"For a principle," snapped the girl beside her, who chanced to be a sophomore.
"Well," said Jennie, smiling, "principles are far from filling. They're a good deal like the only part of the doughnut that agreed with the dyspeptic—the hole. Please pass the bread, dear. Somebody must have eaten mine—and it was nicely buttered, too."
"Goodness! nothing disturbs your calm, does it, Miss Stone?" cried another girl.
Few of the girls in the dining hall, however, could keep their minds or their gaze off Rebecca Frayne. In whispers all through the meal she was discussed by her close neighbors. Girls at tables farther away talked of the situation frankly.
And the consensus of opinion was against her. It was the general feeling that she was entirely in the wrong. The very law which she had essayed to flaunt was that which had brought the freshmen together as a class, and was welding them into a homogeneous whole.
"She's a goose!" exclaimed Helen Cameron.
And perhaps this was true. It did look foolish. Yet Ruth felt that there must be some misunderstanding back of it all. It should be explained. The girl could not go on in this way.
"First we know she'll be packing up and leaving Ardmore," Ruth said worriedly.
"She'll leave nobody in tears, I guess," declared one girl within hearing.
"But she's one of us—she's a freshman!" Ruth murmured.