“I hardly think I do, but I can’t tell yet. Wait till we’ve been here a year or two, and have had a chance to observe things.”
Marjorie rose to go. “It’s time to study,” she said. “I just wanted to run in and see you for a little while. Ruth,” she lowered her voice, “please don’t be discouraged. There’s a great deal more to school than being a sorority member!”
Ruth turned away. “I tell you I don’t want your sympathy, Marj.”
“I’ll never mention it again,” agreed the other, as she stood with her hand on the door. “And Ruth, I’ll look for you at hockey-practice to-morrow! Good night!”
“Good night,” mumbled Ruth.
CHAPTER VIII
THE HOCKEY MATCH
Three weeks had passed by, and the girls were making preparations to return to their homes for the Thanksgiving holidays. The whole school, however, looked forward to the big hockey match with Miss Martin’s Seminary which was to be held the last Saturday before vacation. After the game there was to be a reception to the teams and to the visitors from the other school.
Ruth regretted that she had not gone out for athletics from the first; it was too late now to try to make any position on the hockey team. Now that class affairs had quieted down, and there was no longer a possibility of being chosen for the sorority, she was forced to lose her place in the foreground of the school affairs, a situation entirely distasteful to such an ambitious girl as Ruth. She turned the matter over and over in her mind, but she did not see what she could do to alter her position. She had been too proud to write much about her personal feelings to her mother; she preferred to try to work out the problem by herself.
Nor had Marjorie’s expectations been realized; she was not so happy after she was pledged to the sorority as she had hoped to be. She lived in too much of a rush; she seemed to race from hockey-practices to teas and cocoa-parties, and to be obliged to stay up late at night to finish her lessons. This, of course, was not allowed—the lights were turned off at ten o’clock—but she lighted three or four candles and put a raised umbrella between Lily’s cot and the light, and “crammed.” But all her lessons, and especially her Latin, suffered.