“You ought never to have gone to Judith Blount,” she continued after they had unburdened their secrets. But having gone to her, “it would be well,” so spake the Oracle, “to sit back and hold tight. The news is certain to spread, and of course only Judith and her ring would believe that Molly sent you out to find her an escort. There is one thing sure: Molly is obliged to go to the dance, not only because she has so many friends, but because she figures, I am told, so largely in ‘Jokes & Croaks,’ and it would be sport spoiled if she wasn’t there when the things are read out. Now, trot along, children, I’m cramming for an exam., and I’m busier than the busiest person in Wellington to-day.”
The afternoon dragged itself slowly along. Nance took her best dress out of its wrappings, heated a little iron and smoothed out its wrinkles. She lifted Molly’s blue crepe from its hanger and laid it on the couch.
“It was made in the simplest possible way out of the least possible goods in the least possible time,” she informed Judy, who had wickedly cut a class and sat moping in her friend’s room. “Isn’t it pretty? We made it together, and I’m really quite puffed up about the result. It’s Empire, you know,” she added proudly.
The dress did indeed show the short Empire waist. The round neck was cut out and finished with a frill of creamy lace which Molly happened to have, and there had not been much of a struggle with the sleeves, which came only to the elbow and were to all intents and purposes shapeless. But the color was the thing, as Molly had said.
“I’d be willing to drown in a color like that,” Judy observed. Judy was quite a poseuse about colors and assured her friends that she could never wear red because it inflamed her temper and made her cross; that violet quieted her nerves; green stirred her ambitions, and blue aroused her sympathies. While they were looking at the dress, Margaret Wakefield and Jessie Lynch, her roommate and boon companion, after rapping on the door, sailed into the room.
“We came to consult about clothes,” they announced. “Is this to be an evening dress affair, or what’s proper to wear?”
“The best you have,” replied Judy, “at least that’s what I was told by the oracular Sally below stairs.”
“For the love of heaven, don’t tell that to Jessie,” cried Margaret. “If you give her so much rope, she’ll be wearing purple velvet and cloth of gold.”
Jessie laughed good-naturedly. She was already considered the best dressed and prettiest girl in the freshman class, and it was a joke at Queen’s Cottage that she had been obliged to apply to the matron for more closet room, because the large one she shared with Margaret Wakefield was not nearly adequate for her numerous frocks. It had been a constant wonder to the other girls in the house that these two opposite types could have become such intimate friends; but friends they were, and continued to be throughout their college course, although Jessie never could rake up an interest in the U. S. Constitution or woman’s suffrage, either.
The two girls really formed a sort of combination of brains and beauty, and it became generally known that Jessie would hardly have pulled through the four years, except for the indefatigable efforts of her faithful friend, Margaret.