"It's just a shame," said Eleanor. "We've been saving that trip all the fall, so that Mary could go."

"Let's just go without her," suggested Katherine rebelliously. "There can't be many more nice days."

But Betty shook her head. "We don't want to hurt her feelings. She's a dear, even if she does act queerly this week. Besides, every one of us but Roberta and Madeline has that written lesson in English 10 to-morrow, and we ought to study. I'm scared to death over it."

"So am I," agreed Katherine sadly. "I suppose we'd better wait."

"But we can go walking," said Madeline to Roberta, and Roberta, more hurt than any of the rest by her idol's strange conduct, silently a.s.sented.

They were scuffling gaily through the fallen leaves on an unfrequented road through the woods, when they heard a carriage coming swiftly up behind them and turned to see--of all persons--Mary Brooks, who hated driving, and Dr. Hinsdale. Mary was talking gaily and looked quite reconciled to her fate, and Dr. Hinsdale was leaving the horses very much to themselves in the pleasant absorption of watching Mary's face.

Indeed so interested were the pair in each other that they almost pa.s.sed the two astonished girls standing by the roadside, without recognizing them at all. But just as she whirled past, Mary saw them, and leaned back to wave her hand and smile her "beamish" smile at the unwitting discoverers of her secret.

It was dusk and nearly dinner time before Dr. Hinsdale drew his horses up in front of the house around the corner, but Mary's "little friends"

gave up dressing, without a qualm, and even risked missing their soup to sit, lined up in an accusing row on her bed and her window-box, ready to greet her when she stumbled into her dark room and lit her gas.

"Oh, girls! What a start you gave me!" she cried, suddenly perceiving her visitors. "I suppose you think I'm perfectly horrid," she went on hastily, "but truly I couldn't help it. When a faculty asks you to go driving, you can't tell him that you hate it--and I couldn't for the life of me sc.r.a.pe up a previous engagement."

"Speaking of engagements"--began Madeline provokingly.

"All's fair in love, Mary," Katherine broke in. "You're perfectly excusable. We all think so."

"Who said anything about love?" demanded Mary, stooping to brush an imaginary speck of dust from her skirt.

"Next time," advised Rachel laughingly, "you'd better take us into your confidence. You've given yourself a lot of unnecessary bother, and us quite a little worry, though we don't mind that now."

"Why didn't you tell us that he spent the summer at the same place that you did?" asked little Helen Adams.

Mary started. "Who told you that?" she demanded anxiously.

"n.o.body but Lucile," explained Betty in soothing tones. "She visited there for a week, and this afternoon just by chance she happened to speak of seeing him. It fitted in beautifully, you see. She doesn't know you were there too, so it's all right."

Mary gave a relieved little sigh, and then, turning suddenly, fell upon the row of pitiless inquisitors, embracing as many as possible and smiling benignly at the rest. "Oh, girls, he's a dear," she said. "He's worth twenty of the gilded youths you meet out in society." She drew back hastily. "But we're only good friends," she declared. "He's been down a few times to spend Sunday--that was how I heard about the lecture--but he comes to see father as much as to see me--and--and you mustn't gossip."

"We won't," Katherine promised for them all. "You can trust us. We always seem to have a faculty romance or two on our hands. We're getting used to it."

"But it's not a romance," wailed Mary. "He took me walking and driving because mother asks him to dinner. We're nothing but jolly good friends."

"Nothing but jolly good friends--"

That was the last thing Mary said when, late the next afternoon, her "little friends" waved her off for home.

"Isn't she just about the last person you'd select for a professor's wife?" said Helen, as Mary's stylish little figure, poised on the rear platform of the train, swung out of sight around a curve.

"No, indeed she isn't," declared Roberta loyally. "She'll be a fine one.

She's awfully clever, only she makes people think she isn't, because she knows how to put on her clothes."

"And it's one mission of the modern college girl," announced Madeline oracularly, "to show the people aforesaid that the two things can go together. Let's go to Smuggler's Notch Monday to celebrate."

CHAPTER VI

HELEN ADAMS'S MISSION

The particular mission that Madeline had discovered for the modern college girl was one that Helen Chase Adams would never probably do much to fulfil. But Helen had a mission of her own--the mission of being queer. Sometimes she hated it, sometimes she laughed at it, always it seemed to her a very humble one, but she honestly tried to live up to its responsibilities and to make the most of the opportunities it offered.

The loneliness of Helen's freshman year had made an indelible impression on her. Even now that she was a prominent senior, an "Argus" editor, and a valued member of Dramatic Club, she never seemed to herself to "belong" to things as the other girls did. She was still an outsider. An unexplainable something held her aloof from the easy familiarities of the life around her, and made it inevitable that she should be, as she had been from the first, an observer rather than an actor in the drama of college life. And from her vantage point of observation she saw many strange things, and made her own little queer deductions and comments upon them.

