A summons to visit an invitation house!

And on such a gratifying mission! Peggy smiled as she slipped into her rose-colored taffeta, and Katherine, watching her with pride, decided that “the poet’s look” had come back.

“Well, good luck, room-mate,” she called as Peggy went out the door, and she received one radiant glance in answer from the departing young bard.

The pleasantly warm tone of the rose-colored taffeta buoyed up the new genius’ spirit all across the campus until she came out into Green Street and beheld the imposing reality of Macefield House directly before her.

She had the fleeting and snobbish wish that all the girls of her class could see her turning thus assuredly up the walk to the famous senior house. To be sure, she couldn’t help casting a cold look of disapproval at the porch—it was the messiest porch she had seen anywhere in Hampton, but she supposed the celebrity inhabitants of Macefield were all too busy with their dinners and dances and social duties generally to notice how careless and extremely—impromptu—the approach to their home appeared.

The campus house porches all had chairs out on them and comfortable magazine tables—there were still a lot of hot fall days to look forward to—but on the Macefield House porch there was nothing. And somebody had carelessly left an old ladder lying down right in front of the steps! Peggy had a very hard time scrambling over it. Perhaps it was just as well the other Freshman girls weren’t there to see her after all. She must admit there was considerable loss of dignity involved in scrambling over an old paint-specked ladder that was so completely in her way.

Her face was flushed to the color of her dress when she finally climbed the steps. Even in her confusion she noticed that the porch floor looked strangely new and that it seemed to have a tendency to cling a little and impede her footsteps.

“It’s probably because I’m getting scared that I imagine my feet stick to the boards,” she mused uncomfortably. “I don’t know how a person should act at an invitation house. Whether you’re supposed to walk right in or——”

That part of her problem was settled immediately, for she found the door locked. Gathering what self-confidence she could, she pressed the bell.

Uneasily she shifted from one to the other of the sticking feet. No one came. She knew it was rude to ring twice, but she felt she would never have the heart to come again if she didn’t see the great editor of the Monthly now and get everything arranged. So she pressed a shaking finger nervously against the bell, and held it so until she heard a rustling inside the house. The door opened—just a crack—and a surprised head poked itself into view. Peggy had a jumbled and confused impression all at once. She was aware of the speechless amazement in the eyes, also that the face was not that of a girl at all, but belonged to a rather severe looking and decidedly middle-aged woman.

With a little jump of her heart she realized that she was meeting the gaze of the matron of Macefield House. Campus house matrons were regarded in the light either of common enemies or motherly souls, whose hearts responded to all college-girls’ troubles. But what might the matron of an invitation house be like? Peggy thought she must be something incomparably greater.

“Is Miss Armandale in?” she asked weakly.

“She may be, but she’d be up in her room,” answered the head ungraciously enough, while its owner apparently did not intend to admit the enemy within the fortifications, since no move was made to open the door wider.

“Well——” murmured Peggy, with a sudden realization that she was standing in wet paint,—“shall I—go up—and—and find out?”

“By the back door if you wish,” said the head witheringly. “If you came in this way, you’d Track in the Paint.”

Peggy’s heart leaped. A crimson tide went over her. She shut her eyes before the accusing and indignant gaze of the matron.

So that was what the ladder had been for, and any stupid but she would have known! With dread she looked back along the porch the way she had come and there, sure enough, was a procession of marring footprints in the new grey of the flooring!

She had climbed with great difficulty over the barrier that had been deliberately placed there to prevent such a thing.

And Ditto and the other girls of the house would have to have the porch all done over on account of a silly freshman. For the girls in the invitation houses carried their own expenses, leasing their houses and then conducting them like any tenants.

“I will go ’round the back way, then,” she gasped to the glowering matron. Her one thought was to escape the baneful glare of those eyes.

Her feet stuck firmly when she tried to go and as she was lifting them up with a generous accompaniment of Macefield House paint, the door banged behind her and she was left to make her humiliating way back as she had come, with the ladder to be surmounted again, and her eyes so full of tears of embarrassment that she could hardly see to walk.

She had no intention of going around the back way. Her only desire was to get home.

She must face again the guns of the enemy—for that wonderful poem mustn’t be lost to the Monthly—but she would make her charge after she had rested once more in the trenches of Suite 22, and had equipped her army of one with a new uniform.

For that was the plan that was already taking shape in her mind. She would return in disguise. She had sallied forth in her brightest and best. Well, she would go back as meek as a freshman should, in plain clothes—and who would know she was the young stupid who had scaled the step-ladder and marred the new grey paint of the invitation house?

“Well,” said Katherine, yawning up at her lazily from the couch, when she was once more within the home walls, “how did it go, room-mate?”

“How did what go?” inquired Peggy, kicking off her pumps hastily and sliding them out of sight, under the dressing table.

“Why, the interview with the great Ditto. You make me tired, Peggy—acting just as though you were bored by the best thing that’s happened to either of us yet. And really and truly, you’re just as glad as I am for you. Admit that you are.”

“Not—so wildly,” Peggy made a little grimace, as she flung the rose-colored silk dress into a corner. A moment later her muffled voice came from the bed room, where she was fumbling among her dresses. “I never can find anything I want.”

