Through the glory of late afternoon sunlight the two cars, each with its winsome freight of white-gowned girls, sped down the smooth pike past beautiful Hamilton Estates and on toward the station. Happy in the fact that she was now so perfectly at home at Hamilton, Marjorie smiled as she compared last year with the present. Yes; it was good to be a sophomore. Her new estate stretched invitingly before her. It was all so very different from the previous September. The splendor of the sunlit sky and the warm fragrance of the light breeze seemed indicative of pleasant days to come. Because she had missed a welcome on her arrival at Hamilton, she was ready to welcome doubly some other freshman stranger within Hamilton's gates.
"Train 16, late, 40 minutes," was the dampening information which stared them in the face from the station bulletin board.
"Forty minutes! Who cares to eat ice cream? Back into the buzz wagons, all of you. I like the taste of ice cream in my mouth better than the feel of those station boards under my feet for a long stretch of forty minutes. We can go to the Ivy, that little white shop on Linden Avenue. It is only two blocks from the station. We shall have time and to spare."
Leila called the latter part of her remarks over her shoulder. Immediately she had read the notice she turned and started for the station yard. Her companions followed her with alacrity. They were no more in favor than she of a tedious wait on the platform for a belated train.
"One of us had better call time," wisely suggested Helen, as they flocked into the pretty white and green tea room. "Otherwise we are likely to overstay our limit. We must be out of here ten minutes before the train is due. You had better, Luciferous. You are infallible."
"Much obliged." A faint pink crept into Lucy's fair pale skin. Lucy was secretly proud of her own reliability. Turning her pretty gold wrist watch on her wrist so that she could see the face of it, she watched it with an eager eye from then on. The watch had been a gift to her from Ronny the previous Christmas, and was her most valued possession.
Fortune favored them with prompt service on the part of a waitress. They had only comfortably finished their ice cream, however, when Lucy announced that it was time to go. Returning to the station platform, they found only a sprinkling of students awaiting the coming train.
"What has become of Ethel Laird, I wonder?" asked Jerry. "I hope she hasn't forgotten she is on this welcoming committee. Suppose about twenty or thirty freshmen stepped off the five o'clock train. It would keep Marjorie and me busy chasing up and down this old board walk handing out welcomes."
"Now where do you suppose we would be during that time?" demanded Leila.
"Oh, you would be a help, undoubtedly," conceded Jerry, with a boyish grin. "I forgot about you folks. I was merely thinking of us from our committee standpoint. We'll have to guess whether these arrivals are freshies or not. I don't know all the Hamilton students and where they belong. It will be about my speed to walk up to some timid-looking damsel and gallantly offer my assistance only to find out she is a proud and lofty senior."