CHAPTER XVII
CONGRATULATIONS
By this time the usually self-contained Margaret was weeping bitterly in Jean’s arms, while she patted her reassuringly on the back. Gerry looked utterly exhausted, her hair was in a perfect tumble and a smut ornamented one of her cheeks. Frieda had turned toward the wall and Lucy and Mollie Johnson each had an arm about her.
“Well, girls, the game is up, isn’t it?” Jean spoke first, but Olive simply would not accept what her eyes had already told her.
“It isn’t true, Jean hasn’t been defeated, has she Gerry?” she entreated, squeezing the hand that held hers.
“Winifred Graham has just been elected president of the Junior class at Primrose Hall for the coming year!” Gerry announced stoically, and then there was a sudden sound of weeping from all parts of the sitting room.
“Why, goodness gracious, girls, don’t take things like this,” Jean insisted, being the only dry-eyed person on the scene. “Margaret dear, you are positively wetting my shirtwaist. Of course, I am sorry not to have been elected, but I’m not disappointed, as I haven’t thought lately that I could be. And please, this isn’t anybody’s funeral.” Then Jean kissed Margaret and walked over to shake hands with Gerry.
“You have both worked terribly hard for me and I never can cease to be grateful to you, but now that things are all over do let us show the girls that we can take defeat gracefully anyhow. Please everybody stop crying at once and come on with me to shake hands and offer my congratulations to Winifred Graham. Wouldn’t we look a sorry set if the next time she beheld us we should all appear to have been washed away in tears? The first person that looks cheerful in this room shall have a five-pound box of candy from me in the morning.”
Of course Jean’s suggestion that Winifred Graham should not learn the bitterness with which they accepted their defeat had an immediate effect, as she had guessed it would, upon Gerry and Margaret. Both girls stiffened up at once.
“Jean is perfectly right,” Margaret immediately agreed, “for it will never do in the world for us to make a split in our Junior class just because things have not gone as we wanted. Lots of the girls did vote for Jean and if we take our defeat bravely, why Winifred Graham and her set can’t crow over us half so much as if we show our chagrin.”
Gerry made such a funny face over the prospect of Winifred’s crowing that everybody was able to summon a faint laugh.