Aline yielded, and had as fine a time as anybody. Alice’s fudge was all that had been claimed for it, and the study bell rang before the gay conversation ceased. The girls hastily brought their visiting to a close and started out, Ann slipping her arm through Aline’s and not hurrying. Alice followed and strolled a little beyond the door of the senior cottage, where she and her suite-mates occupied a first floor suite. Over the campus, girls were making their way to cottages or to the music rooms.
“I must go back, girls,” said Alice, turning to Aline, and taking both her hands. “We Betas, Aline, have only just discovered that you did not join the Sigs! ‘Animus meminisse horret’! I can hardly forgive the Sigs for letting the impression get out that you were theirs,—Ann, you tell her about it, and humbly recommend your Beta sisters!”
With this, Alice smilingly left the girls, turning back at the door for a last glimpse.
“Well!” exclaimed Aline. “Alice is your president, or ‘chief,’ or head executioner, or whatever you call it, isn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“Her quotation from the pious Aeneas was cute. I am wondering what all this means, of course; but I don’t know whether I want you to talk to me about it or not, as she suggested.”
Ann was a little surprised. “I’ll not, if you do not want me to, Aline, but I have some things that I would like to say to you. It is perfectly true that we have just found out that you are not a Sig-Ep; and we know that it is by no fault of theirs that you are not. Are you pledged to some other sorority, Aline?”
“No. I didn’t mean that, Ann, but I hate the ‘rushing’. It always seems so insincere to me, and when I noticed the older girls in the crowd, I felt embarrassed. I don’t mean, Ann,” Aline added, noticing that Ann seemed a little subdued, “that I thought anything insincere tonight. I enjoyed the fun. Isn’t Dots a case?—and that Jane Price!” Aline laughed in recollection.
“Well, Aline, I don’t want to urge you to anything you do not want to do. We’ll start out on that basis. You know most of the Beta Alpha Taus and what sort of girls they are, so it is not necessary to recommend them, even ‘humbly’, as Alice said. You are perfectly able to make up your mind on that without assistance! What I want to tell you is in regard to how bad we want you to join us and what happened this afternoon. I’ll ask you to remember that you had a little rushing from the Bats last year, till they thought it of no use. My! It makes me sick to think of it,—but maybe you wouldn’t have joined us anyway.”
Aline made no reply to this.