CHAPTER VI.
THE “DOUBLE THREE.”
This small association of six girls, who were known as the “Double Three,” and who so denominated themselves, had drifted into the very informal organization on account of an accidental performance at Hallowe’en in their junior year. They were friends, more or less intimate then. It chanced that the Mistress of Hallowe’en celebrations, a senior of the year before, had appointed Sidney and Hope to manage some sort of a “stunt,” as those events are called.
The result was an amateur one act play, portraying more or less of a mystery. Sidney wrote most of it, or managed its production. Masks and loose black dominoes were the costume, to which the final touch was given by an oblong badge which represented the face of an ordinary ivory domino, the “double three.” The domino robe had suggested the word; the number of the girls who had been asked by Sidney and Hope to help had suggested the badge; double three sounded so much better than plain six, if something from the game were taken as a symbol.
So much was said about the stunt of the “double threes” that it was only natural for the girls to drift together more often and finally to call themselves the Double Threes, with occasional meetings and good times. But it must not be supposed that it was a definite or recognized society or anything like a sorority, for sororities did not exist in this school.
Fleta Race, Irma Reed, Edith Stuart and Sidney Thorne occupied a suite together. Dulcina Porter and Hope Holland shared one of the single rooms in the dormitory. In their junior year Sidney and Hope had roomed together; but without having any trouble, both had come to the conclusion that it would be good to try not being together, for they were friends when at home. Each would room with a “stranger” and Sidney would try being in a suite. Hope privately thought that she would not like it, for all the ways of simple school living were not what Sidney enjoyed at home. But at that Sidney was an independent soul that wanted to see if she could do what other girls did. She was not the only daughter of wealthy parents among the students here.
Previous to her sophomore year Sidney had been tutored at home, and hard indeed she found it to make up all the loose ends of her freshman year. Hope had attended another school until her junior year, when she had come to join Sidney after hearing her accounts of its superior advantages. But then, everything that Sidney did, everything that she had, all connected with herself and her family, were considered just right by the cool Sidney, so sure was she, so blandly superior to mistakes or criticism.
Hope felt a sense of relief to have no one but dainty unselfish little Dulcie around. Yet there was a charm about the superior Sidney after all, and Hope loved her. In the real living together, Sidney’s gentle training made it impossible for her to be discourteous or disagreeable. It was that unconscious assumption of superiority that Hope disliked, though she could not have analyzed it. Sidney was “proud,” she would have said. Money had nothing to do with it, for Sidney at least thought that she admired achievement and ability above everything. It was quite likely that she did not even give her father credit for having successfully managed a large business and money which he had inherited. Practical ability is not to be despised, and it is only the love of money that is the root of evil, or the silly ostentation that sometimes accompanies it.
Leaving the campus, the girls of the Double Three strolled into the parlors, where several other girls at once ran up to Sidney, as she was the latest arrival.
“I looked everywhere for you, Sidney,” said one. “Where in the world did you disappear to?”
“Oh, the girls got hold of me after I was dressed. We had so much to talk about that we went down in the grove to look at the lake and stayed there, gibbering, longer than we intended. I wanted to hunt up some more of you.” Sidney was swinging hands with this bright-eyed girl as she spoke.