Chapter 24

SAYING GOOD-BYE TO THEIR FRESHMAN YEAR

The few intervening days that lay between commencement and home were filled with plenty of pleasant excitement. There were calls to make, farewell spreads and merry-makings to attend, and momentous questions concerning what to leave behind and what to take home to be decided. The majority of the girls at Wayne Hall had asked for their old rooms for the next year. Two sophomores had succeeded in getting into Wellington House. One poor little freshman, having studied too hard, had brought on a nervous affection and was obliged to give up her course at Overton for a year at least. There was also one other sophomore whose mother was coming to the town of Overton to live and keep house for her daughter in a bungalow not far from the college.

It now lacked only two days until the end of the spring term, and what to pack and when to pack it were the burning questions of the hour.

"There will be room for four more freshmen here next year," remarked Grace, as she appeared from her closet, her arms piled high with skirts and gowns. Depositing them on the floor, she dropped wearily into a chair. "I don't believe I can ever make all those things go into that trunk. I have all my clothes that I brought here last fall, and another lot that I brought back at Christmas, and still some others that I acquired at Easter. If I had had a particle of forethought I would have taken home a few things each trip. Don't dare to leave the house until this trunk is packed, Anne, for I shall need you to help me sit on it. If our combined weight isn't enough, we'll invite Elfreda and Miriam in to the sitting. I am perfectly willing to perform the same kind offices for them. Oh, dear, I hate to begin. I'm wild to go home, but I can't help feeling sad to think my freshman joys are over. It seems to me that the two most important years in college are one's freshman and senior years.

"Being a freshman is like beginning a garden. One plants what one considers the best seeds, and when the little green shoots come up, it's terribly hard to make them live at all. It is only by constant care that they are made to thrive and all sorts of storms are likely to rise out of a clear sky and blight them. Some of the seeds one thought would surely grow the fastest are total disappointments, while others that one just planted to fill in, fairly astonish one by their growth, but if at the end of the freshman year the garden looks green and well cared for, it's safe to say it will keep on growing through the sophomore and junior years and bloom at the end of four years. That's the peculiarity about college gardens. One has to begin to plant the very first day of the freshman year to be sure of flowers when the four years are over.

"In the sophomore year the hardest task is keeping the weeds out, and during the junior and senior years the difficulty will be to keep the ground in the highest state of cultivation. It will be easier to neglect one's garden, then, because one will have grown so used to the things one has planted that one will forget to tend them and put off stirring up the soil around them and watering them. I'm going to think a little each day while I'm home this summer about my garden and keep it fresh and green."

Grace laid the gown she had been folding in the trunk and looked earnestly at Anne as she finished her long speech.

"What a nice idea!" exclaimed Anne warmly. "I think I shall have to begin gardening, too."

"Your garden has always been in a flourishing condition from the first," laughed Grace. "The chief trouble with mine seems to be the number of strange weeds that spring up--nettles that I never planted, but that sting just as sharply, nevertheless. It hurts me to go home with the knowledge that there are two girls here who don't like me. I know I ought not to care, for I have nothing to regret as far as my own conduct is concerned, but still I'd like to leave Overton for the summer without one shadow in my path."

"Perhaps, when certain girls come back in the fall they will be on their good behavior."

"Perhaps," repeated Grace sceptically.

The entrance into the room of Elfreda and Miriam, who had been out shopping, brought the little heart talk to an abrupt close.

"We've a new kind of cakes," exulted Miriam. "They are three stories high and each story is a different color. They have icing half an inch thick and an English walnut on top. All for the small sum of five cents, too."

"We bought a dozen," declared Elfreda, "and now I'm going out to buy ice cream. This packing business calls for plenty of refreshment to keep one's energy up to the mark. I've thought of a lovely plan to lighten my labors."

"What is it?" asked Grace. "Your plans are always startlingly original if not very practical."

"This is practical," announced the stout girl. "I'm going to give away my clothes; that is, the most of them. I found a poor woman the other day who does scrubbing for the college who needs them. I found out where she lives and I'm going to bundle them all together and send them to her. I don't wish her to know where they came from. I'll just write a card, and--"

The three broadly smiling faces of her friends caused her to stop short and regard them suspiciously. "What's the matter?" she said in an offended tone.

Grace ran over and slipped her arm about the stout girl's shoulders. "You are the one who sent Ruth her lovely clothes last Christmas. Don't try to deny it. I was sure of it then."

"Oh, see here," expostulated Elfreda, jerking herself away, her face crimson. "I--you--"

"Confess," threatened Miriam, seizing the little brass tea kettle and brandishing it over Elfreda's head.

"I won't," defied Elfreda, laughing a little in spite of her efforts to appear offended.

"One, two," counted Miriam, grasping the kettle firmly.

"All right, I did," confessed Elfreda nonchalantly. "What are you going to do about it?"

"Present you with your Christmas gifts now," smiled Miriam. "You wouldn't look at us last Christmas, so we've been saving our gifts ever since. Wait a minute, girls, until I go for mine."

