The three P. G’s. were beginning their dessert when the freshman invasion upon the dining room occurred. The belated twelve, seen without motor coats and hats, were an attractive-looking lot of girls, smartly dressed to a degree. Assigned seats at table by Miss Remson, who had conducted the newcomers to the dining room, they made considerable noise in the way of talk and laughter, calling back and forth to one another across the three tables which seated them, precisely as though they might have been the only occupants of the dining room.

“What’s overtaken their chaperon, I wonder?” Leslie surveyed the chattering group of diners with an enigmatic face.

“Where is Jewel Marie?” counter-questioned Vera.

“Maybe taxi-cabbing it back to Hamilton town,” Leslie said ruminatively. “I left her to learn her fate from Miss Remson. She wouldn’t take my word for it, that the Hall was full up to the last half room. I still feel sorry for her, somehow, thinking her over after having thankfully passed her on to Miss Remson.”

Neither Mrs. Weatherly, nor Miss Ogden made an appearance in the dining room before Leila, Vera and Leslie had finished dessert.

“Want to go for a ride with me?” Leslie invited as the three went upstairs, bound for their rooms.

“We can’t. We’ve been shamefully lazy since we came to the Hall. Neither of us are more than half unpacked. We made each other a solemn promise to do the job up brown before going bye-bye tonight,” Vera said with a sigh.

“And we are persons of our word. You know just how it will be if we keep putting off unpacking. We shall be flitting gaily about, here, and there, with our friends descending hungrily upon us, and our poor possessions still in a fine muddle. ‘Take time by the forelock.’ So we shall firmly grab the forelock, and give it a strenuous jerk,” Leila finished with energy.

“Go to it! Attaboy! Maybe I’ll see you later; maybe not.” Leslie left the industry-declared pair at the door of her room. The door closed, she went over to a wicker chair beside one of the windows, meditatively seating herself. She was wishing that the inquisitive little freshie she had brought to the Hall from the station had not proposed herself as a roommate to her.

“Nope I can’t see it that way,” she presently said aloud. “There’s no reason why I should. Miss Remson would back me up in that.” Her eyes roved about the luxuriously-appointed room, a gleam of pride in their dark depths. “Some room,” she nodded, with a sigh of satisfaction. She smiled a little, anticipating Marjorie’s friendly delight at the beauty of her “den.” “I’ll have a ‘den-warming’ next week for the Travelers,” she murmured.

Thought of Marjorie, and her smile vanished gradually, leaving her rugged features darkly overcast. Marjorie, to whom she owed the change of heart which had brought her nothing except happiness, Leslie regarded as a guiding spirit. Given the same circumstances, it had now occurred to her to wonder what Marjorie would do. She thereupon began arguing with herself that even Marjorie might easily feel as she felt about giving up the comfortable privacy of a “single” to a stranger, merely because the stranger in question had set her mind upon living at Wayland Hall. Yet, in her heart, she misdoubted the strength of her own argument.

“‘Remember the stranger within the gates,’” was the final pertinent fling of her mind at her as she left her room and went soberly down the stairs. She was tempted to stop in Miss Remson’s office, there to inquire what had become of her freshman “catch.” She went on out of the house instead, deciding to seek the manager on her return from the ride.

Leslie walked past the long line of cars, temporarily deserted by their owners, glad that she had parked her own roadster sufficiently near enough to the gates so as to escape the string of automobiles which extended within a few yards of it. Her knowledge of motor cars informed her that the cars she had passed were the latest models of the most expensive types. Her own roadster, exceptionally trim-lined, was no better than those of the freshman twelve.

She was soon speeding along Hamilton Pike, the fresh-blowing evening breeze in her face, the swift rush of the fleeing car filling her with contented exhilaration. Speeding through Hamilton Estates she glimpsed the lights of Travelers’ Rest and Hamilton Arms, happy in the knowledge that she would be welcome at either of the stately homes, should she choose to stop. Carden Hedge, back among the great trees, shadowed of outline in the growing dusk, would soon be twinkling with lights. Home was not far off. Her heart beat faster at the thought. Once she had hated the very name of Hamilton. Now it was everything to her. Lost in blissful musing, the half sympathetic concern she had felt for the odd little freshman faded temporarily from her mind. Nor did it return until she had driven past the college gates on her way to the garage.

