There was a sound of hurrying footsteps on the stairs and Judy burst into the room. Her face was aflame and she flung herself into a chair panting for breath.
“What’s your hurry?” asked Molly, slipping on her jacket. “Excuse me, I must be chasing along to French. Tell her the news, Nance.”
No need to tell Judy news, who had news of her own.
“I tell you, Nance,” she exclaimed, “there are times when I think the position of a freshman is one of the lowliest things in life. The first sophomore I met was Judith Blount. I did feel a little timid, but I told her what had happened. ‘You can tell your friend,’ she said, ‘that we sophomores are not so gullible as all that, and if her nerve has failed her at the last moment, it’s her fault, not ours.’”
“Why, Judy,” exclaimed Nance, “you didn’t know you were jumping from the frying pan right into the fire when you told that to Judith Blount, who has never liked Molly from the beginning. It’s jealousy, pure and simple, I think; although there almost seems to be something more behind it sometimes. She takes such pains to be disagreeable. Was anyone else there to hear you?”
“Oh, yes. She was surrounded by her satellites, Jennie Wren and a few others.”
The two girls sat in gloomy silence for a few minutes. After that rebuff, they hardly cared to circulate the bit of news any further in the sophomore class, which, it must be confessed, had the reputation of being run by a clique of the most arrogant and snobbish set of girls Wellington College had ever known.
“Let’s go and tell our woes to nice old Sally Marks,” suggested Judy, and off they marched in search of the good-natured funny Sally, whose room was on the floor below.
“Come in,” she called at their tap on the door, and noticing at once their serious faces, she exclaimed:
“I declare, I am beginning to feel like the Oracle at Delphi. What’s the trouble, now, my children?”