That afternoon there were doll-dressing bees at every campus house, and Fluffy’s doll-tea in Jack o’ Hearts’ stall was the centre of interest at the Tally-ho Tea-Shop.
A pleasant vagueness about the C. I.’s continued to pervade the speech of its founders. Nobody seemed to know exactly where or when the first meeting would be held. But, quite irrespective of the club or the mystic time-limit imposed for membership, the doll fad took possession of Harding. It was a red letter day for the conspirators when the junior class president, an influential young person who prided herself on her independence of character, appeared on the platform at class meeting, with her doll in her arms. The college poetess, who went walking alone and had had several of her verses printed in a real magazine—sure signs of genius—took her darling doll to call on the head of the English Department, with whom she was very intimate. A maid who went to the door with hot water for the tea declared “cross her heart” that she saw Miss Raymond with the doll on her lap, undressing it, “just like any kid.” However that might have been, the poetess continued to be great friends with Miss Raymond; evidently the doll episode had not “queered” her with that august lady.
So the doll wave swept the college. Spreads became doll parties, French lingerie was recklessly cut up into doll dresses, girls who had never sewed a stitch in their lives labored over elaborate doll costumes, and on warm October afternoons the campus resembled a mammoth doll market, with Paradise as an annex for exclusive little parties. Tennis matches and basket-ball games were watched by doll-laden spectators, and some of the best athletes actually refused to go into their autumnal class meets because it took too much time when the doll parties were so much more fun.
Christabel Porter showed Georgia, in strict confidence, the tabulated results of her observations.
“Insane, one,” it read; “still infantile, all freshmen, nearly all sophomores, many juniors and seniors; slavish copy-cats, practically all the rest of the college; can’t be accounted for, three.”
“The one,” she explained, “is the college poetess, and the three are you and the Duttons. You’re not infants, you’re not stupid, you’re not exactly crazy, you’re far from being copy-cats. I don’t understand you at all.”
“You never will, Christabel,” Georgia told her sweetly, “no matter if you take a dozen Ph. D.’s in Psych. at Zurich. But you shall presently understand the C. I.’s. There is a meeting in my room to-morrow at two.”
“Won’t it be rather crowded?” inquired Christabel anxiously, glancing around Georgia’s particularly minute and very much littered “single.”
Georgia smiled enigmatically. “Oh, it won’t take long, I think. It means so much red tape to arrange for a more official place, like the gym or the Student’s Building hall. The back campus would do, only the weather man says rain for to-morrow.”
Next morning Georgia and the Duttons cut Logic (except Straight, who dared not), Lit., and Zoölogy lab.