The campus house porches all had chairs out on them and comfortable magazine tables—there were still a lot of hot fall days to look forward to—but on the Macefield House porch there was nothing. And somebody had carelessly left an old ladder lying down right in front of the steps! Peggy had a very hard time scrambling over it. Perhaps it was just as well the other Freshman girls weren’t there to see her after all. She must admit there was considerable loss of dignity involved in scrambling over an old paint-specked ladder that was so completely in her way.
Her face was flushed to the color of her dress when she finally climbed the steps. Even in her confusion she noticed that the porch floor looked strangely new and that it seemed to have a tendency to cling a little and impede her footsteps.
“It’s probably because I’m getting scared that I imagine my feet stick to the boards,” she mused uncomfortably. “I don’t know how a person should act at an invitation house. Whether you’re supposed to walk right in or——”
That part of her problem was settled immediately, for she found the door locked. Gathering what self-confidence she could, she pressed the bell.
Uneasily she shifted from one to the other of the sticking feet. No one came. She knew it was rude to ring twice, but she felt she would never have the heart to come again if she didn’t see the great editor of the Monthly now and get everything arranged. So she pressed a shaking finger nervously against the bell, and held it so until she heard a rustling inside the house. The door opened—just a crack—and a surprised head poked itself into view. Peggy had a jumbled and confused impression all at once. She was aware of the speechless amazement in the eyes, also that the face was not that of a girl at all, but belonged to a rather severe looking and decidedly middle-aged woman.
With a little jump of her heart she realized that she was meeting the gaze of the matron of Macefield House. Campus house matrons were regarded in the light either of common enemies or motherly souls, whose hearts responded to all college-girls’ troubles. But what might the matron of an invitation house be like? Peggy thought she must be something incomparably greater.
“Is Miss Armandale in?” she asked weakly.
“She may be, but she’d be up in her room,” answered the head ungraciously enough, while its owner apparently did not intend to admit the enemy within the fortifications, since no move was made to open the door wider.
“Well——” murmured Peggy, with a sudden realization that she was standing in wet paint,—“shall I—go up—and—and find out?”
“By the back door if you wish,” said the head witheringly. “If you came in this way, you’d Track in the Paint.”