"What's the odds?" finally laughed Helen, as they got into the waiting car. "We've got our tams. I only hope there are enough to go around."
The appearance of more than a score of baby-blue caps on the campus before evening showed that our trio of freshmen were not the only members of their class who considered it wise to obey the mandate of the lordly seniors, and without question.
The tempest in the teapot, however, continued to rage. Many girls declared they had not come to Ardmore to "be made monkeys of."
"No," May MacGreggor was heard to say. "Some of you were already assisted by nature. But get together, freshies! Can't you read the handwriting on the wall?"
"We can read the typewriting on the billboards," sniffed Helen Cameron. "Don't ask us to strain our eyesight farther."
Perhaps this was really the intention behind the senior order—that the entering girls should become more quickly riveted into a compact body. How the rooms occupied by the more popular freshmen buzzed during the next few days!
Our trio of friends, Ruth, Helen and Jennie, had been in danger of establishing a clique of three, if they had but known it. Now they were forced to extend their borders of acquaintanceship.
As they were three, and were usually seen about the study-room Ruth and Helen had established, it was natural that other girls of their class on that corridor of Dale Hall should flock to them. They thus became the nucleus at this side of the campus of the freshman class. From discussing the rule of the haughty seniors, the freshmen began to talk of their own organization and the approaching election.
Had Ruth allowed her friends to do so, there would have been started a boom by Helen and Jennie Stone for the girl of the Red Mill for president of the freshman class. This honor Ruth did not desire. There were several girls whom she had noted already among her mates, older than she, and who evidently possessed qualities for the position.
Besides, Ruth Fielding felt that if she became unduly prominent at first at Ardmore, girls like Edith Phelps would consider her a particularly bright target. She told herself again, but this time in private, that fame was not always an asset.