Due to the heavy rain storm on Thanksgiving Day, Leslie Cairns’ plans had gone considerably “aglee.” To parade the Dazzler, the white car she had loaned Doris, with Doris in it and clothed in expensive white furry finery, had been an impossibility. In consequence a very much disgruntled Leslie Cairns had telephoned Doris that “it was all off” and to meet her instead at the Colonial at two o’clock.

Before the two girls had reached their Thanksgiving dessert they had come perilously near quarreling. Leslie was in bad humor because of the inclement weather. She had the fierce hatred of being disappointed common to utterly selfish persons. The news that Doris would grace the hop on the Saturday evening following Thanksgiving Day and take charge at the door of the admission fee to the frolic had not pleased Leslie.

“You should have known better than to take that job, even though it does give you a chance to show off your looks,” she had upbraided Doris in a surly tone. “You say you can’t endure Bean and her crowd. Then—bing!—you whirl about and let them make a silly of you. Page is Bean’s partner and one of the celebrated Beanstalks. That didn’t hinder you from being as sweet as cream to Page and saying, ‘yes,’ in a hurry when she asked you to be a little pet donkey and collect the fees at the hop.”

“Leslie!” Doris had said in a low, furious voice, “you shall not talk to me in that tone, or call me a donkey. I won’t stand it. You are simply in a rage with everything and everybody today because things didn’t go to suit you. Besides, it was Miss Wenderblatt not Miss Page who asked me. You are rude and boorish.”

“I’ll say what I please. I’ve a perfect right to express an opinion.” Leslie had flung back with equal fury. “What you’ll have to do is to go and tell that smug Dutch prig, Wenderblatt, that you won’t be able to do the tax-collection stunt Saturday night. You have another engagement. You have, you know. One with me. We’ll go to the Lotus to dinner and wander into that select rube recreation palace known as the Hamilton Opera House.”

“I do not intend to tell Miss Wenderblatt any such thing,” Doris had retorted with belligerent independence. “Just remember she is Professor Wenderblatt’s daughter. This stunt I am to do at the hop will boom me a lot on the campus. I have a perfectly ducky dress to wear. Besides Miss Peyton and Miss Barton are going to try to start a beauty contest at the hop. There is no doubt but that I shall win it.”

“Your chances are fair since Bean’s taken her precious self to dear Sanford, the place where Beans and Beanstocks grow,” Leslie had sneered.

“You are so impossible today, Leslie. I sha’n’t lower myself by quarreling with you,” had been Doris’s ultimatum, delivered in offended haughtiness.

“You’d never win a prize for amiability. You’re the most selfish proposition, Doris Monroe, that I’ve ever met,” Leslie had retaliated.

“Get acquainted with yourself,” Doris had sarcastically advised.

The ending of their Thanksgiving dinner had been punctuated freely with other similar pleasantries. The two self-willed girls had left the Colonial hardly on speaking terms. It was nearing half past three o’clock when they had stepped outside the tea room. The rain having stopped Doris had sulkily announced her intention to walk to Wayland Hall instead of allowing Leslie to run her there in the car. Leslie had snapped back: “Don’t care what you do. You’re too selfish to consider me. You know I counted on you to help me amuse myself tonight in that dead dump of a town. Go to the dance. I hope you have a punk evening.”

“In going to the hop I’m only doing what you asked me to do quite a while ago. You told me then that you wanted me to make myself popular on the campus. Well; this is the way to do it. Think it over. You’ll find I’m right,” had been Doris’s parting shot as she separated from her ill-humored companion.

Determining to teach Doris a lesson, Leslie let the rest of the week go by without holding any communication with the sophomore. She had spent a lonely Thanksgiving evening and blamed Doris heavily because of it. She was also dreadfully miffed at the partial failure of her contemptible plot against the dormitory girls’ welfare. When she had awakened on Thanksgiving morning, to see violently weeping skies that promised an all-day deluge, she had smiled contentedly. She had effectually blocked Bean’s plans for the day. And for a good many days to come! Such was her belief, when, after having posted herself in the palm-screened window of the florist’s shop to see that Sabani kept his word and ran no busses, she had frowningly witnessed the arrival of Phil, Barbara and Robin on the scene and what followed as a result of their timely arrival.

When Leslie had had the galling experience of seeing the Thanksgiving part of her plot far on the way to failure she had flung out of the florist’s in a rage, jumped into her car and set off for the campus without any definite reason whatever for going there. The main point had been to keep “rag, tag and bob-tail,” as she had ironically named the off-campus girls, from getting to the “free feed” at the “dago’s hash house.” She had failed to do this. The “beggars” had managed to reach Baretti’s in spite of the rain. They would return to town in the same way that they had come. Leslie felt particularly spiteful toward Robin Page. So very spiteful that she indulged her rancor in “splashing” Phil and Robin when the opportunity chanced to offer itself.

On the Sunday afternoon following Thanksgiving while the Travelers, old and new, had gathered in Marjorie’s room in serious confab over the momentous happenings of the Thanksgiving holiday, Leslie Cairns had sat lazily stretched in an easy chair in her hotel room, eyes half closed, her dark mind wholly concentrated on an idea which had just introduced itself to her. It was an evil inspiration, born of a group of headlines she had glanced at in one of the Sunday papers.

“I wonder why I never thought of that before,” she had said half aloud as she dipped a hand into a box of nut chocolates on the table beside her and thoughtfully nibbled a cream nut. “I wish I dared ask him to help me. He could do what I want done as quickly as a wink. He couldn’t kick, either, for he has handled more than one such stunt. I think I’ll write him. ‘Nothing venture nothing have.’ I’ll wait a few days until I see how the bus scheme works out, then I’ll write. I’ve never written him since he—since he—.” Leslie’s voice had faltered. She had sat staring into the ruddy embers of the open fire looking less like a malicious mischief-maker and more like a sorrowful young woman than ever before. There was only one person in the world who had ever commanded Leslie’s respect and tenderness. That one was her father.