One after another, the girls criticized each other’s gowns, table manners and personality. Each new victim of attack blanched, drew a sharp breath of horror and surprise to see in what esteem she had been held, and then bided her time to “get back.”
Faith in friendship died in that college room. Listening to the deeply serious voice of her critic, each girl had some fleeting memory of that same critic—bursting laughingly into her room for an exchange of confidences, or protesting admiration and liking in a sunny, hearty fashion.
A girl named Lilian Moore came in for the worst of the drubbing. Hardly a girl present but had discovered some glaring defect in her.
“You’ll pardon me, but your clothes have absolutely no style, and Ambler House can’t help wishing you were a little more modern. It hurts a house to have to claim a girl that will not dress properly—it destroys the tone of the whole house.”
“Your hair—this is awful—but it really ought to be washed more. It ought to be fluffy and done with some care, and not—just wadded up as you do it.”
“We like you—Doris and I were saying the other day what a nice girl you were—but we both said we’d like you so much better if you didn’t say ‘indeed’ all the time.”
“You have absolutely no faculty for making friends.”
“Your room is so unattractive—there’s nothing in it, really, and you can’t expect girls to want to go to see you.”
“You don’t walk right—you stoop.”
Those were some of the things that these dainty freshmen had been thinking about her since the first day she had appeared among them, shining-eyed and shy, anxious for their approval, fearful lest she, with such limited advantages, should fail to measure up to their wonderful standard! And then, oh, glory of life, and happiness undeserved, they had seemed to care after all! They had seemed to want to talk to her, had passed her their candy, had often come to her to be helped with difficult algebra problems!