"Oh, come now! We aren't students any more! We can do what we like—"
"Oh, come on, girls! Don't make a fuss; we don't want to stay, anyhow!"
They sang themselves away, and the class upstairs looked around the tables and thought things, for it was time to go. And here I am afraid I shall lose whatever friends I may have gained for Theodora, for it is necessary to state that none of those comprehensive, solemn moments of farewell, known to us all to be the property of departing seniors, came to her. She was conscious of a little vague excitement, but all the last days had been more or less exciting—generally less—and her mind was occupied with irrelevant details. Had Uncle Ed remembered to change at Hartford? Had Aunt Kate packed her black evening dress? Would the post-office forward that note to the little freshman? Could she get Virginia up in time for the 9.15? Had she lost the slip with the Nicest Woman's address on it? And had she given Marietta that senior picture yet?
There had been one moment when her throat had contracted and her eyelids had crinkled: it was that very evening, when Annie, the cook, had beckoned to her in the hall of the Nicest House, and said: "There's three o' them little cakes on a plate on your table, Miss The'dora. I shan't be bakin' 'em agin, an' I know you do be terrible fond of 'em!"
"Thank you, Annie," she had said, and shaken her hand warmly. Annie had cooked fifteen years in the Nicest House, and what she and her mistress didn't know about girls you could put in a salt-spoon. It wasn't every girl that Annie liked, either.
Grace was getting up, and they stood a moment irresolutely by the chairs.
"Let's make a ring, girls, and sing once 'round, and say good-by till next year," she said; and then there was a little quick shuffling, and the carefully divided sets got together and stood as they had stood for the last two or three years. Theo took tight hold of Virginia and Adelaide, and they moved slowly around the tables, a great circle of girls, so quiet for a moment that Ninety-green, singing one another home around the campus, sounded as loud and clear as their own voices a moment ago. They listened with a common impulse as the rollicking Tommy Atkins song paused awhile under the Washburn windows; they had been very fond of Ninety-green.
Ninety-green she is a winner,
Ninety-green she is a star,
Is there anything agin her?