“I’ll say what I please. I’ve a perfect right to express an opinion.” Leslie had flung back with equal fury. “What you’ll have to do is to go and tell that smug Dutch prig, Wenderblatt, that you won’t be able to do the tax-collection stunt Saturday night. You have another engagement. You have, you know. One with me. We’ll go to the Lotus to dinner and wander into that select rube recreation palace known as the Hamilton Opera House.”
“I do not intend to tell Miss Wenderblatt any such thing,” Doris had retorted with belligerent independence. “Just remember she is Professor Wenderblatt’s daughter. This stunt I am to do at the hop will boom me a lot on the campus. I have a perfectly ducky dress to wear. Besides Miss Peyton and Miss Barton are going to try to start a beauty contest at the hop. There is no doubt but that I shall win it.”
“Your chances are fair since Bean’s taken her precious self to dear Sanford, the place where Beans and Beanstocks grow,” Leslie had sneered.
“You are so impossible today, Leslie. I sha’n’t lower myself by quarreling with you,” had been Doris’s ultimatum, delivered in offended haughtiness.
“You’d never win a prize for amiability. You’re the most selfish proposition, Doris Monroe, that I’ve ever met,” Leslie had retaliated.
“Get acquainted with yourself,” Doris had sarcastically advised.
The ending of their Thanksgiving dinner had been punctuated freely with other similar pleasantries. The two self-willed girls had left the Colonial hardly on speaking terms. It was nearing half past three o’clock when they had stepped outside the tea room. The rain having stopped Doris had sulkily announced her intention to walk to Wayland Hall instead of allowing Leslie to run her there in the car. Leslie had snapped back: “Don’t care what you do. You’re too selfish to consider me. You know I counted on you to help me amuse myself tonight in that dead dump of a town. Go to the dance. I hope you have a punk evening.”
“In going to the hop I’m only doing what you asked me to do quite a while ago. You told me then that you wanted me to make myself popular on the campus. Well; this is the way to do it. Think it over. You’ll find I’m right,” had been Doris’s parting shot as she separated from her ill-humored companion.
Determining to teach Doris a lesson, Leslie let the rest of the week go by without holding any communication with the sophomore. She had spent a lonely Thanksgiving evening and blamed Doris heavily because of it. She was also dreadfully miffed at the partial failure of her contemptible plot against the dormitory girls’ welfare. When she had awakened on Thanksgiving morning, to see violently weeping skies that promised an all-day deluge, she had smiled contentedly. She had effectually blocked Bean’s plans for the day. And for a good many days to come! Such was her belief, when, after having posted herself in the palm-screened window of the florist’s shop to see that Sabani kept his word and ran no busses, she had frowningly witnessed the arrival of Phil, Barbara and Robin on the scene and what followed as a result of their timely arrival.
When Leslie had had the galling experience of seeing the Thanksgiving part of her plot far on the way to failure she had flung out of the florist’s in a rage, jumped into her car and set off for the campus without any definite reason whatever for going there. The main point had been to keep “rag, tag and bob-tail,” as she had ironically named the off-campus girls, from getting to the “free feed” at the “dago’s hash house.” She had failed to do this. The “beggars” had managed to reach Baretti’s in spite of the rain. They would return to town in the same way that they had come. Leslie felt particularly spiteful toward Robin Page. So very spiteful that she indulged her rancor in “splashing” Phil and Robin when the opportunity chanced to offer itself.