“That sounds well,” persisted Jean, “but in actual fact it’s a different matter. You get the place that everybody thought belonged to some one else”—here Jean had the grace to look a little uncomfortable, for her friends had frequently assured her that she stood as good a chance as anybody for a minor position on the editorial staff—“but you miss the fun of it. You don’t get the flowers and the spreads and all that sort of thing that the popular girls will have.”
“Well, anyway Miss Adams isn’t going to miss the spread,” said the bright-eyed sophomore.
“Who’s going to give it for her?” demanded Jean.
“Miss Watson.”
Jean laughed disagreeably. “Indeed! One of Eleanor’s quixotic philanthropies, I suppose.” She lowered her voice so that only the little crowd of juniors near her could hear. “Wouldn’t you think that to-day of all days she’d have preferred to keep in the background? But I suppose she thought that she might as well be ‘in it’ one way if she couldn’t the other.”
At first Eleanor’s impulse had been just what Jean had suggested. She wanted to get into the background, away from the noisy demonstrations and the curious or idle inquiries about her omission from the “Argus” board. Ever since she entered college, fully informed by her upper class friends about all the ways of putting oneself forward and all the offices and honors that a clever girl might aspire to, Eleanor had looked forward to the day of the “Argus” elections as her hour of greatest triumph. Now Emily Davis had the place that might have been hers, and she was slinking home by a back path, hoping to avoid meeting any one. She looked across the greening campus and saw little Helen Adams also hurrying home. Her lips curled scornfully as she watched Helen’s joyous progress, for to her as to Jean this late hard-won recognition would have had in it more humiliation than triumph. Then all at once her face softened as the idea of the supper came to her.
“I don’t believe any one else, except possibly Betty, will think of it,” she decided swiftly, “and perhaps it would please Helen more if I should do it. Coming from some one outside her special friends, it will seem like a more general recognition.”
At the door of Helen’s room she hesitated and drew back to consider. All the editors would be at Cuyler’s that evening with parties of their friends. Everybody who saw her would either remember why she was not an editor or wonder what the mysterious reason could be.
