Just keep serene, beloved Bean,
You will come out all right.
I am your friend, unto the end,
I’ll stick to you like glue
On me just lean, entrancing Bean
And I will see you through.”
“Thank you, oh, thank you!” was Marjorie’s grateful reception of Jerry’s improvised tribute. “I’d love to have a book of Bean Jingles.”
“You’ll have to take them down as they are ground out, then, Bean. I never can remember them afterward. ‘I consider them rather sweet little things.’ Now I must stop entertaining you and get busy. If you hear blood-curdling wails outside the door today, don’t collapse. Leila says she may give a farewell exhibition of true grief in the hall.”
The very prospect of Leila’s wails set the two girls to laughing. In spite of the coming separation from their close friends the both felt lighter of spirit as a result of Jerry’s nonsense.
As the morning sped toward noon, one by one, Ronny, Muriel, Lucy, Leila and Vera sought Room 15, the headquarters of all their college years. They were invited to the Arms to dinner that night in honor of Jerry’s and Marjorie’s arrival. Now they hovered about Marjorie and Jerry, trying to be cheerful at the blow that had fallen. They had agreed among themselves not to flivver in the slightest particular. “But after they’re gone,” Leila had said somberly to Vera, “I shall howl my Irish head off.” Anna Towne and Verna Burkett had been invited to take up their abode at Wayland Hall in Room 15 until either college closed or the two Travelers came back again to the Hall.