It was the first evening at college in their junior year. Upon coming out of the dining-room Lila caught sight of Bea waiting at the elevator door. Dodging three seniors, a maid with a tray, and a man with a truck full of trunks, she made a dash for the new arrival who in a sudden freak of perversity danced tantalizingly just beyond reach.
“You imp! And I haven’t seen you for three months. Help me!” she beckoned to Berta who that moment emerged from dinner, “run around that side and catch her.”
But Bea, swiftly subsiding from her mischievous agility, stood still and regarded them with an air of surprised, sad dignity as the two flung themselves upon her.
“Young ladies, I am astonished at such behavior. Leading juniors—real, live, brand-new juniors—and to display such lack of self-restraint, such disdain of gracefulness and repose! Oh!” her voice changed magically, “oh, you, dear sweet, darling girls, I love you pretty well.”
“Then why,” queried Berta, gasping as she released herself, “then why, I repeat, do you endeavor to choke us to death?”
“Because,” answered Bea, as she meekly allowed Lila to straighten her hat while Berta rescued her satchel from the middle of the corridor, “because you are so nice and noble and haven’t any false feeling about little tokens of affection like that. In fact, you haven’t any false pride or anything false, and I have a tale of woe to tell you by and by. Hereafter I intend to be a typical college girl, not an exception.”
The promised by and by proved to be the hour of unpacking after chapel services. While Bea was emptying her satchel that night she snatched up a little fringed napkin and shook it vigorously before the other girls.
“See the crumbs! Thereby hangs the tale. Now, listen.
This summer we have been feeling rather poor at home, you know. My father’s firm was forced to make an assignment. It wasn’t his fault, you understand; it was because of the hard times. Every few days we would hear of a bank closing its doors or a factory shutting down. People have been cutting off expenses in all directions. Of course my family has to economize. I am thankful enough to be able to come back to college. About a dozen girls in the class have dropped out this year of the panic. I knew that I could earn fifty dollars or more by tutoring and carrying mail, if I once got here. That will help quite a lot toward books and postage and ordinary personal expenses. Father said he could manage the five hundred for board and tuition. You had better believe that I do not intend to be needlessly extravagant, when my mother is keeping house without a maid, and my father is riding to his office on a bicycle.
Now I rather suspect that this explanation is no excuse for the foolish way I behaved on the journey to college that September. But the summer has been so horrid, and two or three acquaintances changed around after the failure and treated us as if we had ceased to be worth noticing. Of course I know that such persons are not worth noticing themselves, still it did hurt a little. I guess the reason why I pretended to have plenty of money while traveling with Celia was because I was afraid of being hurt again. And then too I remembered how she had said one evening the year before when we were playing Truth that she despised stinginess beyond any other vice. That had made an impression on me because I was just going to say the very same thing myself.