It was growing late. The girls were exhausted and hungry. They had eaten no lunch except crackers and cheese. At last Judith, utterly crushed with disappointment, drew Madeleine aside.
“Suppose we leave her,” she said. “I can’t stand it any longer.”
Without another word they took their departure, leaving Millicent still in the window seat looking pensively out on the campus. They were hardly outside before she sprang to the door and locked it. Then she hastened to the den and began to pack feverishly and with trembling nervous hands. Wrapping each article of silver in tissue paper, she placed it in the chest on a bed of raw cotton. When the table was entirely cleared, she closed and locked the chest and, addressing a tag, wired it to the handle.
Next she drew a trunk from the big closet and packed it with her best clothes. This done, she crept downstairs to the telephone and engaged Mr. Murphy to call that night for an express box and a trunk.
The Beta Phi girls were all at a Saturday night dance at one of the other houses when Mr. Murphy called. Millicent explained to the matron that her rooms were too crowded and she was sending some of her things back to New York.
As quietly as possible she drew her other two trunks from the closet, and by three in the morning the rooms were entirely dismantled and all drapery and pictures carefully packed away. These also she locked and tagged with the precision of one who intends to lose nothing, no matter what’s to pay. One more task remained. This was performed in the privacy of the den behind closed doors. When it was done there stood on the table a square box addressed in artistic lettering to “Miss M. Brown, No. 5 Quadrangle.”
Placing her watch on her pillow, Millicent now rested for several hours without sleeping. At last, at seven o’clock, dressed for a journey, with suit case, umbrella and hand bag, she crept softly downstairs and plunged into the early morning mists.
Not once did she glance back at the two gray towers as she hastened down to the station, and when the seven-thirty train for New York pulled in, she boarded it quickly and turned her face away from Wellington forever.