"We shall be delighted to begin cherishing you immediately," Marjorie gaily a.s.sured.

Jerry was quick to add to the a.s.surance. Given also to very positive likes and dislikes, she had already taken a great fancy to Robin's lively cousin. She had a shrewd opinion that it would not take Phillis Marie Moore long to make a prominent place for herself in the freshman cla.s.s.

Leila and Vera now joined them, in company with the two seniors, who were going to the campus in Vera's car. Leila claimed the privilege of conveying the freshman arrival at Silverton Hall, her destination. Once there, Miss Moore's three upper cla.s.s guardians were given a vociferous greeting by a bevy of jubilant girls.

"You bad old goose!" was Robin Page's affectionate censure as she hugged her tall, boyish cousin. "Why didn't you wire me?"

"I did," returned Phyllis. "You'll probably receive it tomorrow. That will be so nice, won't it, to get a wire that I am on the way when I'm already here?"

"You fell into good hands, anyway," Robin beamed on the trio of Wayland Hall girls. "Do you notice anything different about me?" she asked anxiously of them all. Very carefully she turned her head so that the small knot of hair at the nape of her white neck could be seen. "I am a real grown-up young person now!" she proudly exclaimed. "I can do up my hair."

"You are that," Leila agreed in her most gallant Irish manner. "It is now that we shall have to begin to treat you with proper respect."

"See that you do," retorted Robin. "Right away quick I am going to treat you folks to luncheon. You must stay. It will be ready in a few minutes.

Come up to my room and we can hold an impromptu reception until the bell rings. The Silvertonites are all anxious to see you. As sophs we have a duty to perform. We must try hard to impress my freshman cousin. Do telephone Ronny, Lucy, Muriel and Vera to come over. You can run 'em over in your car, Leila, in a jiffy."

"Many thanks for Vera's and my invitation. We can't accept, for we have a luncheon engagement at Baretti's with two seniors. I must be hurrying along or I'll be late. I'll send the girls back in my car. Any of them can drive it."

Leila took hurried farewell of her friends and drove off at top speed.

True to her word, it was not long before her car swung into sight again driven by Ronny. The three new arrivals were received with the same heartiness which had been extended to Marjorie and Jerry. By the time they appeared, Robin's large square room was overflowing with girls.

Once more in the genial atmosphere which always pervaded Silverton Hall, the petty worries and annoyances of the past week fell away from Marjorie. She entertained a momentary regret that she had not chosen Silverton Hall as a residence in the beginning. She and her chums would have found life so much pleasanter there.

Then the face of kind little Miss Remson rose before her. She realized how very fond she had grown of the upright, sorely-tried manager. She reflected, too, that, if the Lookouts had not gone to Wayland Hall to live, it would have been much harder for Katherine Langly. Neither would she have known Leila, Vera, or Helen Trent intimately. Besides, she loved Wayland Hall and its beautiful premises best of all the campus houses. It had been Brooke Hamilton's favorite house. Miss Remson had once told her this. In spite of the difficulties the Lookouts had encountered at the Hall, Marjorie wondered if, perhaps, they had not gravitated to it for some beneficient, hidden purpose which only time might reveal.

CHAPTER X.

WINNING OVER THE FRESHMEN.

As Vera had predicted, Sat.u.r.day brought to Hamilton a goodly number of freshmen. Though the faithful reception committee was strictly on duty that day, the Sans relieved them of a large part of their conscientious task. They were even more in evidence than on Friday. Greatly to the surprise of Marjorie and her companions, they laid themselves out to be democratic. They rushed every young woman who bore freshman earmarks with a zeal which might have been highly commendable had it been sincere. Out of the considerable number of freshman arrivals that Sat.u.r.day, Marjorie and her committee captured not more than half a dozen.

"The end of a perfect day, I don't think," grumbled Jerry. The five-fifty train had come and gone. Though the seven soph.o.m.ores had all been on duty, not one of them had a freshman to show for it.

"I'm glad it is over," Marie Peyton said wearily, as the nine disgusted workers strolled to their waiting cars. "I suppose the Sans thought we would contest the ground with them. I wouldn't be so ill-bred. Come on over to the Colonial for dinner. I hereby invite you. We need a little pleasant recreation to offset this fiasco. Next year, no committee duty for me. I have had enough of it."

