“Why, I know the man who wrote that,” she gasped. “There! J. E. N.—see those initials at the end?—they mean Jack Newbold. I remember now he is writing for that paper. He told me this summer at the sea-shore that he was going in for newspaper work. His grandfather owns this paper, you know, and has promised him half a million when he is twenty-five if he will go through the whole thing—learn everything a newspaper man must know. He didn’t want to do it much, but, of course, he would go in for almost anything sooner than lose all that pile of money.”
Miss Atterbury looked thoughtfully and intently at Miss Thayer.
“You say he is a friend of yours?” she demanded, slowly.
“Oh, yes; we got to be very good friends this summer. He taught me how to play fifteen-ball pool—that’s about all he knows,” went on the girl, scornfully. “He’s an awful duffer about everything else. You ought to see him play tennis! It’s not very edifying, but it’s awfully funny.”
Miss Atterbury gave a little gasp of delight.
“That’s too good to be true,” she said, enthusiastically.
Miss Thayer rather stared. “Why?” she demanded, and then, without waiting for a reply, she swept on. “You wouldn’t think so if you had to play doubles with him! And he simply can’t walk—gets awfully tired, he says. I think it’s his clothes. Gets ’em in London, and they are terribly swell and uncomfortable. And he is always afraid his collar is going to melt; it’s quite painful to be with him on a warm day. And I couldn’t induce him to come out in my cat-boat with me. Said he didn’t think a girl could learn to handle one with any degree of safety. Did you ever hear of anything so unjust? I think he was afraid.”
Miss Atterbury was leaning on the table now, and her countenance had assumed such a cheerful look that the freshman felt quite relieved and ventured to pick up her mandolin again.
“Go on!” demanded the senior, delightedly.
“Well, I don’t know anything more,” declared Miss Thayer, impatiently. “Isn’t that enough for you? He’s no good at out-door sports, and what he is doing writing us up or down is more than I can imagine. He oughtn’t to be allowed to do so. He don’t know anything about it at all, and I should think he would be ashamed of himself. I suppose his editor told him to do it, and he simply ‘made up’ and put down everything he had ever heard about us, and worked in all the old jokes about girls’ colleges.”