What Marjorie said, however, the next moment after Ronny had turned the key in the door was: “Girls, I’d like to have Ronny take charge of this meeting. While there are only a handful of us, someone ought to be at the head.”
Veronica demurred vigorously. She was overruled and found herself mistress of ceremonies whether she would or no.
“Very well,” she at last accepted, “I will do the best I can to be an illustrious head to this noble organization. To begin with, I will say that I admire Lucy’s policy. What we report here weekly is official. If we merely talked it over in our rooms it would sometimes seem like gossiping, even though we did not intend it to be such. I don’t know that I have anything special to tell. I will say this: Much as I like Wayland Hall and Miss Remson, I do not like the atmosphere of it. It is a house quietly divided against itself. There is no unity here of the better element of girls. There ought to be. I am ready to say how such unity might be brought about. I am not sure that I wish to make it my business. I am not sure that it would come under the head of being a Lookout. As the Five Travelers we have made no pledges, thus far,” she concluded with her strange, flickering smile.
“While I was anxious to carry out the plan we made on the train about the Five Travelers, what I have to tell you really comes under the head of being a Lookout.” Lucy paused and glanced around the uneven semi-circle into which the girls had drawn their chairs. “Someone I know is in great need of help, or rather protection, and that is Miss Langly.”
“In need of protection,” repeated Muriel Harding in a surprised tone. “What awful calamity hangs over that quiet little mouse’s head?” The other three girls also looked in mild amazement. Katherine Langly, a quiet little sophomore, was the one acquaintance Lucy had made by herself.
“It is those hateful sophomores from whom she needs protection,” explained Lucy, smiling faintly at Muriel’s question. “They torment her in all sorts of sly ways. I mean the ones Jerry named ‘our crowd.’ They wish her to leave the Hall as a friend of theirs, a freshman, is trying to get in here. You see she won a Hamilton scholarship. I mean one offered by Hamilton College. She tried special examinations made up by the Hamilton faculty of years ago. Her papers were considered so nearly perfect that she was awarded the special scholarship which no one had won for twenty years. It covers every expense. Mr. Brooke Hamilton founded it and laid aside a sum of money for it. It is still in bank. So few have won this scholarship, the money has accumulated until it is now a very large sum.”
“How interesting!” the four listeners exclaimed in the same breath.
“Truly, I shall never rest until I have dug up a lot of Mr. Brooke Hamilton’s history,” asserted Marjorie. “He was almost as interesting as Benjamin Franklin, who was the most interesting person I ever heard of. Pardon me, Lucy. I am the one who is off the subject tonight.”
“What does ‘our crowd’ do in the way of ragging Miss Langly?” demanded Jerry, bristling into sudden belligerence. “They make me weary! The idea of insulting a girl who has more mind in a minute than the whole bunch will have in a century.”
“They never speak to her, although this is her second year at the Hall. You see, the scholarship mentions a certain room in each of four campus houses which the winner may have the use of. She cannot share it with anyone. The terms state that a young woman brilliant enough to win the scholarship has the right to exclusive privacy.”