“Just time before dinner,” Peggy insisted, whipping a towel from the dresser and beginning to fasten it around the reluctant shoulders of the other freshman.
She was led down the hall and Peggy experimented with all the Suite 22 hair-dressing implements. Egg shampoo, alcohol, bay rum, electric dryer, special French orris powder, and finally the hot curling iron.
Then Katherine dexterously did it up for her—not in an original style at all, but in the mode that had swept the entire college: so that when their work was finished and the victim was handed an oval ivory mirror, she exclaimed with wonder, for there was reflected a nice-looking-girl just like a hundred others in Hampton, with wonderful ripples of soft gleaming hair, that made you want to follow the waves with your fingers.
“Is that me?” asked Lilian.
“We’ll forgive you for being ungrammatical, since it’s all in recognition of our efforts,” said Peggy delightedly. “It is very much you—the way you ought to have been all along, and will, I hope, continue to be, now that we’ve shown you the way. Mercy, Kay, she does look wonderful! If you and I ever get poor, we’ll know of one talent we have at least whereby we can hope to make an honest living.”
So Lilian came that night to the party, very much elated, and entirely self-confident, instead of shrinking and conscious of making an inferior appearance.
Those who had chafing-dishes had brought them, those who had not had borrowed them. Beside each chafing-dish, the hostesses had arranged a little set of materials.
“Now, two chafing-dishes are prepared to make fudge, one sea-foam, and one chocolate marshmallow. Will the freshmen kindly pair off and choose what they want to make? Here are the materials for white taffy over here, as a prize for the ones that get done first.” Peggy made the announcement, and the girls lit the chafing-dishes and started in with great zeal.
This was the kind of party to please them all. Nothing but candy—and all they could make and eat of that!
“This is an anti-climax party,” explained Katherine, when the fudge was bubbling with its rich delicious odor, in the chafing-dish chosen by Florence Thomas and herself. “Peg and I thought of the awful faults we all found in each other last night”—they hadn’t done any of the finding, but the others didn’t notice that they painted themselves blacker than they were—“and we have a suggestion to make as to how to cure them.”