To her satisfaction Jerry walked into the room at ten minutes to six. She and Helen had taken a ride in the latter’s car. Jerry was full of mirth over the fact that they had met Elizabeth Walbert’s car at the side of the road with a blown-out tire. A mechanician from a Hamilton garage was on the scene adjusting a new one under the verbose direction of the owner.
“Helen drove her car past at a crawl. We wanted to hear what she was saying to the man from the garage. Honestly, we could hear her voice before we came very near her. She shrieks at the top of her lungs. She was trying to tell him what to do. He wasn’t paying any more attention to her than if she hadn’t been there. That blond freshie, who snubbed Phil the day she tried to help her at the station, was with her. I heard her say, ‘My, but he is slow. Our chauffeur could have put on three tires while he was thinking about putting on one.’ So encouraging to the workman!” Jerry’s tones registered gleeful sarcasm. “I wish she had been stuck there for about four hours.”
“You should not rejoice at the downfall of others,” Marjorie reproved with a giggle. “That is, if you can class a bursted tire as a downfall.”
“It did me a world of good to see those two little snips stuck at the side of the road,” returned Jerry. “That Walbert girl and her car are a joke. I wish we had a college paper. I’d write her up. Funny there isn’t one at Hamilton. Almost every other college has one, sometimes two. I think I shall start one next year, if I’m not too busy.”
“You might call it ‘Jeremiah’s Journal,’” suggested Marjorie. Both girls laughed at this conceit. Marjorie then acquainted her room-mate with the invitation, at the same time handing her Miss Hamilton’s note.
“Will wonders never cease!” Jerry laid down the note and beamed at Marjorie. “All your fault, Marvelous Manager. You went ahead and paved the way into Miss Susanna’s good graces for the rest of us. You certainly do get on the soft side of people without trying.”
“Not a bit of it,” Marjorie stoutly contested. “Any one of you girls would have done as I did and with the same results. I am so glad you are all going to meet her. She can’t help but have a better opinion of our dear old Alma Mater after she has met some of her nicest children. I guess that basket handle broke at the psychological moment.”
CHAPTER XVI—OUT OF THE PAST
The invited guests were in scarcely more of an anticipatory flutter than Miss Susanna herself. She had broken down her prejudice against girls partly out of curiosity to see and know Marjorie’s friends, partly because of her growing fondness for Marjorie. The innocent beauty of the young girl, and her utter lack of conceit and affectation, had made a deep impression on the suspicious, embittered old lady. She had no expectation of liking Marjorie’s friends as she was learning to like the courteous, gracious lieutenant. It was her skeptical opinion, uttered to Jonas, that, if one of the “new ones” turned out to be half as worthy as “that pretty child,” she would not regret the experiment.
“You may take me for an old fool, Jonas,” she declared to her faithful servitor of many years. “Here I am entertaining college misses after I’ve sworn enmity against them for so long. Well, everything once, Jonas; everything once. If I don’t like ’em, they won’t be invited here again.”