“Peggy, look at that sign!”

The room-mates were standing before the students’ bulletin board down in the note-room.

“It’s bridge, I suppose,” said Peggy idly.

“Bridge! No, it isn’t. Look! it isn’t that kind of auction.”

Breathlessly then they read the alluringly artistic letters, and made out with difficulty:

Beautiful clothes, evening dresses, lingerie, furs, everything for the wardrobe of the college girl to be auctioned off positively second-hand. Money must be paid on the spot.

—— The Weldon House Girls.

“That’s Gloria’s house,” said Peggy.

“Yes,” said Katherine, “and all of those girls have so many clothes they don’t know what to do with them. I think it is an awfully good idea to sell some of them this way.”

“I’ve never been to one of those auctions before. Usually it’s just kept in the house. Each girl sells what she doesn’t want, and any other girl in the same house who has seen and envied that particular garment can buy it. Donna Anderson got some lovely evening slippers that way in her house for fifteen cents, and when they were cleaned they were just as good as new.”

“I can think of lots of Gloria’s things I’d like.”

“Yes, especially that Belgian blue velvet suit the girls were talking about.”

Both girls laughed at the idea of Gloria selling her new things.

“Don’t you worry about those girls,” said Katherine finally, “they’ll just auction rags and tatters and get good prices for them, too.”

“Have you got some spare money to go with?”

“A little—about seven dollars. At the rate some of those sales are made, I ought to be able to get quite a complete outfit for that.”

“And I’ve a little. I haven’t counted just how much. But of course we can get some more from the bank.”

When they trailed into Ambler House for luncheon they found the greatest interest and excitement reigning.

The auction was in the air, and nobody could think of anything else.

“Just little tiny no-account auctions,—why, some house is having one every day, but who ever heard of a wholesale kind like this?” cried Doris. “I certainly will be there.”

Since the sign, for all its artistic printing, had neglected to say what day the auction would be held, Ambler House sent a deputation over to Weldon to find out.

Weldon House sent back word, “Saturday afternoon, of course,” so that part of it was settled, and approved by everybody.

Peggy and Katherine went in no small state of excitement. It was a new kind of amusement so far as they were concerned.

The freshmen from Ambler House were almost the only members of the first class to attend.

The freshmen in other campus houses were not so precocious as this singularly self-confident crowd, and did not feel like rushing in where something was going on that was beyond their experience.

As soon as the Amblerites stepped inside of Weldon House, they noticed a conspicuous poster with a hand inked on it pointing, and the single word, “Upstairs.”

The matron of Weldon House was standing before the sign with a curious expression puckering her lips, when the gay little group swept by.

Once upstairs, there was another poster, a more helpful one, this time, “Go to Room 27.”

The upper hall was full of other anxious buyers plodding their way in the direction indicated by the guide-post. Room 27 belonged to a most gracious Junior, Zelda Darmeer.

It was characteristic of Zelda that her walls were decorated with the mottoes, “No studying aloud,” and “Never let your studies interfere with your regular college course.”

The auction was already in progress when Peggy, Katherine and their companions stepped inside.

It was being conducted on the most informal lines. Whenever a girl had anything to auction, she acted as her own auctioneer, and when the others thought she had taken enough time, one of them serenely set up in competition.

The chairs were piled with soft blue chiffons, dainty white under-garments, and plumed hats and mangey furs.

“Put this up, somebody. Who belongs to this? Put this up. I want to bid on it!” One of the guests was rudely waving a silver-spangled scarf that had slipped from a chair nearby and fallen at her feet.

“Yes, in a minute,” came a business-like voice, “that’s mine. Only been worn three years, and has got over two hundred perfectly good spangles left on it. Only eight hundred came off.”

Peggy and the others joined the guests already there, sitting quietly down on the floor in their midst. For floors are vastly more used at college than anywhere else except, perhaps, in the nurseries. Few people realize the solid comfort there is in floors. They are not simply objects lying flatly and dispiritedly beneath our feet to be trodden upon, but they make the most delightful divans and seats in the world, and possess a superior seating capacity.

At least that was the way the Hampton girls found it, and during vacation time they often outraged a parent or relative by proceeding to sit down and be comfortable, if it chanced that every real chair was taken.

That the goods to be sold should repose in the chairs, and the customers should sit on the floor, seemed highly natural to Peggy and Katherine, and a very satisfactory economy of space all round.

“Now this,” Zelda was standing on the wabbly heap of cushions that constituted the platform, “this is my well-known blue chiffon dress. Everybody knows and can testify to its wearing qualities. This dress has appeared at every dance and reception since the opening of the term. It has shown up regularly about four times a week, and has been universally admired.

“Now this dress”—she held it up conscientiously so that the light shone through it and it was seen to be more or less in shreds in certain places, but still presenting a pleasing ensemble, nevertheless.

“There are the marks of honorable service about this dress. It has lots of good times to remember. I was never unhappy in it once, and that’s a boast that any gown might be proud of. Now, girls, I got this in Boston just before I came to college at the beginning of this year, and I went to Hollander’s for it and I paid eighty dollars. I’m tired of the dress now, but there are at least five good more wears out of it. It always looks dear and sweet once it gets on. The price of this dress is four dollars,” she wound up.

