Afterward when all except Jerry and Constance had kissed her good-bye and departed with bubbling good wishes, she said soberly: “Girls, doesn’t it make you positively shiver when you think that next year will be our last in Sanford High? After that we’ll be scattered. Most of us are going away to college. That means we’ll only see each other during vacations. I can’t bear to think of it.”
“Some of us will still be together,” declared Jerry stoutly. “Susan, Muriel and I are going to Hamilton College if you do. You see, you can’t lose us.”
“I don’t wish to lose you.” Marjorie patted Jerry’s hand. Her brown eyes rested a trifle wistfully on Constance. Marjorie knew, as did Jerry, that Connie intended to go to New York to study grand opera as soon as her high school life was over.
“You are thinking of Connie.” Jerry’s eyes had followed Marjorie’s glance. “She won’t be lost to us. Hamilton isn’t so very far from New York. But what’s the use in worrying when we’ve some of this year left yet and another year before us? One thing at a time is my motto.”
“You are a philosopher, Jeremiah.” Marjorie brightened. “‘One thing at a time,’” she repeated. “That’s the right idea. When I go back to school again, I’m going to try my hardest to make the rest of my junior year a success. I can’t say much about my senior year. It’s still an undiscovered territory. I’m just going to remember that it’s a soldier’s first duty to go where he’s ordered and ask no questions. When I’m ordered to my senior year, all I can do is salute the colors and forward march!”
“Lead on and we’ll follow,” asserted Jerry Macy gallantly. “I guess we can hike along and leave a few landmarks on that precious senior territory. When I come into senior estate I shall use nothing but the most elegant English. As I am still a junior I can still say, ‘Geraldine, Jerry, Jeremiah, you’ve got to beat it. It’s almost five o’clock.’”
Left together, after Jerry had made extravagantly ridiculous farewells, Constance seated herself beside Marjorie’s bed. “Are you tired, Lieutenant?” was her solicitous question.
“Not a bit. I’m going to make Captain let me go downstairs to-morrow. It’s time I was up and doing again. I am way behind in my lessons.”
“You’ll catch up,” comforted Constance. Inwardly she was reflecting that she doubted whether there were any situation with which Marjorie Dean could not catch up. Her feet were set in ways of light that wandered upward to the stars. Though to those who courted darkness it might appear that she sometimes faltered, Constance knew that those same steady feet would carry her unfalteringly through her senior year to the wider life to come.
How Marjorie explored her new senior territory and what landmarks she left behind in passing will be told in “Marjorie Dean, High School Senior.”