“I do!” he answered, stoutly, and after that they argued for a full half hour, standing there at the foot of the steps in the chill November day.
The end of it was that Bobs went away with several new ideas about the conscience of a girl. Not only that; he had promised to burn the midnight oil, before he slept, over a sonnet which was to be addressed to past football heroes of Marston High, whose ghosts, Jacquette had hinted, might be imagined as haunting the assembly-room where their gloriously-won banners still hung, and where the big mass-meetings were always held.
It would have been far easier for Jacquette to compose that sonnet on the spot, than it had been to keep from doing it, and, as she entered the house she was feeling triumphant over the way she had insisted on Bobs’s working out his own scheme. Then, before she had laid down her books, the bell sounded, and, turning, she saw her cousin Marquis on the threshold.
“Come out and walk around the block with me, Jack,” he demanded. “I want to see you alone.”
“All right, Quis,” she answered, happily, stopping to give her white-haired grandfather a hug as he came out of the library to meet her. “Just sit down a minute, please, while I run upstairs to speak to Tia. Then I’ll be à votre service.”
But, instead of accepting her suggestion, Marquis excused himself to his grandfather and went out on the steps, where Jacquette found him a little later, with Clarence Mullen. Marquis had just loaded his own school-books on top of those Clarence already carried, and was giving a list of orders in a tone that a master might use with a slave. “After that,” he was finishing, as Jacquette appeared, “take these books to my house and wait there till I come, no matter how late it is.”
Jacquette glanced at Clarence with quick understanding. Far from seeming humiliated, he had an air of new importance as he touched his hat to her and hurried away.
“So he’s pledged Beta Sig, is he?” she asked, with a smile.
Marquis nodded without speaking, as they went down the steps together.
“I’ve a small grudge against that boy, because you deserted Louise and me to walk to school with him one morning,” Jacquette went on, lightly. “He’s been a rival of mine since then. Every time I want to speak to you, he’s right at your heels. I think you have some sort of fascination for him, Quis, the way he follows you around.”