“I don’t believe Miss Susanna is on her ear at us,” observed Jerry inelegantly. “She will write when she feels like it. Maybe she thought it better to postpone writing until she was sure we were all back at college after Christmas. When did you last hear from her?”
“Not since she sent me the money for the tickets for the show. I bought those tickets for her myself. She didn’t understand, I guess. I re-mailed the money to her, explaining that they were from me. Since then I have heard not a word from her. I should have taken the tickets back to her instead of mailing them, but I was so busy just then. Besides, I don’t like to go to the Arms without a special invitation.”
Almost incident with Marjorie’s worry over Miss Susanna’s silence came a note from her new friend, appointing an evening for her to dine at Hamilton Arms.
“I am not asking your friends this time,” the old lady wrote, “as I prefer to devote my attention to you, dear child. I could not answer the Christmas letter for I had no medium of expression. I loved it, and the flowers. Best of all, was the honor you did Uncle Brooke. You may show this letter to your friends, extending to them a crabbed old person’s sincere thanks and good wishes.”
Marjorie kept her dinner appointment with Miss Susanna and spent a happy evening with the old lady. Miss Hamilton showed active interest in the subject of the recent revue. The obliging lieutenant had brought with her a programme which the old lady insisted in going over, number by number, inquiring about each performer. She expressed a wish to hear Constance Stevens sing and asked Marjorie to bring Constance to Hamilton Arms if she should again come to Hamilton College.
“I was truly sorry to have missed that show,” the last of the Hamiltons frankly confessed. “It would never do for me to set foot on that campus. I should be on bad terms with myself forever after; on as bad terms as I am with the college.”
“I’ll tell you what we might do, Miss Hamilton,” Marjorie ventured. “We could give a stunt party here, just for you, at some time when it pleased you to have us here. Perhaps Constance would come from New York for a day or two. She isn’t so far away. Then Ronny and Vera would dance and Leila sings the most charming ancient Celtic songs.”
Her lovely face had grown radiant as she described her chums’ talents, and again, for her sake, Miss Susanna had softened toward all girlhood. She had assented with only half-concealed eagerness to Marjorie’s plan.
Two days after Marjorie’s visit to her, she sent her a check for five hundred dollars, asking that it be placed with the money earned from the revue. The youthful managers had charged a dollar apiece for tickets with no reservations. To their intense joy and amusement, the gross receipts amounted to six hundred and seventy-two dollars. Their only expenses being for printing and lighting the gymnasium, they had, counting Miss Susanna’s gift, a little over one thousand dollars with which to start the beneficiary fund.
Anna Towne had done good work among the girls off the campus. Due to her efforts they had been brought to look upon the new avenue of escape from signal discomfort, now open to them, as an opportunity to be embraced. Marjorie had said conclusively that the funds at their disposal were to be given, not lent. She argued on the basis that money thus easily gained should be distributed where it would benefit most, then be forgotten. The girls who were struggling along to put themselves through college would have enough to do to earn their living afterward without stepping over the threshold of their chosen work saddled with an obligation.