“Please, Miss Leslie, Miss Remson says will you come to her room and bring Miss Monroe with you? She’d like to see you right away.” Annie beamed her whole-hearted regard upon Leslie, to whom she was indebted for various pleasant gratuities.

“I’ll be with her in ten minutes. Miss Monroe has gone out to mail a letter. She’ll be back directly.” Leslie closed the door upon Annie’s retreating back with slow reflectiveness. “I wonder,” she murmured: “I wonder.”

“Miss Remson just sent Annie for us,” she said to Doris as the latter entered, her perfect face in charming relief against the dark bear’s fur collar of her coat. Her head was bare and her hair was massed gold in the lamplight.

“For us?” Doris lifted her dark brows. “Why?”

“Don’t know. I think I’m due to hear something unpleasant,” Leslie returned with frowning conviction. “I saw it coming this morning.”

“Saw what coming?” Doris looked concerned. “I mean, what did you see?”

Leslie explained as well as she could. “I can’t 182kick, you know. Here it is, January, and I’ve had smooth sailing. But I’m going to hit the rocks, I guess. The question is: Who supplied the rocks, and how big are they?” Leslie finished with mocking humor.

“If you really are correct in your suspicion, Leslie, you can blame Julia Peyton for the whole thing,” Doris spoke with anxious warmth. “She supplied the rocks, if there are any. But she is so untruthful, no one will take her word long for anything. She has probably woven a weird tale about the Rustic Romp. I’ll soon put a stop to it if I can find out what she has said.”

“It may not be that at all.” Leslie shook her head. “It’s more apt to be something I did when I was on the campus before. I did so many things I shouldn’t have done. She may have happened to unearth one of them. Well,” unconsciously Leslie squared her shoulders, “let’s go and see.”

“Come in, girls.” To their surprise Doris and Leslie found Miss Remson standing in the door of her upstairs sitting room, evidently on watch for them. She beckoned the girls into the room and closed the door quickly.

“There,” she declared, “I am as well pleased to have no one see you. I am so angry. Gr—r—r!” The little woman accompanied the growl with a violent shake of the head. “I know you’d prefer me to be direct, Leslie. Read this.” She handed Leslie a folded paper. “Then we’ll talk.”

183Leslie unfolded the sheet, scanned it eagerly, then passed it on to Doris with a bitter little laugh. “Here’s the rock,” she said. “It’s a big one.”

“Outrageous!” Doris cried out indignantly, letting the fateful petition flutter to the floor.

Leslie picked it up and re-read it. “No one is to blame but myself,” she asserted doughtily. “I’ll not have you annoyed, Miss Remson, by anything I’m responsible for. I’ll leave the Hall tomorrow and go back to the Hamilton House. At least I’ve Prexy’s permission to finish my course here.”

“You’ll not leave the Hall, Leslie. Such a contemptible thing for a crowd of girls to do,” Miss Remson’s eyes showed an angry sparkle.

“Not half so bad as the things I——”

“Now, now, Leslie. This is the present, you know.” Miss Remson said soothingly. “That petition is only the beginning. Read this. But, first, glance at the signature.” She tendered Leslie a thicker fold of paper.

“Dulcie Vale!” Leslie’s voice rose in astonishment as she scanned the well-remembered signature: “Dulciana Maud Vale.” “Now I begin to understand what it’s all about. Please, pardon me, both of you, while I give Dulcie’s latest outbreak the once-over. ‘The Leslie Cairns’ List,’” she read out. “That’s exactly like Dulcie Vale, the little stupid.”

Miss Remson waited silently for Leslie to read the several sheets of typed paper. At last she glanced up with a laugh of satirical amusement. 184“Dulcie must have hired a stenographer to type this. She never typed it herself,” was her characteristically unexpected comment. “Here is a full account of the crimes of Cairns, Doris. Only Dulcie has tied the truth up in an awful snarl. Read about me in this monograph. If you are still my friend after you read it, you deserve a friendship medal.”

“That petition was handed to me last night after the meeting in the living room,” Miss Remson said. “I read it, and went to Miss Peyton before the ten-thirty bell rang. Her name heads the list, you see. I suspected her as being at the bottom of the trouble. I told her very sternly that I should expect to meet her committee of three next day at noon in my office. Today at noon Miss Ferguson came to my office with a great pretence of dignity. She brought with her this outrageous piece of spite work,” she indicated the list Doris was perusing, her beautiful face utterly impassive.

“She said she would prefer me to read the list she handed me, then she, Miss Peyton and Miss Waters would meet me in conference. At first I thought of handing the list and petition back to her with a lecture. Instead, I accepted the list and said that I would take up the matter with them in three days. As yet I had nothing to say. They went away. There was nothing else for them to do.” Miss Remson’s lips tightened.

“Once upon a time, Leslie,” she continued, 185“Ronny Lynne and I held a meeting in the living room. You remember why.”

“Yes, I remember.” Leslie flushed. “I wish I had been wise enough to profit by the experience of that evening.”

Miss Remson referred to the eventful evening during Leslie’s sophomore year at Hamilton when she had called a meeting in the living room of Wayland Hall in order to see justice done to Marjorie Dean. Leslie had then been the prime mover in an unworthy attempt to traduce Marjorie which had ended in deserved defeat for Leslie.

“Forgive me for mentioning it.” The little manager flashed Leslie a smile of stanch friendship. “History may repeat itself. I wish you would leave this matter entirely to me, Leslie. Think nothing further of it. Don’t consider leaving the Hall. This report of you compiled by Dulcie Vale is grossly untrue.”

“It is, of course, garbled. It’s an entirely different story of the hazing than the one she wrote in the letter to President Matthews. That was our finish at Hamilton. Dulcie ought to do well writing fiction.” In the midst of her dejection Leslie could not refrain from this humorous thrust at Dulcie.

“It’s too bad, Leslie.” Doris looked up from the papers in her hand, her tone one of affection. “You are doing your best to make up for what you once did that wasn’t honorable. We all make plenty of mistakes. Only it takes a brave person to go 186back and try to retrieve them. I’ll stand by you. So will the Travelers.” She came over to where Leslie sat, elbow on chair, chin in hand, her dark face immobile as an Indian’s. She put a reassuring arm across Leslie’s shoulders.

“You are a good pal, Goldie.” Leslie raised her head from her hand in an upward appreciative glance. “I’ve always said that, even when we squabbled.”

“I shall continue to be a good pal,” Doris assured, smiling. Secretly she intended to find a means, if she could, to make the signers of the petition feel ashamed and foolish.

When the two friends left Miss Remson’s sitting room a few moments later Doris went to her own room instead of stopping in Leslie’s. There she found Muriel ............