Marjorie Dean, Marvelous Manager

CHAPTER IV

TESTING TWO TRAVELERS

“Remember, friends and fellow Travelers, this is a serious occasion.” Ronny, as president of the original Five Travelers, stood facing her companions who had disposed themselves four in a row on Jerry’s couch-bed and on chairs in alignment with the couch.

“It’s not very serious any of us are looking, nor our worthy president, either,” Leila declared, throwing Ronny a twinkling glance.

“Never judge by appearances – so very reckless, don’t you know,” Ronny rebuked, her charming face full of mischief.

“On with the meeting. No stops allowed for repartee. We’ve a lot to do, and a spread to eat up afterward,” Jerry announced in her most judicial tones.

“Thank you for your delicate reminder that time is flying, Jeremiah.” Ronny made Jerry a deep bow, meant to convey her humble gratitude. “As I was about to say when I was interrupted” – Ronny stared hard at Leila – “we are to pass upon the names written on slips in this box.” She held up a small square box of ornamental brass.

During their initial railway journey to Hamilton College more than four years previous the quintette of Sanford chums had helped while away the long hours on the train by banding themselves into a private, informal club which they named the Five Travelers’ Club. They had found interest in looking upon themselves as five travelers about to explore the unknown country of College.

The little association had flourished and been a comfort to them during their freshman year. Every now and then, as the journey through the country of college continued they had added a member to the group. When Commencement and the end of their proscribed course came the still informal club had become the Nineteen Travelers.

It had become the earnest desire of the Nineteen Travelers to perpetuate the club as a sorority. After much discussion it had been decided to leave it as a parting gift to nineteen seniors. Due to the multiplicity of duties which the original Nineteen Travelers had pledged themselves to perform, the organization of the new sorority was left, unfortunately, until the last minute. By that time several new-fledged seniors, eligible to membership, had departed for their homes.

It was Ronny who had then proposed that each Traveler should write on a slip of paper her choice of senior to succeed her. The slips were to be placed in a box, without having been examined, and the box placed in Miss Remson’s care until the return the next fall of the post graduate Travelers to Hamilton College. To them would be intrusted the forming of the new sorority.

“I feel confident,” Ronny continued, “that the seniors whose names are in this box are the very girls we most wish to carry on our club. Still, in the event that any one of you may have an objection to a name as read out by me, I will count ten slowly after the reading of each name. Anyone who may make objection must say ‘no’ within the count, and afterward frankly state her reason for so doing.”

With this preamble Ronny put a hand in the box, drew from it a slip and solemnly read out: “Phyllis Moore.” The laughing gleam in her gray eyes did not accord with her solemn face. “One, two – ” she began.

A chorus of laughter drowned her voice, mingled with cries of: “No; no, indeed! I object.”

“Mercy on us!” Up went Ronny’s hands. “Such strenuous objections! Sh-h-h. Be calm and state our objections, one at a time.”

“We can’t decide as to her qualifications for membership until she has been put to the test,” boldly demanded Lillian Wenderblatt.

“Very well,” Ronny agreed with the utmost amiability.

“Poor me.” Phil groaned audibly.

“I would suggest that action be suspended on the candidate to be tested until the other names have been passed upon. In the event that there may be other candidates for the test they may then be put to the ordeal together.” Marjorie made this sly proviso, and with apparent innocence.

“Other candidates!” exclaimed Barbara Severn. “I know only one other besides Phil. Poor me!”

“Barbara Severn.” Ronny promptly read out her name. Another burst of vigorous, laughing “Noes” ascended. Barbara was also condemned to the test.

During the Nineteen Travelers’ senior year at Hamilton they had more than once invited Phil and Barbara to become members of the club. Both had refused the invitation, preferring to receive their election as a parting gift from their elder sisters. They had been as invaluable to the Travelers, however, as though they had been members. Now their comrades proposed to show appreciation in their own peculiar fashion. None of the seventeen other names which Ronny read out for the august consideration of the Travelers were challenged.

“I am sure you will be pleased to hear that Miss Mason and Jer – Miss Macy will conduct the test,” Ronny purred to the hapless candidates.

“That’s right, half call me Jeremiah. Everyone’s only about half respectful to me,” grumbled Jerry.

“Oh, we’re de-lighted,” Barbara and Phil together satirically responded.

“So glad. As all appear to be pleased let the test begin,” Ronny smiled encouragingly on the candidates.

“Ahem-m! Candidates rise and come forward. Stand there; exactly in line,” Jerry dictated grandly. “You will now listen to Miss Mason while she explains to you the nature of the first test.”

Vera came smilingly toward the two girls. “Here is a penny for each of you,” she said generously. “You are not to spend it for candy. No, no.” She shook a forbidding finger at them. “You are to get down on the floor and each shove your penny to the door and” – she beamed beneficently on her victims – “with your nose.”