At the garage she found the proprietor, a short, stout man with a troubled expression, grumbling roundly at the strange ways of “them young ladies from the college.”

“You should worry. Think of the business you’re doing,” Leslie humorously reminded. She had noted at first glance the cars of the twelve freshmen, arranged in a double row at the back of the roomy garage.

“I’d as lief them girls that was just here would take their cars some place else,” he asserted half belligerently. “They wasn’t like you, Miss Cairns, and Miss Harper and Miss Mason, and all them young ladies you go around with. I ain’t no time for fussers, people that treat me ’s if I was the dirt under their feet. I told one girl, straight out, ‘I ain’t goin’ to lose no sleep, you see, if you want to take your cars t’some other garage. There’s a couple more up the next street, south of the campus.’”

“Better luck tomorrow, Mr. Symes. Those girls were tired out tonight. They drove to Hamilton from New York.” Leslie felt impelled to put in a good word for the absent freshmen.

“It’ll take more’n a night’s rest to reform that snippy bunch,” was the proprietor’s displeased prediction, the probable truth of which Leslie could scarcely doubt.

Returned to the Hall she poked her head in at the half-open door of the manager’s office with a jesting, “No ‘Busy’ sign in sight. May I come in?”

“Of course you may.” Miss Remson looked up smilingly from the cloth-bound, ledger-like book over which she had been poring. Leslie recognized it at a glance as the manager’s “Room” book. In it she kept a register of the names of students living at the Hall, together with the numbers of the rooms and such other data as her position of manager demanded.

“I am sorry for that little Miss Ogden, Leslie,” she began in low tones as Leslie sat down in a chair near her. “She seems nothing but a child, in spite of her self-assertive manner. She has set her heart upon living at Wayland Hall, and I have nothing to offer her in the way of a room. I’ve permitted her to use Miss Finch’s and Miss Peters’ room over night. Neither of them will be here until next Wednesday. She has told me that she is an orphan, and must look out for herself. She has given me as a reference Miss Sarah Arthur, Dean of Warburton Preparatory School for girls. She informed me with a ridiculous air of childish pride that she had plenty of money, could afford to take the best room at the Hall, provided she could secure it. She is nineteen, and, it seems, has no legal guardian. She was very frank with me in some respects, and decidedly secretive in others. She is really something of an enigma. I could only advise her to go to the managers of the other campus houses tomorrow and try her luck with them. It is possible she might find a vacancy in one of the other campus houses. I understand the dormitory has been completely filled. She is set against it, however. She is determined to find board on the campus.”

“She applied to me on the way from the station for half of my room,” Leslie said with a touch of humor. “I told her ‘No.’ Afterward, I wondered if it were selfish in me to refuse her. Do you think it was?” Leslie regarded Miss Remson with sudden gloomy gravity.

“No, Leslie: I do not,” was Miss Remson’s prompt reply. “Since you do not desire a roommate, you are under no obligation of kindness to alter your own arrangements on Miss Ogden’s behalf. The Hamilton bulletin, which she admits she wrote for and received, plainly states that arrangements for rooms must be made beforehand, and by letter, by those desiring board at the campus houses. This young girl’s failure to be business-like in the matter hardly calls for such a sacrifice on your part as she has asked you to make.”

“She proudly informed us at the station that she expected to board at Hamilton Hall.” Leslie’s features lifted in a faint grin. “We had to explain matters to her. Then she said she’d made a stupid mistake, but she failed to enlighten us as to how she happened to make it. We found her more or less of a Chinese puzzle.”

“She said nothing to me of having made such a mistake.” Miss Remson showed half smiling surprise. “How came she to make it, I wonder?”

“Hard to say. Maybe she only gave the bulletin a once-over, then threw it away,” was Leslie’s half jesting theory.

