“Never is such a long time, Leslie,” Marjorie’s tone was brightly comforting. “It’s two years, you know, since you left college. Most of the students you knew then, or who knew of you, have been graduated. There is a much better spirit abroad on the campus, too, than in the old days.” Marjorie stopped, flushing. “I didn’t mean to remind you—” she began contritely.
“No harm done, Bean.” A faint lighting of Leslie’s dark features accompanied the ridiculous nickname she had once derisively given Marjorie. “Of course there’s a better spirit now on the campus. You won what you fought for. But there are a certain number of students there still who would love to pick me to pieces, given an opportunity. It would be said of me that I was trying to make money cover my flivvers.”
“But your motive is sincere,” Marjorie cried. “Besides the theatre is not to be built on the campus. I think you ought to brave matters out, Leslie. The Travelers will stand by you through thick and thin. We understand how generous you are, and in time we shall make others see it. That is, if there should be others. Sometimes one sweeping act of nobility such as you propose to do changes everything for the best.”
“It won’t for me,” was Leslie’s pessimistic prediction. “It’s not really about myself I care. To honor Leila, and help the dorms along. What more can one ask?” Leslie made an earnest gesture. “It’s like this, Marjorie. As an unknown donor I’ll be covered with glory. As a known one I’ll be buried under opprobrium.”
“‘Alas for him who never sees the stars shine through his cypress trees,’” Marjorie quoted lightly with an effort toward bringing Leslie out of her somber mood. “I still advise you to go ahead and not hide your light under a bushel.”
“No, I can’t,” Leslie replied with a trace of her old-time gruffness. “I’m going to tell you a secret. I went to Prexy Matthews last spring and asked him if he would give me a chance to come back to Hamilton and do over my senior year. When I went there I intended to tell him how much it would mean to me on my father’s account and of how hard I would try to redeem my past flivvers. He was frosty as a January morning with the mercury way below zero. I had hardly mentioned what I came for when he set his jaws and said that under the circumstances of my expulsion from college he could not for a moment entertain such a request.”
“Leslie Cairns!” Marjorie could not repress a sympathetic exclamation.
“It’s a fact.” The blood rose to Leslie’s dark cheeks in a crimson wave. She went on with shamed reluctance. “I thought he might say ‘no,’ but he made me feel as though he hated even to speak to me. I know I deserved it. I wasn’t in his office five minutes hardly. My nerve went back on me. I had to hurry away, or else cry. I didn’t have time to tell him anything but that I’d like to try my senior year over again.”
“Oh, that was too bad!” Marjorie reached over and laid a consoling hand on one of Leslie’s. “Did you go to Hamilton Hall to see him, or to his house?”
“To Hamilton Hall,” Leslie returned briefly.