Thanksgiving that year proved memorable enough to the Sanford girls. They had cheerfully decided against going home for the holidays and devoting themselves to the entertainment of the dormitory girls. Pending the completion of the dormitory the Hamilton College Bulletin had already announced the glad tidings of its advantages. As a result twice as many young women had applied for admission to the college that year and had arrived at Hamilton campus to be numbered with the colony of off-campus students who were living in the town of Hamilton at dormitory rates until the Brooke Hamilton Dormitory should be ready for occupancy.
On the day before Thanksgiving the Sanford girls had been ordered by Miss Susanna Hamilton to be ready to go to the station with her when she should stop for them at the western gates of the campus in her car at precisely one o’clock in the afternoon.
They had obeyed her mandate and gone with her to the station there to behold Mr. and Mrs. Dean, Mr. and Mrs. Macy, and Hal, Mr. and Mrs. Harding, 156Mrs. Warner, and the two Misses Archer, Ronny’s aunts, step beaming off the one-five train from the north. Leila, Vera, Kathie, Doris Monroe, Robin, Phil and Barbara and Leslie Cairns had also been invited to the largest house party that Hamilton Arms had ever seen invade its stately doors. Leslie’s joy had soared to dizzy heights when the first person she had spied at the Arms was her father, standing bare-headed on the veranda, waiting for her.
Following Thanksgiving and the delightful season of merry-making at the Arms the Travelers found December flying and Christmas approaching with astonishing rapidity. This time the Sanford girls went to Sanford for Christmas, taking Miss Susanna and their six Traveler chums with them. Leslie and Doris spent Christmas in New York with Peter Cairns, a vastly merrier and happier Christmas than they had spent in the metropolis the previous year.
There had been no need for any of the original chapter of Travelers to remain on the campus, there to oversee the making of a merry Christmas for the dormitory students. The senior “dorms” had become thoroughly competent in the matter of providing Christmas amusement for the off-campus dormitory colony. During the month of December, Leila, Kathie, Robin and Phillys Moore had applied themselves zealously to the pleasant task of arranging a couple of one-act plays and various 157other interesting entertainments. They had, as a consequence, embarked on their trip to Sanford with a pleasant sense of work well done.
Leslie Cairns, of all the Travelers, had perhaps felt most sincerely the true spirit of Christmas. Never before in her life had she quite understood the meaning of “Peace on earth, good will toward men.” Even as a child she had not enjoyed the ineffably beautiful comradeship that now existed between herself and her father. He in turn was fondly proud of her fine spirit of resolution. She confided to him her determination to try to do her part toward keeping up the spirit of democracy which the original Travelers had fought so gallantly to establish and maintain.
“There’s only one drawback to it all, Peter the Great,” she had said to her father during one of their firelight confabs. “If this crowd of snobs at the Hall should start on me for anything I may feel it right to do, contrary to their ideas, it would be bound to reflect upon you. That is, if these girls should drag up that hazing business against me. You’d be criticized, maybe, for not bringing me up with a stern hand, and all that sort of talk. But I’ve struck a certain gait, Peter, and I’m going to keep it. Maybe I’m borrowing trouble. Maybe the blow I’m always dreading may never fall.”
It was in such spirit that Leslie returned to the campus after the holidays. On the afternoon of her return to Wayland Hall she was notified by 158Leila that a hope chest party which the Travelers had planned as a surprise for Marjorie was to take place that night at Hamilton Arms. Since early in the fall the hope chest party had been in the offing.
During the previous summer each of Marjorie’s Traveler chums had picked out a gift which was to go in a special carved rosewood chest which Miss Susanna had been hoarding for her favorite. Leila had brought Marjorie a wonderful package of fine Irish table linen. Vera had selected a frock of rose-pattern Irish lace. Ronny’s gift was an amethyst necklace in an old Peruvian setting. Each of the others had searched faithfully to find a gift which she considered worthy of the girl who had long been their leader.
It had been left to Miss Susanna to name the date of the party. She had named the fifth of January as the date, though none of the Travelers knew why.
“It’s a case of hustle off the train, flee for the campus, gobble one’s dinner and be off again merry-making,” Muriel declared animatedly as the hope chest partly stepped out into the starlight after dinner that evening and set buoyantly off across the campus for a jolly hike.
Jerry and Leila had been intrusted with the combined offerings of the surprise party and had preceded the others to the Arms in Leila’s car. They had been instructed by their companions to park the car just inside the gates in the shadow where Miss 159Susanna had ordered George, the stable man, to be on hand to look after the car and its precious contents. According to a mysterious plan of Leila’s, which she laughingly refused to divulge, the presents were to make an appearance considerably later in the evening.
After dinner at the Arms that evening Jonas had managed to disappear and Miss Susanna had innocently requested, “Go to the door, child. Will you please?” when the clang of the old-time knocker rang out resonantly.
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