“Woof-f!” Phil made a despairing gesture.

“I can never do it,” giggled Barbara, “but I’ll try.”

“We are waiting.” Vera sweetly indicated the place on the rug on which the unlucky candidates were to prostrate themselves.

Phil was first to obey. Barbara paused to watch her and learn the way such a feat was to be performed. It took Phil not more than a minute to discover that creeping as a means of locomotion would not aid her penny’s progress to the door. She was obliged to lie flat to the floor, face downward, and wriggle very slowly toward the goal, aiming constant dabs at the penny with her nose.

Her gallant progress in spite of odds so entertained Barbara she had to be reminded of her part in the test. She proved not nearly as skillful as Phil in the art of penny-shoving. Meanwhile the room rang with laughter.

“The candidates will now be allowed a breathing spell while I consult with my valued assistant and prepare the next degree,” was Jerry’s gracious announcement after Phil had triumphantly pushed her penny the required distance and Barbara had shoved hers over half way to the door.

The next degree appeared in the form of two rows of potatoes, placed at short distances apart. At one end of each row was a basket. Jerry handed Phil and Barbara each a teaspoon and assigned them to a potato row. “Start at this end. Pick up the potatoes on your teaspoon and carry them to the basket,” was her next bland instruction.

“That sounds easy,” sighed Barbara. “Oh, my nose,” she tenderly rubbed it.

To balance a good-sized potato on a teaspoon and carry it across a room is a feat which requires practice. Phyllis and Barbara were novices at it. They toiled patiently at the ridiculous task while the Travelers had a hilarious time at their expense. Before either had succeeded in placing more than two or three potatoes in their baskets Vera called them off the job.

“We’ll have to take your will for the deed,” she told them. “Your sense of balance seems to be sadly lacking. Don’t be discouraged. Both of you have splendid useful noses even if your potato carrying was wobbly. You’ve done nobly. Now we are going to give you a feed. I hope you won’t mind being blindfolded for a little while. It’s quite necessary.

“Nothing could please us more,” Phil assured extravagantly.

“Whoever heard of an initiation without the candidates were blindfolded? Go as far as you like.” Barbara was equally gracious.

Jerry proceeded to blindfold the two in her business-like way. Next she motioned to Vera, who brought forward two bungalow aprons. She and Vera politely assisted Phil and Barbara into the aprons. The pair were then led to chairs and ordered to be seated.

From the top shelf of her dress closet Jerry took a square pasteboard box. Opened, two immense, shining cream puffs were revealed. Laughter greeted the sight of them. The other Travelers recognized the puffs as having come from a certain bakery in the town of Hamilton where the size of the dainty and its extra-generous cream filling had popularized it among the Hamilton College girls.

“Here, Phyllis Marie Moore; you can’t say I never treated you. In the absence of plates, hold out both hands.” Jerry lifted one of the huge puffs from the box and carefully set it in Phil’s obediently outstretched hands. She then went through the same performance with Barbara as the recipient. “Eat them nicely,” she admonished with wicked significance.

“Eat them nicely,” mimicked Barbara. “I can’t eat a cream puff nicely when I can see every bite I take of it. Blindfolded – good night!”

“They’re awfully good anyway,” consoled Phil. She held the puff in one hand and went cautiously over the humps and bumps of the big pastry shell. She boldly attacked a corner which promised not to let out too copiously the fairly thin cream filling. She did very well until she had eaten away enough of the shell to court disaster. It would have been hard enough to eat the puff daintily had she been able to see it. Minus sight and a plate or paper napkin on which to place it she soon managed to smear her face, hands and apron liberally with cream. She ate away desperately but there appeared to be twice as much filling as should have been.

Barbara did far worse at puff eating than Phyllis. Her frantic efforts to keep the cream within the bounds of its crisp brown shell sent her companions into shrieks of laughter. Worse still for them, Jerry had decreed that they could not wipe either hands or faces until she gave the word.

In the midst of the fun Marjorie obeyed a sudden impulse to leave the room and stand in the hall outside the door for a moment. She slipped away unnoticed, anxious to ascertain how plainly the laughter and talk of her companies sounded from outside. She and Jerry had hung three heavy portieres which Miss Remson had given them before the door leading into the hall and before the doors of the two dress closets. The manager had assured her that the portieres would serve to a great extent to deaden sounds from within the room.

She smiled her relieved satisfaction after she had listened intently for three or four minutes. She could hear only faintly the sounds of conversation mingled with laughter. She was of the opinion that such sounds would not be disturbing to any student on the same floor.

