a parody of one of Kipling’s “Barrack-Room Ballads” which Madeline Ayres had written one morning during a philosophy lecture that bored her, and which the whole college was singing a week later.
CHAPTER II
A SENIOR CLASS-MEETING
It was great fun exercising all the new senior privileges. One of the first and most exciting was occupying the front seats at morning chapel.
“Although,” complained Betty Wales sadly, “you don’t get much good out of that, if your name begins with a W. Of course I am glad there are so many of 19—, but they do take up a lot of room. Nobody could tell that Eleanor and I were seniors, unless they knew it beforehand.”
“And then they wouldn’t believe it about you,” retorted Madeline, the tease.
Madeline, being an A, was one of the favored front row, who were near enough “to catch Prexy’s littlest smiles,” as Helen Adams put it, and who were the observed of all observers as they marched, two and two, down the middle aisle, just behind the faculty. Madeline, being tall and graceful and always perfectly self-possessed, looked very impressive, but little Helen Adams was dreadfully frightened and blushed to the roots of her smooth brown hair every morning.
“And yet I wouldn’t give it up for anything,” she confided to Betty. “I mean—I’ll exchange with you any time, but I do just love to sit there, although I dread walking out so. It’s just the same when I am talking to Miss Raymond or Miss Mills. I wish I weren’t such a goose.”