And Katherine answered loyally, “I do too.”
The cretonne couch covers they had smoothed up in such haste that morning were carefully folded back, and Katherine climbed into her bed, and with a little tired sigh was fast asleep; but Peggy, after carefully fixing the screen around her room-mate’s couch so that the light shouldn’t trouble her, propped herself up with pillows in her own bed, the College Monthly on her knees.
She found her name in the index, “Margaret Parsons,” and was thrilled by the formality of that. Then she fluttered the leaves over—just as any one might, she told herself, until she came, to her intense surprise, of course, to her poem.
This she proceeded to read. And when she had finished, she tried to read one of the stories or a poem by some one else, but somehow nothing seemed interesting after that—nothing had for her quite the vividness or charm, so she shamefacedly yielded to the temptation to read hers all over again.
But before she had finished, a curious sound disturbed her.
From somewhere down the hall came the unmistakable sobs of a person crying out her heart in heedless abandon. It was not very loud, but was penetrating and alarming.
Peggy listened, hardly able to believe her ears. When she and Katherine were so happy in college, was it possible any girl would have cause to cry like that?—right here in Ambler House?—the nicest dorm on Campus?
Sighing, she slid her feet into her slippers, dipped her arms into her kimono again, laid the precious Monthly on the dressing-table, turned out the light and was soon in the fearsome hall, with those sounds echoing down it, and no light but the tiny globule of red at the other end, which indicated the fire-escape.
She went on toward the unwinking light, until she was sure she stood before the door through which the crying emanated.
It was Lilian Moore’s room. She had a small single room and was apparently drowning herself in tears there.