Mimi watched Sue disappear. Sweet Sue. She put the basket ball back in the locker, without putting her sweater on, she jogged across the short cut from the back door of the gym to Prep Hall ell.
So much to do! She hadn’t been studying as much as she should of late. The lessons and notebooks had been piling up to be worked on during Christmas while her suite mates were gone. Now that she was going to celebrate too, she would have to make things fly. As soon as she changed clothes, she’d go to the library and get Greene’s Source Book and catch up on her outside reading in history. At study hall tonight she’d make every minute count. She would not look at the clock a single time, or get permission to speak to a soul, or to sharpen her pencil or to fill her pen unless it was an emergency. After study hall she would mend her hose, straighten her trunk, the dresser’s drawers and if there was time before light bell, she’d check up on her allowance and see if she could squeeze out a new pair of gloves. While she was home she could get several things. Daddy had oked a charge account for her and had told her she could order things but so far she hadn’t used it. She was trying to spend as little as possible because Daddy’s expenses must be terrific. She knew he had not planned on spending so much on her until she was college age.
Plans were racing through her head.
“I’m going to Bowling Green, I’m going to Bowling Green.” Her mind played an accompaniment to her marching feet. Thinking was so thrilling, before she realized it, those marching feet were detouring by Sue’s practice room instead of keeping the straight trail to the library. She’d only stay a minute. She’d have to rave a while and calm down or she could never sit still in the library with the source book.
Opening the big door to the practice rooms was like opening the door of a menagerie at feeding time. Standing in the hall from which the cell like rooms opened, Mimi’s ears were assailed by squeaks, grunts, and ferociously thundering bass notes. Mimi bumped into the proctor who was looking through the glass windows in the doors to check and be sure that the music students were keeping their regular practice times and—that no one was playing jazz. She scowled at Mimi.
“Could I speak to Sue a second?”
“If you’ll hurry and leave before I do. I am not supposed to leave any one here without special permission.”
Mimi ducked in Sue’s cell. The watchful eye of the proctor cramped Mimi’s style but she got in a few hurried expostulations. Who could say much with the feeling that some one was holding a stop watch over them?
“Put your sweater on,” motherly little Sue called after her.
“Thanks a lot,” Mimi said as she brushed past the proctor on the way out. Some hopeful soprano was singing, “Who Is Sylvia?”