“Isabella, Isabella,
Is a queen of good society!
Isabella, Isabella,
Is the dandy queen of Spain!”
And now Harley had come to Cambridge to lay siege to the princess of this line. They had invited him to tea, where he had felt himself an obscure and humiliated Freshman. In his pride he had gone away, vowing that he would not return until he had made the “Dickey,” and made it without any social aid from the lady of his adoration. But, alas, Harley had found this a task of undreamed-of difficulty. There were so many Edith Winthrops in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and other centers of good breeding; and there were so many obscure Freshmen trying to make the “Dickey” in order to shine before them!
“You can’t imagine how it is, Sylvia,” he said. “They don’t know us here—we’re nobodies. I’ve met all the Southern men who amount to anything, but it’s Eastern men who run the worth-while clubs. And it’s almost impossible to meet them—I’d be ashamed to tell you how I’ve had to toady.”
“Harley!” exclaimed the girl.
“I’ll tell you the facts,” he answered—“you’ll have to face them—just as I did.”
“But how could you stay?”
He laughed. “I stayed,” he said, “because I wanted Edith.”