Elfreda's troubles had been shifted to Grace's shoulders.

CHAPTER IX

DISAGREEABLE NEWS

"Hurrah!" cried Miriam Nesbit gleefully, coming into the living room of Wayne Hall where Grace sat at the old-fashioned library table absorbed in writing a theme for next day's composition cla.s.s.

"What's happened?" asked Grace curiously, looking up from her writing.

"We're to go over to Exeter Field to-morrow for a try out in basketball.

I do hope we'll both make the team."

"So do I," agreed Grace promptly. "But there are so many girls that we may not be even chosen as subs. Besides, our playing may not compare with that of some of the others."

"Nonsense," returned Miriam stoutly. "Your playing would stand out anywhere, Grace, even on a boys' team. I consider myself a fair player, too," she added, flushing a little.

"I should say you are!" exclaimed Grace. "Who told you about the try out?"

"It's on the bulletin board. I don't see how you missed it."

"I didn't look at the bulletin board this morning. I meant to, then something else took my attention, and I forgot all about it." The "something else" had been the extremely frigid manner in which two freshmen she particularly liked had greeted her as she caught up with them on the way to her Livy cla.s.s that morning. Grace wondered not a little at this cavalier treatment, but could arrive at no satisfactory conclusion regarding it. She finally tried to dismiss the matter by ascribing it to over-sensitiveness on her part, but every now and then it haunted her like an offending spectre.

"I always look at the bulletin board, no matter what happens," declared Miriam emphatically. "I must hurry upstairs and impart the glorious news to Elfreda. We had elected to spend Sat.u.r.day afternoon in moving our furniture about, hoping to gain a few square inches of room s.p.a.ce, but we'll have to postpone doing it. We can do it the first rainy Sat.u.r.day.

Hurry along with your paper and come upstairs. I'm going to make tea, and I've acquired a new kind of cakes. They're chocolate covered and taste like home and mother."

After Miriam had gone upstairs Grace sat staring at her theme with unseeing eyes. Disagreeable thoughts would come, and try as she might she could not drive them away. She had been snubbed and she could not forget it. Giving herself a little impatient shake she turned her attention to her theme and went on writing rapidly. Half an hour later she folded it neatly, placed it inside one of her books, and went slowly upstairs. She found Miriam, Anne and Elfreda seated on the floor deep in tea drinking. Before them was a plate piled high with the new kind of cakes, and a five-pound box of candy that Elfreda had received from New York that morning.

"Sit down here, Grace," invited Anne, making room for her friend. "Give her some tea this minute, Miriam. She is a working woman and needs nourishment. Did you finish your theme, dear?"

Grace nodded. Then taking the cup Miriam offered she dropped two lumps of sugar in it, and began drinking her tea in silence.

"What's the matter, Grace?" asked Anne anxiously.

"Nothing," replied Grace. "I feel reflective. I suppose that's why I haven't anything to say. Did Miriam tell you about the basketball try out on Exeter Field?"

"Yes; but not for mine--I mean--I'm not interested in basketball,"

amended Elfreda, hastily. "I tell you this trying to cut out slang is no idle dream."

There was a shout of laughter from the three girls.

"Now, see here," bristled the stout girl. "You needn't laugh at me. What I meant was that--that it is very difficult to refrain from the use of slang," finished Elfreda with such affected primness that the laughter broke forth afresh.

"Humph!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed disgustedly. "I don't see anything to laugh at.

Goodness knows I'm trying hard to break myself of the habit."

"Of course you are," sympathized Anne. "We aren't laughing at you. It was the funny way you ended your last sentence."

Elfreda's face relaxed into a good-natured grin. "I am funny sometimes,"

she admitted calmly. "Even Pa, who doesn't smile once a year, says so."

"I must go," said Anne, rising. "I haven't looked at my history lesson, and it is frightfully long, too."

"I'll go with you," announced Grace. "I must mend my blue serge dress. I stepped on it while going upstairs this morning and tore it just above the hem. I had to change it for this, and was almost late for chapel."

"I waited for you in the hall as long as I could," said Anne. "I meant to ask you what happened, but forgot it. Grace, what do you suppose Elfreda said before you came upstairs?"

"I can't possibly guess," rejoined Grace. "J. Elfreda's remarks are varied and startling."

The two girls were now in their own room.

"These are nice ones," averred Anne. "She said that you and Miriam and I were the first girls she'd ever cared much about. She said that she had never tried to do anything to please any one but herself until she came here. Then when you stood up for her, and fixed things so she could go to the reception, she said she held up her right hand and swore to herself that she'd try to be worthy of our friendship. That's why she's trying not to use slang, and to be more generous. She keeps her things in order, too. You noticed how nice everything looked to-day."

"Miriam, not I, is responsible for the change," said Grace. "She is a born diplomat. She knows exactly how to proceed with J. Elfreda. I hope there won't be anything more said about the registrar affair, though. I want Elfreda to like college better every day."

"Grace," said Anne hesitatingly, "if I tell you something, will you promise not to worry over it?"