Lucile Merrifield, Betty’s stately sophomore cousin, and Polly Eastman, Lucile’s roommate and dearest friend, sat on Madeline Ayres’s bed and munched Madeline’s sweet chocolate complacently.

“Wish I had cousins in Paris that would send me ‘eats’ as good as this,” sighed Polly.

“Isn’t it just too delicious!” agreed Lucile. “I say, Madeline, I’m on the sophomore reception committee and there aren’t half enough sophomores to go round among the freshmen. Won’t you take somebody?”

“I? Hardly.” Madeline shrugged her shoulders disdainfully. “Don’t you know, child, that I detest girl-dances—any dances for that matter. Ask me to do something amusing.”

“You ought to want to do something useful,” said Polly reproachfully. “Think of all those poor little friendless freshmen!”

“What kind of a class is it this year?” inquired Madeline, lazily, breaking up more chocolate. “Any fun?”

“The chief thing I’ve noticed about them,” said Lucile, “is that they’re so horribly numerous.”

“Fresh?” asked Madeline.

“Yes, indeed,” declared Polly emphatically, “dreadfully fresh. But somehow,—I’m on the grind committee, you know,—and they don’t do anything funny. They just do quantities and quantities of stupid, commonplace things, like mistaking the young faculty for freshmen and expecting Miss Raymond to help them look up their English references. I just wish they’d think of something original,” ended Polly dolefully.

“Why don’t you make up something?” asked Madeline.

Polly stared. “Oh, I don’t think that would do at all. The grinds are supposed to be true, aren’t they? They’d be sure to find out and then they’d always dislike us.” Polly smiled luminously. “I’ve got a good many freshmen friends,” she explained.

“Which means violet-bestowing crushes, I suppose,” said Madeline severely. “You shouldn’t encourage that sort of thing, Polly. You’re too young.”

“I’m not a bit younger than Lucile,” Polly defended herself, “and they all worship her.” Polly giggled. “Only instead of violets, they send her Gibson girls, with touching notes about her looking like one.”

“Come now,” said Lucile calmly. “That’s quite enough. Let Madeline tell us how to get some good grinds.”

Madeline considered, frowning. “Why if you won’t make up,” she said at last, “the only thing to do is to lay traps for them. Or no—I’ll tell you what—let’s give an initiation party.”

“A what?” chorused her guests.

“Oh, you know—hazing, the men would call it; only of course we’ll have nice little amusing stunts that couldn’t frighten a fly. Is anything doing to-night?”

“In the house, you mean?” asked Lucile. “Not a thing. But if you want our room——”

“Of course we do,” interposed Madeline calmly. “It’s the only decent-sized one in the house. Go and straighten it up, and let this be a lesson to you to keep it in order hereafter. Polly, you invite the freshmen for nine o’clock. I’ll get some more sophomores and seniors, and some costumes. Come back here to dress in half an hour.”

“Goodness,” said the stately Lucile, slipping out of her nest of pillows. “How you do rush things through, Madeline.”

Madeline smiled reminiscently. “I suppose I do,” she admitted. “Ever since I can remember, I’ve looked upon life as a big impromptu stunt. I got ready for a year abroad once in half an hour, and I gave the American ambassador to Italy what he said was the nicest party he’d ever been to on three hours’ notice, one night when mother was ill and father went off sketching and forgot to come in until it was time to dress. Oh, it’s just practice,” said Madeline easily,—“practice and being of a naturally hopeful disposition. Run along now.”

“I thought I’d better not tell them,” Madeline confided to the genius of her room, when the sophomores were safely out of earshot, “that I haven’t the faintest notion what to do with those freshmen after we get them there. Being experienced, I know that something will turn up; but they, being only sophomores, might worry. Now what the mischief”—Madeline pulled out drawer after drawer of her chiffonier—“can I have done with those masks?”

The masks turned up, after the Belden House “Merry Hearts” had searched wildly through all their possessions for them, over at the Westcott in Babbie Hildreth’s chafing dish, where she had piled them neatly for safe-keeping the June before.

“Madeline said for you each to bring a sheet,” explained Helen Adams, who had been deputed to summon the B’s and Katherine. “They’re to dress up in, I guess. She said we couldn’t lend you the other ones of ours, because they might get dirty trailing around the floors, and we must have at least one apiece left for our beds.”

