“It is a nine days’ wonder to me.” Leila was impressed in spite of her earlier impulse to be skeptical. “If nothing is brought up against Leslie Cairns now on the campus, nothing will be later. The time of interest for a rumor is just before, at the time, or just after something supposedly happens. The Romp is now almost a memory. Soon along will come something new and amusing to crowd that memory out.”
“There is still the other side of it, Leila.” Marjorie grew grave. “It was against good taste in Leslie Cairns to step into the social side of Hamilton College under cover of a mask. She had forfeited the right to do so when she left Hamilton two years ago.”
“Still it is the most harmless piece of mischief that she ever carried out. And she dragged no one else into it,” Leila said thoughtfully.
“Precisely the point, Leila. I’ve felt so about it ever since I went to the door of the gym with her that night.” Marjorie spoke her mind forcefully. “I couldn’t regard her lark as anything but a lark. Her costume was so funny and she behaved in such a funny, original way. She was more like a child than a young woman. It was as if she had slipped through the gate of a high fence, and into a forbidden yard. She acted as if she were having a fine time playing. Perhaps she went over a rustic road to childhood that night, and when she came back found herself changed?” Marjorie made fanciful suggestion.
“It may be so. All the fairy tales are not hatched in the Emerald Isle.” Leila cast a sly smile toward her fanciful chum. “More’s the pity that I instead of she should be given credit for her costume. For that I shall see to it that she gains in another direction. Ah-h-h!” Leila gave the wheel an inspired jerk which sent the car bumping into a rut. “I have just thought of a plan to keep the Screech Owl from screeching on the campus.”
“Have you? I’m glad to hear it.” There was a hint of grim enthusiasm in the reply. “What will you do?”
“I shall have to try it out on her first and tell you my method afterward. It is only the ghost of a plan yet.” Leila made evasive answer.
Marjorie did not inquire further into Leila’s “ghost” of a plan. “All right. Keep it to yourself. I only hope it will be effective. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it, that we should be planning now to protect Leslie Cairns? When one stops to remember that she—”
“Never did anything but harass and torment us,” supplied Leila, “it is that amazin’.” Her accent became strongly Hibernian.
“That’s not quite what I meant to say, but it’s true. We can afford to be generous to her, Leila.”