As they loitered outside, conversing in low tones, the front door opened and a girl stepped out on the veranda. She uttered a faint sound of surprise at sight of the group of girls. She made a half movement as though to retreat into the house. Then, her face turned away from them, she hurried across the veranda and down the steps.
Though the veranda light was not switched on, the girls had seen her face plainly. To four of them she was known.
“Who was she and what ailed her?” was Muriel’s light question. “She acted as though she were afraid we might eat her up.”
“That was Miss Sayres, President Matthews’ private secretary,” answered Leila in a peculiar tone. “As to what ailed her, she did not expect to see us and she was not pleased. We have an old Irish proverb: ‘When a man runs from you be sure his feet are at odds with his conscience.’”
CHAPTER IV—A CONGENIAL PAIR
“Well, here we are at the same old stand again.” Leslie Cairns yawned, stretched upward her kimono-clad arms and clasped them behind her head. Lounging opposite her, in a deep, Sleepy-Hollow chair, Natalie Weyman, also in a negligee, scanned her friend’s face with some anxiety.
“Les, do you or do you not intend to try to make a new stand this year for our rights? I think the way we were treated last year after that basket-ball affair was simply outrageous. I don’t mean by Miss Dean and her crowd, I mean by girls we had lunched and done plenty of favors for.”
“If you are talking about the freshies they never were to be depended upon from the first. Bess Walbert stood by us, of course. So did a lot of Alston Terrace kids. She did good work for us there.”
“Every reason why she should have,” Natalie tartly pointed out. She was still jealous of Leslie’s friendship with Elizabeth Walbert. “You did enough for her. She certainly will not win the soph presidency, no matter how much you may root for her. She was awfully unpopular with her class before college closed. I know that to be a fact.”
“Why is it that you have to go up in the air like a sky rocket every time I mention Bess Walbert’s name?” Leslie scowled her impatience. “You wouldn’t give that poor kid credit for anything clever she had done, no matter how wonderful it was.”