“Jack, I hope you won’t think I’m turning preacher,” Bobs wrote, “but there’s something on my chest that I wanted to say before I came away, and I didn’t have the sand. It’s about the way you fell down on that sorority resolution.” (Jacquette’s eyebrows lifted.) “I say ‘fell down’ because inactive membership isn’t the same as what you planned to do, by a long sight. And here’s the point: If it isn’t good for you to be an active member of a sorority, why is it good for other girls? Your health isn’t so much more delicate—you don’t require so much more time for your lessons—than the general run of girls. Of course they can’t all be inactive, as you are now, and escape the bad effects of the thing, that way, and yet, by wearing your pin and keeping your position more or less of a secret, you’re all the time influencing other girls to get into the very things that you made up your mind it was best for you to get out of. What you write about the four Maries, for instance, especially that little one you like so much, makes it plain that you have a great influence with some of the girls.
“I would have said all this before I left, only I didn’t like to disturb you when you were so happy about the arrangement you had made with the girls. But I have a teacher, here—the finest man I ever knew—and talking with him about some other things to-night, got me to feeling that I was a coward unless I gave you straight goods on this. The fact is, Jack, things that seemed mighty important in high school begin to dwindle when you get to college, especially if you have the luck to know a man like Prescott. I’ll tell you more about him when I see you.
“Always the same old
“Bobs.”
“P. S.—I had a letter from Clarence Mullen, to-day, the second since I’ve been here. You’d be surprised to read it. That military school is a fine thing for him.
“R. S. D.”
Jacquette’s hands, with the letter in them, fell into her lap. Things were happening strangely to-day.
“What—going, Mrs. Waller?” she said, with a start, as the dressmaker appeared in the hall, buttoning her coat about her.
“Yes, my dear. I’m rested, now, and it may be a long time before your aunt comes in. I think I’ll just run along and ’phone her this evening.”
As Mrs. Waller went down the steps, old Mr. Granville came up, supporting himself with his cane.
“Now, Grandpa Granville!” Jacquette reproached him lovingly, as she drew him to his easy chair, and sat down on a stool at his side. “Didn’t you say I was your gold-headed cane, and that you couldn’t take walks without me? What made you go before I got home?”
He smiled at her tenderly. “It wasn’t fair,” he admitted, brushing back her soft, bright hair. “And this ivory-headed cane doesn’t compare with the gold one either. But I was restless, my dear—I was restless. Sula had to go out, and I got to worrying.”
“I know why,” Jacquette murmured, laying her cheek against his shoulder. “You were bothered by those articles about Sigma Pi in the paper to-day.”
“You’ve seen them, then?”
“Yes, indeed! It’s the only topic there is, over at school. Did Tia feel bad?”