“That’s a mood, honey,” she answered, sagely. “I’ve had it, myself, but it comes back to this, every time. As long as there are sororities, we want to be in them. How would you like to go to a dance and be told that, because you were a non-sorority girl, you must stay in one end of the hall and not dance beyond a certain imaginary line on the floor?”
“They wouldn’t do it!”
“In some schools they do. Not here, because non-sorority girls aren’t invited. Do you know what would happen if you had asked a non-fraternity fellow to the dance? You’d dance with him and not another soul, all the evening. ’Tisn’t fair, of course, but we can’t reform the world all at once, so you’d better comfort yourself thinking how lovely you’re going to look in that new gown. You’ll be in sorority colours, won’t you?—your hair the gold and your dress the blue.”
Jacquette smiled through her mood at the thought. “I can hardly wait for Friday,” she confessed, as they parted at the corner. “But Louise, you try to talk a little sense into Quis for me, won’t you? Perhaps he’ll listen to you; he thinks you’re the whole thing.”
“You mean he used to think so, before a certain Miss Willard came to town!” was the mischievous answer. “Yes, I’ll do what I can. Good-night.”
The week moved slowly along, and the Friday of the Sigma Pi dance had come. That morning, in every classroom at Marston, appeared the blackboard announcement that a mass-meeting would be held in the Assembly room, directly after school, for the presentation of football emblems to the team.
Marston Assembly Hall was shaped like a great low half-dome, and ceiled everywhere with varnished yellow pine. Seats lined the curved sides of the room, running down in steep tiers which left only a narrow floor space in front, and, from windows behind these seats, that afternoon, the sunlight streamed down into the faces of twelve self-conscious heroes who sat in a stiff row of chairs—their backs against the yellow wall—facing the audience.
Above their heads, plastered all over the one straight side of the room, hung the purple, red, blue, gold, and white banners which had been won by Marston in former victories, and on the piano, which stood wedged in between the front row of seats and the wall, rose a stack of suit-boxes, each containing, as everyone knew, a handsome dark blue sweater, with the white letters “M. H.” emblazoned on its front.
Suddenly, the boys and girls, who were not only packed into seats but standing on every available inch in the room, began to cheer. Tippie McGee, the “Marston Mascot,” a red-headed little gamin from nobody knew where, who was always on hand for the Marston games, had been perched on a chair by the piano, and Bud Banister, as manager of the team, was announcing,
“An original song, composed for the occasion by our mascot, Tippie, without whom we probably never could have beaten Webster. The school will please join in the second singing.”