“A plausible guess.” Miss Remson’s eyes twinkled. “Well, I have done the best I can for her, poor child. I hope she will be able to find campus accommodations. Did you see her again at dinner? I lost track of her after I had shown her to Room Fourteen. I had my hands full with that crowd of freshmen. I grew quite out of patience with Miss Norris. She ordered me about as though I were a maid. A very arrogant young woman. Her treatment of Mrs. Weatherly, the chaperon, was really insufferable.”

“What became of the chaperon? I didn’t see her at dinner,” Leslie asked with a touch of curiosity.

“She saw her charges safely into the Hall, then telephoned for a taxicab to take her to the station. She said she wished to catch the eighty forty-five train to New York. I asked her to remain to dinner, but she declined my invitation. She complained of having a bad headache. It was hardly to be wondered. From the way her charges treated her, I judged her to be a paid chaperon.”

“I think she was,” Leslie nodded her conviction of the surmise. “Professional chaperons are quite the go in New York among society hounds. Papa is too busy playing the market, mamma, auntie and big sister can’t leave the social whirl. Enter the long-suffering chaperon. All on account of daughter, who regards her as a tiresome necessity, and bosses her to a standstill. I know. I used to boss poor Mrs. Gaylord unmercifully. I’ll say Mrs. Weatherly must have been glad to see the station taxi at the door.”

“I hope you won’t mind my saying it, Leslie, but these New York freshmen seem to me perilously like the Sans,” the manager observed soberly. “Perhaps I formed the impression simply because they came to the Hall together in a seemingly chummy crowd. They may turn out to be of an entirely different sort. Miss Norris was the only one among them who annoyed me.”

“They reminded me of the Sans in some respects,” Leslie replied after a moment of reflective silence.

“Deliver me from any more such experiences as I had with the Sans.” The little manager raised her hands in a prohibitive gesture.

“I will. I promise faithfully to deliver you from this freshie aggregation, if they should start any trouble.” Leslie laughed, but there was a ring of resolution in her words. She rose with: “I must go upstairs and write to Peter the Great. He’ll be leaving London soon for home, and I’d like him to have one more letter from me before he sails. Don’t lose any sleep over the freshie invasion. Just leave it to Leila, Vera and me to keep the democracy plant growing at the Hall.”

“Thank you, my dear. I shan’t run out to meet calamity. Speaking of democracy reminds me of Marjorie. When did you last see her? I have been looking for a visit from her. I was so sorry I couldn’t attend Jerry’s wedding. I’ve not seen Marjorie since her return from Sanford. Tell her, when you see her again, to come over soon.”

“I’m going over to Travelers’ Rest tomorrow. I’ll bring her back with me, if I can. She and Miss Susanna have begun re-arranging Mr. Brooke’s library, and they are not yet through with the job. Good night, Miss Remson.” Leslie was now at the door.

“Good night, Leslie.” The manager nodded affectionately to the girl who had once been a sore trial to her.

Leslie went slowly up the stairs and down the hall toward her room, overtaken by a sudden sense of loneliness. She missed Doris Monroe. “Goldie,” as Leslie liked to call Doris, was always a good pal. Too, she missed the merry camaraderie of the Sanford group of girls now scattered to the four winds. Of them, Marjorie and Lucy still remained to her, but Lucy was staying with Lillian Wenderblatt for a few days before the opening of college, and Marjorie was still deep in love’s young dream. Vera and Leila had turned industrious for the evening. She wouldn’t “butt in” upon them. Leslie sighed faintly as her hand closed on the knob of her door. Remembering the letter she must write, she brightened, shook off her wistful mood and opened her door with an energetic swing.

She was about to close it when the sound of a sob broke upon the dark stillness of her room. Slightly startled, her fingers found the light switch at the left of the door casing. Came a flood of light—

“What?” Leslie’s favorite ejaculation fell from her lips. Inquiry, not displeasure, was in the glance she turned upon the small weeping figure, huddled on the floor beside one of the windows. Advancing toward it she said not ungently, “What’s the trouble?”