Part 11 (2/2)

She went on toward the unwinking light, until she was sure she stood before the door through which the crying emanated.

It was Lilian Moore's room. She had a small single room and was apparently drowning herself in tears there.

The recklessness of the crying, the absolute indifference as to who heard or knew, made Peggy hesitate for just a minute before she turned the k.n.o.b of the door and went in. She was not exactly afraid, and yet she felt very much alone with something too painful for her to cope with, as she felt her way into the darkness.

She felt her foot sink into a soft pile of clothing, then immediately after, she stumbled against some large and solid object that she never remembered having seen in the middle of Lilian's room, and for which she failed utterly to account.

Lilian was throwing herself about on the bed now, and Peggy did not know whether she realized there was any one in the room or not. She felt for the light, and, after much fumbling, found it, and snapped it on.

The freshman's room was in a state of complete confusion. An open trunk half packed was what she had run against in the darkness. Piles of clothing and books were strewn round about it on the floor, ready to go in. Lilian, herself, fully dressed, started up from the bed with a cry, as the glare of light flooded everything, and dropped back moaning when she saw that it was Peggy who had come.

”Now,” said Peggy quietly, sitting down on the bed beside the tossing figure, ”let's be real still or the matron will hear us.”

This obvious common sense thrown like cold water over her misery had an immediate effect on the other girl, who had expected sympathy.

The sobs shuddered down to long-drawn painful breaths, and Lilian covered her swollen eyes with two weak hands.

”I'm sure it isn't just the way you think,” said Peggy, after a few minutes. ”It couldn't be as bad as all that.”

”What couldn't?”

”Why, whatever is the matter.”

There was a pause and then came a smothered, ”Yes, it could. It is. Oh, and I wanted to come to college so-I wanted to come!”

”Well-and you came, and here you are with all of us,” Peggy reminded.

”That's just it,” the confidences came now pouring over each other for utterance. Lilian clasped Peggy's cool fingers with a fevered hand. ”I wish to goodness that I hadn't ever come. I don't belong. The girls showed me that to-night. Oh, when I think of how my mother kissed me good-bye-and-and gave me up for all this year-just for-this--”

”For what?” helped out Peggy.

”To have the girls make fun of my room, my clothes-and me. Listen, Miss Parsons. We lived in a small town where n.o.body was very well-to-do. And mother-wanted something better for me than she had ever known. When she was a girl she used to dream of going to college--”

Sobs choked the narrator and she struggled for a moment before she could go on.

”And-when I began to grow up, she decided that I should go-oh, Miss Parsons, when I came away she said to remember that I was going for both of us!”

Peggy's fingers tightened around the feverish hand, and she could see very clearly in her mind the face of this girl's mother with its wistful yet self-sacrificing expression, and the tears came suddenly to her eyes.

”She saved, my mother did, for years so that there would be enough-for me-to come on Campus like the other girls,” a trace of bitterness crept in here. ”But I didn't know how they dressed at a place like this and how they all fixed up their rooms. I didn't realize there would be anything besides the tuition and board-and-I-didn't-know-they couldn't-love me--”

Peggy tore her hand from the other's grasp and went and stood by the desk with her back to the bed. Her eyes fell on a blotted and tear-stained letter which began, ”Dear Mother.”

”Listen, Lilian,” she said, going back to the couch, ”I haven't any mother at all. That will seem strange to you, who have seen me laughing around here, happy and singing most of the time. But I haven't,-and I know that nothing ever will quite make up. That letter you have begun-just try to realize that no matter what happens to me,-whatever hard thing I may have to go through, I can't write such a letter as that.”

Lilian stared at Peggy in surprise. Why, she had supposed the little Miss Parsons had _everything_.

<script>