“In short,” concluded Fluffy impressively, “Montana Marie O’Toole is the sensation of the hour at Harding College. Do you ask me to prove it? Watch the Dutton twins forget their cakes and tea while they talk about her.”
CHAPTER III
THE INITIATION OF MONTANA MARIE
Montana Marie O’Toole was, even as Fluffy Dutton had said, the sensation of the hour at Harding College. Indeed, she bid fair to be the chief sensation of the entire year of 19—. Her cheerful interest in the curious rites and customs of college life continued undiminished, in spite of elaborate snubs from upper-class girls and the crushing scorn of her fellow freshmen, who attempted, all in vain, to keep Marie (and so Marie’s class) out of the public eye. Nothing escaped Montana Marie’s smiling scrutiny. Her questions were frank and to the point. Her pithy comments were quoted from end to end of the Harding campus, and beyond. But her giggle was contagious, her sweetness really appealing, her appreciation of any small favors touching in its breezy Western sincerity. Montana Marie had “done” New York and the European capitals; she had been “finished” in “dear old Paree”; but she had also been born and brought up in a Montana mining camp, and she was not ashamed of that fact, nor of her very plain, as well as very peculiar, parentage. So Harding College agreed with Fluffy Dutton in liking Montana Marie. Its laugh at her was always friendly, if merciless, and in time it came to be even rather admiring. But that was not until long after the initiation of Montana Marie.
Susanna Hart planned that joyous festivity. Since Madeline Ayres had planned a similar one for Georgia and the Dutton twins and some of their Belden House classmates, and Betty Wales had explained and defended the Harding variety of initiation to an amused faculty investigating committee, there had been no official opposition to the hazing of freshmen at Harding. Hazing (Harding brand) was recognized as just an ingenious, “stunty” way of entertaining the newcomers, of finding out their best points, of helping them to show the stuff they were made of, and to take their proper places in the little college world,—in short, of getting acquainted without loss of time, or any foolish fuss and feathers.
So being initiated had speedily come to be considered an honor instead of a torment. All the most popular freshmen were initiated—in very small and select parties calculated to give each individual her due importance. And because of the extreme popularity—or prominence—of Montana Marie O’Toole, Susanna Hart decided that she should have an initiation all to herself. So she asked Marie to dinner at the Belden on a rainy Saturday night when there was nothing else going on. The initiation feature of the evening’s entertainment was not mentioned to Montana Marie; it was to be sprung upon her as a pleasant little after-dinner surprise. Susanna and her sophomore and senior friends in the Belden spent the whole afternoon arranging the “mise en scène” for the mystic ceremonies; and they made so much noise tacking up curtains and building a spring-board in Susanna’s big closet that Straight Dutton, who had a bad headache and was trying to sleep it off, came up-stairs, with rage in her heart, to find out what was happening.
Fluffy, who was acting as Susanna’s chief assistant, explained. “We thought you were asleep, so we didn’t come to tell you,” she ended.
Straight sniffed indignantly. “I was likely to be asleep—underneath this carpenter shop.”
“Stay and help us, and drown your sorrows in fudge and——”
“Noise,” finished Straight crisply. “No, thanks. I’m going to ask Eugenia Ford to massage my forehead. She’s wonderful at it. Tell me what everything is for, and then I’ll go back.”
Fluffy gleefully exhibited a glove full of wet sand which Montana Marie was to be induced to shake in the dark, as she entered the dusky Chamber of Horrors, otherwise Susanna’s single. There was a part of a real skeleton to run into; there were clammy things and hot things and wriggly things to touch; and finally there was the spring-board to fall from, down upon a heap of pillows, surrounded by a bewildering, fluttering hedge composed of Susanna’s generous wardrobe, carefully spread out on all Susanna’s dress-hangers, and those of some friends.