“You wouldn’t dare do that?” Clara challenged in a half admiring tone.
“Oh, yes, I should. Who is Miss Remson? A manager. Well, what is a manager but an upper servant? I’d certainly not be afraid to speak my mind to our housekeeper at home. That’s all Miss Remson is. What she needs is to be told her place, and be made to keep it.”
“I’ve often thought the same thing,” Clara refused to be subservient to Julia in opinion. “Did you notice the other students in the dining room tonight?” she asked with a knowing glance toward Julia.
“No. What about them?” Julia paused in the midst of her unpacking to look sharply at her Titian-haired roommate.
“Every single one of them acted as though they didn’t think much of that P. G. crowd. I kept watch of them. It seems to me,” Clara tilted her flame-colored head to one side, a sure indication that she was planning mischief, “that it would be a pretty good plan for us to start a crowd of our own this year at the Hall. If we could count on as many as half of the students at the Hall to stand by us, we could make Miss Remson play fairly with us. She’d not dare favor that one crowd above us.”
“That’s a good idea.” Julia looked impressed. She turned from laying out her belongings on the study table and leaned against it, eyeing Clara speculatively. She began counting on her fingers: “One, two, three, four, five of those Bertram students. Then there are Miss Harper and Miss Mason; seven. Five of the Sanford P. G. crowd; twelve. Doris Monroe makes thirteen. Of course a few other students in the house will stick to them. Not more than six or seven at most. Gussie Forbes isn’t popular in this house except with the Sanford and Bertram crowds. You know the sophs at the Hall voted against her at the election of class officers last fall.”
“But they voted for Doris Monroe,” Clara reminded with a frown, “and now Doris has gone over to the P. G. crowd.”
“Yes, and she is not going to gain a thing by it, either,” was Julia’s satisfied prophesy. “Most of the sophs who voted for Doris don’t like Miss Dean and her pals. They can’t stand the calm way those girls have of trying to be the whole thing, and run everything. Annie told me today that there were to be nine new students at the Hall, all freshies but one. Those girls we saw tonight in the dining room must be freshies. Tomorrow we’ll make it a point to get acquainted with the freshies. It’s really our duty as upper classmen.”
“Yes, indeed,” echoed Clara. “By the time Doris Monroe comes back we may have our own crowd well started. We might form a sorority.” Her mechanical tones, which Muriel and Jerry had naughtily compared to a phonograph, rose exultantly. “You could be the president of it,” she accorded magnanimously, “and I would be the vice-president. We could get up a really exclusive, social club and entertain a lot—and be popular.” Her pal’s eyes gleamed at the prospect of popularity. It was the dream of both girls to enjoy a popularity on the campus equal to if not greater than that of Doris Monroe, though neither possessed any of the necessary requisites.
“We’ll do it. We can get up a better sorority than that old Travelers’ club, and not half try,” Julia predicted with supreme egotism. “This is the way we’ll do. We’ll wait until the Hall is full, then we’ll select the girls here that we want for the club and send them an invitation to a luncheon at the Ivy. We’ll have very handsome engraved invitations, and I’ll preside at the luncheon. After we have the sorority well-started we can give plays and shows just for amusement. We shan’t try to make money. Leave that to those beggarly Travelers. We’ll make our entertainments strictly invitation affairs. Miss Dean and her crowd have simply ruined the social atmosphere of Hamilton by welfare experiments. The object of our club shall be to restore it. Let me tell you we’ll have plenty of sympathizers. Just wait. Doris Monroe will be very sorry yet that she didn’t stick to us.”