“How are you?” was Leslie’s nonchalant greeting of the sophomore when Doris arrived in the gathering October dusk at the rendezvous. She leaned out of the small black car she was driving and extended a careless hand to Doris. “Hop in,” she invited. “We’re off to Breton Hill for dinner. I’m going to zip this road wagon along when I clear Hamilton Estates.”
“I’m so glad to see you again, Leslie,” Doris said with more warmth than she usually exhibited.
“So you’ve come to life.” Leslie grinned to herself as she started the car. “I had an idea you would. What’s new at the knowledge shop?” There was a veiled eagerness in her question. Leslie cared far more about what went on at Hamilton than she pretended. “Tell me anything and everything you can think of.”
“Things have livened immensely. I passed my soph exams and I was nominated for the soph presidency.” Doris went on with a somewhat lofty account of the sophomore election and her sudden rise in campus popularity. “You ought to see the way the girls stare at me when I am out on the campus,” she declared with enthusiasm. “I have some freshie crushes as well as sophs and some of the juniors and seniors are sweet to me. It’s because I’m so beautiful,” she added with cool assurance.
“Yes, you are a beauty,” Leslie admitted half enviously. “Do you think you have half the college going?”
“Mercy no!” Doris truthfully exclaimed. “I might have, I think, if I could afford to entertain in a very exclusive expensive way. That’s what counts. I have plenty of lovely clothes, but my father doesn’t believe in giving me a large allowance. He would be awfully angry if he knew that I took half a room instead of the single he applied for for me. I did it so as to have that much more spending money. I wish now I hadn’t. My roommate is Miss Harding, one of those horrid Sanford P. G.’s. She is snippy and so cheeky. A lot of the sophs are down on her and her crowd for boosting that stupid Miss Forbes for president.”
“That was a favorite trick of Bean and her Beanstalks when I was at Hamilton,” informed Leslie. She was regarding Doris’s pretty discontented features as though revolving some plan in the dark recesses of her scheming mind.
“It seems to be a favorite trick still,” replied Doris venomously. “I understand that Bean, as you call her, is trying to run the sports committee, take sides with one half the sophs and lecture the other half as to what they should do. She and that Miss Harper planned the election parade for Miss Forbes’ crowd. I heard that the sophs who were trying to boost me asked her to help them get up a parade and she refused to help them.”
“You sophs are foolish to stand such treatment.” Leslie busied herself with the wheel as though offering casual opinion.
“What can we do?” demanded Doris fiercely. “It’s hardly my place to start a fuss. I have a certain reputation as a beauty to keep up on the campus.”