With a curt good-night she turned into her own room, and the two friends made haste to follow her example.
The banked-up fires burned warm and red; the scattered oddments had been hidden from sight in the “coffin’s” rapacious maw; photographs and knick-knacks gave a homy look to the rooms which had looked so bare and bleak twenty-four hours before. The Freshers tumbled into bed and fell happily asleep.
Chapter Eighteen.
First Experiences.
During the first month at Newnham Darsie and Hannah fell gradually and happily into the routine of college life. They grew to recognise their companions by name, and to place them according to their several “shops”; they entertained cocoa parties in their rooms; picked up slang terms, and talked condescendingly of “townees”; they paid up subscriptions to “Hall,” “Games,” “Flowers,” and “Fic”; slept, played, and laughed and talked, and, above all, worked, with heart and mind, and with every day that passed were more convinced that to be a student at Cambridge was the most glorious fate that any girl could desire.
A week after the beginning of term Helen Ross, the fortunate possessor of a double room, gave a tea-party, with one of the younger Dons as chaperon, to which Dan Vernon and a companion were invited. Ostensibly the party was given in Hannah’s honour, but to her astonishment and dismay Hannah’s friend was not favoured with an invitation, and felt her first real twinge of loneliness in the knowledge that two old friends were making merry together but a few yards away, while she sat solitary and alone. What she had done to incur Helen Ross’s dislike Darsie could not imagine, and, fortunately for herself, she was too large-hearted to suspect that it arose simply from an unattractive girl’s jealousy of one whom all had combined to love and admire. Be that as it may, Darsie was left out of the tea-party, and her subsequent cross-questionings of Hannah were far from comforting.
“Had a good time?”
“Top hole.”