Anndid not see Suzanne at dinner, and heard afterward that she, Madeline and Genevieve had gone to town for their dinner, to “Polly’s.” Ann’s trunk had been sent to the suite and Ann was busy unpacking, when Marta came running up the stairs, not far from the open door. “You’re wanted, Ann,” said she, out of breath. “Suzanne is downstairs and wants to see you.”
“Why doesn’t she come up?”
Marta lifted her brows and nodded toward Eleanor’s door, through which Eleanor, writing a letter, could be seen.
“Sakes!” softly said Ann. “I’m right in the middle of this! And it is going to be a pretty state of things if Suzanne won’t come where Eleanor is!” But Ann picked up her scarf and started out.
Suzanne was strolling up and down the lower hall while she waited for Ann, rather avoiding the stairway, for she did not want to run into Eleanor or Aline. “Hello, Ann,” said she, “come out for a little walk with me. I want to see you.”
“I wish that you would come upstairs, Suzanne,”said Ann. “I’m just in the midst of unpacking and the room is a sight. Still, Marta won’t mind, and we’ll not go to bed for ages. I have to study like everything.”
“I wouldn’t go to your suite tonight for a thousand dollars! The idea of Eleanor’s doing that way! That is what I want to talk about.”
The girls walked out of the hall and out upon the campus to one of the benches, under a beautiful elm. Girls were scattered everywhere over the green lawns, but this seat was empty.
Ann felt from Suzanne’s manner that she was in for something disagreeable, but calmly waited for the explosion, if explosion there was to be.
Suzanne came to the point immediately, sitting down and leaning toward Ann, her hands tightly clasped. “Did you know anything about this, Ann?”
“What do you mean? Did I knowbeforehand, you mean, about rooming arrangements? Indeed I did not. Did you?” Ann asked this question as keenly as Suzanne, though without the feeling behind it.
“Genevieve wrote Madeline a few days before we came that she had asked for a suite for us all. She was counting on rooming with Eleanor, and Eleanor has played her a mean trick! I did not say anything about it to you, Ann, because it was uncertain about our getting the suite, and I did not supposethat you would care; you were planning to room with Marta, weren’t you?”
“Certainly. We did not even ask to be in a suite, though we had expressed a preference for one, to Miss Tudor, one time. This was one great surprise to me, Suzanne.”
“I suppose so, but I wanted to make sure. And I can’t tell you, Ann, how I feel about Eleanor’s turning us down this way!” Suzanne’s eyes filled with tears. She started to speak again and could not. Finally she put her head down on Ann’s shoulder, shaking all over in the effort to control herself and keep from breaking into a storm of tears.
Ann took her hands and squeezed them, without saying a word. With a sob and a sigh, Suzanne presently raised her head. “Were any girls looking at us?” she asked.
“No,—not a soul around. Never mind, Suzanne. It isn’t worth feeling so bad about it.”
“Yes, it is, too, Ann. You don’t know what it means among our crowd of girls to be in with Eleanor.” There it was again! Ann’s sympathy received a jolt. It wasn’t that Suzanne cared so much for Eleanor, after all!
“So I have been wondering if something can’t be done about it. Would you and Marta care, if Eleanor and Aline should room with Maddy and me?”
“Not a bit, but could you plan a thing like that, Suzanne? Where would Genevieve come in? And wasn’t she the one who arranged for that particular suite?”
“Yes, but it’s her fault that she is out with Eleanor. Couldn’t you ask Eleanor about it?”
“Not I, Suzanne. You girls will have to fix it up among yourselves.” Ann spoke very decidedly.
“But you could find out whether she dislikes me or not, couldn’t you?”
“Probably. I don’t believe that Eleanor has anything against you. Marta said that it was Genevieve, and then, that Eleanor does not like Madeline.”
“Then don’t you suppose that I could room with you?”
“And turn Marta out? Why, Suzanne!”
“Well, she might not care much. Besides, Grandmother would much rather have me room with you. She did not like it a bit last year, Mother said, when she found out that I was rooming with Madeline instead of you. But Mother persuaded her, told her that Maddy and I had been friends so long and that you did not care.”
“Grandmother never mentioned it to me. I had expected to room with you, Suzanne; but I knew Marta as well as I knew you, of course, and we have become fast friends. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt Marta for worlds!”
“It could be fixed up through our parents, you know.”
Ann wanted to tell Suzanne that she was a “selfish little pig” and the words were on the tip of her tongue,—but she refrained. It would not do. Here was a bit of scheming that would be worthy of Aunt Sue. What Suzanne could not get in one way she would get in another!
“If you won’t do anything about it, I’m going to ask Marta myself,” Suzanne continued.
“For pity’s sake, Suzanne! Don’t do anything of the kind!”
Suzanne set her lips together. How much her profile looked like Aunt Sue.
