"Better let this Miss Dean alone," was Laura's succinct advise. "I hear she is very popular on the campus. She looks independent enough to take up for herself. Be careful she doesn't turn the tables on you as she did last spring."
"Not this time. She won't like my methods, but she won't be able to prove that they are mine. In fact she won't know where to place the blame."
CHAPTER XVI.
FAIR PLAY AND NO FAVORS.
Phyllis Moore accepted her defeat with the easy grace which was hers. Her freshman supporters were not so ready to give in. They gave up the ghost with marked displeasure. Forty-five members of the class had voted for her. They had shown open and hearty disapproval of Elizabeth Walbert. The other three officers were more to their liking, but the Sans' electioneering had left a rift in the freshman lute which promised plenty of discord later on. Though every member of the class had attended the picnic as a matter of courtesy, the finer element had been privately weary of the affair before the afternoon was over. The Sans' efforts to mould the freshmen to their views merely resulted in amalgamating stray groups to one solid formation. A fact they were presently to discover.
The election of officers had occurred much later than was the rule. The excitement attendant upon it had hardly died out before the freshman frolic loomed large on their horizon. With the sophomore class almost entirely free from snobbish influences, the dance promised to be an occasion of undiluted enjoyment. The humbler freshmen off the campus were the first to receive invitations from the sophs. Those sophs who still clung to the Sans were only a handful. The freshies of Elizabeth Walbert's faction found that the majority of them would be without special escort unless the juniors or seniors came to their rescue.
Rallied to duty by Alida Burton and Lola Elster, the Sans magnanimously stepped into the breach. They, in turn, brought certain of their junior and senior allies to the aid of the escortless. It was a sore point, however, among a number of freshmen who had voted for Miss Walbert that the sophomores had passed them by for mere off-the-campus students. It served as a quiet lesson by which a a few of them afterward profited.
Eager to regain her lost laurels, Natalie Weyman was insistent that Lola and Alida should ask the entertainment committee to give another Beauty contest.