Leslie clasped her hands behind her head in a quick, nervous motion. She closed her eyes, forcing back the tears which were gathering behind her tightly-shut eyelids.
Marjorie stole a sympathetic, furtive glance at her. She thought the touches of vivid cherry color on Leslie’s sleeveless gray wash satin frock charmingly lightened her companion’s dark skin and irregular features. She guessed Leslie to be perilously near tears and noted that her subdued pensive expression had softened her face to a peculiar attractiveness.
While Leslie had given up all hope of a return to Hamilton campus as a student, Marjorie was just beginning to consider how such a miracle might be brought to pass. She wondered if an appeal on her part to President Matthews would help Leslie’s case. At least she could put forward to the president a generous side of Leslie of which he was not yet aware. She resolved to tell him of Leslie’s love for her father, of her deep regret at being unable to make the restitution she so greatly desired to make, of her anxiety to promote his happiness.
Recollection of Doctor Matthews’ stern face, on the fateful day when the San Soucians had been arraigned before him and the College Board, returned vividly to Marjorie. For an instant her impulsive determination to seek such an interview with him in behalf of Leslie wavered.
What argument could she present to the learned man of affairs which should be strong enough to justify her request for another trial for Leslie at Hamilton College? She could not but believe that no such request had ever been made to him before. Then, again, Leslie was rated by the Hamilton executive board as the most lawless student who had ever enrolled at that college.
Leslie watched the fleeting scenery as the train rushed eastward, her eyes misted and unseeing. She was not even aware of the shifting panorama of woods, meadows, streams and houses as the train steamed on its way. Instead she was seeing herself as she had been when she flaunted through college, unscrupulous, bullying and untruthful.
She was amazed to think that she had lasted until her senior year. Her one redeeming trait had been her ability to keep up in her classes. She had always been able to make fair recitations on a small amount of study. She wished with desperate fervor now that she had been a “dig” instead of a thorn to the faculty. No; she had been foolish in imagining that she could live down her past unenviable reputation were she to return to the campus.
“Oh!” Marjorie straightened in her chair with a suddenness that made Leslie open her eyes.
“Is that all?” Leslie smiled faintly as she saw Marjorie carefully brush a large cinder from the skirt of her white frock. She folded her hands again behind her head and resumed her dark musing.
Marjorie smiled, too, but said nothing. She might have told Leslie that it was not the appearance of the cinder which had brought forth the “Oh!” She had inadvertently stumbled upon a truth relative to a possible return to the campus of Leslie which she believed could not fail to impress President Matthews.