There was a pause and then came a smothered, “Yes, it could. It is. Oh, and I wanted to come to college so—I wanted to come!”
“Well—and you came, and here you are with all of us,” Peggy reminded.
“That’s just it,” the confidences came now pouring over each other for utterance. Lilian clasped Peggy’s cool fingers with a fevered hand. “I wish to goodness that I hadn’t ever come. I don’t belong. The girls showed me that to-night. Oh, when I think of how my mother kissed me good-bye—and—and gave me up for all this year—just for—this——”
“For what?” helped out Peggy.
“To have the girls make fun of my room, my clothes—and me. Listen, Miss Parsons. We lived in a small town where nobody was very well-to-do. And mother—wanted something better for me than she had ever known. When she was a girl she used to dream of going to college——”
Sobs choked the narrator and she struggled for a moment before she could go on.
“And—when I began to grow up, she decided that I should go—oh, Miss Parsons, when I came away she said to remember that I was going for both of us!”
Peggy’s fingers tightened around the feverish hand, and she could see very clearly in her mind the face of this girl’s mother with its wistful yet self-sacrificing expression, and the tears came suddenly to her eyes.
“She saved, my mother did, for years so that there would be enough—for me—to come on Campus like the other girls,” a trace of bitterness crept in here. “But I didn’t know how they dressed at a place like this and how they all fixed up their rooms. I didn’t realize there would be anything besides the tuition and board—and—I—didn’t—know—they couldn’t—love me——”
Peggy tore her hand from the other’s grasp and went and stood by the desk with her back to the bed. Her eyes fell on a blotted and tear-stained letter which began, “Dear Mother.”