Without further words Grace closed the door. She did not wish to betray her annoyance. She had experienced a wild desire to march over to the bed and drag the complacent freshman forth from it by the shoulders.
When Evelyn descended to the dining-room she found that most of the girls had eaten breakfast and gone off to chapel. Happening to recall that she had not attended the morning services for a week, and with visions of her unsigned chapel card staring her in the face, she ate a hurried breakfast and was about to depart when her eyes happened to rest upon the bulletin board in the hall around which were gathered several girls. Pausing, Evelyn read Grace's notice. It asked the members of Harlowe House to be in the living room at five o'clock that afternoon for the discussion of a most important subject.
"I wonder what it is," said Nettie Weyburn, lively curiosity overspreading her usually placid face.
"I think I know," volunteered Mary Reynolds. "Miss Harlowe was telling me only last night that she wishes to organize a club of just Harlowe House girls, with a president and other officers. The club will have a constitution and by-laws and every member will have to live up to them."
"Wouldn't that be splendid?" asked Cecil Ferris, a gray-eyed, black-haired freshman who made up in energy what she lacked in height.
"Who would be president I wonder," murmured Evelyn, shooting a glance of apparent innocence about the circle.
"You'd make a good president, Miss Ward," declared Mary Reynolds, in open admiration. To her beauty-loving little soul Evelyn was the most exquisite person in the world.
"I," cried Evelyn in well-simulated amazement. "I wouldn't attempt to be, I am not clever or popular enough."
"I believe you would be the very one. You are so independent and know just how to do things." Now that Mary had suggested it, it met with Nettie Weyburn's placid approval. Cecil Ferris echoed it. She, too, had fallen under the spell of Evelyn's beauty.
"I must run along or be late to chapel," murmured Evelyn modestly, and hurried off at precisely the wisest moment to further her own cause. The ambition to become the president of the proposed club had sprung into life in her self-centered young soul as she stood reading the bulletin, and she determined that she would leave nothing undone to obtain the honor.