“Because I think it is the one thing to do for Miss Monroe. I want to do it, Leila. Why won’t you help me?” Marjorie sent Leila a puzzled, almost hurt glance.
“Why won’t I help you? Because—” Leila’s smile burst forth from her sober face like sunlight through a cloud—“I shall be busy managing the Beauty contest myself.”
CHAPTER XXI.
NEWS FROM MISS SUSANNA
“I’m going out to mail a letter,” Jerry told Marjorie, when, later, the girls had gone to their own rooms.
“How nice. You may have the pleasure of mailing two for me,” Marjorie reached in the table drawer for the letters. “I put them in the drawer for safe keeping and went out without them, she explained.
“Hand them over.” Jerry took them and was gone. She had decided to say nothing to anyone about the letter she had written to Louise Walker until she had seen the outcome. Like the sleuth she had laughingly vowed to be, at the time when Marjorie had received the letter from Louise Walker and also the one signed “Senior sports’ committee,” she preferred to keep matters a secret until she had completed her case.
On the way back across the campus from the nearest mail box she saw a mail carrier leaving the Hall. In going out she had noted that the bulletin board in the hall was empty of mail. Now a flock of letters roosted in its alphabetical, shallow pockets. Near the top under D she plucked one for Marjorie addressed in Miss Susanna Hamilton’s individual hand.
“You’re in luck,” Jerry said as she entered the room to find Marjorie sitting at the table, elbows braced upon it, hands cupping her chin. A rare old book on chemistry lay near her on the table. It had been given her by Miss Hamilton during her senior year at Hamilton. She had brought it from her bookshelf to read. Instead she had fallen into a reverie concerning the giver of the book. Miss Susanna had told her that it was the only copy of the work on chemistry known to be in the United States. It had belonged to Mr. Brooke Hamilton. Marjorie could hardly believe at times that she was actually in possession of a book that had belonged to the founder of Hamilton College.
“Why am I in luck?” Marjorie’s head was quickly raised from her hands. “I never seem to be much out of it, Jeremiah. I have so much more of happiness than I deserve.”