“Don’t I look like a boiled lobster?” cried Nancy. “But this was the only dress anywhere near my size. It’s Nora O’Day’s. Isn’t it handsome? It is unfortunate that she is so dark and I so fair. But it was this or nothing. Think of a yellow-haired girl in an orange-colored gown.”
The effect was startling. Nora, with her dark eyes and coloring, would have looked like a picture in this vivid orange; but Nancy, with her blue eyes and flaxen hair, looked anything but picturesque.
“But you are comfortable,” gasped Mame, in short breaths. “If Min Kean had had a little more flesh on her bones when this dress was fitted, I would have felt better now. Nancy had to use a shoe-hook to fasten the buttons.”
“Have you seen Laura Downs? She looks exactly like Landis. The dress fits except it is a little short in the waist; but Azzie pinned up the skirt. It doesn’t look bad. She was in our room before she went down. And she ‘did’ Landis to perfection—that same haughty manner that Landis has when she means to impress one.”
As they moved along, their number increased. The leading spirits of the Middler class were there, each decked out in the new gown that some Senior, whose manner and tricks of speech she had been studying for weeks to impersonate, would have worn had she not been locked up in the little greenroom near the stage of the chapel.
There had been no Middler of sufficient height and dignity to impersonate Dr. Morgan. Yet she was a light of so great magnitude that she could not be ignored. Miss Hogue, a special student, a girl devoted to the classics, and a writer for all the school papers, had been pressed into service. Dr. Morgan when she had appeared upon the rostrum during the commencement exercises had worn a gown of black lace, its sombre tone relieved by cuffs and collar of cream duchess. She was very slender and erect. Her mass of brown hair, touched with gray, was always dressed in the same style. During all the years she had been at Exeter, it had been worn in a great coil on the top of her head. Dr. Morgan was no longer young. During the last year, she had been compelled to use eye-glasses. These were attached to her bodice by a gold chain. As she talked they were held in her hand the greater part of the time. In physique, Miss Hogue was Dr. Morgan’s double. Robed in the black gown, which she had borrowed from Dr. Morgan’s maid, and with her hair powdered, she could have easily passed as the doctor herself.
Miss Bowman, in company with her fourteen Seniors, sat in the greenroom and waited. There was no lack of conversation, although Miss Bowman took little part in it. However, she was an interested listener, and laughed heartily at the remarks of her charges. They threatened her; they cajoled; they flattered; they offered her all the good things that could be laid at a Senior’s feet during Commencement. When these availed nothing, they expressed themselves strongly. At intervals of a few minutes, one of the girls would try the doors, shaking them, and pounding with her fists on the panels.
“There are other Seniors somewhere,” cried Mary Wilson. “If we could make them hear, we ’d soon be out of here. We’d stop the Middlers’ banquet.”
Miss Bowman laughed. “Do you still think it is a banquet? Well, it isn’t. They hadn’t the least idea of giving one.”
“But I saw the letter that Elizabeth Hobart sent to Achenbach, the caterer. Isn’t that proof enough?” And Mary looked as if, had this been a legal case, she had Blackstone on her side.