As they passed into Room E closing the door behind them with the peculiarly irritating, undecided rattle that particular door always gives, suspended animation woke again in the lingering underclassmen, who had ceased their talk to gaze after the person who had suddenly become a Personage in the college world. A knot of freshmen talked in low tones.
"Marian Coale is embittered for life because Marjorie didn't get it," suggested one teasingly.
"I'm not," protested the literal-minded accused. "Marjorie doesn't deserve it——"
"Tut, tut, how disloyal!" murmured the tease.
"—so far as scholarship is concerned," she finished.
"What else would you base the choice upon?" was the astonished inquiry from another.
"That is the first thing to consider, of course; but it is not all." And Marian waxed eloquent upon the subject of the ideal European Fellow.
"Who told you all this?" asked she of the insatiable desire to annoy, when Marian paused. "You didn't have it with you when you came to college."
Marian's dark face reddened. "I am learning a few things in college," was the slow answer. "One is to value something beside pure intellect, and to estimate people at more than the amount of grey matter they happen to possess."