Jerry saved her the interrogation. “Then we saw her, just as we drove out of the station yard. She was driving this gray car I mentioned. It looked to me like a French car. There must have been seven or eight girls in it besides herself.”
“It was Natalie you saw. There isn’t another car like hers here at Hamilton. It is a French car.”
Jerry turned to Marjorie, a positive grin over-spreading her plump face. “Right you were, wise Marjorie, about the mistake business. Perhaps time may restore our shattered faith in the Hamiltonites. What did you say Veronica?” She beamed mischievously at Ronny.
“I did not say a single word,” retorted Ronny. “I am glad Marjorie was right, though.”
Helen Trent stood listening, her eyes betraying frank amusement at Jerry, her dimples threatening to break out again.
“We were a little bit disappointed because not a soul spoke to us after we left the train. We had looked forward to having a few Hamilton upper classmen, if only one or two, speak to us. Perhaps we were silly to expect it. To me it seemed one of the nicest features of going to college. I said I thought there must have been a mistake about no one meeting us. That is what Geraldine meant.”
Marjorie made this explanation with the candor of a child. Her brown eyes met Helen’s so sweetly and yet so steadfastly, as she talked, that the sophomore thought her the prettiest girl she had ever seen. Helen’s sympathies had enlisted toward the entire five. Even Lucy Warner had struck her as a girl of great individuality. A slow smile touched the corners of her lips, seemingly the only outward manifestation of some inner cogitation that was mildly amusing.
“I am glad, too, that it was a mistake,” she said, her face dropping again into its soft placidity. “We wish our freshmen friends to think well of us. We sophs are only a year ahead of you. It is particularly our duty to help the freshmen when first they come to Hamilton. I would have gone down to the station today to meet you but Natalie Weyman took it upon herself. I have this special exam to take. I have been preparing for it this summer. It is in trigonometry. I failed in that subject last term and had to make it up this vacation. I only hope I pass in it tomorrow. Br-r-r-r! the very idea makes me shiver.”
“I hope you will, I am sure.” It was Ronny who expressed this sincere wish. She had quickly decided that she approved of Helen Trent. Certainly there was nothing snobbish about her. She showed every mark of gentle breeding.
“I am afraid we may be keeping you from what you were about to do when we stopped you.” Lucy Warner had stepped to the fore much to the secret amazement of her friends. A stickler for duty, Lucy’s training as secretary had taught her the value of time. During that period that she spent in Miss Archer’s office, her own time had been so seriously encroached upon that she had made a resolution never to waste that of others.