GETTING ACQUAINTED WITH THE NEWSPAPER GIRL
"It was just this way," began Kathleen West, setting down her tea cup and looking impressively from one girl to the other, "Long before I graduated from high school I had made up my mind to go to college. Now that I have passed my exams and have become a really truly freshman, I'll tell you all about it."
Elfreda and Miriam were giving a tea party with Grace, Anne and Kathleen West as their guests. It was a strictly informal tea and both hostesses and guests sat on the floor in true Chinese fashion, kimono-clad and comfortable. A week had passed since Kathleen's advent among them. She had spent the greater part of that time either in study or in valiant wrestling with the dreaded entrance examinations, but she had managed, nevertheless, to drop into the girls' rooms at least once a day. In spite of the almost unfavorable impression she had at first created, it was impossible not to acknowledge that the newspaper girl possessed a vividly interesting personality. As she sat wrapped in the folds of her gray kimono, arms folded over her chest, she looked not unlike a feminine Napoleon. Elfreda's quick eyes traced the resemblance.
"You look for all the world like Napoleon," she observed bluntly.
"Thank you," returned Kathleen with mock gratitude. "I can't imagine Napoleon in a gray kimono at a tea party, but I feel imbued with a certain amount of his ambition. By the way, would any of you like to hear the rest of my story?" she asked impudently. "I'm rather fond of telling it."
"Excuse me for interrupting," apologized Elfreda. "Go on, please."
"Where was I?" asked Kathleen. "Oh, yes, I remember. Well, as soon as I had fully determined to go to college, I began to save every penny on which I could honestly lay hands. I went without most of the school-girl luxuries that count for so much just at that time. You girls know what I mean. Mother and Father didn't wish me to go to college. They planned a course in stenography and typewriting for me after I should finish high school, and when I pleaded for college they were angry and disappointed. They argued, too, that they couldn't possibly afford to send me there. As soon as I saw that I was going to have trouble with them, I kept my own counsel, but I was more determined than ever to do as I pleased. At the beginning of the vacation before my senior year in high school I went to the only daily paper in our town and asked for work. The editor, who had known me since I was a baby, gave me a chance. Father and Mother made no objection to that. They thought it was merely a whim on my part. But it wasn't a whim, as they found out later, for I wrote stuff for the paper during my senior year, too, and when I did graduate I turned the house upside down by getting a position on a newspaper in a big city. Father and Mother forgave me after awhile, but not until I had been at work on the other paper for a year.
"At first I did society, then clubs, went back to society again, and at last my opportunity came to do general reporting. I was the only woman on the staff who had a chance to go after the big stories. I have been doing that only the last two years, though.
"Naturally, I made more money on the paper than I would as a stenographer. I saved it, too. It was ever so much harder to hang on to it in the city. There were so many more ways to spend it. But I kept on putting it away, and, now, by going back on the paper every summer, I will have enough to see me through college."
"But why do you wish so much for a college education when you are already successful as a newspaper woman?" asked Elfreda.
"Because I want to be an author, or an editor, or somebody of importance in the literary world, and I need these four years at college. Besides, it's a good thing to bear the college stamp if one expects always to be before the public," was the prompt retort.
"Suppose you were to find afterward that you weren't going to be before the public," said Elfreda almost mischievously.
"But I shall be," persisted Kathleen, setting her jaws with a little snap. "I always accomplish whatever I set out to do. On the paper they used to say, 'Kathleen would sacrifice her best friend if by doing it she could scoop the other papers.'"
"What do you mean by 'scoop the other papers'?" queried Elfreda interestedly.
"Why, to get ahead of them with a story," explained Kathleen. "Suppose I found out an important piece of news that no one else knew. If I gave it to my paper and it appeared in it before any other newspaper got hold of it then that would be a scoop."
"Oh, yes, I see," returned Elfreda. "Then a scoop might be news about anything."
"Exactly," nodded Kathleen. "The harder the news is to get, the better story it makes. People won't tell one anything, and when one does find out something startling, then there are always a few persons who make a fuss and try to keep the story out of the paper. They generally have such splendid excuses for not wanting a story published. I never paid any attention to them, though. I turned in every story I ever ran down," she concluded, her small face setting in harsh lines.