The B’s joined rapturously in the preparations for Madeline’s mysterious party. Katherine could not be found, and Rachel and Eleanor were both engaged for the evening; but that was no matter, Madeline said. It ought to be mostly a Belden House affair, but a few outsiders would help mystify the freshmen.

Promptly at quarter to nine Polly, Lucile, and the rest of the Belden House contingent arrived, each bringing her sheet with her, and presently Madeline’s room swarmed with hooded, ghostly figures.

“Is that you, Polly?” whispered Lucile to somebody standing near her.

“No, it’s not,” squeaked the figure, from behind its little black mask.

“Why, we shan’t even know each other, after we get mixed up a little,” giggled somebody else, as the procession lined up for a hasty dash through the halls.

“Now, don’t forget that you’ve all got to help think up things for them to do,” warned Madeline, “especially you sophomores.”

“And don’t forget to remember the things for grinds,” added Polly Eastman lucidly. “That’s what the party is for.”

“If the freshmen find out that you had to get us to help you, you’ll never hear the last of it,” jeered Babe.

“Now Babe, we’re their natural allies,” protested Babbie. “Of course we always help them.”

“Sh!” called a scout, sticking her head into the room. “Coast’s clear. Make a rush for it.”

The last ghost had just gotten safely into the room, when two freshmen, timid but much flattered by Polly’s cordial invitation, knocked on the door.

“Come in,” called Polly in her natural voice, and once unsuspectingly inside, they were pounced upon by the army of ghosts, and escorted to seats as far as possible from the door. The other guests luckily arrived in a body headed by Georgia Ames, who, having come into the house only the day before, was already an important personage in the eyes of her classmates. What girl wouldn’t be who called Betty Wales by her first name, and wasn’t one bit afraid to “talk back” to the clever Miss Ayres?

Georgia’s attitude of amused tolerance therefore set the tone for the freshmen’s behavior. “Don’t you see that it’s some sophomore joke?” she demanded. “Might as well let the poor creatures get as much fun out of us as they can, and then perhaps they’ll give us something good to eat by and by.”

“We’ll give you something right away,” squeaked a ghost. “Georgia Ames and Miss Ashton, stand forth. Now kneel down, shut your eyes and open your mouths.”

“Don’t do it. It will be some horrid, peppery mess,” advised a sour-tempered freshman named Butts.

But Georgia and her companion stood bravely forth, to be rewarded by two delicious mouthfuls of Madeline’s French chocolate. After this pleasant surprise, the freshmen, all but Miss Butts and one or two more, grew more cheerful and began to enter into the spirit of the occasion.

“Josephine Boyd, you are elected to scramble like an egg,” announced a tall ghost.

Josephine’s performance was so realistic that it evoked peals of laughter from ghosts and freshmen alike.

“We’ll recommend you for a part in the next menagerie that the house or the college has,” said the tall ghost, who seemed to be mistress of ceremonies. “The Dutton twins are now commanded to push matches across the floor with their noses. You’ll find the matches on the table by the window. Somebody tie their hands behind them. Now start at the door and go straight across to Georgia Ames’s chair. The one that wins the race must send Polly some flowers,” added the tall ghost maliciously as the twins, blushing violently at this barefaced reference to their rivalry for Polly’s affections, took their matches, and at Georgia’s signaled “One, two, three, go!” began their race.

Pushing a match across a slippery floor with one’s nose looked so easy and proved so difficult that both ghosts and freshmen, as they cheered on the eager contestants, longed to take part in the enticing sport. The fluffy-haired twin kept well ahead of her straight-haired sister, until, when her match was barely a foot from Georgia’s chair it caught in a crack and broke in two.

“Oh, dear!” sighed the fluffy-haired twin forlornly, trying to single out her divinity from among the sheeted ghosts.

Her despair was too much for soft-hearted Polly. “Never mind,” she said kindly “The race is hereby called off.”

“And we can both send you flowers, can’t we?” demanded the straight-haired twin, jumping up, flushed and panting from her exertions.

Every one waited eagerly to hear what the next stunt would be.

“This is for you, Miss Butts,” announced the tall ghost, after a whispered colloquy with her companions, “and as you don’t seem very happy to-night we’ve made it easy. Tell the name of your most particular crush. Now don’t pretend you haven’t any.”

“I won’t tell,” muttered Miss Butts sullenly.

