“Talk it right out before Grandpa and Aunt Sula,” said Mary Elliott, with unusual decision, and she glanced lovingly from one to the other of the relatives she had adopted in the speech. “It’s all about me, and I want to know what they think.”
So, while Jacquette stood by her grandfather’s chair, with one arm round Mary’s waist, Marie Stanwood told them of Mr. Elliott’s stern decree, and went on to present the reasons why it was too much to expect that Mary should obey him.
“We’ve been to Miss Billings—my Latin teacher,” she said, “and she thinks no father would ask such a thing of his daughter if he knew what it meant. She belongs to a college sorority herself, but she’s fair to both sides. She says a high school sorority probably does sway a girl away from study toward—society, and if she had a daughter, she’d try to keep her out of such things until she went to college, but she thinks the getting out, after you’re once in, is a different matter. A girl that would turn against her sorority—this is just what she said—would be despised and boycotted by the whole school, as much by the non-fraternity and non-sorority crowds as by the others. And we girls think, Jacquette,” she concluded, “that you can talk the best of any of us, and that if you’d just go to Mary’s father and tell him how things are at Marston, he’d feel differently. What do you say?”
Jacquette’s hand stole down into her grandfather’s, and she drew Mary closer. Then she spoke, with a sweet, womanly ring in her voice.
“I’m glad you came, girls. I was just going to tell my grandfather something that I’d like to say before all of you. I’ve made up my mind that the Board is right—that we’d all be better off without sororities, and I don’t think I ought to hide that belief behind inactive membership another day. To-morrow I’m going to tell the girls, and give up my place in Sigma Pi, once for all. Mary, will you be afraid to come—with me?” she asked, smiling down into the upturned face which had suddenly grown luminous.
“Now, Tia, don’t you look sorry this time, when you want to be glad!” she went on, turning to Aunt Sula. “It isn’t tragic the way it was before. Then, I was doing it because you thought it was right, but now I know it’s right myself, and I’m happy about it, too. Why, even if the girls decide that they’ll have to ‘dishonourably expel’ Mary and me, I guess we can stand it, as long as we know we’re doing right!”
“Bravo!” cried old Mr. Granville, bringing his cane down on the floor, while Jacquette, with a shining face, caught Aunt Sula in her arms for a hug and then turned to the bewildered girls, with both hands outstretched.
“Don’t think I’m breaking the vows easily,” she said, reading the doubt in their faces. “I’m not, girls. It’s only because a ‘bad promise is better broken than kept!’ And, even if you can’t follow your Queen in this, I know you’ll never make Mary and me feel like outcasts when we see you at Marston High.”
“Outcasts!” ejaculated quiet Mary Barnes, opening her lips for the first time during the interview, and speaking up stoutly. “Why, Jacquette Willard, you’re the splendidest girl I ever saw in my life! Marie, I don’t know how you feel, but I’m going to follow the Queen!”
A little later, as three loyal Maries started down the steps together, Mary Elliott lingered to throw her arms around Jacquette’s neck and whisper happily,