“Yes; I heard a commotion going on up there one evening, but only faintly. My door was closed. I didn’t pay any attention to the noise, for it did not concern me.” Marjorie was struggling against an irresistible desire to laugh. To her mind Dulcie was the last person she would have classed as temperamental.
“The rest of that crowd were just as noisy as I, but Leslie Cairns blamed me for it all. She told Miss Remson it was I alone who made the disturbance. I’ll never forgive her; never. What I thought was this, Miss Dean. The Sans deserve to be punished for hazing you. I was a victim, too, that night. They made me go along with them, and I didn’t wish to go. I came home with my eye blackened. I won’t say how it happened, only that Leslie Cairns was to blame. I know about the whole plan for the hazing. Leslie rented that house for six months and paid the rent in advance so as to have a good place to take you. She would have left you there all night but Nell Ray and I said we would not stand for that. We were the only ones who stood up for you. Leslie Cairns was the Red Mask.
“You know that Doctor Matthews is awfully down on hazing,” Dulcie continued, taking a fresh supply of breath. “I thought if you would go with me to his office we could put the case before him. So long as I have all the facts of that affair and you and I were the ones hazed, he would certainly expel those Sans from Hamilton. You could say, just to clear me, that you knew I was hazed, too. That is, I was forced to go with them against my will. You see I had said I wouldn’t have a thing to do with it. I put on a domino that night over my costume and started across the campus by myself. Half a dozen of the Sans headed me off and simply dragged me along with them. I couldn’t get away from them, either. If that wasn’t hazing, then what was it?”
Marjorie was sorely tempted to reply, “Nothing but a yarn.” She did not credit Dulcie’s story and was growing momentarily more disgusted with the author of it.
“I can get away with it nicely if you will help me.” Dulcie evidently took Marjorie’s silence as favorable to her plan. “I’ve resigned from the Sans of my own accord. That will be in my favor. Matthews doesn’t like Leslie. You know she received a summons after Miss Langly was hurt. Maybe the doctor didn’t call her down! With you on my side. Oh, fine! I can see the Sans packing to leave Hamilton in a hurry!” Dulcie brightened visibly at the dire picture her mind had painted of her enemies’ disaster. “I can tell you a lot more things against them, too. Leslie is afraid all the time that Miss Remson will find out how she worked that stunt to keep us our rooms here. She——”
Marjorie interrupted with a quick, stern: “Stop, Miss Vale! I don’t wish to hear such things. I listened to what you said about the hazing as that concerned myself only. I have no desire to know the Sans’ private affairs. Whatever they may have done that is against the rules and traditions of Hamilton they will have to answer for. In the long run they will not be happy. I would not inform against them to President Matthews or anyone else.”
“Would you let them go on and be graduated after what they have done against both of us?” demanded Dulcie, her voice rising.
“It has not hurt me; being hazed, I mean,” was the calm reply. “I do not approve of hazing. I would not take part in any such disgraceful thing. Still, I do not believe in tale-bearing. You will gain more, Miss Vale, by going on as though all that has annoyed and hurt you had never been. Whoever has wronged you will be punished, eventually. The higher law, the law of compensation, provides for that.”
“I don’t know a thing about law. I wouldn’t care to take the matter into court.” Marjorie’s little preachment had gone entirely over the stupid senior’s head. Leslie had often remarked, and with truth, that Dulc was “thick.”
“I mean by the higher law, ‘As ye mete it out to others, so shall it be measured back to you again,’” Marjorie quoted with reverence.