CHAPTER XVII—POTENTIAL ENEMIES

The time had come! Disclosures promised real sensations, and Jane, quiet, composed, if a trifle flushed, waited rather uneasily in her place beside the retiring class president.

Just across the room, directly below the big desk, sat Marian Seaton, surrounded by a chattering crowd, taking advantage fully of the open session preceding the formal program.

Hazel Manners, the retiring president, looking very handsome and very charming, in her senior gown, with the cap’s tassel still to the left, however, made a happy and appropriate little speech in stepping down. She assured the girls of her willingness and wish to assist them, by advice with any matter her experience might make valuable to them. Hazel was one of the most popular girls in college, and it was undoubtedly the aspiration of every girl present to become like Hazel in her senior year.

Jane thanked her gracefully, and took the place at the desk. A few words of consecration, as Jane expressed it, opened the new period of class history.

This was the signal for all outsiders to withdraw; that is, all except the guards, these being two of the faculty, always on hand to keep order.

With characteristic directness Jane plunged into the most difficult part of the meeting.

Instantly everyone changed positions, that shifting move, usually marking a new angle in a sermon, and after that one could have heard a pin drop in the big room.

“To sustain my reputation and on that account only,” Jane began, “I am prompted to open a subject bound to be rather distressing to all. I refer to the question of my change of heart on the matter of taking this office. I had said positively I would not take it, and now here I am. In such a position I feel obliged to give a reason for my decision, to my splendid supporters.”

Applause interrupted Jane at this point. Not only did the girls want to know what happened on election night, but they had no hesitancy in publicly proclaiming their interest.

“When you began your meeting at which you hoped to elect me (Applause) I had fully intended to decline, but scarcely had I settled down to wait for your call than another came—it was an urgent call to go to Rutherford Inn, where, the message said, I would meet a relative, who was in distress! I have few relatives (Jane paused a moment) and that call sent me flying out to Rutherford!” Audible breathing marked the interval.

“But no sooner did I cross the threshold of the Inn than I was seized by—someone, or some two or three, and after a rather rough tussle I succeeded finally in getting free,” declared Jane. “Of course, I knew then it had been a trick to kidnap me!”

Cries of “shame,” “foul,” and hisses broke in on the monologue here, and Jane was obliged to rap loudly for order.

“Kidnapping is positively forbidden in class rules,” Minette managed to make heard, “and the perpetrators should be brought to trial.”

“Madam President! Madam President!” shouted a girl from the opposition. “I demand to be heard——”

“Miss Tracy has the floor,” conceded Jane.

“The rules were not violated. We did not kidnap a candidate. You had not yet accepted,” Miss Tracy shouted in verbal chunks.

“No such interpretation can be placed on rule five!” replied Jane calmly. “The secretary will please read rule five, by-laws.”

Theodora Guthrie, known as Ted, fat and flustered, stood up with the little typewritten pamphlet of rules and by-rules. She thumbed the pages to find the desired section, and after a preliminary cough and some squirming of her touseled black head, waited for a signal from Jane (Ted was a very careful secretary), then she proceeded:

“Section two, by-law five: candidates: No candidate shall be forcibly or strategetically detained from her caucus, at any time calculated to debar her from office. This shall apply to abductions, kidnapping, stunts, and tricks, hitherto allowed, but from this date and by this section now prohibited.”

“That seems to cover the case,” said the president.

“It does not,” shouted the spokesman for the opposition, Rose Bowers, without regard for voice, or its effect on her listeners. “If that were true with Jane Allen, it was equally true with Marian Seaton. She was kidnapped by the other side.”

“Nothing of the kind,” interrupted Dozia Dalton. “I was——”

“Silence! Order!” called the crier, Judith. “We shall be obliged to clear the room at the first sign of disorder. We have given our word to the guards.”

“Yes, and that order must be obeyed,” insisted the chair, namely, Jane Allen. “We shall be pleased to hear each in turn. Secretary, who has the floor?”

“The report of the secretary on the rules was just finished,” replied Ted Guthrie.

“And I ask the secretary to make a record that the rule covered the case of illegal abduction,” went on Jane. “I may add further that the trick of bringing my relations into the fight was, in my opinion, small and cowardly. At a call from home I would have gotten into an airship without question—any girl would.”

