The brightness of reunion had been gradually fading from Marjorie’s face as she listened to Robin to give place to an expression of almost stern gravity. Robin had not yet brought Leslie Cairns into the narrative. Nevertheless her name had suddenly leaped into Marjorie’s mind. Why Robin’s recital of her difficulties with two warring Italian garage owners should have reminded Marjorie of Leslie Cairns she was momentarily at a loss to understand. She conceived a swift, unbidden, formless suspicion of Leslie which she instantly tried to dismiss as unworthy. It continued to tantalize her brain until she recalled with relief that it was the mention of the Italians as garage owners that had brought Leslie to the fore in her mind. Leslie herself was a prospective garage owner.
Half an hour later when Robin had resumed her story to her interested audience of chums Marjorie sat, chin on hand, staring in secret bewilderment at Robin as the latter indignantly recounted the sensational mud-spattering climax of Act One, with Leslie Cairns as the villain. Her curious, flitting suspicion of Leslie had not then been idle. She felt as she might have if she had suddenly reached up and picked her conviction of Leslie’s treachery out of the atmosphere.
“Phil insisted from the first that Leslie Cairns had an object in view when she stood in the store watching us from behind the palms. I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt. Afterward, when she deliberately ran her car through that mud puddle as hard as she could drive it, and as close to our car as she dared, I decided Phil was right,” Robin asserted with an energetic bob of her head.
“What do you think her object was, Phil? Leslie Cairns’, I mean?” Vera voiced the curiosity of the others. “Do you think she heard about the dinner to the off-campus girls from her friends?”
“Of course. She must have. Hard to say what her object may have been. She was probably hunting mischief. When she couldn’t find any to do, it put her in a worse humor than ever with us and she vented her spite in a mud-spattering act.” Phil accompanied her opinion with a contemptuous shrug.
“That ends the first act, ladies and Gentleman Gus,” announced Robin. “The second act has nothing to do with Leslie Cairns. It features Guiseppe Baretti, the hero of the hour and the knightly defender of the dormitory girls.” She accompanied the announcement with flamboyant gestures.
“Thank you for special mention.” Gussie stood up and bowed.
“You’re welcome,” beamed Robin. “I couldn’t resist including you. It sounded well.”
“It’s a poor way to do, to be calling attention to oneself in the middle of a story,” grumbled Leila. “My fine old Irish manners tell me that.”
“Ask them to tell you to practice the lost art of silence,” Muriel blandly requested. “When you get the information pass it on to Gentleman Gus. Whisper it so we can’t hear it. We’re anxious to hear the rest of Robin’s tale.”