While Doris accepted dinner and luncheons from Leslie and allowed Leslie to pay for the upkeep of the Dazzler, she was wary about spending Leslie’s money. She knew her father would be righteously enraged with her for accepting a penny from either stranger or friend. Her own allowance was a comfortable one for a girl of her age. The money she saved by sharing her room with Muriel also augmented it. She had a very fair wardrobe and had therefore done no shopping in particular since entering Hamilton. She developed no crushes. Consequently she did not spend much money. She was not mean or stingy in this respect. She was too selfishly indifferent and too indifferently selfish to care to give pleasure to others. Her beauty had always demanded for her, and met no denial.
Since she had come to Hamilton College she had cherished two ambitions. The first had been toward popularity. The second was to achieve a trip to New York City. Popularity, because of her beauty, had quickly found her. The trip to New York had not been so easy of fulfillment. She had hoped to go to New York with Leslie at Thanksgiving. Leslie had disappointed her. More, she had utterly discouraged the idea when Doris had defiantly asserted that she would visit the metropolis alone. Leslie’s half sincere promise to show Doris about New York during the Christmas vacation was one on which Doris had fondly built. Her anger, on hearing from Leslie that she did not intend to fulfill the promise, had been so scathing as to cause Leslie to reconsider and try to make peace with wrathful “Goldie.”
Muriel’s invitation had been offered at the psychological moment in Doris’s affairs. The step in the right direction which she had planned to take would have wrought an admirable change in her before the dawn of New Years. Instead Doris had received a call from Julia Peyton which had completely uprooted her healthily growing good will toward Muriel and again thrown her upon the society of Leslie Cairns for amusement.
Leslie had received Doris’s note with a silent hobgoblin laugh and a contemptuous: “Pouf; I thought she wouldn’t stay peeved.” Deciding to keep the sophomore in suspense she had not answered the note until the very last moment. It had reached Doris on the morning of the day when college closed for the holidays, leaving her barely time to pack a trunk and arrange her affairs. Long since determined on the New York trip at some time or other, Leslie or no Leslie, Doris had saved a certain sum each month from her allowance. She had not therefore drawn on the account in Hamilton bank for the trip, nor did she intend to do so. The very sight of the bank book in the top drawer of her chiffonier gave her a feeling of uneasiness. At the time when she had burst upon the campus in her white suit, furs and shining white car she had used in the neighborhood of seventy-five dollars of the sum in bank to her credit. Since then she and Leslie had quarreled and bickered so much she wished she had never used a cent of the five hundred. She planned to return it from her own income after the trip to New York was over.
“I wish you had let me know sooner what you intended to do,” had been Leslie’s grumbling words to Doris as the two met at the Hamilton station. On receipt of Leslie’s belated note Doris had obeyed its instructions to call Leslie on the telephone at the Hamilton House. Over the telephone the trip had been hurriedly arranged.
“Why didn’t you let me know?” had been the ruffled sophomore’s strongly emphasized question. “You could have answered my note sooner than you did.”
“You should have written me long before you did.” Leslie’s emphasis had been stronger and more displeased than had Doris’s. “I told you before you left me at the Colonial that I would go to New York. You never said a word. It’s your own fault, Goldie, that you had to rush around like mad at the last minute.”
Such had been the discordant basis upon which the two girls had met at a time when all the world of light and love was pleading for “Peace on earth, good will toward men.” Once they had settled down in the train for the journey they had grown a trifle more amiable. They were both too fond of pleasure not to look forward to a two weeks’ stay in New York. Leslie had soon miraculously recovered her good humor and had proceeded to lay out a program of amusements for the first week of their stay in the metropolis. She had decided privately to “ship Goldie back to the campus the day after New Years.” That would leave her a few brief days in New York alone to go about her own affairs. Time was flying. She had difficult and important work to do which must be done soon.
She planned to humor Doris to a round of holiday gaieties. They would dine and lunch at the smartest restaurants and tea rooms. They would occupy box seats at the theatres, and at the opera. Leslie even considered introducing Doris to Natalie Weyman. That would mean an entree for Doris into New York’s most exclusive younger set. Her objection to this proposal was that Nat was “such a snip when she was jealous.” Of course she would be jealous of Doris. She was capable of “snubbing Doris off the face of the earth.” That would mean Doris in a towering rage again.
Leslie was not anxious to arouse a fresh spirit of antagonism in Doris. The self-willed sophomore was her only reliable source of campus information. Besides, Doris was more truthful than the majority of girls with whom she had chummed. She had also the virtue of silence. Goldie could be trusted not to “tell everything she knew, and a lot she didn’t know, to the mob.” Like the majority of untruthful persons, Leslie was quick to note and appreciate truth in someone else. Again, she did not fancy losing the companionship of the one girl intimate she had at Hamilton. She had spent time, patience, effort and money in cultivating Doris’s friendship. She did not propose to be a loser.