“I know; I didn’t mean quite all night!” Jacquette laughed, coaxingly. “And truly, Tia, it’s a very special time, different from all the rest of the year. Explain it to grandpa, please, so he won’t worry. Oh, by the way,” she called over her shoulder, as she hurried down the walk, “the girls were crazy over those sandwiches I made for the spread yesterday. They want me to bring thirty more just like them, Friday.”
Aunt Sula smiled, and sighed, as she closed the door; but she would have sighed without the smile if she could have looked into one of the halls at Marston, a half hour later, where two semi-circles of excited, angry girls were lined up opposite each other, each with a spokesman in the centre of its group.
Blanche Gross was acting for Sigma Pi, with Jacquette Willard close at her elbow, while on the other side, Margaret Howland was peeping over the shoulder of Bertha Maxwell, the Kappa Delta leader.
The quarrel was about the new girl who had been pledged Sigma Pi the day before.
“We understand you stooped so low as to go out to Winifred’s house, last night, and actually try to get her mother to make her take off her Sigma Pi ribbons!” Blanche was saying, hotly.
“We certainly did talk to her mother,” Bertha Maxwell answered for the Kappa Deltas. “We intend that Winifred Pierce and her mother shall have their eyes open about Marston sororities. It’s not fair to take possession of a girl and overwhelm her without giving her a chance to see other sororities and make up her own mind. We want Winifred to come to our spread this afternoon and meet our girls, and her mother said she could do it, too.”
“Well, we say she can’t, and what we say about our pledges counts just a little more than what their mothers say, you’ll soon find out!”
“Oh, does it! That will sound so pleasant to her mother!”
“Go and tell her! Hurry! Take the first car! We’ve understood, before now, that Kappa Delta made a specialty of telling tales.”
“Go right on, Blanche Gross!” Bertha flung back. “You can’t trust your pledge to stay with you if she finds out about other sororities, that’s the trouble!”