“Would you and Marta care, then, if it were arranged for Maddy and me to come with Eleanor and Aline? That would give Genevieve the old suite in the new cottage, and she’d get over being mad about it!”
“So far as I am concerned, if you can arrange to room with Eleanor and Aline, it is all right. I don’t think that Marta would care, though it certainly would be a bother, after getting settled. But how about Eleanor’s not liking Madeline?”
“Maybe I can get some other Sig-Ep girl that shedoeslike.”
“If you can fix it up, Suzanne, I’ll not stand in your way. This was a surprise, and it really doesnot make any difference to me,—just till the Christmas vacation. Do you think that it is important enough to stir things up so?”
“Yes. If I could room with Eleanor this year, it would probably mean for the junior and senior years, too. Maybe Eleanor is going South, too, with her mother.”
“I see. All right, Suzanne; do anything you want to, but don’t expect me to take a hand. You will have to see Eleanor yourself.”
“That is what I hate to do. I believe that I’ll talk to Miss Tudor first, tell her that I am not satisfied. She’ll want to keep in with Mother.”
“Perhaps,” dryly said Ann.
That ended the interview and the girls separated, Suzanne to join some other girls, after being assured by Ann that all traces of tears were removed, and Ann to resume her interrupted task of unpacking. She was both annoyed and troubled. Marta noticed her abstraction but made no comment. Both girls studied busily, chiefly in their bedroom this time, for Eleanor and Aline were talking in their common study.
Ann was too busy the next day to think of anything but lessons, though she wondered if Suzanne would go to work “upsetting things.”
The worst arrangement suggested was the one whereby she and Suzanne would room in the suitewith Eleanor and Aline. Not that she did not like them all, but she wanted Marta or some one of the Jolly Six, her very own congenial friends, with much of the same interests and purposes. But she told herself, as she had in wakeful hours of the previous night, that they all would have to be consulted anyhow about the matter and it would be handled by headquarters in final arrangements. “No use to worry,” she thought. The best plan, if change was to be made, was for Suzanne and some one of the “Sig-Eps” to move in with Eleanor and Aline. That would be much better for Suzanne, Ann thought, than continuing to room with Madeline. Perhaps sheoughtto do something about it! Itwouldbe a shame for Suzanne to be with both Genevieve and Madeline!
At dinner, for the girls were at present sitting where they pleased at table, Suzanne joined Ann and afterward almost dissolved into tears again telling Ann about matters at their suite. “Miss Tudor has put a new girl in with us, temporarily, she said, and she is awful. Genevieve is tearing her hair, figuratively speaking, and we are all upset. I am to see Miss Tudor pretty soon.”
Poor Ann wondered what her duty was in the matter, and hoped that she need have nothing to do with it. Ought she to give her consent to taking Suzanne in place of Marta, if Miss Tudor suggested it? What would Marta think? Perhaps she andSuzanne could take a room or a two room suite together, and let Marta get a new room-mate, staying with Eleanor and Aline. There!Thatwas what she would suggest, if she had anything to say about it. That would fulfill her duty to her cousin and not turn anybody out. Of course, that would not suit Suzanne. Ann felt fairly dizzy with the different plans that suggested themselves. What a bother!
No wandering about the campus that evening. “Bunny” had announced a theme, the assignment in Math looked hard, and there were pages and pages of new and more difficult French to prepare. Ann got out her books and went to work at the table in the study, where Eleanor and Aline found her later. Marta was still out with the girls.
“Got a wonderful song, Ann,” said Eleanor, waving some sheets of music. “I borrowed it from the girl who owns it. It has an exquisite violin obligato and I want you to do the accompanying, if you will. I’m sending for copies. We were just trying it over in the parlor. Sara played the piano part.”
Ann stopped work long enough to look at the music “I’d like to go right down and try it over, but I can’t,—got to study.”
“I have to, too,” said Eleanor. “Aline and I have a miserable harmony lesson to work out. Will it bother you if we do it together?”
“I’ll not even hear you,” laughed Ann.
The girls had scarcely started on the harmony lesson, when there came a knock. One of the girls acknowledged Eleanor’s “Come in” by poking her head inside the door and saying, “Miss Tudor wants to see you, Eleanor.”
Ann, busy with a problem, heard it as in a dream, but waked up sufficiently to her surroundings to hear Aline say, as Eleanor hurried out, “It’s about the suite, Eleanor!” And Eleanor answered, shortly, “That’s all settled!”
Aline disappeared from the room a little later, and soon, who should appear but Suzanne, in some excitement. “I saw that Eleanor went over to the administration building, and that Aline was outside, so I ran up a minute. I saw Miss Tudor and talked with her,—all about it. She did not say much, but said that she would see me again after she had talked to the other girls. So she is going to do something!”
