“Why don’t you put it right on and go down to breakfast? If a girl should notice it you might have just cause for suspicion.”
“You put it on, if you want to,” retorted Gloria. “This isn’t my day for necklaces. I have already decided to wear the ugly and uncomfortable sailor’s noose, prescribed.”
But all the day and for sometime thereafter both girls were ever on the alert to detect a clue to the original owner of the little talisman. Many strings of beads were significantly fingered and admired, but without provoking a tell-tale flush of admission, and as often as the opportunity could be made, Gloria or Trixy talked about foreign stones, especially dark ones with little light streaks running through. But at the end of a week both girls were forced to admit “no progress.”
“Tell you what we’ll do,” proposed Gloria. “Just let’s forget it. Put it away and wait. Some day the culprit will betray herself. Then, if we are not parties to some dark plot that includes hiding the queen’s jools, we’ll be lucky kids.”
“Just as you say,” agreed Trixy. “But don’t forget to-night is the night we are supposed to celebrate. I hope you can express a note of interest in this here Altmount without straining your conscience. Me—I’m beginning to like it.”
“It is picking up,” admitted Gloria. Both were assuming facetiousness.
There was, however, plenty of interest, “without straining consciences” at the dance. The fine old assembly room was gay with colors of many classes no longer otherwise represented, there was a very creditable orchestra composed of seniors and girls in the finishing classes, but more than these mere details, the personalities of all those present came out for the “acid test” according to Trixy.
Friends paired off, and groups assembled. Pretty gowns were praised with wordless glances of approval, new dances were demonstrated and various local peculiarities shown, even Pat declaring that the new position was quite like the “old fashioned way her mother had always insisted was the only correct way,” and so on passed a happy evening, at the boy-less dance, after which, like the spreading of a map, the personalities of students stood revealed.
No silly stunts nor traditional initiations were countenanced at Altmount, not since that rather disastrous event, still talked of, but no longer risked. It was the night one girl got locked in a closet and another climbed from the third floor window on a rope of bed sheets. Both were “laid up for repairs,” and a stringent rule against all rough play or initiations was the outcome.
But there were even now some secret affairs held in junior or soph quarters, usually followed the next day by pronounced fits of absentmindedness in class. Neither Gloria nor Trixy had been invited to any of these. First years usually were not, quite contrary to the regulation college customs.