Part 13 (1/2)

”We shall have to call you the girl of many names,” Jane said with a bright smile. ”But what is movable is curable, we say in English, so perhaps some day you will have a name so famous--”

”Oh, la, la, la!” and Helen ran off to the beckoning throng of freshmen, which included d.i.c.k and Weasie. She had thus acquired more freedom in a few hours on the campus than many would have gained in days, under more formal circ.u.mstances.

Small wonder seniors commented favorably on the ”Jane Allen Plan,” as the new arrangements had been styled. That Jane had suffered tortures on her own initiation no one guessed, but that she was instrumental in saving others embarra.s.sment was too obvious to disregard. As was expected, many of the old cla.s.s failed to return. The close of the World's War had spent its baneful influence on many homes, where happy school girls were suddenly thrust into premature womanhood, and where girls, hitherto closely guarded from the most trivial hards.h.i.+p, now occupied the boys' places, and willingly offered st.u.r.dy young arms to prop crushed parents under the blows dealt by Humanizing Fate.

But Marian Seaton-she whom Jane and Judith and their faction, had struggled so valiantly to subdue-she was back-like the proverbial bad penny.

Her hair was no longer any relation to yellow, but glowed a rich golden brown like early chestnuts. How do the heads stand the changes! And her white skin, pale to the edge of chemistry, was now pale in spots and tinted in detail. Her deep uncertain eyes, now blue and then yellow, movie eyes, as Meta Noon called them, were surely changing tone. Every experimenter knows hair dye afflicts the blood in color changes, affecting the eyes disastrously. Also, but it seems unkind to suggest such a catastrophe, hair-dye has an immediate action on the sight.

Cicily Weldon could not tell time last year after one trip to New York when her hair was ”fixed up!”

”Oh, how do you do, Jane?” lisped the same Marian, coming up the path as Jane was hurrying down. ”Wasn't it perfectly wonderful?”

”Delightful,” replied Jane with a show of good nature she intended to make infectious. ”Did you have a pleasant summer?”

”Yes, and no. I was on at Camp Hillton helping mamma with some war work left unfinished. I met some lovely non-coms.”

”Oh, at Camp Hillton! Only the sick are there, are they not?”

”Not all really very sick,” replied Marian. ”Some are merely ailing.

But of course, they had been wounded,” she felt patriotically obliged to qualify.

”Poor fellows,” sighed Jane.

”Awfully jolly chaps,” replied Marian.

Even at this early date Jane and Marian disagreed-and about wounded soldiers!

”Dazzling little foreigner our-Nellie,” too sweetly remarked Marian.

”Hasn't she the loveliest accent?”

”Do you think so?” almost gasped Jane. There! In spite of all precautions that word ”foreigner.” What was there so perfectly fiendish about Marian Seaton? Why should she always sing out the falsetto?

”Oh, yes, I was wondering what was her province?” she persisted.

But Jane was now hurrying down the path, scattering recalcitrant dishes as she went.

Plague that old Marian Seaton and her sneers!

”Oh, h.e.l.lo, Janie,” called out Dozia Dalton, otherwise Theodosia.

”How's the Wild and Wooly?”

”Almost ready to shear,” replied Jane, in as jovial a tone as Dozia had betrayed. ”There are whiskers on the moon, and the sun has a pompadour.

How's little Beantown?”

”Browning nicely, thank you!” in an invisible pun. ”I had a pan just before I left.”