On a certain gray and gloomy afternoon in November Helen sat alone in the "Argus" sanctum. She loved that sanctum--the big oak table strewn with books and magazines, the soft-toned oriental rugs, and the shimmering green curtains between which one could catch enchanting glimpses of Paradise River and the sunsets. She liked it as much as she hated her own bare little room, where the few pretty things that she had served only to call attention to the many that she hadn't. But to-day she was not thinking about the room or the view. It was "make-up" day for the sketch department--Helen's department of the "Argus." In half an hour she must submit her copy to Miss Raymond for approval--not that the exact hour of the day was specified, but if she waited until nearer dinner-time or until evening Miss Raymond was very likely to be at home, and Helen dreaded, while she enjoyed a personal interview with her divinity. Curiously enough she was more than ever afraid of Miss Raymond since she had been chosen editor of the "Argus." She was sure that Miss Raymond was responsible for her appointment, but she had never gotten up courage to thank her, and she was possessed by the fear that she was disappointing Miss Raymond in the performance of her official duties. So she preferred to find Miss Raymond's fascinating sitting-room vacant when she brought her copy, to drop it swiftly on the table nearest the door, and stopping only for one look at the enticing prospect of new books heaped on old mahogany, to flee precipitately like a thief in the night.

The copy for this month was all ready. There was Ruth Howard's monologue, almost as funny to read as it had been in the telling, next, by way of contrast, a sad little story of neglected childhood by a junior who had never written anything good before, and a humorous essay on kittens by another junior that n.o.body had suspected of being literary. There was also a verse, or rather two verses; and it was these that caused the usually prompt and decisive Helen to hesitate and even to dawdle, wasting a precious afternoon in a futile attempt to square her conscience and still do as she pleased about those verses. One of them was Helen's own. It was good; Miss Raymond had said so with emphasis, and Helen wanted it to go into the "Argus." She had rather expected that Jane Drew would ask for it for the main department of the magazine; but she hadn't, and her copy had gone to Miss Raymond the day before. The other verses were also stamped with Miss Raymond's heartiest approval, and like the rest of the articles that Helen had collected, they were the work of a "n.o.body." Helen's vigorous unearthing of undiscovered talent was a joke with the "Argus" staff, and her own great pride. But to-day she was not in a benevolent mood. She had refused all through the fall to have anything of her own in the "Argus"; she did not believe in the editors printing their own work. But these verses were different; she loved them, she wanted people to see them and to know that they were hers.

She had thought of consulting Jane or Marion l.u.s.tig, who was editor-in-chief, but she knew beforehand what either of them would say.

"Put in your own verse, silly child! Why didn't you say you'd like it used in the other department? We've got to blow our own horns if we want them blown. Use the others next time--or give them back."

But by next month there might be an embarra.s.sment of good material, and as for giving them back, Jane could do it easily enough, but Helen, being queer, couldn't. For who knew how much getting into the "Argus"

might mean to that unknown other girl? Helen had never so much as heard her name before, though she was a soph.o.m.ore. She had a premonition that she was queer too, and lonely and unhappy. The verses were very sad, and somehow they sounded true.

"Perhaps she'll be an editor some day," Helen sighed. "Anyway I'll give her a chance."

She put on her coat and gathered up her ma.n.u.scripts, first folding her own verses and pushing them vindictively into the depths of her own particular drawer in the sanctum table.

When she reached the Davidson she noticed with relief that Miss Raymond's windows were dark. She was in time then. But when she knocked on the half-opened door she was taken aback to hear Miss Raymond's voice saying, "Come in," out of the shadows.

"Oh, excuse me!" began Helen in a frightened voice. "I've brought you the material for the sketch department. Please don't bother about a light. I mustn't stay."

But Miss Raymond went on lighting the lamp on her big table. As she stood for a moment full in the glare of it, Helen noticed that she looked worn and tired.

"I'm very sorry that I disturbed you," she said sadly. "You were resting."

Miss Raymond shook her head. "Not resting. Thinking. Do you like to think, Miss Adams?"

"Why--yes, I suppose so," answered Helen doubtfully. "Isn't that what college is supposed to teach us to do?"

"I shouldn't like to guarantee that it would in all cases," said Miss Raymond smilingly. "Has it taught you that?"

"Yes," said Helen. "I don't mean to be conceited, Miss Raymond, but I think it has."

"And you find it, as I do, rather a deadly delight," went on Miss Raymond, more to herself than to Helen. "And sometimes you wish you had never learned. When people tell you sad things, you wish you needn't go over and over them, trying to better them, trying to reason out the whys and wherefores of them, trying to live yourself into the places of the people who have to endure them. And when they don't tell you, you have to piece them out for yourself just the same." Miss Raymond came sharply back to the present and held out her hand for Helen's bundle of ma.n.u.script.

Helen gave it to her in puzzled silence, and watched her as she looked rapidly through it.

"Ruth Howard?" she questioned, when she reached the signature of the monologue. "Do I know her? Oh, a freshman, is she? She sounds very promising. Ellen Lacey--yes, I remember that story. Cora Wentworth--oh, I'm very glad you've got something of hers. She needs encouragement.

Anne Carter--oh, Miss Adams, how did you know?"

"How did I know?" repeated Helen in bewilderment.