When the four-ten train to Wellington pulled into the station it seemed as if every student in the university must be crowded inside. They leaned from the windows and packed the doorways, overflowing onto the platforms.
The air vibrated with high feminine shrieks of joy. Only the poor little freshies were silent in all this jubilation of reunions. Suddenly Nance, spying Molly Brown and Judy Kean, rushed to meet them, Otoyo following at her heels like a toy spaniel after a larger dog. There was a long triangular embrace.
“Well, here we are, and juniors,” was Judy’s first comment. “Nance, you’re looking fine as silk. No sign of travel on that snowy gown.”
“There oughtn’t to be,” said Nance. “I just put it on half an hour ago.”
“And look at our little Jap,” cried Molly, hugging Otoyo. “Look at little Miss Sen, all dressed up in a beautiful linen.”
“Little Miss Sen has been learning a thing or two,” said Nance. “She’s been to parties, she’s been studying English under a famous professor; she’s been buying duckling, lining and musling dresses through a purchasing agent with very good taste, and she’s got a photograph she looks at in private and hides away when any one comes into the room. Oh, you needn’t think I didn’t see you!”
Otoyo blushed scarlet and hung her head.
“Oh, thou crafty one,” Judy was saying, when four of the old Queen’s girls pounced on them with suit cases and satchels. “Why, here are the Gemini,” Judy continued, embracing the Williams sisters. “Burned to a mahogany brown, too. Where did you get that tan? You look like a pair of—hum—Filipinos.”
“Don’t be making invidious remarks, Judy,” put in Katherine. “Learn to see the beautiful in all things, even complexions.”
In the meantime Margaret Wakefield, looking five years older than her real age because of her matured figure and self-possessed air, was shaking hands all around, making an appropriate remark with each greeting, like the politician she was; and Jessie Lynch was crying in heartbroken tones: