“I am sure we’ll always be the best of friends, Hal,” she said seriously, though her color heightened at the sincere tribute to herself. “I can’t see that I’ve done anything specially wonderful, though. It’s easy to be nice to those one likes who like one in return. It’s being nice to those one doesn’t like that’s hard. It’s harder still not to be liked.”
“Then you aren’t apt to know that hardship,” retorted Hal.
Marjorie smiled faintly. She had known that very hardship ever since she had come to Sanford. She merely answered: “Everybody must meet a few, I won’t say enemies, I’ll just say, people who don’t like one.”
That night as she sat before her dressing table brushing her thick, brown curls, she pondered thoughtfully over Hal Macy’s words. In saying them she knew he had been sincere. It was sweet to hope that she had been and was still a power for good. Yet it made her feel very humble. She could only resolve to try always to live up to that difficult standard.
CHAPTER XX—CONSTANCE POINTS THE WAY
“This is a nice state of affairs,” scolded Jerry Macy. “What do you suppose has happened, Marjorie?” Overtaking her friend in the corridor on the way from recitation, Jerry’s loud question cut the air like a verbal bomb-shell. Without waiting for a reply she continued in a slightly lower key. “Harriet has tonsilitis. Isn’t that the worst you ever heard? And only three days before the operetta, too. We can’t give it until she gets well, unless somebody in the chorus can sing her rôle. I’m going to telephone Laurie after my next class is over and tell him about it. The chorus is our only hope. Some one of the girls may know the part fairly well. They all ought to after so much rehearsing last Spring. Most of them can’t do solo work, though. Do you think you could sing it?” Jerry had drawn Marjorie to one side of the corridor as she rapidly related her bad news.
“Mercy, no!” Marjorie registered dismay at the mere suggestion. “I wouldn’t dream of attempting it. Isn’t it too bad that Harriet hasn’t an understudy? I’m ever so sorry she’s sick. How dreadfully disappointed she must be.”
“Not any more so than half of Sanford will be when they hear the operetta’s been postponed. Every reserved seat ticket’s been sold. Who’d have thought that Harriet would go and get tonsilitis?” mourned Jerry. “There’s a regular epidemic of it in Sanford. You know Nellie Simmons had it when the sophs wanted that basket ball game postponed. Quite a number of Sanford High girls have had it, too. Be careful you don’t get it.”
Marjorie laughed. “Oh, I won’t. Don’t worry. I’m never sick. We’ll have to go, Jerry. There’s the last bell.”
“You had better touch wood.” Jerry hurled this warning advice over one plump shoulder as she moved off.