The vision of the tall, radiant young Westerner, with her red-gold hair and her wide, laughing, blue eyes—the way she talked, the way she wore her clothes, her charm and sincerity of manner—rose vividly in Katherine’s mind. She compared this vision with the actual striking little figure of her room-mate, with the flickering dimples showing and disappearing and the warm light that always lay in the depths of her black eyes.
“I—don’t—know,” she said honestly. “Gloria is wonderful—but you, Peggy, you’re so dear.”
“I’ll give all I have to the class,” cried Peggy, opening her arms, as if to embrace every girl of the four hundred and fifty freshmen, “but I don’t have to be set up in the post of honor to do it.”
“But Andrews usually has the presidency,” ventured Katherine in a troubled tone. “Ditto Armandale reminded me that our school has always carried off everything, Freshman year. It’s expected.”
“We’re not Andrews now, we’re Hampton,” said Peggy gravely. “Don’t you remember the signs in the moving picture shows, from Wilson’s proclamation? Something about ‘whatever country you came from, you are an American now.’”
“Well, the president-elect is dead, long live the president-elect,” capitulated Katherine reluctantly.
“Good. I really feel that I owe her an awful lot for taking you away from her,” smiled Peggy, grown light-hearted once more. “Being president wouldn’t half make up.”
Katherine laughed her gratified surprise and began to plan how to draw the solid Andrews vote, in favor of a girl who was not from Andrews.
“I’m going to have a party for Gloria,” Peggy mused, “and invite every single freshman in the catalogue. You’ll have to help me write the notes to stick up on the bulletin board. And we’ll say, ‘To meet the freshman class president,’ and freshmen are such sheep, they’ll think she’s as good as elected.”
“Sheep yourself,” flared Katherine. “I think putting anything like that in would be terribly crude. But the rest of the plan I like.”