“You don’t catch me marching out of the train with my mouth full of candy, looking as though I were about seven years old,” was Jerry’s decided stand. “Go ahead. Eat some yourself, Muriel.”
“I don’t think it would be polite to eat all of Marjorie’s candy,” declined Muriel.
“The delicate consideration of that girl! Ahem! Here’s your candy, Sweet Marjoram.” Reaching over, Jerry deposited it on Marjorie’s seat. “Now for a first timid look at Collegeburg!” As the train began to slow down for a dead stop, Jerry peered curiously out of the car window.
From her own window, Marjorie was also casting her first glances at the Hamilton station. Like the stations of exclusive suburban towns, adjacent to large cities, this one had two separate station buildings; one for outgoing and the other for incoming trains. The two connected by a stone passage-way underneath, ascent or descent made possible by a short flight of stone steps at each end of the passage.
As it happened, Marjorie had been sitting on the side of the car that faced toward the outgoing trains. In consequence, her first impression of Hamilton was a blank. She had expected to see groups of girls in white and light-colored gowns walking up and down the platform. She had looked forward to a scene of moving color and young life. Now all she saw was a platform, empty save for an elderly man, who was leading a little boy of perhaps five or six years along it. This surely was not the Hamilton of her dreams.
CHAPTER IX.—A DISAPPOINTMENT AND A FRIEND.
A moment later she was moving out of the train with her chums, smiling over her recent flat sense of disappointment. A glance out of a window on the opposite side of the car had proved reassuring. On the platform toward which she and her friends were directing their steps were girls in abundance.
“Look at the mob!” Jerry made this low-tone exclamation over her shoulder as she went down the car steps.
Soon the Five Travelers had left the car behind them and become a part of the throng on the station platform. Unconsciously they drew together in a compact, little bunch, somewhat as a quintette of homeless kittens might have done, who had been thrown out on a very big, inhospitable world to wonder what was going to happen to them next.
There they continued to stand for at least three minutes, each busily forming her own opinions of this particular feature of college life. Two girls who had left the train just ahead of them had already been pounced upon by a group of their friends and whisked off the platform. At the right of them a tall, dignified girl in glasses was shaking hands warmly with three welcoming friends. She looked as though she might be a senior. It was not until long afterward that Marjorie learned that she was a prospective freshman who failed ignominiously in her entrance examinations and left Hamilton, disconsolate.