“Are you looking for your kimono? Going to rest a while, before we get dressed for dinner? Your kimono’s under the bed, Peggy; I saw the blue edge sticking out. Hurry back in here and tell me the news; I’m consumed with curiosity.”

Peggy came back into the study, wearing a blue serge skirt, her head lost to view in a middy blouse in the process of being slipped on. She struggled to the top at last and peered out with pleading eyes.

“Will you go over there with me, Katherine?” she said in a tone she strove to make indifferent.

“Go over there with you? Haven’t you been?”

“I want your company,” Peggy stammered with difficulty, unable to tell the fib that would have been a direct answer to her room-mate’s question.

“Well,” said Katherine, getting up slowly and stretching her arms, “I should say I will.”

And so Peggy, her army reinforced, began her march on Macefield House a second time.

If Katherine was surprised at her simplified costume, she made no comment, but held her arm chummily all the way over, and Peggy felt that victory was in sight.

“Look, they’ve painted their porch,” she said in assumed surprise, when they came in sight of the fateful ladder.

“So they have,” cried Katherine, “and we can’t get up that way.”

And then she began to titter.

“What’s the matter?” demanded Peggy quickly.

“Somebody—somebody—did go up anyway,” Katherine laughed delightedly. “There are footprints all over it! Oh, mustn’t the Macefield House girls be furious?”

Peggy was silent.

“Don’t you think that’s funny?” her room-mate insisted, still laughing.

“Perfectly simple,” returned Peggy. “Some people haven’t a bit of sense. I imagine it was some—some delivery boy, don’t you?”

“More likely a freshman. Delivery boy with those little feet? How ridiculous—as if he’d wear high heels!”

“Katherine, you’re a regular Sherlock Holmes,” Peggy protested.

“I believe I could ferret out the criminal,” persisted Katherine. “I’ve thought of a good clue.”

“How would you do it?” Peggy’s voice was little more than a whisper.

“Look on the bottoms of all the freshmen’s shoes for paint,” announced her friend.

“Katherine!”

“Yes?”

“Last year you and I were detectives and we found out things together, which did people good. But do you think—after our partnership then, it is right for you to go—looking things up all by yourself without me, now?”

“How perfectly silly of you,” laughed Katherine; “of course you’d have to help. You could look at the shoes of the girls on one side of the campus, and I’d take our side. Anyway it’s all in fun. I suppose we’d better go around the back way, don’t you think so?”

Peggy thought so, decidedly. In a few moments they were climbing the dark back stairs to the room of the great Monthly editor on the second floor.

The door of Number 11 stood part way open and showed a delightful and luxurious confusion within. Peggy and Katherine got a glimpse of tall red roses, Oriental couch cover, and a profusion of pillows, old bronze bric-a-brac, green leather banners, scattered books and manuscripts, with the inevitable Mona Lisa enigmatically smiling down at it all from the opposite wall of the room.

Peggy and Katherine, after a light knock, advanced into the room and seated themselves on the inviting couch.

“A book-case and a dictionary,” murmured Peggy. “Such funny things to have at college.”

“But there’s a tea table, too,” reminded Katherine. “In fact, I never saw a room that had such a varied assortment of things—and all in harmony.”

“I like that leather peacock screen,” Peggy went on.

“Oh, I love it all—but don’t you think it’s the least bit oppressive? That incense smell lulls my senses to sleep. I don’t see how Ditto can be the fresh, breezy sort she is,—perfectly matter-of-fact and everydayish,—and live in an opium den of a room like this.”

“It isn’t just what her character would lead you to expect,” admitted Peggy.

Just then, a girl drifting aimlessly by in the hall paused at the door, and glanced in curiously at the two freshmen sitting so stiffly, toes out, hands clasped in their laps, awaiting the all-important Ditto.

“Dit know you’re here?” she asked, with friendly brevity.

Both girls shook their heads.

“I’ll get her,” said the other, disappearing, and an instant later they heard, up and down the hall, the loud cry, “Dit-to! Di-i-t Armandale! Somebody to see you!”

From the third floor came a scrambling noise, then the sound of light feet tapping on the stairs.

“Well, you really did come, you children,” gasped the owner of the room, coming in flushed from her hasty descent and blowing a wavy strand of golden hair from her face.

She plumped down between them on the couch and looked from one to the other with an air of delighted proprietorship.

“And you’re beginning just right, too, as I knew you would. Thirteen is the open road to glory, here, and you certainly were courageous, handing in a poem first thing.”

Her hand reached for Peggy’s knee. “How do you like everything, now you’re here, and why haven’t you been over before?”

“We didn’t think you’d remember us,” said Peggy.

“There was so much water that day you saw us, at the picnic last year——”

Ditto threw back her head and laughed. “Yes, there was plenty of that,” she agreed. “I never saw anything so moist as you were. And you—Katherine Foster—yes, I remember your names, too,—I chose you for a friend of mine that day. And I’m positively insulted that neither of you accepted my invitation to come to see me, until I dragged you here on business. Your poem, Peggy,—here it is, I kept it out for you——”

She had risen and lifted the blue-folded paper from a pile of thick stories and “heavies” on the table. And Peggy, watching the nonchalant way she handled the sacred Monthly material, felt her admiration increasing.

