Part 11 (1/2)
”Ten o'clock.” The gray-eyed girl seemed on the point of volunteering a remark. She half-opened her lips, then closed them almost tightly as if repenting of the impulse.
With a second ”Thank you” a shade cooler than the first, Ronny concluded the brief interview. The four Lookouts had walked toward the Hall door, which stood open, and there paused to wait for her. Ordinarily, Ronny would have addressed the strangers with a certain graciousness of manner which was one of her charms. She had relaxed a little from her first reserve on the strength of their apparent willingness to direct her to Baretti's. She had not missed, however, the gray-eyed girl's deliberate checking of her own purposed remark. While she forebore to place an adverse construction upon it, nevertheless it had annoyed her. Trace of a frown lingered between her dark brows as she joined the others.
”I noticed you didn't get very chummy with that pair,” greeted Jerry.
”Just so you located our commissary department, Baretti. He's our star of hope at present.” Jerry led the way across the veranda and down the steps.
”I know the way to Baretti's, never fear,” Ronny a.s.sured. ”It is one square from the west wall of the campus. Just how much of a walk that means, we shall see. It may be anywhere from a quarter to three-quarters of a mile to the west wall. We turn to our right as we go through the gateway.”
”We will have to walk it, even if it is a mile,” decreed Muriel. ”I'd walk two miles for something to eat. I am about as hungry as I can ever remember of being. Our introduction to Hamilton! _Good night!_”
”I can't get it through my head that we are actually students at Hamilton College,” declared Muriel. ”I feel more as though I had just arrived at a summer hotel where people came and went without the slightest interest in one another.”
”It is missing dinner at the Hall that makes it seem so. If we had had a fair chance at the dining room we would have felt more--” Jerry paused to choose a word descriptive of their united feelings. ”Well, we would have felt cinched to Hamilton. That nice Miss Trent helped us, of course, but she faded away and disappeared the minute she turned us over to Miss Remson. I don't believe we can be, what you might call, fascinating. No one seems to care to linger near us. Wouldn't that be a splendid t.i.tle for one of those silly old popular songs? 'No one cares to linger near,' as sung by the great always off the key vocalist, Jerry Macy. Wh-ir-r! Bu-z-z-z! What has happened to you swe-e-etart, that you do not linger near-r-r? I am lonele-e-e--”
Jerry's imitation of a phonograph rendering a popular song of her own impromptu composition ended suddenly. Muriel placed a defensive hand over the singer's mouth. ”Have mercy on us, Jeremiah,” she begged. ”You are at Hamilton now. Try to act like some one. That's the advice I heard one of the mill women give her unruly son at the nursery one day last winter.”
”I trust no one but ourselves heard you,” was Veronica's uncomplimentary addition, delivered in a tone of shocked disapproval.
”I don't blame anyone for not caring to linger near such awful sounds.”
Lucy's criticism, spoken in her precise manner, produced a burst of low-keyed laughter. It appeared to amuse Jerry most of all.
By this time they had pa.s.sed through the gateway, flanked by high, ornamental stone posts, and were following a fairly wide, beaten footpath that shone white in the light shed by the rising moon. On their right hand side, the college wall of matched gray stone rose considerably above their heads.
”This wall must be at least ten feet high and about three or four thick.” Jerry calculatingly appraised the wall. ”It extends the whole around the campus, so far as I could tell by daylight. I was noticing it as we came into the grounds today.”
”We are not so far from the end of it now.” Marjorie made the announcement with a faint breath of relief. ”You can see the corner post from here. I think it about a quarter of a mile from the gate.”
”And only a square from it lies our dinner, thank goodness! Let's run.”
Muriel made a pretended dash forward and was promptly checked by Jerry.
”You wouldn't let me sing. Now you need a clamp. I'll give you a piece of advice I heard last winter at that same old nursery: 'Walk pretty.
Don't be runnin' yourse'f all over the place.'”
”There is Baretti's across the road.” Marjorie pointed down the road a little, to where, on the opposite side, two posts, topped by cl.u.s.ter electric lights, rose on each side of a fairly wide stone walk that was the approach to the restaurant. It stood fully a hundred feet from the highway, an odd, one-story structure of brown stone, looking like an inn of a bygone period. In sharp contrast to the white radiance of the guide lights at the end of the walk, the light over the doorway was faint and yellow, proceeding from a single lamp, set in a curious wrought-iron frame, which depended from a bell-like hood over the door.
Through the narrow-paned windows streamed the welcome glow of light within. It warmed the hearts of the Five Travelers even as in departed days it had gladdened the eyes of weary wayfarers in search of purchased hospitality.
”What an odd old place!” Lucy Warner cried out in admiration. ”It is like the ancient hostelries one reads of. I wonder if it has always been an inn. It must be considerably over a hundred years old.”
”I suppose it is. A good deal of the country around here is historic, I believe. You remember the bulletin said Brooke Hamilton was a young man at the time of La Fayette's visit to America. That was in 1824. He and La Fayette met and the Marquis was so delighted with him that he invited him to join his suite of friends during his tour of the country. I wish it had said more about both of them, but it didn't,” finished Marjorie regretfully.
”Perhaps the old Marquis de la Fayette and young Brooke Hamilton walked down the very road we walked tonight and supped at the same old inn,”
Veronica said, as they approached the two wide, low steps that formed the entrance to the restaurant.
”Quite likely they did,” agreed Jerry. The foremost of the party, she opened the heavy, paneled door of solid oak.
A faint, united breath of approbation rose from the visitors as they stepped into a room of n.o.ble proportions. It was almost square and as beautiful an apartment as the girls had ever seen. Beam ceiling, wainscoting and floor were all of precisely the same shade and quality of dark oak. So perfectly did every foot of wood in the room match that it might have all come from one giant tree, hewn out and polished by gnomes. There was something about its perfection that suggested a castle hall of fairy lore. On each side of the room were three high-backed, ma.s.sive oak benches. The tops of these were decorated by a carved oak leaf pattern, the simplicity of which was the design of genius itself.