Leila’s frank assumption that Leslie Cairns had been a secret Thanksgiving Day disturber could not fail to find lodgment in the minds of the girls gathered in Marjorie’s room that snowy Sunday afternoon. There was not one among them who did not know considerable about Leslie Cairns’ underhanded methods of trouble-making. They knew, too, that she had oftenest directed her spite against Marjorie. Marjorie was adored for her beauty, as Leslie was disliked for her lack of it. Her unfair treacherous ways made her unprepossessing features even more ugly in their girlish eyes.
Be it said to their credit they tried not to discuss Leslie any more personally than could be helped under the circumstances. All of them were of the same opinion. Leslie had not gotten over her grudge against Marjorie. She had chosen to strike at a time when she knew Marjorie would not be on the campus to guard her benevolent interests.
“She’s as relentless as an Indian,” was Jerry’s opinion of the ex-student. “It’s a good thing for Bean that she has me to protect her.”
Marjorie did not take the indignant view of Leslie Cairns’ further attempt to persecute her which her comrades entertained. Still she was now more concerned about it within herself than she had been in her earlier campus days when Commencement was a far-distant prospect. Now she was a promoter. She smiled to herself whenever the word crossed her brain. She was a promoter of democracy; a promoter of happiness. Before she had gone through the gate of Commencement she feared that she had been far more interested in her welfare than she had that of others. Now her work demanded the thought of others above her personal wishes and inclinations. It became more than ever necessary that she should make it her business to guard the interests of those who would benefit by and through the efforts of Page and Dean.
“Between you and me,” she said confidentially to Jerry the next afternoon in the privacy of their room. “I wish Leslie Cairns would go on an expedition to Alaska, Kamchatka, Bolivia, Tasmania or any other far away point where she’d be neither seen nor even heard of for a long time.” Marjorie’s tone was anything but vindictive. Her brown eyes regarded Jerry somberly.
“Your wish and your tone don’t harmonize,” criticized Jerry. “Why wish your worst enemy almost off the face of the earth in such a mournful tone? Which shall I believe?”
“Either or neither. Suit yourself,” Marjorie stood before the mirror of her dressing table adjusting a chic little green velvet hat to just the right angle on her curly head. The hat placed to her satisfaction she swung round from the mirror saying forcefully, “It makes me weary, Jerry, even to have to think of Leslie Cairns. She isn’t my worst enemy. She’s her own. I wish someone could make her understand that. But not I.”
“Who?” Jerry looked up in mock alarm from the translation into French which she was in indifferent process of making. “I hope you didn’t mean me, Bean.”
“No, not you.” Marjorie’s merry laugh was heard. “I don’t know who. I won’t allow myself to label Leslie Cairns as dangerous. In the past she usually overreached herself every time she started trouble.”
“You are living in the present, Bean,” Jerry staidly corrected, “and Les, as her pals used to call her, is living in our village, too, and right on the job. She’s like an epidemic. No one knows how or when she may break out. Things were whizzing along on wheels when we went home at Thanksgiving. Next day it rained and the busses all stopped running. They aren’t running yet. Now we can’t blame Les for the rain, but what about the busses?”