“Bess, you don’t seem to have good sense.” Leslie had grown caustic. “You know Matthews threatened to ban cars when I ran down Langly. If you are reported for this, you’re done with your buzz wagon at Hamilton. So are all the other students. Oh, this is too bad! And all because you are either too stubborn or else too stupid to learn to drive!”
“I don’t understand you, Leslie, and you will kindly stop calling me stupid,” sputtered Elizabeth, her face very red.
“You will understand in a minute. As it happens, your punk driving may have seriously interfered with a business venture of mine. Since I left college I have been looking about for a chance to go into business for myself. One of my ventures is to be a garage near Hamilton College.” Leslie spoke rapidly and with displeased force. “Now I chose to even my score with Bean at the same time. That’s why I wanted you to find out about those properties. I heard last year before I was fired from college about a wonderful dormitory the little prigs were going to try to build near the campus, for the benefit of plebeian beggars who want to go through college on nothing a year.
“I remembered it after I left Hamilton. That’s why I came back and took up a residence here. I made up my mind I’d find out the site they were after and take it away from them. The woman I am with is my chaperon, not my aunt. I tried to get Alida and Lola interested in the affair, but couldn’t. I knew you could help me, so I decided to forget the past and be friends with you again.”
“Why didn’t you explain all this to me in the beginning, instead of deceiving me so?” burst forth Elizabeth rancorously.
“It had to be kept a dead secret. You would have told it to someone, sure as fate. I’m telling you now. That’s soon enough,” returned Leslie coolly. “Now listen to the rest. I have bought those boarding-house properties west of the campus—the block that contains the seven houses. I paid sixty thousand dollars for them and I am going to have ’em torn down and a mammoth garage put up there. You see what will happen to my investment if cars are banned at Hamilton.”
“Oh, bother your old investment!” Elizabeth had grown angrier as she listened to Leslie. “It will never amount to a string of glass beads. Am I to blame because people won’t keep out of the path of my car?”
“The path of your car!” Leslie repeated with a sarcastic snicker. She was equally incensed at her companion’s disparagement of her business venture. “Where is that wonderful path? All over the road, I’ll say. The state ought to issue you a non-license instead of a license.”
Thus began a quarrel which raged hotly for several minutes. Elizabeth was furious at having been deceived by Leslie. The latter was utterly out of temper over the seeds of catastrophe to her plans which the junior had sown. They were a long way from Hamilton when the altercation began. In the midst of it Leslie turned the roadster about and started back over the route they had come. By the time the campus wall appeared in sight a black silence had fallen between them. Nor was it broken until Leslie brought her car to an even stop at the eastern entrance.
“You may as well get out here,” she sullenly dictated.