CHAPTER IX
JACQUETTE’S REBELLION
“DONE with Sigma Pi!” Aunt Sula echoed, not able to believe her ears.
But Jacquette, dropping into a chair and covering her face with both hands, had begun to sob. It was with an effort that she quieted herself to begin telling the troubles of the afternoon, but when she came to the description of the accident, her excitement dried her tears.
“And yet,” she declared, at the end, “I would have stood by Sigma Pi through everything, Tia—you know I would—if the girls hadn’t all turned against me, but everyone of them except Louise brought up some criticism. They said, if I was going to find fault with the sorority, I might as well know that the sorority had fault to find with me, and that, the truth was, I’d acted set up ever since they were so easy with me about letting me keep on my pin after my flunk in December. Then Mamie Coolidge showed out her jealousy of Louise. She said it wasn’t sorority spirit for me to go so much with one girl to the exclusion of my other sisters. And Blanche Gross put in that she wouldn’t say anything if I’d confine my attentions to Sigma Pi girls, but that I’d been seen bowing to non-sorority and non-fraternity people around school, and that I must know it was against sorority principles to do that.
“Oh, how angry that made me! I told her it wasn’t against my principles, and I wasn’t going to have my character all made over by any bunch of girls—not even my sorority—and that one thing I liked about Louise was the way she always spoke to everyone she knew around school, whether they belonged to sororities or not. Then Flo Burton said I might insist on bowing to them but I surely ought not to chum with non-sorority girls, and that she had noticed my walking to school with Fannie Brewster. And when I told them Fannie was poor, and that you thought she was lonely, Flo said, in the meanest way, ‘Aunt Sula, again!’ and two or three of the girls laughed, as if they had made a joke of it before.
“Do you think I could stand that? I came off and left them! And on the way home, I decided I’d make you happy, no matter how I felt myself, by telling you that I had done with Sigma Pi forever.”
Jacquette had hardly stopped for breath since the beginning of her story, but now she lifted her tear-stained face to meet Aunt Sula’s approval. To her surprise, it was not there.
“What about the vows of loyalty, sworn for life?” Aunt Sula asked her. “Where is the friendship that was going to bear criticism? This is its first test.”
Jacquette’s eyes dropped, but her voice was unyielding. “I can’t help that,” she murmured. “The girls were mean, and I’ll show them there is such a thing as going a step too far, even in a sorority. I’m going to call up two or three of them this very night, and tell them I’ve decided to resign.”
In spite of her unhappiness, Jacquette was getting a certain solace from imagining the effect of this announcement, but, before she had time to gloat over it, Aunt Sula astonished her still further by saying decidedly,