“Tia! Tia! Am I really that girl in the glass, or is she a dream?” she cried, the roses deepening in her cheeks, as she caught her little aunt in her arms, just before she started. Then she found herself leaning back against the cushions of the carriage, and she turned a wondering glance on Louise, who sat beside her uttering commonplaces to Bobs and Ned, as if this were everyday life. After all, a girl needed to have grown up in Brookdale, Jacquette reflected, to understand the thrill of grandeur she had felt when that carriage door slammed.
She had the same thought again, a little later, when they all stepped out into the carpeted, covered way that led from the carriage to the entrance of the Lakeside Club. And, while she was thinking it, she entered into a fairyland of lights, of music, of gaiety, of excitement.
CHAPTER VII
THE “FOOL-KILLER”
AS soon as Jacquette opened her eyes, next morning, she closed them again, and tried to bring back the glittering scene of the evening before. Bobs had proved a perfect cavalier, as good a dancer as quarterback, and two o’clock had come before anyone remembered time. Yes, she could see the brilliant hall, the blue and gold decorations, the huge copy of the Sigma Pi pin done in electric lights on the wall just over the orchestra, the richly dressed mothers of two of the girls presiding at frappé, as chaperones of the occasion; she even heard strains of music, and carriage numbers being called, as they came out into the frosty air—but, all the time, she knew that it was past, and that nothing was left to happen. For weeks she had been looking forward to this dance. Now that it was over, the year stretched ahead in grey monotony.
After a few days, however, she awoke to the fact that another event, fully as exciting, though very different in nature, was looming in the near future. Two of her teachers warned her that she would have to do better work if she hoped to get through her half-yearly examinations in January.
Jacquette heard them in shocked astonishment. In Brookdale she had been the star of all her classes. It seemed unbelievable that she could be facing utter failure; yet the semi-final examinations, she knew, counted as much in the year’s standing as the dreaded June finals themselves.
As she started for home that day, she was wondering, with a sick dread, how Tia would feel when she told her, and whether, if she really should fail, the Sigma Pi girls would carry out that dreadful threat of taking away her pin. At least, she made up her mind, if hard study from now on could avert the calamity, it should never come, and she began her campaign by resolutely refusing to join in a special frolic which was coming off in the sorority rooms that afternoon.
Her grandfather and Aunt Sula were both out, when she reached home; so Jacquette had the library to herself, and she set at work with a will.
Half an hour passed. Then she saw Rodney Fletcher, a grammar school boy, dashing across the street to her door.