"That is the proper spirit," approved Leslie. "Believe me, I know what I am saying when I tell you that we must fight those girls and put them in the background where they belong. The way to begin this year is to win over the freshies. The minute it is known we are interesting ourselves in these greenies' welfare, our popularity will take a jump upward. Every one of you can either give me your promise tonight to help or keep away from me the rest of the year. Think it over. Don't promise and then go to grumbling behind my back about it. If you do, I'll be sure to hear it."
"It will be rather good fun to play angel to the freshies for a change," said Evangeline Hepper. "We might have a picnic some Saturday, or give a hop for them. Have it understood, of course, that it was the Sans Soucians who were to be the hostesses."
"We can decide better what to do after we have met a few of the freshmen," returned Leslie. "I hope there won't be many of those beggarly-looking girls who come into college on scholarships or scrape their way through without a cent above their expenses. They are so tiresome. That Miss Langly, of our class, is a glowing example of what I mean."
"She is very high and mighty since the Sanford crowd took her up, isn't she?" shrugged Natalie.
"She always was, for that matter," said Adelaide Forman. "Those girls have praised her and babied her until she is a good deal more infatuated with herself than she used to be."
"That is another reason I have for wanting to get back at them," asserted Leslie. "You all know the snippy way she acted when we asked her to change rooms with Lola. Worse still, she had to go and tell her troubles to the Sanford crowd. They started right in to tell everyone how brilliant she was and how shabbily we had treated her. Then the Silverton Hall girls took it up and spread the news abroad that Langly had won a scholarship no one else had been able to win for twenty years. That sent her stock away up and we had to stop ragging her or be disliked. I shall not forget that little performance in a hurry."
"They certainly put one over on us with that miserable old beauty contest, too." Natalie's voice quivered with bitterness.
"Leila Harper was to blame for that, Nat. She is the cleverest girl at Hamilton. We made a serious mistake in the beginning about her. They say her father has oodles of money." Joan looked brief regret at the mistake the Sans had made in not cultivating Leila.
"We never could have got along with her," Leslie said decidedly. "I am glad we never took her up. I detest her and Vera Mason, too, but not half so hard as I do Miss Bean and her satellites." Leslie invariably said "Bean" instead of Dean in derision of Marjorie.
She now paused, her heavy features dark with resentment. The independence of Marjorie Dean and her friends was a thorn to her flesh. Each time she had attempted to injure them she had been ingloriously defeated. She was determined, this year, not only to win back and maintain her former leadership at Hamilton College, but also to crush the rising power of the girls she so greatly disliked.