CHAPTER XXI.
THE JUNIOR GAMBOL.
“Hail, Wellington, beloved home!
Hail, spot forever dear!
We greet thy towers and cloisters gray,
Thy meadows fresh in spring array;
We greet thee, Wellington, to-day;
Thy hills and dales; thy valleys green;
Thy wood and lake—tranquil, serene;
We greet thee far and near.”
Molly and Judy were responsible for the words of these stirring lines, which with three other verses were sung by the junior class to the air of “Beulah Land,” the music having been adapted to the words rather than the words to the music.
The entire junior class, a long, slender line of swaying white stretched across the campus, lifted its voice in praise of Wellington that May Day morning at the Junior Gambol. In the center waved the class flag of primrose and lavender. In the background was the gray pile of Wellington and in the front stretched the level close-cut lawn of the campus, fringed by the crowd of spectators. It was an impressive sight and when the fresh young voices united in the class song of “Hail, Wellington!”, Miss Walker was moved to tears.
“The dear children!” she exclaimed to Professor Green at her side, “really I feel all choked up over their devotion.”
Winding in and out in an intricate march, the class moved slowly across the campus until it reached the sophomores grouped together in one spot. Here they paused while the President of the juniors made a speech and presented the President of the sophomores with a small spade wreathed in smilax, a symbol of learning, or rather of the delving for learning which that class had in prospect in another year. Next the juniors approached the seniors and sang one of the Wellington songs, “Seniors, Farewell.”
Then the line broke up and moved to the center of the campus, where stood a May pole. An orchestra, stationed under one of the trees, began playing an old English country dance, and the juniors seized the streamers and tripped in and out with the graceful dignity suitable to their new, uplifted position of seniors about-to-be.
Not one of the Wellington festivals could so stir her daughters of the present or the past, now grouped on the edge of the campus, as this Junior May-Day Gambol.
“Perhaps it is so sad because it is so beautiful,” Miss Pomeroy observed to Miss Bowles, teacher in Higher Mathematics, wiping her eyes furtively. But Miss Bowles, not being an ex-daughter of Wellington, and having a taste for more prosaic and practical pleasures, regarded the scene with only a polite and tolerant interest.
“Who is to be the May Queen?” asked Mrs. McLean, standing in the same group with Miss Walker and Professor Green.