“I wish we could invite her, too, then,” said Patricia slowly. “It must be pretty lonely to be among so many girls, and not be in on their good times.”
“I know, but you can’t start asking people from upstairs,” protested Anne. “If you do, there’ll be no stopping place.”
“What’s the matter with Sue, anyhow?” asked Patricia.
“Mostly her queer ways,” replied Clarice quickly. “Last year she was always rapping on people’s doors and asking them to keep quiet so she could study. Then she complained to the Dean every so often about how long some of the girls kept her out of the bathroom. She also felt it her duty to report the maid several times for being late in distributing the clean linen. In short, Sue just disapproved of the way everything was run, and got herself in most awfully wrong. She belongs in some boarding house, not in a dorm.”
“How did she happen to come back here, since she found so much fault with the place?” inquired Patricia.
“Don’t know. Maybe she found out that she liked it after all. Hasn’t opened her mouth this year, so the girls upstairs say; but she queered herself for good and all last year,” replied Clarice carelessly. “But to return to my original question, can’t I interest any of you in helping me out?”
“I don’t know what we could do,” began Anne.
“Go into the pool for me when my name is called,” answered Clarice boldly. “There’s a ten in it for anybody who will.”
“You’re surely not in earnest,” said Patricia, pushing back her hair to look directly at the girl on the railing above her. Patricia was so easily embarrassed for others, frequently an embarrassment in which the “others” took no part.
“Why shouldn’t I be?” retorted Clarice.