“I never answer foolish questions,” retaliated Muriel. “There are persons who make a practice of asking them. Such persons should not be encouraged.”
“Pay no attention to those two, Leila,” Marjorie advised. “Talk to Lucy and me. Tell me, are there any new arrivals at the Hall?”
“Two freshies. I haven’t asked Miss Remson their names. They have Leslie Cairns’ room. They are a noisy pair. I hear them giggling and talking in the halls at every turn.”
“That doesn’t sound as though you admired them, Leila.” Jerry had not lost what Leila had been saying.
“I do not. As a crusty old post graduate, I am hard to please.” Leila’s genial smile belied her words. “I have been too long used to distinguished company.”
“That means us. Bow to the lady.” Muriel gave Jerry a significant nudge.
“Do your own bowing and don’t interrupt. I want to hear who’s come back and who hasn’t. Go ahead and tell us some more, Leila. Never mind my friend here. She is what I should term ‘voluable.’” Jerry turned her back on Muriel.
“Let me see. Martha Merrick is coming back. With her, Vera, Helen and I, there will be four P. G’s. Five Lookouts, make nine of the old girls here. Eva and Mary make eleven, and there are six or seven more. In all, perhaps eighteen students who were here last year. The Hall holds forty-four girls, but Muriel has a single and Kathie’s room will stay empty unless some one wins the scholarship she won. That is not likely to happen.”
“I hope Kathie will have half as nice a room at Randolph House as she had here,” Lucy said. “I’m going to miss her dreadfully.”
Engaged to teach English at the college, Kathie had applied for admission to Randolph House the previous June. It was a campus house given over to members of the faculty.