"How many freshies do you think they have captured altogether?" asked Blanche Scott.

"Oh, sixty or seventy, at least," was Elaine Hunter's guess. "They have been down to every train for the last two days. Between trains they have hung around the Ivy and that other tea shop just below it. I don't recall the name. It opened only last week."

"The Lotus," supplied Jerry. "The funny part of it is the way Miss Cairns has marched that Miss Walbert around with her. They seem to be very chummy.

"Leslie Cairns is trying to popularize Miss Walbert with the freshmen.

That is why she has been keeping her on hand at all the trains. I am sure of it," stated Vera positively. "You just watch and see if I am not right. The Sans are going to try to run the freshman cla.s.s. Otherwise they would never have gone to the trouble they have."

"They won't keep it up. Mark what I tell you, there will be a lot of snubbed and very wrathful freshies before the month is out," prophesied Leila.

"I hope the grand awakening comes before their cla.s.s election. I doubt it. With Miss Walbert as president of 19--, the Sans would feel they had really put one over on us. I think Phyllis Moore, Robin's cousin, would make a fine freshman president." Jerry glanced about her for corroboration.

"Why not do some quiet electioneering for her, then," suggested Grace Dearborn. "It is just as fair for us to boost a freshie for an office as for the Sans. It would be only a helpful elder sister stunt. We need not make ourselves prominent. A girl like Miss Moore would be a fine influence to her cla.s.s. This Miss Walbert would not be."

"It isn't really our business," demurred Marjorie, "but I think it would be a good thing, nevertheless. We are fighting for democracy. The Sans are fighting for popularity and false power. I am willing to do all I can to help the cause along. I know Ronny and Muriel and Lucy will feel the same. Jerry's here to speak for herself."

The others agreeing to enter into a quiet little plot to put the right girl in the freshman presidential chair, how they should go about it formed the main topic of conversation at Marie's dinner at the quaint Colonial that evening. All sorts of ways and means were suggested, only to be abandoned. It was impossible to proceed until they had come into more of a knowledge of the freshmen themselves. Each, however, pledged herself to make a point of getting acquainted with the freshmen in the house where she resided and sounding them on their policies, with a view toward giving them a hint in the right direction.

It seemed to Marjorie that the next few days following her strenuous service on committee were days of undiluted peace. Busy with her study programme she forgot, for the time being, that there ever were any such persons as the Sans Soucians. She had decided on French, chemistry, Greek tragedy, Horace's odes and spherical trigonometry for the fall term, a programme that meant hard study. Since coming to Hamilton her active interest in chemistry had increased and she planned to carry the study of it through her entire college course. The laboratory at Sanford High School had been well equipped, but the Hamilton laboratories were all that scientific progress could devise. Marjorie hailed her chemistry hours with the keenest pleasure.

The other four Lookouts were hardly less occupied than herself in arranging their college affairs for the fall term. With a year of college behind them it was much easier to buckle down to study and enjoy it than it had been when they had first entered Hamilton. Girl-like, they loved the good times college offered, yet they were as quick to appreciate the rare educational advantages Hamilton afforded and make the most of them. The average college girl takes the utmost pride in keeping to the fore in her studies. In this the Lookouts were no exception.

Not forgetting their pledge to get acquainted speedily with the freshmen in their own house, the Lookouts found themselves completely blocked in their well-meant design by the Sans. To begin with, there were only four freshmen at Wayland Hall. These the Sans completely monopolized. As yet, no one at the Hall outside the Sans had a speaking acquaintance with them.

Silverton Hall was also at a disadvantage by reason of the few vacancies there. It had been almost entirely a freshman house the previous year.

It was now practically soph.o.m.ore. A few girls, having made changes on account of friends in other houses, there had been eight vacancies and no more. Phyllis Moore had been fortunate enough to secure board there.

The seven other freshmen had turned out to be delightful girls with no sn.o.bbish notions. Seven democrats in a cla.s.s of one hundred ten, with the politics of the other hundred and two doubtful, did not point to a speedy election of Phyllis to the freshman presidency.