“Now,” said Ditto, bending over the page with complete concentration, “let’s see just what we want to do—I thought that possibly——”

And her sturdy little blue pencil crept mercilessly through word after word, while Peggy felt the blood pounding into her face and tried not to mind the kindly criticism of her effort.

Peggy was consulted tactfully about each change and asked for suggestions, until, under the skilful guidance of the more experienced writer, the fledgling really developed a verse that would not mar the Monthly pages. Then Ditto gave her a pen and some paper to write it all out again, in the copy that was actually to go to the printer.

Katherine talked to Ditto about her room-mate, while the latter was carefully rewriting her masterpiece.

“You know you’ve got good material for freshman president, there,” said Ditto with something of senior condescension. “An Andrews girl usually has it, and she’s the right type. She isn’t very self-conscious, she’s lots of fun and ready for anything. You can tell that. Why don’t you put her up? Your elections are this week, aren’t they? Honestly, I’ve heard of nothing but Peggy Parsons, Peggy Parsons, from all the freshmen protÉgÉes of the girls in this house.”

Katherine caught fire. “It would be great,” she said. “Think of rooming with the class president. Oh, I did a clever thing in bringing her to Hampton. I can shine in reflected glory through the whole four years.”

“You do it,” urged Ditto, “get her elected, I mean. I’ll help.”

She nodded carelessly toward the huge vase of roses. “I have quite a few little freshmen friends whom I’ll—tell about Peggy.”

When Peggy handed back the poem with a rueful smile at its many changes, Katherine got up from the couch and took her room-mate’s arm. It would never do to linger, though it was hard to leave the great Presence.

Peggy’s look as they left the house held simply pleasure and gratitude, but Katherine’s brimmed with meaning.

“You don’t know what I know,” she hummed.

“Then why not tell me?” laughed Peggy.

“I know who’s going to be freshman president!”

“Who?”

“Shan’t tell you—but I suppose you’ll find out when it happens.”

“Well,” retorted Peggy unexpectedly, “I know already.”

“What’s—her—name?” gasped Katherine.

“Gloria Hazeltine,” answered Peggy.

Katherine stopped and caught her shoulders. Facing her, she studied her calm expression of certainty.

“Why, Peggy,” she couldn’t help saying, “it was going to be _you_, and I was going to start this very day to campaign for you.”

“Me!” scoffed Peggy. “I couldn’t even look like a president. The freshman president stands for the whole class, and the sophs and juniors and seniors are apt to judge us a good deal by the one we choose for that office. They’d think what flyaways the freshmen are if you had any one like me. Or rather they’d never notice us at all, but would sever diplomatic relations. But Gloria now——”

The vision of the tall, radiant young Westerner, with her red-gold hair and her wide, laughing, blue eyes—the way she talked, the way she wore her clothes, her charm and sincerity of manner—rose vividly in Katherine’s mind. She compared this vision with the actual striking little figure of her room-mate, with the flickering dimples showing and disappearing and the warm light that always lay in the depths of her black eyes.

“I—don’t—know,” she said honestly. “Gloria is wonderful—but you, Peggy, you’re so dear.”

“I’ll give all I have to the class,” cried Peggy, opening her arms, as if to embrace every girl of the four hundred and fifty freshmen, “but I don’t have to be set up in the post of honor to do it.”

“But Andrews usually has the presidency,” ventured Katherine in a troubled tone. “Ditto Armandale reminded me that our school has always carried off everything, Freshman year. It’s expected.”

“We’re not Andrews now, we’re Hampton,” said Peggy gravely. “Don’t you remember the signs in the moving picture shows, from Wilson’s proclamation? Something about ‘whatever country you came from, you are an American now.’”

“Well, the president-elect is dead, long live the president-elect,” capitulated Katherine reluctantly.

“Good. I really feel that I owe her an awful lot for taking you away from her,” smiled Peggy, grown light-hearted once more. “Being president wouldn’t half make up.”

Katherine laughed her gratified surprise and began to plan how to draw the solid Andrews vote, in favor of a girl who was not from Andrews.

“I’m going to have a party for Gloria,” Peggy mused, “and invite every single freshman in the catalogue. You’ll have to help me write the notes to stick up on the bulletin board. And we’ll say, ‘To meet the freshman class president,’ and freshmen are such sheep, they’ll think she’s as good as elected.”

“Sheep yourself,” flared Katherine. “I think putting anything like that in would be terribly crude. But the rest of the plan I like.”

“And I’ll dress in my very best and make an impression for her sake,” Peggy went on, thinking aloud.

“Wear that rose-colored dress and those cute pumps,” suggested Katherine, interestedly.

“No, not the rose-colored dress, and not the pumps,” Peggy returned with a slight shiver.

The first thing she did, when they reached their room, was to drag the pumps from their hiding place and wrap them carefully in a sheet of newspaper.

“What in the world——?” began Katherine.

“I’m—I’m going to take them to be resoled,” murmured Peggy hastily.