“Then I shouldn’t think your friend Marjorie would care for her.”
“Oh, she likes anybody,” said Ruth, anxious to dismiss the other girl from the mind of her room-mate. “Let’s finish putting up the pictures.”
“Anyway,” said Ethel, “I want to know Marjorie Wilkinson. She looks promising.”
The sophomores had secured the gymnasium for their reception to the freshmen. All the afternoon of the following day, the committee was busy with the decorations. The girls had gone into the woods and returned with their arms full of autumn leaves and wild asters. They twined branches through the apparatus; they covered the walls with school banners; and they pinned orange crepe paper over the bright electric bulbs to soften the glare. At quarter of six, Frances Wright, the sophomore president, surveyed the hall approvingly.
“You’d never recognize the old gym, would you?” she remarked to Ethel, as the girls started toward the door.
The sophomores all ate rather hastily that evening, in their anxiety to precede their guests at the reception. Shortly after eight, the freshmen began to arrive in groups. Ruth, accompanied by her three friends—Doris Sands, Evelyn Hopkins, and Mae VanHorn, was among the first to appear.
Marjorie and Lily came very late. Lily had encountered difficulty in dressing—“Without mother’s maid to help me,” she had explained to her room-mate; and Marjorie had patiently waited for her. Almost everyone else was there when they finally arrived.
The reception committee had become scattered, but Frances Wright noticed the newcomers as they entered the room, and went forward to greet them.
“We’re awfully glad to see you, girls,” she said cordially. “Will you forgive me if I ask you your names?”
“Certainly,” replied Marjorie, graciously complying with the president’s request.