“She must have said ‘prosecuted,’ Gloria.”
“Well, one or the other, the effect is the same. She has been persecuting me.”
“Well, and then did you give her the rest?” asked Peggy, desirous of hearing all of the story.
“Yes, I poured into her hands the full amount the bidders had given me in return for all my beautiful kimonos, gowns, waists and underwear.”
“Sounds like an elevator call in a department store.”
“Doesn’t it? But she didn’t know. She counted it out and returned me two dollars and said I’d given her too much. I was thankful there had been enough. Oh, Peggy, Peggy, Mrs. Ormsby saw it all. She is a brick. But I feel so mean, so mean——”
“You needn’t. Now you’ve learned, and you can go around here in sackcloth and ashes and you will be the ‘freshmen’s handsome president’ still. That’s what the upperclass girls call you. So it will come out all right. And nobody guessing anything.”
“You know,” Gloria was laughing through her tears, “the reason I wouldn’t tell you was because I couldn’t bear to risk seeing your stare of disillusionment and loss of faith—in case you felt about me as some of the others do. I don’t know why they should, but they act as if I were sort of superhuman. And all my worry about your attitude for nothing! I’ve just been plain Gloria Hazeltine to you all the time, haven’t I, Peggy? And to Katherine. I’m—kind of glad. It’s awful to have people holding such ridiculous ideals about you.”
“No, it isn’t. When you’re graduated, you will look back on it as something very precious—and very wonderful. It is one of the best things that can come to any one—such idealization as you have met with at the hands of our class. And the only way to do is to live up to it, to make it as true as truth.”
“That’s what I was doing, in a way,” explained Gloria woefully. “But only to the most material side of it. I wanted to live up to their ideal of me in wonderful clothes—in generous subscriptions, and all that kind of thing.”