And certainly if Georgia’s head had not been very firmly set on her square shoulders, it would have been hopelessly turned by her meteoric career at Harding. For weeks after college opened she was a spectacle, a show-sight of the place. Old girls pointed her out to one another in a fashion that was meant to be inobtrusive but that would have flattered the vanity of any other freshman. Freshmen were regaled with stories about her, which they promptly retailed for her benefit, and then sent her flowers as a tribute to her good luck and a recognition of the amusement she added to the dull routine of life at Harding. Seniors who had been duped by the phantom Georgia asked her to Sunday dinner and introduced her to their friends, who did likewise. Foolish girls wanted her autograph, clever ones demanded to know her sensations at finding herself so oddly conspicuous, while the “Merry Hearts” amply fulfilled their promise to make up to her for unintentionally having forced her into a curious prominence. But Georgia took it all as a mere matter of course, smiled blandly at the stories, accepted the flowers and the invitations, wrote the autographs, and explained that she guessed her sensations weren’t at all remarkable,—they were just like any other freshman’s.
“All the same,” Madeline declared, whenever the subject came up, “she’s absolutely unique. If the other Georgia had never existed, this one would have made her mark here.”
But just how she would have done it even Madeline could not decide. The real Georgia was not like other girls, but in what fundamental way she was different it was difficult to say. Indeed now that the “Merry Hearts” came to know her better, she was almost as much of a puzzle to them as the other Georgia had been to the rest of the college.
CHAPTER XI
A DARK HORSE DEFINED
“Did you see Mr. Masters in chapel this morning with Miss Kingston?”
This was the choice tid-bit of news that 19— passed from hand to hand as it took its way to its various nine o’clock classes.
“I thought he wasn’t coming until to-morrow,” said Teddie Wilson, who followed every move of the play committee with mournful interest.