“I guess I should do better if we had real eats at the first meeting,” giggled Montana Marie.
No one paid any attention to her frivolity. Susanna wondered politely why college girls should bother about votes, when of course they couldn’t vote yet a while. Georgia explained that working women’s rights were just as interesting and important as suffrage, and that anyway the projected organization was to begin right at home, with the problems of college life.
“You see,” she explained, “if women are maybe going to vote and to learn how to run unions and protect their own interests and look out for their children, why, of course we college people ought to be ready to take hold. But how can we, if we’ve never had any experience in sticking together and thinking about the public good? So what we thought of—only I was just going to explain it all out nicely when most of the crowd had to go up to a mob rehearsal for the senior play—what we thought of was to form a self-government association, to make rules for the college and arrange to carry them out, and—oh, just generally run the ship of state.”
“What gorgeousness!” Straight gave a long sigh of admiration. “Why couldn’t you think of an elegant scheme like that while we were on hand to profit by it? Freshman year was the time for a thing like that.”
“But we hadn’t had sociology then,” chorused Georgia and Fluffy apologetically.
“Well, don’t let’s organize it now,” pleaded Straight. “It’s bad enough to be almost through Harding, and I simply couldn’t bear it if I thought that those”—waving comprehensively at the lower class girls—“were still here, going to bed when they were sleepy, and not bothering about cuts or study-hours or any of the other trifling annoyances of Harding life.”
“And the next year’s freshmen can sit on the note-room table if they want to,” giggled Montana Marie joyously.
“Nonsense!” Susanna Hart told her sternly. “That’s not a regular rule; it’s an unwritten law, and you can’t change it any more than you can change the color of your hair.”
“Oh!” said Montana Marie slowly. “They write down the rules that everybody knows, and the ones that——”
“They don’t actually write down any of the rules,” interrupted Susanna tartly, annoyed at being caught in a contradiction.