“Seeing is believing. How did it happen? That’s what is bothering me.”
“These two know.” Marjorie turned in her seat, including Vera and Leila, in a comprehensive wave of the hand. “Now I understand what you two were so full of laugh about. I knew you had something else on your mind besides giving me Miss Susanna’s letter. There’s a new firm on the campus, it seems, Harper and Mason. And they’ve been very very busy!”
CHAPTER IX.—THE FAIRY TALE PRINCESS
“Never blame us,” Leila said. “Weren’t those houses but a rubbish heap the day we came, Midget?” She appealed to Vera for corroboration.
“Why, of course they were,” emphasized Vera. “We thought you’d be surprised to see them torn down. We were.”
“Surprised?” Marjorie repeated exultantly. “I’m simply amazed, astounded, dumbfounded, flabbergasted, stupefied by such a piece of good fortune. It’s just what both Robin and I wanted.”
“We worried during Commencement week because we hadn’t the time then to see a firm of Hamilton contractors about having those houses torn down. You and Vera knew that, Leila Harper. You’re implicated in this surprise somehow,” Robin accused.
“My word as an honorable Irishman, I had not a thing to do with it,” protested Leila, though she laughed.
“But you haven’t said you didn’t know who had. Never mind. I know. It was Miss Susanna. It must have been either she or President Matthews. He wouldn’t have had——” Marjorie paused to think of a phrase which would describe the stately president’s disinclination to intrude upon their project.
“The nerve,” Vera supplied with a giggle.