Margaret Selover looked down at the Dresden China girl who, her fluffy golden curls loosened from their fastenings, was wearing a blue corduroy kimona which matched her eyes. Babs sat tailorwise upon the furry white rug close to their grate fire.
Megsy laughed. “Which means?” she inquired as she sat in front of her birds-eye maple dressing table, brushing her pretty brown hair.
“Which means that I have determined to startle the natives by getting my name on the honor roll. Watchez-vous me! See if I don’t.”
“I certainly admire your French.” Margaret was donning her golden brown robe that was woolly and warm. Then, when she, too, was seated opposite her roommate, she inquired: “But why this sudden ambition? I thought your motto has always been ‘Learn as little as you can, for wisdom makes a stupid man.’”
“Well, doesn’t it?” Babs flashed. “Take Professor Crowell fer instance. He probably knows as much as the encyclopædia, and yet, who can deny but that he is stupid. He goes around ruminating on things that nobody else could understand, and he can’t even tell his own daughters apart.”
Margaret laughed. “Well, belovedest, I don’t think you and I are either of us in danger of becoming as wise as Professor Crowell, and as for telling Dora and Cora apart—who can? Certainly not Mrs. Martin, and they’ve been in this school since they were small.” Then more seriously, she clasped her hands over her drawn-up knees, Margaret continued: “But I would like to be as wise as Miss Torrence. When she is reading to us and there is a reference to someone or something that happened in the long ago, you know how her eyes brighten. She is seeing a picture that represents it. I know, because yesterday when I came across a reference to the Peripatetic school, I was as pleased as Punch. I knew at once that the Greek word meant ‘to walk,’ and that it had been used because Aristotle, the greatest of ancient philosophers, walked up and down in his garden while teaching. And so I have decided that, if learning does nothing else, it adds a lot to one’s own pleasure.”
Babs glanced at the clock over the mantle. “I don’t see why the girls don’t come,” she said, trying to suppress a little yawn. Margaret laughed and leaned over to poke up the fire. “My professorial discourse has evidently made you sleepy. Hark! I believe I hear approaching giggles.”
A merry tattoo on the closed door announced the arrival of the expected guests, and in they trooped, each wearing a bath robe or warm kimona of the color which the owner believed to be most becoming to her particular type of beauty.
Betsy Clossen, in a brilliant cherry-red robe, was the first to burst in. Then, observing the solemn faces of the two before the fire, she remarked inelegantly: “For Pete’s sake, who died? I thought we were going to have a giggle-fest to celebrate our reunion, after the long separation, and here are our hostesses looking as though they had just heard that they’d both failed in the final tests.”
The newcomers dropped down on chairs or floor, as they preferred. Barbara continued to look unusually solemn. “That’s just it,” she announced. Then to Margaret: “That’s why I told you awhile ago that I mean to redeem myself. I flunked on the holiday tests, and I was the only one in our crowd who did. Even Betsy—” She paused and there was a mischievous twinkle in the blue eyes that had been serious longer than was their wont.