As she darted from the room, Grace said softly: "We hoped that you would understand about Thanksgiving and that everything would be all right by Christmas, so we planned our little remembrances for you just the same. Then, when--when we didn't see you before going home for the holidays, Anne suggested that we put them away, because we all hoped that you'd be friends with us again some day." Rummaging in the tray of her trunk she produced a long, flat package which she offered to Elfreda. Anne, who, at Grace's first words, had stepped to the chiffonier, took out a beribboned bundle, and stood holding it toward the stout girl. Another moment and Miriam had returned bearing her offering. "I wish you a merry June," declared Miriam with an infectious giggle that was echoed by the others. Then Elfreda opened the package from Miriam, which contained a Japanese silk kimono similar to one of her own that her roommate had greatly admired. Grace's package contained a pair of long white gloves, and Anne had remembered her with a book she had once heard the stout girl express a desire to own.

"You had no business to do it," muttered Elfreda. Then gathering up her presents she made a dash for the door and with a muffled, "I'll be back soon," was gone. It was several minutes before she reappeared with red eyes, but smiling lips. Then a long talk ensued, during which time the art of trunk-packing languished. It was renewed with vigor that evening and continued spasmodically for the next two days. In the campus houses the real packing dragged along in most instances until within two hours of the time when the trunks were to be called for. Then a wholesale scramble began, to make up for lost minutes. One of the most frequent and painful sights during those last two days was that of a wrathful expressman, glaring in impotent rage while an enterprising damsel opened her trunk on the front porch to take out or put in one or several of her various possessions which, until that moment, had been completely forgotten.

The night before leaving Overton the four girls paid a visit to Ruth Denton. The plucky little freshman had refused an invitation to spend the summer with Arline Thayer, but had accepted a position in Overton with a dress-maker. The last two weeks of her vacation she had promised to spend with Arline at the sea-shore.

Their last morning at Overton dawned fair and sunshiny. Grace, who had risen early, stood at the window, looking out at the glory of the sparkling June day.

The campus was a vast green velvet carpet and the pale green of the trees had not yet changed to that darker, dustier shade that belongs only to summer. Back among the trees Overton Hall rose gray and majestic. Grace's heart swelled with pride as she gazed at the stately old building surrounded by its silent, leafy guard. "Overton, my Alma Mater," she said softly. "May I be always worthy to be your child."

"What are you mooning over?" asked Anne, who had slipped into her kimono and joined Grace at the window.

"I'm rhapsodizing," smiled Grace, her eyes very bright. "I love Overton, don't you, Anne?"

Anne nodded. "I'm glad we didn't go to Wellesley or Vassar, or even Smith. I'd rather be here."

"So would I," sighed Grace. "Next to home there is no place like Overton. I almost wish I were coming back here next fall as a freshman."

"But it's against the law of progress to wish one's self back," smiled Anne, "and being a sophomore surely has its rainbow side."

"And it rests with us to find it," replied Grace softly, placing her hand on her friend's shoulder.

A little later, laden with bags and suit cases, the three Oakdale girls, accompanied by Elfreda, walked out of Wayne Hall as freshmen for the last time.

"When next we see this house it will be as sophomores," observed Elfreda. "I'm glad we are all going home on the same train. Do you remember the day I met you? I thought I owned the earth then. But I have found out that there are other people to consider besides myself. That is what being a freshman at Overton has taught me."

"That's a very good thing for all of us to remember," remarked Grace. "I'm going to try to practise it next year."

"You won't have to try very hard," returned Elfreda dryly. "How much time have we?"

"Almost an hour," replied Miriam, looking at her watch.

"Then we've time to stop at Vinton's for a farewell sundae. It's our last freshman treat. Come on, everybody," invited the stout girl.

"No more sundaes here until next fall," lamented Miriam, as they sat waiting for their order. "I shall miss Vinton's. There is nothing in Oakdale quite like it."

"And I shall miss you girls," declared Elfreda bluntly.

"Why don't you pay us a visit, then?" suggested Miriam. "We expect to be at home part of the time this summer."

"Perhaps I will," reflected Elfreda. "But you must write to me at any rate."

At the station groups of happy-faced girls stood waiting for the train.

"We are going to have plenty of company," observed Anne. "Do you remember how forlorn we felt when we were cast away on this station platform last fall? We won't feel so strange next September."

"We shall feel very important instead," laughed Miriam. "It will be our turn to escort bewildered freshmen to their boarding places."

"Yes, and we'll see that they don't stray, too," retorted Elfreda grimly.

"Or mistake the Register for the registrar," smiled Grace.

What befell Grace and her friends during their sophomore year is set forth fully in "Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College." How they lived up to their girlish ideals, finding the "rainbow side" of their sophomore year, is a story that no admirer of Grace Harlowe can afford to miss.

The End

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2 GRACE HARLOWE'S SOPHOMORE YEAR AT HIGH SCHOOL; Or, The Record of the Girl Chums in Work and Athletics.

3 GRACE HARLOWE'S JUNIOR YEAR AT HIGH SCHOOL; Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities.

4 GRACE HARLOWE'S SENIOR YEAR AT HIGH SCHOOL; Or, The Parting of the Ways.

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