Leslie’s deep-rooted jealousy of the two girls who were college successes where she had been a rank failure rushed to the surface. “Leila Harper has nerve to ask you to be in a play when she knows you are a friend of mine. I see her game. She knows just how useful you can be to her in her confounded old play. It’s some feather in her theatre bonnet to keep the college beauty at her beck and call. She has planned to break up our friendship by flattering you into believing you are a dramatic wonder. Bean is probably back of Harper’s scheme. She can’t and never could bear to see me enjoy myself.”
Leslie jerked out the final sentence of her tirade against Leila with angry force. Her face had darkened in the jealous way which invariably reminded Doris of the driving of thunder clouds across a graying sky.
“Miss Harper was impersonal in asking me to be in the play,” Doris defended. The sea shell pink in her cheeks had deepened perceptibly. “She dislikes me. I know she wants me in the cast because she thinks I’d be a feature. You see I’m the true Norse type. The heroine of the play is a Norse princess. I want to be in the play because I like to be in things. I’ll enjoy the praise and the excitement. I may go on the English stage when I have been graduated from Hamilton. My father would not object if I were to play in a high class London company.”
“The same old Goldie who cares for nobody but herself.” Leslie gave vent to a sarcastic little snicker. “Why not take up with Bean, too?”
“Oh, Leslie, don’t be hateful,” Doris said with an air of resigned patience. “You know I detest Miss Dean. Nothing could induce me to take up with her. It’s different with Miss Harper. She’s not American, you know. She is so cosmopolitan in manner. She is really more my own style. But, of course, she’s hopelessly devoted to that Sanford crowd of girls.”
“Don’t mention Sanford to me. I hate the name of that collection of one-story huts,” Leslie exploded fiercely. “You ought to detest Bean, considering the way she has treated me. If she had been half as square as she pretends to be she would have put the kibosh on old Graham, just like that, when he began hiring my men away from my architects. My father said the whole business was a disgrace. He said there was no use in my trying to buck against an institution. That’s what Bean’s pull amounts to. She has both Prexy and that ancient Hamilton relict to back her.”
“If Miss Dean knew that her architect was hiring your men away from your architects, and ignored the fact for her own business interests then she must be thoroughly dishonorable,” Doris said flatly.
“If—if—There you go,” sputtered Leslie, wagging her head, her shaggy eye-brows drawn together. “No ‘if’ about it. She knew. You talk as though you wanted to believe her honorable. Well, she isn’t, never was; never will be. It makes me furious to think that she should go nipping around the campus as a college arc light while I wasn’t even allowed a look at a sheepskin. Too bad I couldn’t have learned some of her pretty little dodges. I’d have been able to slide out of the hazing racket. I’ll tell you something you don’t know. Bean could have helped us when the Board sent for her by refusing to go to Hamilton Hall to the inquiry. Not Bean. She went, and made such a fuss about pretending she didn’t care to talk that it made us appear ten times as much to blame as we really were.”
“If—” Doris hastily checked herself. “She seems to have tried her best to down you, Leslie. But, why?” Her green eyes directed themselves upon Leslie with a disconcerting steadiness.
Leslie gave a short laugh. “I used to ask myself that,” she replied with a sarcastic straightening of her lips. “Now I understand her better. She was jealous and wanted to be the whole show, all the time. She is deep as a well. Take my word for it. I know her better than I wish I knew her.” She shook her head with slow effective regret.