“Oh, it does! It stands for so many things—all my Marston good times—all my friendships with the girls. Why, anybody else but you would think it was perfectly foolish if I should tell how it makes me feel to think of leaving off that pin. But there!—we’re not going to talk about it all summer. Where’s that dimity you said I could make into a waist? If I’m going to be an accomplished dressmaker before vacation’s over, I mustn’t lose any time.”
So she plunged into the summer, determined not to make her sacrifice unlovely, and she succeeded, through all the busy weeks that followed. In July there was a visit to Brookdale, and after that, by her sweetest wiles, she coaxed her stay-at-home grandfather into a bracing trip on the lakes with Aunt Sula and herself, and brought him home feeling years younger and happier.
Then came a series of farewell boat-rides and picnics in the park, with Louise and Marquis and Bobs, for the two boys had honestly buried the high-school hatchet on the night of their graduation, and they and Louise were bent on making the most of these last days with Jacquette before starting away for their first year of college work. There was no end to the frolics they planned and carried out, until suddenly, in the midst of all the hurry and fun, came the opening day of school at Marston High.
Except Louise, Marquis and Bobs were the only ones outside of home who had been told Jacquette’s intention in regard to her sorority. Bobs had received the news very quietly. “It’ll take sand,” was his one comment, “and you have it.”
But telling Marquis had been another matter.
“It’s a quixotic attitude, imported from Brookdale, and you’ll find it doesn’t belong in Channing,” he had declared. “Aunt Sula and grandfather mean all right, I know, but their ideas are old-fashioned about some things and nobody will get your point of view, at all. Everybody at Marston will set you down as funny. I’m going to have mother go over and talk to Aunt Sula.”
The next day Aunt Fanny had come, and had said a great deal in her own forceful way about the pity of making Jacquette a social outcast for the remaining three years of her high-school life, especially after Marquis had interested himself so much to get her nicely started with the right girls. It was only the course of nature, she maintained, that, in a public school where all classes were thrown together, the carefully brought-up girls should band together, and be separated from the rabble.
Sula Granville’s answer had been that, though she was glad of Jacquette’s decision, she had never urged it, and, true to the spirit of this, she told her every word that Aunt Fanny had said. Apparently, there was no result, but the warnings found a sensitive spot, none the less, and they were all surging through Jacquette’s mind when she stood up at the first sorority meeting of the year, and faced her Sigma Pi sisters.
It was a sparse little gathering, compared with the last one of the spring before. Some of the girls had moved during the summer; others had been graduated; still others had broken off their course at Marston to go away to a finishing school. The Sigma Pi ranks would soon be filled by new girls—in fact there were five or six being rushed, even now—but, to-day, there were less than a dozen at the meeting.
For a minute Jacquette’s words refused to come. She remembered Bobs’s faith: “It’ll take sand—and you have it.” At the same instant, she met the loving eyes of Louise, sitting there in all the dignity of an alumna, among the other girls. She knew very well why Louise had taken time, in the hurry of preparation for her year away from home, to come to that meeting, and the knowledge helped. Then she thought of Tia, and began.