“Then you’ll have to make up Lucile Merrifield’s bed for two weeks as a penalty for disobeying our decrees. Now all the rest of you may tell your crushes’ names. I will explain, as some of you look a little dazed about it, that your crush is the person you most deeply adore.”

Some of the freshmen meekly accepted the penalty rather than divulge their secret affections, one declared that she hadn’t a crush, one, remembering the legend of Georgia Ames, made up a sophomore’s name and after she had been safely “passed” exulted over the simplicity of her victims. A few, including Georgia, calmly confessed their divinities’ names and gloated over the effect their announcements had upon some of the ghosts.

When this entertainment was exhausted, the ghosts held another conference. “Carline Dodge, get under the bed and develop like a film,” decreed the leader finally.

“Oh, not under mine,” cried a tall, impressive-looking ghost plaintively. “My botany and zoÖlogy specimens are under it. She’d be sure to upset the jars.”

“There!” said Georgia Ames complacently. “That makes six of you that we know. Polly Eastman and now Lucile have given themselves away. Babbie Hildreth crumpled all up when Carline Dodge called out her crush’s name. If she’s here, the other two that they call the B’s are, and Madeline Ayres is directing the job. It’s easy enough to guess who the rest of you are, so why not take off those hot things and be sociable?”

“Go on, Carline Dodge,” ordered the tall ghost imperturbably.

“But I don’t get the idea of the action,” objected the serious-faced freshman, and looked amazed that everybody should laugh so uproariously.

“That’s so funny that we’ll let you off,” said Madeline, when the mirth had subsided. “I foresee that you’ve invented a very useful phrase.”

And sure enough Carline’s reply was speedily incorporated into Harding’s special vocabulary, and its author found herself unwittingly famous.

“Now,” said Madeline cheerfully, “you may all chase smiles around the room for a while, and when I say ‘wipe,’ you are to wipe them off on a crack in the floor. Then we’ll have a speech from one of you and you will be dismissed.”

Most of the freshmen entered gaily into the “action” of chasing smiles, and caught a great many on their own and each other’s faces. That frolic ended, Madeline called upon a quiet little girl who had hardly been seen to open her mouth since she reached Harding, to make a speech. To every one’s surprise she rose demurely, without a word of objection or the least appearance of embarrassment, and delivered an original monologue supposed to be spoken by a freshman newly arrived and airing her impressions of the college. It hit everybody with its absurd humor, which no one enjoyed better, apparently, than the quiet little freshman herself.

“Encore! Encore! Give us another!” shouted the freshmen when she had finished; but their quiet little classmate only shook her head, and assuming once more the mincing, confidential tone she had been using in the monologue, remarked: “Do you know, there are some girls in our class that will forget their heads before long. Why, when they’re being hazed, they forget it and think they’re at a real party.”

Everybody laughed again, and the tall ghost made the little freshman blush violently by saying, “You’ll get a part in the house play, my child, and if you can write that monologue down I’ll send an ‘Argus’ editor around after it.”

The little freshman, whose name was Ruth Howard, pinched herself softly, when no one was looking, to make sure that she was awake. Like Mother Hubbard she felt a little doubtful of her identity, as she noticed the admiring glances cast upon her by even the haughtiest of the freshmen. She had been rather lonely during these first weeks, and it was very pleasant now to find that the things she could do were going to make a place for her in this big, busy college world.

“A hazing party isn’t a half-bad idea, is it?” said Georgia Ames, reflectively. “It’s got us all acquainted a lot faster than anything else would, I guess,—even if there wasn’t any food.”

“Considering that we’ve done everything else, you children might find the food——” began one of the ghosts, but a bell in the corridor interrupted her.

“Is that the twenty-minutes-to or the ten o’clock?” asked another ghost anxiously.

“Ten,” said a freshman. “The other rang while we were chasing smiles.”

“Then we’re locked out,” cried a small ghost tragically, and three sheeted figures rushed down the hall, tripping over their flowing robes and struggling with their masks as they ran.

“My light is on. Will they report it?” asked little Ruth Howard shyly of Georgia Ames.

“Mine will be reported all right before I’ve done with it,” declared a ghost gloomily. “I’ve got to study for a physics review. I oughtn’t to have come near this festive function.”

“Same here.”

“Come on, Carline. Don’t you know the action of going home?”

“Jolly fun though, wasn’t it?”

The initiation party dissolved noisily down the dusky corridors.

