Part 11 (1/2)

”Well,” Myra accepted the challenge, ”that poem of yours in the _Monthly_--”

”How did you know?” cried Peggy and Katherine, simultaneously.

”Why, I read the foolish thing in the _Monthly_,” snapped Myra, surprised.

Peggy, her eyes alight, and Katherine, dawning credulity in her face, turned and met each other's gaze in slow triumph.

”It's _in_?” asked Peggy breathlessly.

”Of course-how else--?” murmured Myra.

”Girls!” cried Peggy, radiantly, ”my poem is in the _Monthly_! I didn't suppose they'd really use it-oh, I would have told you all, if I'd been sure. Are the new _Monthlies_ down on the table now, Myra?”

”Yes, they're downstairs.”

”I'm going to sneak down just as I am and get mine,” breathed Peggy, ”and then shall I read it to you, girls?”

Faults, depression, lost faith-all forgotten in the frank joy that was Peggy's.

She pattered across the floor, begged prettily for the key, took it from Hazel Pilcher's reluctant hand, and fitted it in the lock.

A moment later they heard her trailing down the hall.

There was complete silence while she was gone.

The outraged feelings were subsiding, and the girls, who a few moments before were almost hating each other, now waited in pleasant antic.i.p.ation the reading of the poem.

There was no warning of her return. They were simply watching the door, which she had left open, and all of a sudden she stood framed in it, the soft candle glow lighting her lovely face and blue-clad figure, and the tan cover of the _Monthly_ which she held clasped to her heart.

”I-can't come back in,” she whispered. ”I met our house-mother on the stairs, and she made me promise to go right to my own room if she'd let me creep down and get the _Monthly_ from the table. It's after ten, and all the lights are out down the hall. Good-night, girls; I've had a lovely time,” and she really believed she had.

Katherine followed her, with a backward wave of the hand, and what more fault finding went on after their departure they never knew.

”I s'pose it isn't much to any one else,” said Peggy deprecatingly, ”but I just feel as if this was the nicest number of the _Monthly_ ever gotten out!”

And Katherine answered loyally, ”I do too.”

The cretonne couch covers they had smoothed up in such haste that morning were carefully folded back, and Katherine climbed into her bed, and with a little tired sigh was fast asleep; but Peggy, after carefully fixing the screen around her room-mate's couch so that the light shouldn't trouble her, propped herself up with pillows in her own bed, the College _Monthly_ on her knees.

She found her name in the index, ”Margaret Parsons,” and was thrilled by the formality of that. Then she fluttered the leaves over-just as any one might, she told herself, until she came, to her intense surprise, of course, to her poem.

This she proceeded to read. And when she had finished, she tried to read one of the stories or a poem by some one else, but somehow nothing seemed interesting after that-nothing had for her quite the vividness or charm, so she shamefacedly yielded to the temptation to read hers all over again.

But before she had finished, a curious sound disturbed her.

From somewhere down the hall came the unmistakable sobs of a person crying out her heart in heedless abandon. It was not very loud, but was penetrating and alarming.

Peggy listened, hardly able to believe her ears. When she and Katherine were so happy in college, was it possible any girl would have cause to cry like that?-right here in Ambler House?-the nicest dorm on Campus?

Sighing, she slid her feet into her slippers, dipped her arms into her kimono again, laid the precious _Monthly_ on the dressing-table, turned out the light and was soon in the fearsome hall, with those sounds echoing down it, and no light but the tiny globule of red at the other end, which indicated the fire-escape.