“There!” cried Peggy, abruptly stopping in her homeward limp, and throwing her arms around her room-mate’s neck, “I’m not half so ashamed of it now that it’s been dragged out into the light of day—the light of moon, I mean. It’s funny how much better it makes a person feel to confess something mean and be sympathized with for it.”
“Anyway,” said Katherine, as their tired feet climbed the steps of their house, “you were the dea ex machina, Peggy Parsons.”
“The—the what?” demanded Peggy, startled. “Oh, it’s mean to spring anything like that on a trusting room-mate who hasn’t any Latin dictionary along. I’ll be driven to using a trot for your remarks, if you keep on.”
Their laughs rang out inside the huge dimly lighted hall, and the matron, in curl-papers and a purple wrapper, strode forth from her room noiselessly and confronted the culprits.
“Hush, hush,” she said. “At this time of night! Please go up to your room without any more of this unseemly laughter.”
“Yessum, yessum,” whispered Katherine and Peggy meekly, and together they stole up the broad stairway to their rooms, where they snapped on the light and looked at each other and laughed again—but this time silently.
[CHAPTER VI—AS OTHERS SEE US]
Bang! Bang!
“My-y goo-oodness, is it time to get up?” Katherine sat up sleepily the morning after the freshmen officers’ reception, and tried to get some response from the little log-like Peggy in the bed across the room. But Peggy’s face was toward the wall and she presented a perfect picture of deep sleep.
The banging continued and Katherine felt it incumbent upon her to locate it. Gertie Van Gorder, who had kindly taken upon herself the task of waking up the entire second floor at whatever hours its individual inhabitants specified, never thumped like that. She always came quietly in and laid icy cold wet wash cloths over their faces, and informed them calmly, “Your tub is ready, girls; I’ve left my violet ammonia in there for you.”