“Will you vote for Myra Whitewell?” some friend was imploring.
“No,” said Peggy, suddenly, “let me alone. Every one is after me so hard to vote for other people that I haven’t had any time to work for my own candidate.”
And she forced her way through the throng, shouting into each bewildered and crimson ear, “Vote for Gloria Hazeltine! She’s a dandy girl.”
“Peggy, Peggy, listen a moment,” said Katherine’s agonized voice. “What do you think the Andrews girls are doing? Going back on us at the last minute. They say they will put up Florence Thomas for president if neither of us will run, and that you and I are traitors to try to elect some one not from our own prep school.”
“Well,” said Peggy, gritting her teeth, “we can elect Gloria without Andrews.”
“Oh, but, Peggy, we will be voting against our own school! If they insist on putting her up this way, won’t we have to vote for Florence?”
Peggy shook her head and went on through the thick crowds of freshmen. “She’s a dandy girl,” Katherine heard in Peggy’s clear tones.
Here in this giant recitation room was assembled a class in the process of being welded together into an organization having one heart and one mind. It was a conglomeration of more or less uncertain and dazed girls now. Some were actively working up sentiment, but for the most part they stood in groups, each group a stranger to the others, four hundred and fifty girls, many of whom had never seen each other before this day, trying to realize that they were of one college flesh and that out of this roomful must be made the dearest friendships of a lifetime.
There was nothing coherent about them as yet. They held aloof from each other, partly in timidity and partly in pride, and their interests were in conflict rather than in unison.
Once pledged to a name for president, they clung to it desperately as if that particular girl had been their best and oldest friend. And they hated all the other girls who had been put up.