“What we want,” said Migwan decidedly, “is a fad—something that will take the college by storm and separate them from their cash. I remember last year some of the seniors started the fad of taking impressions of the palm of your hand on paper smoked with camphor gum and sending them away to have the lines read by some noted palmist, and they made oceans of money at twenty-five cents an impression.”
We talked possible fads until we were green in the face, but nobody got an inspiration and we finally adjourned with our heads in a whirl.
The next day I went into a deserted classroom for a book I had left behind and found Sally Prindle with her head down on one of the desks, crying. By that time I had forgotten how disagreeable she had been to us and hastened over to see what was the matter.
“What’s the trouble, Sally?” I asked, laying my hand on her shoulder.
Sally started up and tried to wipe the tears away hastily. “Nothing,” she answered in a flat voice.
“There is too something,” I said determinedly, and sat down on the desk in front of her.
She looked at me sort of defiantly for a minute and then she broke down altogether. Between sobs she told me that she wasn’t going to be able to come back to college next year because she hadn’t won the big Andrews prize in mathematics she had counted confidently on winning, and she had worked so hard for it that she had neglected her other work, and the first thing she knew she had a condition in Latin. Besides, she was sick and couldn’t do the hard work she had been doing outside to pay her board.
I never saw anyone so broken up over anything. I wouldn’t have expected her to care whether she came back to college or not; I couldn’t see what fun she had ever gotten out of it, but I suppose in her own queer way she must have enjoyed it. I tried to comfort her by telling her that the way would probably be found somehow if she took it up with the right people, but Sally wasn’t the kind of girl that took comfort easily. Life was terribly serious to her. She felt disgraced because she hadn’t won the prize and was sure nobody would want to lend her money to finish her course. I left her at last with my heart aching because of the uneven way things are distributed in this world.
Our room was a mess when I got back. Our floor was entertaining the floor below that night and Hinpoha was in the show. She was standing in the middle of the room draping my dresser scarf around her shoulders for a fichu, while Agony was piling her hair high on her head for her and Oh-Pshaw was pinning on a train made of bath towels.
“Have you a blue velvet band?” Hinpoha demanded thickly, as I entered, through the pins she was holding in her mouth.