“What Danny and I ought to do is to duck out the back way, cut and run,” Jerry told Marjorie in the privacy of her room to which she and Marjorie had slipped away from the throng after supper, there to make ready for her wedding journey. “Make up your mind there’ll be rice enough thrown at us to stop a famine in China. There’ll be confetti, too. Make no mistake about that. By the time the Seabrookes dash into their car it will be hard to say which they resemble most, the tag end of a Mardi Gras parade, or a couple of rice stalks in full crop. Anyhow, we aren’t going to duck. Danny and I are agreed upon that point. Nothing like giving our friends a chance at us,” Jerry grinned philosophically as she slipped into the smart beige colored ensemble she had chosen as a traveling costume.
When at half-past twelve she and Danny boldly essayed their departure by way of the broad flight of steps which led down from the port cochere to the drive the rice storm set in in earnest. Amid showers of rice and confetti, and a frantic hub-bub of gay-spirited farewells, the besieged couple fled across the narrow space of stone walk, gaining the welcome shelter of their waiting car. A moment, and William, the Macy’s chauffeur, had sent the trim roadster shooting forward down the drive. Jerry and Danny were started at last upon their real journey through life.
CHAPTER VIII
A “QUEER CATCH”
“And from today on we shall be driven slaves, bound by the order of good-intentioned Travelers to the ill-fare and welfare of Hamilton,” Leila Harper proclaimed dramatically to Leslie Cairns as she entered Room 15 at Wayland Hall in answer to Leslie’s call of “Come.”
“I can stand it if you can,” Leslie returned imperturbably as she gave a final pat to her smartly-coiffed head and viewed the effect with commendable satisfaction. “Thanks to a permanent wave. I’m not quite so ugly as I used to be,” she told Leila with a half sardonic smile.
“Tell me nothing. I am admiring you more each time I see you,” Leila spoke lightly, but there was an undercurrent of seriousness in her reply which brought a quick tinge of color to Leslie’s cheeks.
“I used to think I looked better in tailored clothes and mannish coats and hats than in ‘girlie’ stuff.” Leslie glanced down at the soft folds of the imported chiffon frock she was wearing. Silver gray, flowered with twisting sprays of scarlet poppies, with here and there a touch of scarlet satin, the dress had a peculiar individuality which was ever noticeable in Leslie’s choice of clothes.
“It was Marjorie Dean who revolutionized my ideas of how to dress,” she confided. “Even in the days when I couldn’t even think about her without hating her, I was crazy about her clothes. They were just like her—perfectly beautiful. I took a violent fancy to one dress I saw her wear. It was a peachblow silk evening frock and I made a sketch of it and had it duplicated as nearly as I could by a New York modiste. It was just before I went home from my soph year here. I intended the dress for wear at Newport. When the dress was delivered to me, in New York, I tried it on. I looked a fright in it. I was so angry over it that I sat down and tore it to shreds and then bundled the wreck into my waste basket.”
“A desperate deed,” was Leila’s light comment. Her keen mind flashed her an inkling of what Leslie was going to say next.