The upper hall was full of other anxious buyers plodding their way in the direction indicated by the guide-post. Room 27 belonged to a most gracious Junior, Zelda Darmeer.
It was characteristic of Zelda that her walls were decorated with the mottoes, “No studying aloud,” and “Never let your studies interfere with your regular college course.”
The auction was already in progress when Peggy, Katherine and their companions stepped inside.
It was being conducted on the most informal lines. Whenever a girl had anything to auction, she acted as her own auctioneer, and when the others thought she had taken enough time, one of them serenely set up in competition.
The chairs were piled with soft blue chiffons, dainty white under-garments, and plumed hats and mangey furs.
“Put this up, somebody. Who belongs to this? Put this up. I want to bid on it!” One of the guests was rudely waving a silver-spangled scarf that had slipped from a chair nearby and fallen at her feet.
“Yes, in a minute,” came a business-like voice, “that’s mine. Only been worn three years, and has got over two hundred perfectly good spangles left on it. Only eight hundred came off.”
Peggy and the others joined the guests already there, sitting quietly down on the floor in their midst. For floors are vastly more used at college than anywhere else except, perhaps, in the nurseries. Few people realize the solid comfort there is in floors. They are not simply objects lying flatly and dispiritedly beneath our feet to be trodden upon, but they make the most delightful divans and seats in the world, and possess a superior seating capacity.
At least that was the way the Hampton girls found it, and during vacation time they often outraged a parent or relative by proceeding to sit down and be comfortable, if it chanced that every real chair was taken.
That the goods to be sold should repose in the chairs, and the customers should sit on the floor, seemed highly natural to Peggy and Katherine, and a very satisfactory economy of space all round.