“Perhaps; but if loyalty to Sigma Pi makes you disloyal to duty at home or in school, isn’t there something wrong with it?”
Into Jacquette’s thoughts flashed the memory that two of her Sigma Pi sisters had deliberately missed their afternoon recitations, the week before, because they considered it necessary to take a girl they were “rushing” to the matinee. “But, Tia,” she hurried on, defensively, “you forget its effect on scholarship. We’re ashamed to fall below passing mark, because our pin will be taken off if we do.”
Aunt Sula looked thoughtful. “I wonder if a sorority can help scholarship while it uses up so many study hours?”
“Oh, it does! And then, it’s good social training for us, too.”
“Does it teach you to give the Sigma Pi whistle to a girl a block away, when I’m walking and talking with you on the street?” Aunt Sula put in, quizzically.
“No; but that whistle is the accepted way of hailing each other. All the girls do it; haven’t you noticed? Here’s another good point, though—a sorority interests nice girls in each other instead of their having their heads full of boys. And then—well, isn’t that enough?”
“Not quite. Don’t you think that, as long as your pledges are forced to do things which make them a nuisance to outsiders, you’re giving outsiders reason to think you girls are too young and foolish to have charge of a secret society?”
“You mean our making that girl steal cookies!” Jacquette dimpled, in spite of herself, at the recollection.
“Yes; everything of that sort. And one more thing; I want to know, positively that there is nothing in the Sigma Pi initiation that could offend the delicacy of any sensitive, modest girl.”
Jacquette recalled a certain rite at which one of the pledges had balked in the initiation the day before, and flushed uncomfortably. Just then the bronze clock on the mantel struck one with a silvery note. Aunt Sula looked up, as if answering.