"Stay at home then," advised Jerry. "If that last remark of yours was meant for me, I am _not_ misguided and I shall _not_ be friendly if you hurl such adjectives at me."

"Neither was meant for you. You are only the bearer of the invitation.

Why stir up a breeze over nothing?"

"If you don't go to Elaine's birthday party she will think you stayed away because you were too stingy to buy her a present. We are all going to drive to Hamilton this afternoon after cla.s.ses to buy gifts for her.

Don't you wish you were going, too?" Ronny regarded Muriel with tantalizing eyes.

"Oh, I'm going along," Muriel glibly a.s.sured. "You can't lose me. What I like to do and what I ought to do are two very different things. After this week I shall settle down to the student life in earnest. My subjects are terrific this term. I am sorry I started calculus. I had enough to do without that."

"This will have to be my last party for a week or two," Marjorie declared. "I haven't done any real studying this week, and I owe all my correspondents letters. I feel guilty for not having done more toward helping this year's freshies. I've only been down to the station twice."

"They're in good hands. Phil and Barbara have done glorious work. They have had at least twenty sophs helping them. It's a cinch this year.

Very different from last." Jerry gave a short laugh. "Phil says," Jerry discreetly lowered her voice, "that not a Sans has come near the station since she has been on committee duty there to welcome the freshies. I told her it didn't surprise me."

"I didn't know Miss Cairns and Miss Weyman had come back until I happened to pa.s.s them in the upstairs hall," Muriel said.

"They were here for a couple of days before Leila knew it, and she generally knows who is back and who isn't. Miss Remson told Leila she didn't know it herself until the next day after they arrived. The two of them came back together on the night we were serenaded. They simply walked into the house and went to their rooms. She didn't see them until noon the next day." It was Veronica who delivered this information.

"Did Miss Remson say anything to them on account of it?" questioned Muriel.

"No; she wasn't pleased, but she said she thought it best to ignore it.

It was just one more discourtesy on their part."

"That accounts for our meeting Miss Sayres on the veranda." Lucy's greenish eyes had grown speculative. "She had been calling on those two.

We spoke of it after she pa.s.sed, you will remember. Leila said 'No,'

they had not come back yet. We wondered on whom she had been calling at the Hall. While we can't prove that it was Miss Cairns and Miss Weyman she had come to see, that would be the natural conclusion," Lucy summed up with the gravity of a lawyer.

"I object, your honor. The evidence is too fragmentary to be considered," put in Muriel in mannish tones. She bowed directly to Marjorie.

"Court's adjourned. I have nothing to say." Marjorie laughed and pushed back her chair from the table. "I'm not making light of what you said, Lucy." She turned to the latter. "I was only funning with Muriel. I think as you do. Still none of us can prove it."

"I wish the whole thing would be cleared up before those girls are graduated and gone from Hamilton," Katherine Langly said almost vindictively. "I wouldn't care if it made a lot of trouble for them all.

Miss Remson has stood so much from them and she still feels so hurt at Doctor Matthews' unjust treatment of her. I can't believe he wrote that letter. She believes it."

"I don't see how she can in face of all the contemptible things the Sans have done," a.s.serted Jerry.

"She believes it because she says he signed the letter, so he must have written it. I told her the signature might be a forgery. She said 'No, it could hardly be that.' I saw she was set on that point, so I didn't argue it further."

"Excuse me for abruptly changing the subject, but where are we to meet after cla.s.ses this P.M.?" inquired Muriel.

The chums had left the table and proceeded as far as the hall, where their ways separated.

"Go straight over to the garage. Our two Old Reliables will be there with their buzz wagons. Be on time, too," called Jerry, as with an "All right, much obliged, Jeremiah," Muriel started up the stairs. Half way up she turned and asked, "What time?"

"Quarter past four. If you aren't there on the dot we shall go without you. None of us know what we are going to buy, so we want all the time we can have to look around. Remember, we have to hustle back to the Hall, have dinner and dress."

"I'll remember." With a wag of her head Muriel resumed her ascent of the stairs and quickly disappeared.

The others stopped briefly in the hall to talk. Marjorie was next to leave the group. She remembered she had intended to change her white linen frock, which did not look quite fresh enough for a trip to town.

Her last recitation of the afternoon being chemistry, she knew she would have no time to return to the Hall before meeting her chums at the garage.

Alas for the pretty gown of delft blue pongee which she had donned with girlish satisfaction at luncheon time. An accident at the chemical desk sent a veritable deluge of discoloring liquid showering over her.

Despite her ap.r.o.n, her frock was plentifully spotted by it.

Ordinarily she would have made light of the misfortune. As it was she felt ready to cry with vexation. She would have to change gowns again in order to be presentable for the trip to Hamilton. The girls had set four-fifteen as the starting time. She could not possibly make it before four-thirty.