“Watchman, tell us of the night,” hailed Jerry as Marjorie again stepped into the room. “I know what you’ve been doing. You’ve been listening to how noisy we are.”

“Right-o, Jeremiah. And we haven’t been disgracefully noisy, after all,” Marjorie gaily assured. “While the girls were laughing loudest at Barbara and Phil I stole out of here into the hall. I wanted to find out, if I could, just how noisy we were. That heavy curtain we hung over the door shuts the sound in beautifully. You can only hear it faintly from the hall.”

“Good work, Bean; good work.” Jerry patted Marjorie on the back. “We’ve two more stunts to put Phil and Barbara through yet and the crowd is getting hilariouser and hilariouser. Listen to them now.”

A fresh gale of mirth testified to the truth of Jerry’s remarks. It assaulted Marjorie’s critical ears with almost dismaying force. Reminded of what she had just proven to her own satisfaction she grew reassured. Since that day, early in the fall, when Doris Monroe had reported the joyful little welcome party in Gussie Forbes’ room to Miss Remson as disturbing to her peace Marjorie and Jerry had been expecting the same dire fate would overtake them. Their room was the Travelers’ headquarters as well as a favorite haunt of the five Bertram girls. “It’s our positive good fortune that we escaped thus far,” Marjorie had more than once told Jerry.

In itself to have been reported to Miss Remson as disturbers would not have troubled Marjorie and Jerry. Understanding between them and the brisk little manager of the Hall was complete. It was their standing as post graduates, their college honor which they prided themselves upon. As post graduates they would be first to be weighed in the balance. They ardently desired not to be found wanting even in small things.

What Marjorie had not known when she returned to Room 15 after her brief moment of listening in the hall was that she had been observed. Across the hall from Room 15 two interested sophomores had kept diligent watch since the Travelers had come upstairs from dinner. With their own door a few stealthy inches ajar they had heard, or imagined they heard, what they had been longing to hear – noise enough from “those tiresome, interfering P.G.’s” to warrant prompt action on their part.

CHAPTER V

A LEADING QUESTION

Action came while Phil and Barbara were engaged in removing at least a third of the creamy contents of the puffs from faces, hands, necks and even hair. They “cleaned up” amidst the laughter and gay raillery of their friends.

“How much more must we endure?” demanded Barbara as she dried her cleansed features with a Turkish towel and began lightly powdering them at the mirror.

“Oh, not so much,” tantalized Jerry. “There are a few more little stunts that – ” Two imperative raps on the door sent Jerry hurrying to it. She pushed the portiere to one side; swung open the door to confront the tall, squarely-built sophomore whom she had nicknamed the Prime Minister.

“Good evening,” she said in level tones. Her keen eyes were missing nothing. Her mind leaped at once to the nature of the other girl’s intrusion, for such it was.

“Good evening.” Her salutation was returned with haughty aggression. In fact every line of the sophomore’s broad face and stiff, unyielding figure spelled aggression. Her peculiarly round black eyes, blacker in contrast to the unhealthy white of her skin, resentfully searched Jerry up and down.

“I wish to speak to Miss Dean at once,” she demanded. “I know she is here.” She eyed Jerry belligerently, as though to forestall a denial on her part.

“Of course she is here. We are entertaining our friends.” Jerry’s matter-of-fact reply brought a dull flush to Miss Peyton’s pale cheeks. “Will you come in?” The concise invitation had a certain restraining effect upon the frowning caller.

“No, I will not,” she refused, her own inflexion rude. “Ask Miss Dean to come to the door. I wish to speak to her, and to you.”

“Very well.” Jerry appeared non-committal. “Just a moment.” She turned away from the door and beckoned to Marjorie.

Marjorie left Barbara and Phil, whom she had been assisting in the removal of the sticky traces of the puff test, and walked quickly to the door. In that brief second on the way to it a flash of dismay visited her. It drove from her eyes the light of laughter occasioned by Phil’s and Barbara’s complaining nonsense as they scrubbed faces and hands.

“What is it, Jerry?” she asked as she reached her room-mate.

Jerry opened the door wider and made room for Marjorie in the doorway beside her. “Miss Peyton has something she wishes to say to us.” Jerry’s round face was enigmatic. Marjorie had but to glance at it to read there what others might not.

Within the room the buzz of conversation had lessened to a mere murmur. Muriel had been entertaining her chums with a flow of her funny nonsense. Even she had run down suddenly, seized by the same surmise which had occurred to her companions. Too courteous to stare boldly toward the door, canny conjecture as to the caller’s errand temporarily halted the will to talk.

“Good evening, Miss Peyton.” Marjorie’s straight glance into the soph’s smouldering eyes was courteously inquiring. Ordinarily she might have followed the greeting with a pleasantry. What she read in Julia Peyton’s face held her silent; waiting.