"We might as well give up boosting Phil as a hopeless job," Jerry remarked to Marjorie one evening, as the two girls were putting away their books preparatory to retiring. Both made it a rule not to talk over outside matters until next day's recitations had been prepared. "It is two weeks since we planned the fateful boost and none of us have made much headway."

"I know it." Marjorie looked up regretfully from the scattered sheets of the finished theme which she was collecting. "The trouble is, so many of the freshies are at Alston Terrace. Acasia House has about twenty. Ethel Laird says they are a fairly affable set, but Miss Burton and Miss Elster are doing their best to spoil them. There are as many as twenty-five freshies off the campus entirely. Miss Humphrey told me that. There were twelve registrations from the town of Hamilton this year. Of course those students go home after recitations."

"Not much can be done when a cla.s.s is so scattered. I mean by us. Let me count 'em up. There are twenty-five off the campus, eight at Silverton Hall," enumerated Jerry; "four here, forty-four at Alston Terrace. Think of that. That makes one hundred and one. Now where are the other nine?

At Craig Hall, perhaps, or Houghton House. You see Miss Walbert has the advantage over Phil as she is at Alston Terrace, the freshie center."

Marjorie nodded. "It doesn't look very promising for Phil," she said.

"Robin would love to have Phil win the presidency. She is so proud of her. The Silverton Hall crowd adore her already. She is a dear. She is so full of fun. I like her frank, boyish ways. Leila told me today that the Sans are planning some kind of party for the freshmen. She heard it somewhere on the campus. I don't know who told her."

"That is to taffy the freshmen so they will vote for Miss Walbert," was Jerry's instant uncharitable conclusion. "They haven't held their cla.s.s election yet. When is this party to be, I wonder?"

"Leila doesn't know. If the Sans do make a party for the freshmen I doubt if all of them will attend it. It won't be at all like the regular freshman dance. Still," she continued reflectively, "if the Sans take that much trouble for them, they ought to respond."

"Yes; I guess that's so. The freshies haven't been here long enough to know the charming Sans as they really are. In their infant verdancy they will probably look upon it as a great honor. They'll probably be more enlightened after they have attended it," Jerry added with a wicked little grin.

Two days later it became circulated about the campus that the freshmen had been invited by the Sans to attend a picnic, instead of a party, to be given at Pine Crest, a wooded height about five miles east of Hamilton College. For many years it had been a favorite college picnic ground. Hardly a Sat.u.r.day pa.s.sed, when the weather was good, without an invasion, great or small, of its fragrant, pine-shaded premises. It was an ideal spot for an al fresco luncheon. As it could be reached by automobile, it was all the more popular with the Hamilton students.

The certainty of the rumor was made manifest to Marjorie when, on Wednesday evening after dinner, she and Jerry heard a timid knock on their door. Jerry, hastening to open the door, their caller proved to be Anne Towne.

"Why, good evening, Miss Towne!" Jerry extended a hospitable hand. "So glad to see you. We wondered what had become of you. We knew you owed us a visit and were waiting for you to pay it." Jerry ushered the wren-like freshman into the room and offered her its most comfortable chair.

"I have been intending to call, but I--" Miss Towne paused, looking rather confused. "You see--I--didn't know but I might intrude. You girls are so different from myself," she suddenly blurted out, as though anxious to bare her diffident soul to her dainty hostesses and have it over with. "I mean different because you aren't poor and have lots of friends and can entertain them and all that. I know it is the custom at college for the upper cla.s.s girls to be kind to entering freshmen. I didn't care to presume on your kindness. I hope you understand me." She flushed painfully.

"Nonsense," scoffed Jerry st.u.r.dily. "We aren't a bit haughty. We want you to be our friend and hope to see you often. You mustn't think about such things. Just go along with your head held high. If people don't like you for your own merits, they are not worth cultivating."

"I believe you couldn't have been so very much afraid of Jeremiah's and my great dignity or you wouldn't have dared come and see us tonight."

Marjorie smiled encouragement at the still embarra.s.sed girl.

"Perhaps I wasn't really." Marjorie's winning smile communicated itself to the other girl. Her tired little face brightened wonderfully. "I am sure I won't be afraid ever again. I would love to call both of you my friends."