The freshmen sat in crestfallen silence. They had acknowledged their defeat; must they now acknowledge that it was deserved? Putting down her plate and leaning a little forward in her chair, Charlotte regarded them earnestly.
"Let me tell you something," she said; "I have not lived in college six years for nothing; I have learned a great deal in that time; but it did not take me six years to learn not to waste my energy on trifles. In this campaign of yours, you have used up an amount of force which would have accomplished wonders in a serious cause. Has it paid?"
"I'm afraid not," they said.
"It is an odd thing, too," said Charlotte, in a casual tone, "to notice that in nine cases out of ten the popular instinct is a safer guide than the popular reason. Your class reasoned itself into a frenzy, and then, by instinct, did the right thing."
At this unexpected tribute to their conqueror, the two vanquished leaders looked a bit blank; perhaps they had nursed a faint egotistical hope of some day seeing the class brought to a realizing sense of its mistake in electing Peggy, and Charlotte's view was a blow. She saw the effect of her words.
"They did the right thing," she repeated, "in choosing a girl who will be an excellent figurehead for—a coalition—" Charlotte smiled, a little self-complacently; she rather prided herself on the sensitiveness of her feeling for things that were in the air—"a public-spirited, disinterested——"
"Oh, don't!" pleaded Shirley; "I am sick of it. We have been talking awful cant, haven't we?"
"Suppose we talk about that," said Charlotte.
And they did. They talked about it until the late sunlight faded, and twilight came down on the little study; and then, in the gathering gloom, they talked about it still, and all the more freely. The older girl, who had tilted with windmills in her time, opened her heart to these young Quixotes, fresh from their first fall, on the difference between cant and college spirit; and the two freshmen, sitting in the twilight with tingling cheeks, pledged themselves silently to the larger vision.