Her first resolve was to hurry over to the garage immediately after the chemistry period and tell the the girls not to wait for her.

In spite of Jerry's a.s.sertion to Muriel that they would not wait a moment after four-fifteen, Marjorie knew that they would strain a point and linger a little longer if she did not put in an appearance at the time appointed. Recalling the fact that Lucy was in the Biological Laboratory, situated across the hall from the Chemical Laboratory, Marjorie decided to try to catch Lucy before she left the building and send word to the others to go on without her. She could then hurry straight to the Hall, slip into another gown and hail a taxicab going to the town of Hamilton. There were usually two or three to be found in the immediate vicinity of the campus.

"Oh, there you are!" Marjorie hailed softly, when, at precisely four o'clock Lucy emerged from the laboratory across the hall. "I thought you would be out on the minute on account of going to town. I left chemistry five minutes earlier for fear of missing you. Just see what happened to me." She displayed the results of the accident. "I am a sight. Tell the girls not to wait. I must go on to the Hall and make myself presentable.

I'll take a taxi and meet them at the Curio Shop. If they're ready to go on before I reach there, tell them to leave word with the proprietor where they are going next."

"All right. What a shame about your dress. Do you think those stains will come out?" Lucy scanned the unsightly spots and streaks with a dubious eye.

"I know they won't." Marjorie voiced rueful positiveness. "This is the first time I ever wore this frock. I gave it a nice baptism, didn't I?

Well, it can't be helped now. I mustn't stop." The two had come to the outer entrance to Science Hall. "See you at the Curio Shop." With a parting wave of the hand Marjorie ran lightly down the steps and trotted across the campus.

Always quick of action, it did not take her long, once she had gained her room, to discard the unlucky blue pongee gown for one of pink linen.

"Just half-past four. I didn't do so badly," she congratulated, consulting her wrist watch as she hastened down the driveway toward the west gate. "Now for a taxi."

No taxicab was in sight, however. Three of these useful vehicles had recently reaped a harvest of students bound for town and started off with them. Five minutes pa.s.sed and Marjorie grew more impatient. To undertake to walk to Hamilton would add greatly to the delay in joining the gift seekers. True she might meet a taxicab on the way. Whether the driver would turn back for a single fare she was not sure. She determined to walk on rather than stand still. If she were lucky enough to meet a taxicab on the highway she would offer its driver double fare to turn around and take her into town.

The brisk pace at which she walked soon brought her to the western end of the campus wall. Presently she had reached the beginning of Hamilton Estates. And still no sign of a taxicab!

"It looks as though I'd have to walk after all," she remarked, half aloud. "How provoking!" She would reach the Curio Shop about the time the others were starting for the campus was her vexed calculation.

Besides, there was Lucy, who would patiently wait for her when she might be going on with the others. They had planned to visit two or three shops.

In the midst of her annoyance, the sound of a motor behind caused her to turn. To her surprise she recognized the driver and machine as being of the regular jitney service between the campus and the town. His only fare was a young man, evidently a salesman who had had business at the college. He was occupying the front seat beside the driver.

The latter stopped at Marjorie's sign and opened the door of the tonneau for her. Very thankfully she stepped in. Engaged in conversation with the salesman, the man at the wheel drove along at a leisurely rate of speed. Marjorie could only wish that he would hurry a little faster.

Coming opposite to Hamilton Arms, Marjorie forgot her impatience as her eyes eagerly took in the estate she so greatly admired. The chrysanthemums had begun to throw out luxuriant bloom in border and bed, while the bronze and scarlet of fallen leaves lay lightly on the short-cropped gra.s.s.

Almost opposite the point where Hamilton Arms adjoined the next estate, Marjorie spied a small, familiar figure trotting along at the left of the highway. It was Miss Susanna Hamilton. In one hand she carried a good-sized splint basket from which nodded a colorful wealth of chrysanthemums in little individual flower pots. She was bare-headed, though over her black silk dress she wore the knitted scarlet shawl which gave her the odd likeness to a lively old robin.

Marjorie leaned forward a trifle as the machine came opposite Miss Susanna. She viewed the last of the Hamiltons with kindly, non-curious eyes. The taxicab had almost slid past the st.u.r.dy pedestrian when something happened. The handle of the splint basket treacherously gave way, landing the basket on the ground with force. It tipped side-ways.

Two or three of the flower pots rolled out of it.

Forgetting everything but the mishap to Brooke Hamilton's eccentric descendant, Marjorie called out on impulse: "Driver; please stop the taxi! I wish to get out here!"

CHAPTER VI-THE LAST OF THE HAMILTONS