Suzanne was feeling some confidence about the affair, Ann could see. “You’d better not put on your kimono, Ann, for she may send for you. Do your best for me, cousin,” said artful Suzanne.
“I will,” said Ann, “though I don’t know what is ‘best.’ I fancy that Miss Tudor will do the settling of it, don’t you?”
“She can beinfluenced,” replied Suzanne.
Ann did not believe this, in the sense in which Suzanne meant it, and thought that Suzanne exaggeratedher own importance and that of her family. “She thinks that the Huntington-LeRoys are the whole thing!” thought Ann. “And to get her own way and be with Eleanor, for the sake of I don’t know what, she’d do anything and turn anybody out!” Ann was thoroughly disgusted. She laid aside her “math,” decided that she could not think up a theme while her mind was so distracted, and picked up the new French text, rather technical and difficult, but she could more easily read along and look up the new words in her dictionary than do anything else. She went into her bedroom, looked in the glass to see if her hair were in condition to appear before the dean, and sat down by the window with her book. If Eleanor came in and did not want to speak to her about where she had been, it would be simpler for her to be out of the way. She shut the bedroom door, as this occurred to her.
But it was not long before Aline and Eleanor came in, talking, as Ann thought, in some excitement, though their voices were low. “Ann!” called Eleanor, rapping sharply upon the bedroom door.
“Come in,” called Ann in reply.
Both girls came in and sat down on the bed, looking at Ann and each other. “You tell her, Eleanor,” said Aline, clasping the head of the bed with one arm, crossing her small slippered feet and cupping her pointed, poetic chin with her free hand.
“Surely I will,” replied the efficient Eleanor, hereyes flashing. “Are you satisfied with this arrangement, Ann, or would you like to get out of it?” she asked directly.
“I should prefer to leave things as they are,” promptly replied Ann.
“From what I know of you,” said Eleanor, “I judge that you are telling the truth.”
“I am,” said Ann.
“Did you see Suzanne and know that she was going to see Miss Tudor about this rooming business?”
“Yes. Suzanne was very much upset, and hurt, because she thought that perhaps you did not want to room with her. She says that she is just sick over it. She wanted me to talk to you about it, but I told her that I would not get into it.”
Eleanor looked thoughtful. “I like Suzanne,” she said, “but I can’t bear Maddy, nor Genevieve, now. Of course you know that Miss Tudor has been talking to me about it. She gave me a good lecture, too, on not having consideration for other people, and upsetting plans and so forth. I certainly ammadabout it!” Eleanor’s eyes flashed fire again; then she looked at Ann, and they both laughed, Aline joining.
“I suppose you think, Ann, that it is a tempest in a tea-pot; but these things make a lot of difference.”
“Yes, they do,” answered Ann, sobering again. “Itisimportant whom you room with. I can’t saythat I am very anxious to have Suzanne stay with Genevieve and Madeline—both pretty reckless about some things.”
Eleanor nodded. “Say, Ann, I’ve always wanted to explain about that time when you came on us and we had the cigarettes. I don’t do that sort of thing, but we were in high spirits and Gen dared us. She and Maddy think that it’s smart, and that is one of the reasons that I don’t want to room with Genevieve,—but please don’t say anything about it. I couldn’t tell Miss Tudor that.”
“What is Miss Tudor going to do?” asked Ann.
“Mercy, I don’t know! She’s talking to Genevieve and Madeline now. Probably she will send for you next. That is why I wanted to talk with you. Miss Tudor asked me if I would object to having Suzanne room here with you,—of course, she gave me to understand that I hadn’t much to say about it, but still, she wants a good arrangement for everybody. I told her that it would be all right with me, but that I thought it mean to turn Marta out. Then I didn’t know how you would like it, I said. I was so mad because of the good scolding I had, that I talked right up to her!”
Ann laughed. “Lots of good it will do, Eleanor.”
“Exactly. But it was some consolation to me.”
“I’d have a great time with three Sig-Eps in the suite with me, wouldn’t I?” laughed Ann. She did not mind giving this hint.
“I thought of that, but it would only be two, at that. I can’t get Aline into the Sigs. Her mother was a Bat.”
A direct look was exchanged between Ann and Eleanor. “Thanks,” said Ann, storing away the knowledge, as Eleanor meant her to do. The Bats would be after Aline now. They had thought it useless before, as she and Eleanor were so intimate. But they had wondered why they did not hear of her initiation as a Sig-Ep. Eleanor was a “pretty good scout” after all.
“I don’t like it of Suzanne, if this is her scheme, to leave Maddy out in the cold; but if she wants to room with you it would be much better for her. I don’t see why she didn’t do it last year,—yes, I do, too. She and Maddy are more congenial in many ways. That is nothing against you, either.” Eleanor was surely frank, Ann thought. Probably Eleanor had learned some things during her freshman year, as they all had.