Jacquette pouted, and then laughed. “You make me think of Mademoiselle! Yesterday, there was an announcement of a basket-ball game on the blackboard, and down at the foot it said, ‘Come, girls, and help us yell!’ She looked at it; then she said, in her sweet, soft voice. ‘Come—girls—and help us—yell! So refined! So suggestive of a lady! Come—girls—and help us—yell!’ Not another word, and wasn’t I glad I hadn’t written it! But that gentle sarcasm belongs to her. It doesn’t to you, Tia.”
“Doesn’t it?” Aunt Sula leaned forward and took her girl’s hands in both of hers. “Then I’ll say it in my own way. Jacquette, I am making up my mind that I’m sorry you joined the sorority.”
“Oh, you mustn’t speak like that to me, Tia! It’s disloyalty to Sigma Pi to listen to it. Say anything you want to about me, but I can’t let you talk against my sorority. There’s Louise!” Jacquette added, brightening suddenly, as the Sigma Pi whistle sounded outside. “I’ll have to go, dearest. Good-bye.” And off she flew.
“Hurry!” Louise called, as Jacquette came down the steps. “Quis was here, but he couldn’t wait. The boys told him there were things doing over at school.”
“What kind of things?” Jacquette asked, half running to keep up.
“Oh, the senior boys are up to something again. You know last week they painted those big, white ‘Naughty-eights’ all over the side-walks and the juniors worked all night, I guess, scrubbing them off with turpentine, and putting ‘Naughty-nines’ in their place. Quis wanted to drop it, then. He’s class president, you know, and wants to keep things dignified, but some of the boys wouldn’t stop, and——”
“Look there!” Jacquette exclaimed, suddenly, as, from two blocks away, both girls beheld a monster Indian in war-paint and feathers, limply hanging by his neck to the flagstaff on the topmost peak of the school building. A placard adorned his chest, bearing, in huge letters, the legend, “’09.”
“That’s what they’ve done! Hanged the junior class in effigy. But how did they ever get it up there?”
As the girls neared the school, a cluster of their Sigma Pi sisters opened almost silently to receive them. Everybody was crowding around Mr. Branch, the principal, to hear what he was saying. Marquis, as class president, had just disavowed all knowledge of the prank.
“That hung there all day yesterday, to amuse people on their way to church,” said Mr. Branch in a tone of annoyance. “It’s a break-neck climb, but the one who put it up knows how to get it down!”