“What you said at breakfast about the strangers being well within our gates, made me feel that we ought to begin to try to get acquainted with them. We promised Miss Remson to help them get settled, if we could. I don’t mind their being noisy.” Marjorie paused.
Jerry eyed her quizzically. “You think they are too much like the Sans to be a positive comfort around the house, now don’t you?”
“They seemed a little that way to me,” Marjorie admitted. “The Sans were older by a year or two than these girls when they entered Hamilton. These freshies are very juvenile acting.”
“They acted last night as though they didn’t care a button whether they met anyone else or not. A sufficient-unto-themselves crowd, you know. Still, if we hold off from them, they may feel that we are puffed up over our senior estate. The best way, I guess, is to cultivate them. We can be friendly, but a trifle on our dignity at the same time.”
“We’ll probably meet them in the halls and on the veranda during the next day or so. That will start the ball rolling. I’d rather not make any calls until I’ve had one or two chance encounters with some of them. Being on station duty is different. It is a detail.”
“I hate to butt into a stranger’s room, freshie or no freshie,” Jerry agreed. “You know how we felt when the three Sans came to call before we had hardly taken off our hats.”
In spite of Marjorie’s ever ready willingness to be of service when needed, she still retained a certain amount of shyness which had been hers as a child.
“I am not afraid of being snubbed by these lively freshie children,” she presently said, with a trace of humor. “I don’t care to intrude on them unless I am truly sure they want to know us.”
“They don’t know what they want or what they don’t want,” calmly observed Jerry. “I am not enthusiastic over them, Marvelous Manager. I’ll try to be a conscientious elder sister to them, but it will be an awful struggle.”
Marjorie laughed at this. Jerry chuckled faintly in unison. The unexpected invasion of Lucy, Katherine Langly and Lillian Wenderblatt put an end to confidence. The will to labor also languished and was lost in the ardor of meeting and greeting.