“There are the members of the trouble bureau,” she told Leila. “Look in the direction I’m looking and you’ll know who I mean.”
“I heard something about a trouble bureau.” Marjorie, next to Jerry on Jerry’s right, bent a laughing face forward to her room-mate. “What?”
“First time I ever head you commit a Cairns-ism. For further information about the trouble bureau, find the Ice Queen,” Jerry directed not without humor.
“Oh; I understand. But I won’t look down at her. If she happened to see us looking at her she would probably be offended, just as Gussie Forbes was when she noticed us eyeing her the first time we saw her at Baretti’s. I learned a lesson then. I don’t intend to make the same mistake again.” Marjorie spoke with the utmost good humor. She was not preaching to her chums, and they knew it.
“Merely because you’re such an old friend of mine, Bean, to confide in you doesn’t mean that I’m gossiping, I’ll say a word or two about the trouble bureau. That tall soph with the straight black hair, black moon eyes and pasty-white face is the chief disturber. She seems to be directing the Ice Queen’s campaign. Muriel says she comes to see Miss Monroe about every half hour until the ten-thirty bell puts the kibosh on her visits.”
Unlike Marjorie, Jerry could not refrain from voicing her disapproval of Doris Monroe and her group of sophomore satellites living at Wayland Hall. “The next agitator to Moon Eyes is the pudgy, red-haired soph with the mechanical voice. Their real names happen to be Miss Peyton and Miss Carter, but Muriel and I have made a few changes,” Jerry declared with a whole-hearted grin. “Ahem! We call the pair the Prime Minister and the Phonograph. So true to life! What?”
Marjorie, Leila and Vera could not help laughing at the names Jerry and Muriel had waggishly applied to the two sophs. Miss Carter’s speech had a habit of clicking itself from her lips with the mechanical precision of a phonograph. She had a wooden manner of carriage and walk which further added to the impression she gave of something mechanical. As for the name Muriel had picked for moon-eyed Miss Peyton, Muriel herself probably best understood thus far its fitness as applied to the tall, austere looking young woman.
“The traditions of Hamilton say nothing about the naming habit.” Leila shot a playful glance at Jerry.
“Er-r—well, it’s remembering the stranger within our gate in a kind of way,” Jerry defended. “Now that Muriel and I have named ’em specially we can remember ’em so much the better.”
“Such ignoble sentiments from a Hamilton P. G.! I am shocked!” Vera’s small hands went up in simulated displeasure.