Doris had wisely decided not to tell Leslie of what Julia Peyton had said. Julia was fond of telling her friends and classmates anything disagreeable which she might have heard of them. Doris abhorred the pernicious habit. Instead she began to quiz her companion about the umbrella mishap. She had a curiosity to know Julia Peyton’s exact part in it. She had not wholly credited the sophomore’s side of the story.
Leslie answered, at first rather abstractedly. Her mind was still centered on the “good turn” which “Bean” had done her. Presently she dropped into a humorous account of the accident which made Doris laugh. Julia had declared Leslie to be lawless and dishonorable. Doris wondered if it were really true of her. Leslie had treated her fairly. She began to believe she liked Leslie despite the latter’s occasional spells of domineering insolence. She made up her mind then and there to learn if she could the history of Leslie’s and Marjorie Dean’s enmity from its beginning.
Leslie’s account of the umbrella incident, humorous and truthful, differed considerably from that of Julia Peyton. Doris wondered if Julia had not also misrepresented matters to her about Muriel at Christmas time. Then she remembered regretfully that Muriel had admitted having said the very things which had offended her pride. In the present instance she chose to believe Leslie rather than Julia.
“Miss Harding won the prize for having the funniest costume,” Doris ended a little silent interval between the two girls. “She had on that ridiculous imitation of a riding costume. You remember we were laughing at her? The prize was a large jar of stick candy. Your costume was really funnier than hers. Your mask was so screamingly silly.”
“Bean said I had the funniest costume,” Leslie commented shortly. Her dark face grew darker as she sent the roadster speeding over the smooth pike. So it had been the girl she most disliked who had conducted her merrily and surely out of an embarrassing situation for which only herself was to blame. Her mind began suggesting petty spiteful reasons for Marjorie’s kindly act. She dismissed them in the instant of their birth. None of them were honest.
Only one conclusion remained to be drawn in the matter. Leslie faced it unwillingly. To give it credence meant the crashing down of all the carefully built-up cases against “Bean” which she had cherished for over four years. In spite of the wilful and malicious attempts she had made against Marjorie’s welfare and peace of mind, “Bean,” it now appeared, had no grudge against her.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE JOURNAL
“That settles things for me, Jeremiah. For the first time since I entered Hamilton I’m not going home for the Easter vacation. General can’t come home for a month from that Canadian trip. So Captain’s coming here for Easter. Oh, joy! Tra, la, la, la, too, roo, re, lay!” Marjorie whisked up and down her’s and Jerry’s quarters at the Arms in frisky delight. A letter from her captain had furnished impetus for the dance.
“It’s a good thing for us that Irma has changed the date of her wedding from Easter until the last week in June. That lets us completely out of going home. Not that I don’t want to see the Macy family. I do; I do. But I must stick to you, Bean, till all is over. Then the Macys will have the pleasure of seeing Jeremiah for the rest of their lives. I feel a jingle beginning to sprout. Aha!” Jerry turned an imaginary crank on one side of her head and recited: