“Oh!” repeated Montana Marie. “That’s the real difference between college and boarding-school, isn’t it? I’m glad I’ve found out about that at last. But if they’re all unwritten rules, and unwritten rules can’t be changed, what will be the use of your club? Oh, dear, I promised to be home at five, so I can’t wait to have you explain.”
“Come to the grand rally to-morrow afternoon,” Georgia ordered, “and everything will be revealed. We’ll depend on you to get out all the freshmen.”
The next day it rained—a fact which, combined with Montana Marie’s industry in stirring up the freshmen, and with the prevalent interest in self-government, to produce a mammoth mass-meeting. The Dutton twins, whose method of getting things done, inherited from Madeline Ayres, was to make them seem exclusive and therefore highly desirable, sat in the back row and scoffed at the earnestness with which small points were debated, and at the absurd length of time it took to adopt a simple constitution and elect the smallest possible quota of officers. Georgia Ames was made president. The Duttons resented the reproachful way she stared at them when she introduced Miss Seaton, who spoke on the modern woman so exhaustively that even the admiring Fluffy was finally caught yawning. Next came Betty Wales, who, trying to be brief, left her hearers somewhat confused about the status of self-government, as she had officially investigated it in other colleges for women. And then even the Duttons ceased fidgeting, and, like the other chief organizers, waited breathlessly for Georgia’s next announcement, on which, to the initiated, everything depended; Georgia was to appoint the executive committee, and the executive committee would do the rest; that is, they would revise the present college rules and have general charge of enforcing the new code. Georgia made a little preliminary speech about President Wallace’s faith in the girls and in any experiment that they honestly wanted to try. Then she read the committee list: six prominent girls of the type who could always be relied upon to do the sensible thing, and Fluffy Dutton.
Fluffy jumped up to resign, but Straight persuaded her to wait, and having waited, Fluffy declared that no power on earth should keep her from acting on Georgia’s old committee. Before she knew it the committee had elected her chairman.
“That’s only so I’ll come to all the meetings,” grumbled Fluffy. “They’re so afraid of not having a quorum.”
“I hope you’re fixing it about the note-room table,” Montana Marie reminded her. “Because if they’re all unwritten, I don’t see why you can’t change one rule as well as another, and I think that one is positively unfair.”
“Don’t be silly, child,” Straight ordered sharply. “Fluffy can’t be bothered with any little fiddling custom like the note-room table business. She’s fighting the ten o’clock rule. She’s been using all her influence to get the committee to report against it, and if she does, and the girls can hereafter use their judgment about going to bed, why, all the bother we’ve had in organizing and starting the self-government plan going will have been well worth while, in my opinion.”
Fluffy sighed. “Maybe,” she said. “But I think myself that looking out for your rights is a terrible lot of bother. If you leave it all to the faculty, they manage things fairly well for you, and you have your time free for fun.”
“But that’s not good sociology, Fluffy,” Susanna Hart reminded her with malicious sweetness. “If we’re going to learn to help the working women, and to purify politics and so on, we must first understand how to help ourselves and manage our own little republic.”
“I suppose so,” muttered Fluffy, and went off to a meeting of her hopelessly sensible committee. They had devoted one session each to the various college regulations, had debated them “backward and forward and crisscross,” as Fluffy had irritably confided to Straight, and had ended each time by ratifying the existing rule exactly as it stood.