Applause and hisses mingled at this, until the latter caught up with the former, merging all the sounds into a conglomeration of noises such as only school girls know how to issue. Order at length restored, the meeting proceeded.

“Madam President! May I speak?” called Dozia Dalton.

“Miss Dalton has the floor,” replied Jane, before anyone else could cut in.

“I would like to tell what happened to me on election night,” Dozia began, and again the apprehensive silence, preluding something of deep interest, was so loud it could almost be heard.

“Proceed,” ordered Jane.

“When I took the password and grip from our contingent I found a stranger in our lines. I called her out and she ran!”

“That was——”

“No interruptions, please! Miss Dalton, go on.”

“When I followed I found the runaway was Miss Seaton!”

“Oh, shame!” came from more than one voice. “Spying! Sneaking!”

“I was not,” declared Miss Seaton hotly, now on her feet. “I had a perfect right to be in the Allen lines. Why shouldn’t I?”

“Miss Dalton has not finished,” Jane ordered with a very considerate nod to Marian who still stood, thus claiming the floor. She finally sat down but kept up a mumble for some moments.

“Yes, I found the leader, Marian Seaton, had stolen into our ranks, perhaps to give all our secrets to the opposition,” went on Dozia mercilessly, and plainly excited.

“And you tried to tie my feet!” swung in Marian.

“And you tried to gag me!” almost shouted Dozia.

“They both tumbled into the lake,” fired in a freshman who never should have spoken, but was too new to know of her disbarment.

A roar of honest laughter greeted this announcement. It was not difficult to picture Dozia trying to tie Marian’s feet, and Marian trying to gag Dozia, with the result of both girls rolling into the lake.

“And of course,” continued Dozia, “I could not get to the meeting at all. I had to stay in that cold, dark boat house——”

“What about me?” again interrupted the indignant Marian. “I was kept away from the hall, and I got a very bad cold——”

“Oh, too bad. Wasn’t that awful! Dear little thing!” and similar exclamations crowded out Marian’s attempt to gain sympathy.

“We have two different charges here, it seems to me,” replied the now judicial Jane. “One is, that a girl from the other side stole into the ranks of the right with the intention of betraying secrets, and——”

“No such thing, that isn’t so. We had a right there with our own class,” and a string of such outcries from Marian’s corner interrupted Jane.

“Not after sides had been taken and candidates chosen,” declared Jane indomitably.

“But why could I not vote—for your—candidate?” asked Marian in a quaking voice.

“Oh! oh! oh! oh! oh! As if you would!” came the call of the squad that should have saved its tones for cheering on other occasions.

“Well, I claim I had a perfect right to be in that line. And I am going to take the matter to the faculty,” persisted Marian rather feebly.

“You will have no occasion to,” snapped Jane, forgetting the dignity of her office. “I dislike, very much, this petty squabbling and I am determined, this year, to keep our reputation clear of it. If you want any redress other than to stand by the result of all our meetings you can ask for a special session, and we will thrash it out, if it takes all night, but I am against any one carrying tales to the faculty. It is a small and—childish thing to do, and we all claim to be at least old enough to be in college,” finished Jane.

“I move that we give three rousing cheers for our new president,” spoke up little Dorothy Blyden. This was responded to by so many “second its” the secretary was obliged to ask: “Who seconded that motion?” But meanwhile the three rousing cheers were echoing through the old study hall.

“And will someone move that we invite the opposition to come in on the committees?” generously asked Jane.

“No need to do that,” snapped Marian Seaton, “for until this matter is adjusted, I, as leader, shall oppose uniting with the Allens,” she almost sneered at the word Allens. “And I will ask for a special investigation, in spite of the opposite views having been expressed,” grandiloquently finished the vanquished leader.

“Any other business? If not, we stand adjourned,” called Jane resonantly, and the celebration which followed seemed to lack nothing from the fact that all the class was not represented in its numbers.

A feature of the occasion, as reported in “The Trumpet,” was the new president, Jane Allen, seated on a pyramid of cushions, crowned with a glorious feather duster, meanwhile dispensing sweet music from her home-made uke.