For fifteen minutes, while Peggy and Katherine were making themselves presentable for luncheon, the gift-bearers kept coming, leaving their present on the dressing-table in the bedroom or the window seat in the living-room, sometimes saying nothing at all, and sometimes a great deal.
“You won’t mind going down now?” Katherine asked.
“N-not so much,” admitted Peggy, putting dabs of perfume out of various bottles here and there on her cheered-up countenance, on her fluffy gold-brown hair, and on the new waist, contributed.
For at least six girls had brought perfume and loyal Peggy meant to have one represented just as truly as another, so she followed this neutral course of using all,—with a resulting odor that was anything but neutral.
As she went into the big dining-room, each giver could distinctly discern the pervading sweetness of her own scent bottle and was satisfied.
It seemed to Peggy that every face was lifted and turned toward her as she and Katherine came in. There was a temptation to walk with lowered eyes, and sink into the seat the head waitress might indicate, without meeting a single person’s gaze.
But casting this desire aside, she went in bravely, her eyes taking in the whole room. And every girl smiled back at her with the very essence of friendship and proprietorship, for there was hardly a girl in the room who had not contributed something that the radiant freshman was even then wearing, or had just made use of.
So Peggy did not have to wait until the others in her house had learned to love her, but she was taken from the first day into their hearts. And she felt the warmth of their love around her even while she went through so prosaic a ceremony as the partaking of a meager college luncheon.
[CHAPTER II—SUITE 22]
It was right in the middle of Freshman Rains.