The instant they reached the hall above, pandemonium broke loose. To judge from the sounds, they were playing blindman’s buff with scampering of heavy shoes, scraping of chairs, banging against walls, flopping on mattresses. Even reluctant Robbie Belle looked upward in fear that the ceiling might fall. When a deputation of wild eyed sophomores from an adjacent study arrived to protest against a continuation of the outrage, the shrinking corridor-warden had no loophole for escape from her duty. Outwardly calm, inwardly quivering, she mounted the stairs to expostulate on behalf of the Students’ Association for Self-Government.
When the peace officer reached the foot of the flight, the noise sank abruptly into a silent scurrying—on unadulterated tiptoes this time. When she appeared at the top, she beheld the tower hall deserted, every door shut and a suspiciously profound stillness reigning in the dimly lighted Paradise of fun. Ah! she drew a breath of relief from away down in her boots. Surely now she had performed her duty. Nobody could expect her to find fault after the disturbance had ceased. Now the girls below would be at liberty to study in peace.
Barely had she completed her hurried descent before the strange silence above was shattered suddenly by the simultaneous banging of seven doors. Seven full-lunged voices burst forth into a howling song, while twice as many feet thumped and tapped and pranced and pounded in the mazes of an extemporaneous jig.
Robbie Belle halted instantly, with a quick lift of her head. Her nostrils quivered. Her violet eyes snapped black. Her hands clenched. Turning swiftly she mounted the stairs once more. But this time she was angry. The uproar was an insult to the authority of the Students’ Association. She forgot for the minute all about shy Robbie Belle.
And the mischievous freshmen above—the flippant fun-loving irresponsible six-year-old freshmen—they waited ready to meet the warden with an impudent burst of revelry, and thus to dash her official dignity from its exasperating estate. When they saw Robbie Belle’s face they simply stared. They listened in silence to the few rapid words that stung and burned and smarted. They watched her depart, her head still held at its angle of wrathful justice. Then they looked at one another.
They could not see how, when once safely in the haven of her room, she broke down utterly and lay trembling and sobbing in Miss Cutter’s astonished arms. Now at last she had surely committed an unpardonable offense against the only girls for whom she cared in the whole collegeful—especially Berta. Now Berta would be certain she was queer.
Meanwhile in the tower, Berta drew a long breath and glanced around at her dismayed and sobered companions.
“The more I see of that girl,” she said, “the better I like her. And we have been awfully silly—that’s a fact. The next time I see her I shall tell her so too. Now suppose we go and do a little studying our own selves.”
Somehow or other before Thanksgiving Day, Robbie Belle Sanders had ceased to be disappointed in college. With Berta for a dearest friend and Miss Cutter withdrawn to a more congenial neighborhood, she was finding it even more fun than she had expected.