"But didn't that make some of the people about whom the stories were written very unhappy?" asked Miriam pointedly.
"I suppose so," answered Kathleen. "But I never stopped to bother about them. I had to think of myself and of my paper."
"How long have you known Mabel Ashe?" asked Grace, abruptly changing the subject. Something in the cold indifference of Kathleen's voice jarred on her.
"Just since she appeared on the paper," returned Kathleen unconcernedly. "She is very pretty, isn't she? But prettiness alone doesn't count for much on a newspaper. Can she make good? That is the question. She imagines that journalism is her vocation, but I am afraid she is going to be sadly disillusioned. She seems to be a clever girl, though."
"Clever," repeated Grace with peculiar emphasis. "She is the cleverest girl we know. While she was at Overton, she was the life of the college. Everyone loved her. I can't begin to tell you how much we miss her."
"It's very nice to be missed, I am sure," said Kathleen hastily, retreating from what appeared to be dangerous ground. "I hope I shall be eulogized when I have graduated from Overton."
"That will depend largely on your behavior as a freshman," drawled Elfreda.
"What do you mean?" asked Kathleen sharply. "I thought freshmen were of the least importance in college."
"So they are to the other classes," returned Elfreda. "They are of the greatest importance to themselves, however, and if they make false starts during their freshman year it is likely to handicap them through the other three."
"Much obliged for the information," declared Kathleen flippantly. "I'll try not to make any false starts. Good gracious! It is half-past ten. I had no idea it was so late. I've had a lovely time at your tea party. I'm going to send out invitations for a social gathering before long." She rose lazily to her feet, and carefully set her cup on the table. "I suppose Miss Ainslee will be sound asleep," she remarked, yawning. "Lighting the gas will awaken her and she will be cross. She goes to bed with the chickens."
"Don't light it, then," suggested Grace. "You can see to undress with the blind up. There is full moon to-night."
"Why shouldn't I light it?" asked Kathleen. "Half of the room is mine. I wouldn't grumble if the case were reversed. She will soon grow used to the light. I intend occasionally to read or study after hours. Don't tell me it is against the rules. I know it. But circumstances, etc. I'll see you to-morrow. I wish I were a junior. The freshmen I have met so far are regular babies. I'm going to study hard next summer and see if I can't pass up the sophomore year. There is nothing like having a modest ambition, you know."
With this satirical comment the newspaper girl nodded a pert good night and left the room.
No one spoke after she had gone.
"I must go to bed," said Grace, breaking the significant silence that had fallen on the quartette. "Come, Anne, it's twenty minutes to eleven. Good night, girls."
"What do you think of Miss West, Anne?" asked Grace a little later as they were preparing to retire.
"I don't like to say," returned Anne slowly. "She's remarkably bright—" Anne paused. Her eyes met Grace's.
"I know," nodded Grace understandingly. "We will try to keep a starboard eye on her. She is going to find college very different from being a newspaper woman." Grace smiled faintly. The word "woman," as applied to Kathleen West, seemed wholly amusing.
"I don't think she showed particularly good taste in speaking as she did of Mabel Ashe," criticized Anne, a moment later. "I didn't intend to say that, but I might as well be perfectly frank with you, Grace."
"I was sorry she spoke as she did, too," agreed Grace. She did not add that the newspaper girl's half slighting remarks about Mabel Ashe still rankled in her loyal soul. It was chiefly to please Mabel that she and her friends had hospitably received this stranger into their midst, prepared to do whatever lay within their power to make her feel at home with them. And she had dared to speak almost disparagingly of the girl who was beloved by every student in Overton who knew her. In spite of her resolution to keep a "starboard eye" on the freshman, Grace felt infinitely more like leaving the ungrateful freshman to shift for herself.
"Well, what about her?" Elfreda asked bluntly of Miriam, as she piled the tea cups one inside the other.
"What about who?" returned Miriam tantalizingly.
"You know very well" declared Elfreda; "but, if I must be explicit, what do you think of Miss West now?"
"What do you think?" counter-questioned Miriam.
"I think she has more to learn than I had when I came here," said Elfreda speculatively, "and unless I am very much mistaken it will take her longer to learn it."