No one even asked her if she had any fault to find in return. What could she have found to criticize about them? So she was passed over at last, and allowed to sink back in silence, miserably conscious of her cotton crepe kimono that she and her mother had made with such pride and such appreciation of its becomingness. Her cheeks burned a tortured red, but there was nobody to notice her.
The hilarity with which Peggy and Katherine had meant to accuse each other of colossal faults had died. They sat quietly in the candle dusk, holding each other’s hands while indignation showed in their faces.
“And Peggy Parsons——”
It was the cold, diamond-hard voice of Myra Whitewell speaking. “Peggy Parsons, I’ve felt it my duty for quite a while to tell you how thoroughly conceited you are——”
Katherine, who had shifted uneasily when the speech began, gasped now and would have laughed in her relief, for it seemed to her that if there was one thing in the world everybody must know that Peggy was not, it was conceited. Myra was wide of the mark, Katherine felt, and she did not even press her room-mate’s hand that still lay passively in hers.
“You feel as if you have to dip into everything,” went on Myra, with a voice in which spite was veiled in a grave tone of carrying out a disagreeable duty. “You felt you must run the elections——”
“Ah,” thought Katherine, “I knew that was the reason.”
“As if the freshman class couldn’t get along without you! You made yourself very forward and, it seemed to some of us, bold, by going up and advising Alta Perry how to do things. And Alta the junior president! It wasn’t respectful, and it was taking a good deal on yourself!”
Here Florence Thomas, astonished that any one should dare arraign Peggy, got up, the golden dragons flaming in the dim light, and moved deliberately toward the door.
She found the door locked, and the key gone. She turned angrily.