Noticing a small girl who had put her handkerchief to her eyes, Merry remonstrated. “Tessie, don’t cry, child! This isn’t a funeral or a wedding. Of course you’ll see us again. We four intend to come back to Highacres to watch you graduate just as you watched us today. Work hard, Little One, and carry off the honors. I’ve been your big-sister coach all this year, and I want you to make the goal. I know you will! Goodbye!” Marion Starr could say no more for the small river steamer gave a warning whistle—the rope was drawn in, and, as the boat churned the water noisily in starting, the chorus of goodbyes from the throng of girls on the wharf could be heard but faintly.
Marion remained standing at the rail, waving her handkerchief, smiling and nodding until the small steamer rounded a jutting-out point of land, then she turned about and faced the three other girls, who had made themselves comfortable in the reclining steamer chairs.
“What a fuss you make over all those undergrads, Merry,” Jane Abbott remarked languidly. “A casual observer might suppose that each one of them was a very best friend, while we three, who are here present, have that honor. For myself, I much prefer to conserve my enthusiasm.”
Marion sat down in a vacant steamer chair, and merely smiled her reply, but the youngest among them, Esther Ballard, flashed a defense for her ideal among girls. “That’s the very reason why Merry was unanimously voted the most popular girl in Highacres during the entire four years that we have been at the seminary. Nothing was ever too much trouble, and no girl was too unimportant for Merry’s loving consideration.”
“Listen! Listen!” laughed good natured Barbara Morris. “All salute Saint Marion Starr.”
But Esther, flushed and eager, did not stop. “While you, Jane Abbott”—she could not keep the scorn out of her voice—“while you were only voted the most beautiful.”
“Only?” there was a rising inflection in Barbara’s voice, and she also lifted her eyebrows questioningly. “I think our queen is quite satisfied with her laurels.”
Jane merely shrugged her shoulders, then turning her dark, shapely head on the small cherry colored pillow with which she always traveled, she asked in her usual languid manner, “Marion, let’s forget the past and plan for the future.”
“You said you had a wonderful vacation trip to suggest, and that you would reveal it when we were on the boat. Well, this is the time and the place.”
“And the girls?” chimed in Barbara. “Do hurry and tell us, Merry. Your plans are always jolly.”