“That is what college has given us,” put in Lila who had been listening, “it gives us sympathy. Being with different persons, you know, and loving them.”
“Oh, yes!” Robbie’s sigh of intense assent left her breathless, “loving them.”
“Now, then, girls!” Berta’s hand was lifted again to beat time as the clapping for the sophomores subsided. Then the seniors sang. They sang the songs that were to be interspersed as illustrations in Bea’s class history. There was the elegant stanza which they had shouted all the way to the mountain lake that first October at college.
| “’Rah, ’rah, ’rah! kerchoo, kerchoo! We are freshmen— Who are you?” |
From that brilliant composition the selections ranged through four years of fun and sentiment with an occasional flight to the poetry of earnest feeling as well as many a joyous swoop into hilarious inanity.
When tired of standing around the tree, the class fluttered across the campus to the broad stone steps in front of the recitation hall.
Bea clung to Robbie’s arm again and reached for Lila in their flight. “I’m ’most sure we look like nymphs flying through the glades, with our draperies blowing in the lines of swift motion. I love to run when I feel like it. Robbie Belle, shall we ever dare to run when we get home?”
Robbie did not hear her. From her seat on the steps she gazed at Berta who was standing before the ranks of familiar faces, her eager face alight with the exhilaration of the hour. Once she threw back her head, laughing at some ridiculous verse. Her eyes sought Robbie’s for an instant, smiled, then danced away again. Robbie swallowed once, unconsciously, and moved closer to Bea.
In a semicircle sweeping around the group of singers, sophomores and stray juniors and many a wandering alumna in a flower-decked hat had gathered to listen. In a pause between the songs. Robbie surveyed them gravely, unrecognizing any of the older guests until presently one face stood out vaguely familiar in the clear twilight. It was a beautiful face, framed by dusky hair beneath the wreath of crimson roses on her hat. The eyes were dusky too and deep-set. They were staring at Robbie with an intensity of grieving affection that contrasted sharply with the stern, almost resentful, expression of her finely cut mouth.
As Robbie gazed back in fascinated perplexity, the face suddenly curved into a smile so tenderly radiant that Robbie felt quite dazzled for a moment. Involuntarily she smiled back, while striving to grasp the dim recollection. Who could it be? She had surely seen her before somewhere. But where? At college? At home? Where was it? Slowly a vision grew distinct in her groping memory. It was a vision of Elizabeth, her sister, lifting a photograph from a pile of others. “This,” she had said, “is my Jessica. She knows all my family from their pictures, and some day she shall come home with me and meet you your own selves. She wishes Robbie Belle were to enter college before we finish. Robbie will be a senior when we go back for our fifth year reunion.”