“Oh, Katherine! and I thought I looked so nice! Oh, they all saw and knew, and the ones I just met to-day couldn’t know but I marked up my face like that always. It’s—it’s awful—I wish I had never come to college—I wish I’d never seen an Amherst man—or Hazel Pilcher either. What shall I do?”
“Jim knows,” Katherine soothed.
“B-but he’ll be ashamed of me,” moaned Peggy.
“He won’t either. He’ll just think it’s funny,” Katherine tried to comfort her.
“Funny! Oh, dear, and I suppose it is—but not to me. And Bud Bevington—every time he’s seen me there’s been something—r-ridiculous about me!”
Peggy shook with sobs, and hid her face in the cushions of the window seat, sure that she would never take any pleasure in life again.
She wouldn’t go down to dinner, so Katherine had it sent up on a tray, and though Peggy felt that she really wasn’t the tiniest bit hungry, she ate all that was brought to her, and almost wished she had decided to go down after all, because then she might have asked for a second helping.
Katherine and the other freshmen made up an impromptu party to go to a picture show that evening, but Peggy could not be persuaded to join them.
“I never knew her to sulk before,” said Florence Thomas. “What in the world is the matter with her?”
“Sulk,” cried Katherine indignantly, “why Peggy doesn’t know how to sulk. She—she just had a very sad thing happen to her, and you’d cry, too, if it happened to you, only you wouldn’t get over it as soon as Peggy will.”