“Yes, with Miss Cairns,” Doris answered; then added bitterly: “She has invited me to go there with her because we are friends; not because she feels sorry for me.”
CHAPTER IX.
DEFEATING HER OWN HAPPINESS
When the door had closed on her gossiping caller Doris sat down again at the table. She leaned her beautiful head on her white, dimpled arms and gave herself up to brief disconsolate reverie. Now that she was alone she wondered whether what Julia Peyton had said about Muriel Harding was strictly true. There was one way in which she could find out with certainty. She would ask Muriel point-blank if it were true that four off-campus girls had refused her invitation. She would ask Muriel, also, where she had gained so much information regarding herself. When she endeavored to recall Julia’s exact words she found they did not mean much. Julia’s reluctant inflections, her stammering pauses, had implied so much more than words.
Julia’s object in warning Doris against Muriel had been double. Since the evening when she had made complaint against the noise in Room 15 she had shown marked hostility to the knot of post graduates at Wayland Hall. She and Clara Carter had encouraged Doris in her half fancied dislike for them. She had noted the new spirit of friendliness growing between Doris and Muriel with every intention of crushing it if she could. She kept up a zealous watching and longing for an opportunity to create dissention between them. She had a habit of dropping in on Doris in her room when Muriel was there purposely to see how things were between the two. She never spoke to Muriel, however.
About the time she had begun to despair of making mischief between them she was delighted to overhear a group of chattering freshmen in the gymnasium one afternoon gaily discussing their Christmas plans. What most pleased her were the remarks of one of them: “Isn’t it too bad? Miss Harding can’t find a single dorm to trot home with her. They are all attached. It’s too bad for her. I mean. Of course it’s lovely for the dorms.”
The jealous, prejudiced girl had chosen to place an entirely different construction upon the remarks from that intended by the merry little freshman. By the time she had repeated the remarks to Clara Carter, her roommate, with embellishments, they had assumed an ugly tone. Clara also contributed a few opinions which did not improve matters.
Added to this it needed but the rumor that Doris Monroe was going home with Miss Harding for the holidays to set the mischief-making pair of sophomores to work. Julia was of the opinion that since Doris had planned to go home with Muriel she and Miss Cairns must have quarreled. If she could only set Doris against her roommate then Doris would go home for the vacation with her. She would have the pleasure of boasting that she had entertained the college beauty. She was confident that she would gain socially by having entertained Doris as her guest. With so much to be gained to her interest Julia had picked her hour and boldly braved the “Busy” sign and Doris’s “royal” manner. At the last she had not dared propose to Doris that her wrathful classmate should spend the vacation with her. She returned to her room to inform Clara, who was watching for her, that she had just missed getting into an awful mess.
With a pettish little jerk of her head Doris straightened in her chair. She picked up the letter she had been writing from the table and began reading it over. Then she sat staring reflectively at it, as though deliberating some very special course. Next instant and she had torn the unfinished letter in pieces. With the peculiar cresting of her golden head, always a sign of defiance, she reached for her fountain pen where it had rolled to one end of the table.
“Dear Leslie:” she wrote, her green eyes darkening with her unquiet thoughts. “If you really meant what you said when I left you the other day at the Colonial, then I will take you at your word. Miss Harding, my roommate, has invited me to go home with her. I prefer to go to New York with you, provided you will not feel that I am an incumbrance to your plans. Let me know immediately what you wish to do.