“Even if I can’t room with you, I won’t stay in this room. I’ll go home first!”
“Forget it for tonight. Fix up and go back down to the parlors and meet some of the girls. I want to get back to 207-209 and see who has moved in. I am in a suite, the only one in Prep Hall, and if I don’t like the other three girls I may envy you this single room. Go on down and I’ll join you later. In the meantime I hope to ‘scum a scheme.’”
Mimi was so absorbed that she absent mindedly turned in the open door of 209 and stumbled against a trunk in the dark. The hall light shown in through the open door on the name painted across the end in white letters—Betsy Buchanan.
“Whew!” Mimi whistled between her teeth. “Now that’s something!” She had wanted the cutest and the peppiest in her suite but this was more than she expected. Delighted as she was she felt strangely uneasy. Mimi backed away from the trunk and into the hall instead of cutting through the bathroom to 207. Here again she stumbled, another trunk tagged Clorissa Madison blocked her way again.
“Clorissa Madison,” Mimi said aloud and the sound was pleasing to her. “I wonder which one of all that mob downstairs is you, Chloe?”
She turned toward the parlor to find out.
Even as she arrived Chloe faded into the background of her mind. The scene had changed since she left. The college girls, instead of being grouped by classes as they were when she left, were massed in one large group. The new preps who had clustered so eagerly around Mimi had joined the old preps. Betsy was standing in front of the whole group giving directions.
Mimi watched from the edge of the crowd. Betsy, she knew, had what it took—pep, poise, and that innate gift of leadership.
Between the end of the last yell and the singing of Alma Mater, Mimi was conscious of lowered voices behind her. Two faculty members strolling through the hall had paused to listen.
“The Buchanan girl is a born leader,” one of the voices said.