“Well, I carried it,” retorted Katherine, fanning herself with the biggest Gibson girl. “And Mary, you should have seen the elegant Roberta, lugging my handsome telescope.”
“Did you know that we’d voted a class-tax to buy you a sole-leather suit case lined with white satin?” inquired Mary Brooks. Katherine’s battered canvas bag was a college joke.
“Glad to hear it, I’m sure,” returned Katherine serenely. “Where’s Rachel?”
“Coming,” called a merry voice, and Rachel herself appeared in the doorway and was dragged in, amid great enthusiasm.
“When did you come, Rachel?” asked Betty, leading her to a seat of honor on the window-box.
“At four,” said Rachel, “but I’ve been tutoring conditioned freshmen ever since.”
“You poor thing!” sighed Mary.
“Not a bit,” laughed Rachel. “My pocketbook is fairly bursting. Besides, they were dears, all of them. One took me to supper at Holmes’s, so she could get more time for her math., and we talked cube root and binomial theorem over the most delicious chicken salad.”
Rachel was still economizing at the little white house around the corner, but she was too happy at finding herself back in Harding again to feel one bit of envy for the campus girls, who never had to worry over finances, or plan how to make both ends meet.
The four were still all talking at once when Madeline Ayres appeared.