CHAPTER XIII.
A PAINFUL INTERVIEW.
As a result of a private conference among the Lookouts that evening, a trained nurse arrived on Sunday afternoon to look after their injured friend. Ronny, with her usual magnificent generosity, wished to take the expenses for Katherine's care and treatment upon herself. To this her chums would not hear. "We all love Kathie," Muriel declared. "I think we ought to divide her expenses among us." Lucy Warner was particularly pleased with Muriel's proposal. She had earned an extra hundred dollars that summer by doing typing in the evenings. She felt, therefore, that she held the right to offer a portion of it in the cause of her particular friend.
"It seems too bad to go on having good times with poor Kathie so sick," deplored Marjorie, as she and Jerry softly closed the door of the latter's room after a brief visit to her following their return from Houghton House.
"I know it, but what good will it do us to cut out recreation, so long as we can't spend the time with her?" argued Jerry. "We know she is all right and going to get well. It isn't as though she wasn't expected to live. The nurse said a lot of the girls had come to her door to inquire for her. She wouldn't let any of 'em see her. I think the Sans have been on the job. They are probably scared for fear Kathie will make it hot for Leslie Cairns when she is well again."
"She wouldn't." Marjorie shook her curly head. "Neither would I, if I were in her place. It ought to be a lesson to the Sans without any further fuss about it. They are the only ones who drive faster than they should."
"If Miss Cairns had run down a citizen of the town of Hamilton then there would have been a commotion. It is a very good thing for her that a traffic officer wasn't around. He would have arrested her, sure as fate. I wish one had been on the scene," declared Jerry, with a trace of vindictiveness.
That the Sans were manifestly uneasy over the accident was evidenced by their gathering in Leslie Cairns' room that afternoon for a confab. Leslie herself hid whatever trepidation she was feeling under an air of cool bravado. She listened to all that her companions had to say on the subject without vouchsafing more than an occasional curt reply.
"Really, Les, you don't seem to understand that you may get into an awful mess over running down that beggardly dig!" Joan Myers at length exclaimed in sharp irritation. "Suppose the whole thing is put before President Matthews or the Board. We may all lose the privilege of having our cars at college. I read of a college out west the other day where that happened as the result of an accident to a student."