Next day the college rang with the report that hazing was now practiced at Harding. Strange accounts of the Belden House party were passed from group to group of excited freshmen who declared that they were “just scared to death” of the sophomores and wouldn’t for the world be out alone after dark, and of amused upper-classmen who allowed for exaggerations and considered the whole episode in the light of a good joke. But a particularly susceptible Burton House freshman, who sat at Miss Stuart’s table and burned to make a favorable impression upon that august lady, repeated the story to her at luncheon. Miss Stuart received it in silence, wondered what the truth of it was, and asked some of her friends about it that afternoon at a faculty meeting. Of course some of the wrong people heard about it and took it up officially, as a matter calculated to ruin the spirit of the college. The result was that Miss Ferris and Dr. Hinsdale were furnished with the names of some of the offenders and requested to interview them on the subject of their misdemeanors. Miss Ferris unerringly selected Madeline Ayres as the ring-leader of the affair and Betty Wales as the best person to make an appeal to, if any appeal was needed, and set an hour for them to come and see her.

Madeline, who never looked at bulletin-boards, did not get her note of summons, and Betty, who had taken hers as a friendly invitation to have tea with her friend, went over to the Hilton House alone and in the highest spirits. But Miss Ferris was not serving tea, and Dr. Hinsdale showed no intention of leaving them in peace to indulge in one of those long and delightful talks that Betty had so anticipated. Indeed it was he, with his coldest expression and his dryest tone, who introduced the subject of the initiation party and demanded to know why Madeline Ayres had neglected Miss Ferris’s summons. Betty had no trouble in explaining that to everybody’s satisfaction, but she longed desperately for Madeline’s support, as she listened to Dr. Hinsdale’s stern arraignment of the innocent little gathering.

“It’s not lady-like,” he asserted. “It’s aping the men. Hazing is a discredited practice anyhow. All decent colleges are dropping it. We certainly don’t want it here, where the aim of the faculty has always been to encourage the friendliest relations between classes. The members of the entering class always find the college life difficult at first. It’s quite unnecessary to add to their troubles.”

Betty listened with growing horror. What dreadful thing had she unwittingly been a party to? And yet, after all, could it have been so very dreadful? If Dr. Hinsdale had been there, would he have felt this way about it? A smile wavered on Betty’s lips at this thought. She looked at Miss Ferris, who smiled back at her.

“Say it, Betty,” encouraged Miss Ferris, and Betty began, explaining how Madeline had happened to think of the hazing, relating the absurdities that she and the rest had devised, dwelling on Ruth Howard’s clever impersonation and Josephine Boyd’s effective egg-scrambling. Gradually Dr. Hinsdale’s expression softened, and when she repeated Carline Dodge’s absurd retort, he laughed like a boy.

“Do you think it was so very dreadful?” Betty inquired anxiously, whereupon her judges exchanged glances and laughed again.

“There’s another thing,” Betty began timidly after a moment. “I don’t know as I should ever have thought of it myself, but it did certainly work that way.” And Betty explained Georgia Ames’s idea of the hazing-party as a promoter of good-fellowship. “It’s awfully hard to get acquainted with freshmen, you see,” she went on. “We have our own friends and we are all busy with our own affairs. But since that night we’ve been just as friendly. That one evening took the place of lots of calls and formal parties. We know now what the different ones can do. Of course,” Betty admitted truthfully, “it didn’t help Miss Butts any, unless it showed her that at Harding you’ve got to do your part, if you want a good time. She’s certainly been a little more agreeable since. But Ruth Howard now—why it would have been ages—oh, I mean months,” amended Betty blushingly, “before we should have known about her, unless Madeline had called for that speech.”

Again the judges exchanged amused glances, and Dr. Hinsdale cleared his throat. “Well, Miss Wales,” he said, “you’ve made your point, I think. You’ve found the legitimate purpose for a legitimate and distinctly feminine kind of hazing. And now, if Miss Ferris will excuse me, I have an engagement at my rooms.”

So Betty had her talk and her tea, after all, and went away loving Miss Ferris harder than ever. For Miss Ferris, by the mysterious process that brought all college news to her ken, had heard about Eleanor Watson and the Champion Blunderbuss, and she was looking out for Eleanor, who, she was sure from a number of little things she had noticed and pieced together, was now quite capable of looking out for herself. This confirmation of her own theory encouraged Betty vastly, and she was able to feel a little more charitable toward the Champion, who, as Miss Ferris had pointed out, was really the one most to be pitied.