The flush of success invaded old Wellington. As a whole the place seemed suffused with a pardonable pride, and as individuals each girl seemed justly proud of the small part she played in making up that grand total. Even the big city papers sent out reporters to get a "good story" of the mid-year dance, and more than one scribe waylaid the popular girls, pleading for pictures.
Judith Stearns, as sub-editor of the Blare, the college paper, had a part in giving out this general publicity, and what a joy it was to describe the gowns of Jane, Bobbie, Doze and lists of others!
Jane was busy dismantling the dance room—the big assembly room in Warburton—and no classes were to be called for any work during the morning, so that conditions and students might just slide back into orderliness and thence to the serious work of finishing the last semester.
Party dresses were packed away by reluctant hands, boxes tied up and labelled hopefully for the next dance, while heads that had been curled for the big occasion bore testimony to the skill of many willing fingers (not a few of the fingers bearing blisters to still further testify to such achievements), and altogether the atmosphere was distinctly and decidedly that of the small day after the big night before.
Sally was ruefully tieing up her finery in rather compressed packages and Bobbie was begging her not to spoil the stuff outright.
"Don't act so suicidal, Kitten. Be brave today for tomorrow we fly!" she misquoted.
"I can't see how you can joke about it," whimpered Sally, bruising her fingers with a jerk at too strong a piece of bundle cord. "Really, Bobbie, if I ever dreamed it would be as hard as this to go, I don't believe anything would have induced me to come." She bit her bruised finger as well as her trembling lip.
"You don't mean that, Kitten," drawled the indifferent Bobbie, who had agreed to help pack, although she much preferred "firing things in trunks" and utilizing packing time out of doors. "You would never have known the fun we have had here, if you hadn't come, and isn't it heaps better to pay now than never to have known it?"
"Nothing seems better now—everything is worse, coal black, pitch dark, bitter, worse," snapped the usually complaisant Sally.
"If I had your talent, wild horses couldn't drag me from Wellington," said Bobbie seriously. "And I do hope, little Kitten, that I am not wholly to blame for your unhappy predicament," her voice dropped to seriousness.