She parted the green and white cretonne curtains and looked out on a new world; she stroked the bright silk cushions with a new sense of comfort and luxury.
Then she went over to the dresser and drew out the tear-stained letter that began “Dear mother,” and tore it into bits. A few minutes later her pen was flying over some clean, fresh sheets in a glowing description of college, of her room, of her friends.
It was the sort of letter to make a mother think with a sigh of gladness when she read it, “Well, she is having it all. How nice, that my daughter can draw about her such friends. How lovely, that she is so pleasantly situated in such a delightful room—and how, best of all, that she should not have been deprived of college.”
An interested group of girls clustered around the house bulletin board on the stair landing, and read many times the latest sign that was pinned there:
“Looks like a nice party to me,” speculated Doris Winterbean. “But May and I haven’t a chafing-dish. May, go and borrow one from some sophomore, because I’m curious, and after last night I certainly want something cheerful.”
Peggy herself knocked at Lilian’s door a few minutes later.
“I’ve got a sign up for a party to-night,” she said as soon as a welcoming voice had called to her to enter, “and I thought maybe you’d like Kay and me to fix your hair for it—it’s pretty hair—and I thought——”
Lilian tried to say something about the benefits she had already received at their hands, but Peggy hurried on.
“We have a new electric hair dryer, and Kay has some marcel irons—an amateur kind, you know—and if you’d like to have us practise them on you,—I think the result would surprise the girls and send them right down to Gibot to have theirs done.”
“I can’t let you,” stammered Lilian. “I never could fix my hair well, but I wouldn’t let you bother with it for the world.”