There were two ways of auctioning. According to them, you either set your own price and the bidders’ contest simply went on to see which would be the first, or you offered the object after the approved auction custom and the bidders ran up the price as high as it would go.

Zelda had a conscience. Had she not held the gown before the light in that frank fashion, the beauty of the frayed garment might have turned some freshman’s head to the extent of fifteen dollars or more, and it had served its purpose for Zelda—she wanted a few dollars spending money, and getting rid of her old things was a quick method of obtaining it.

When the price of the blue chiffon was named, Lilian Moore nearly fell over on the floor. She had been straining forward across Katherine Foster’s knee, her eyes covetous and hungry.

She had not come expecting to buy anything. She had merely “been dragged along,” as the girls said, and she had hoped to find enough pleasure in watching the others purchase the wonderful second-hands.

But that pleasure was gone now. Suddenly, as she realized that this wonderful, shimmering blue butterfly of a dress was within her reach, she burned with a sudden fire to have it.

For Lilian, who, under the Ambler girls’ teaching, had come to get together a fairly good school-day wardrobe at small cost, had never yet possessed a real evening dress.

She had gone to party after party, reception after reception and dance after dance, always meekly and shamefacedly arrayed in the white simplicity that had been her graduation dress at high school the spring before. Now, staring her in the face with soft blue intensity, was Opportunity, and she meant to seize upon it.

“Me,” she cried out, like a child in her eagerness. “I want it, Miss Darmeer. Here’s the four dollars!”

Her spending money for weeks was poured extravagantly into Zelda’s hand, and the wonderful gown was thrown lightly over her trembling arm.

For a little while at least—until the gorgeous thing actually dropped to pieces—she would appear as well-dressed, as beautiful and as fragile as the other girls, with her hitherto covered shoulders glistening charmingly into view and her arms bare and bright almost to the shoulder.

At this moment Gloria came in from her own room, her fair face flushed, and her arms laden. There was a curious hauteur, that was foreign to her accustomed manner, clinging about her, somehow.

And the very first thing that she put up was the wonderful suit of Belgian blue!

As she mounted the swaying pile of cushions, her expression never softened to the hilarity that the occasion had held up till now.

The light gleamed over the wonderful blue of the thing in her arms.

“A suit,” she began, in that voice the freshmen worshipped, “a blue suit. Tailored to fit me. Do for any tall girl. The lining is, as you see, a good quality taffeta,” she turned the coat conscientiously inside out, “and a blue silk underskirt goes with the skirt. I’ve worn this three times. I don’t think very many people saw it, for it was only to chapel and vespers and——”

A laugh interrupted her. That was rather scathing of her, those of her classmates who were present thought. For they were required to attend chapel and vespers and didn’t like the implication that they neglected their duty.

“Kaddie,” whispered Peggy, “do you suppose she’s got so many clothes—that—that three wearings is—enough?”

She gasped at the very idea of such a thing. The condition of the chiffon gown that Zelda had sold was more like her own things by the time she had done with them. She could not fancy any one parting with something they had scarcely become even used to yet.

“Maybe it isn’t becoming to her.”

“Oh, Kaddie!”

Katherine looked again at the figure of Gloria with her blue burden over her arm and saw that she had spoken carelessly.

The blue of the suit brought out the blue of the eyes in a dazzling fashion. The triumphant red and gold of Gloria’s hair and eye-lashes flamed more like those of a Norse goddess than ever.

“What am I offered? I can’t advertise”—(the ghost of a smile did quirk her lips here for an instant)—“as Zelda did, that this suit has known only happy times. It’s—had to take its chances. But such as it is—it’s ready for your offers.”

She stood expectantly, the suit lifted a little on her arm.

“Twenty-five,” lazily called a senior from the back of the room.

“I’m offered twenty-five,” said the auctioneer, “and I’m—still listening.”

“Thirty,” piped Hazel Pilcher eagerly.

“Forty,” jumped the senior’s voice from the back of the room.

“Forty-one,” hesitated Doris Winterbean.

There was no more bidding. Doris opened her check-book and wrote the sum which had purchased the shining wonder that had lately been the property of the freshman president. She knew that suit had never cost less than a hundred, and she was more than satisfied. Its former wearing rather lent it grace than detracted from its value, considering who the wearer was.

“I was going to buy a new suit and a spring coat for next term,” said Doris, “but this will have to do instead of both now,—and I’d rather have it.”

But nothing else that was put up by the others, or by Gloria herself, brought anything like that price—none even yielded so high a percentage of its original cost.

Gloria offered waists, which went for prices such as fifty cents, or, at the highest, a dollar. Then she held up an adorable kimono, direct from Japan, that all the girls had envied and coveted. But beautiful kimonos are luxuries, whereas suits of some kind are necessities. So her sacrifice met with no such fortune as the blue suit had called forth. Most of the girls didn’t attend college auctions with their check-books. Doris Winterbean was a single foresighted exception.

“Isn’t it terrible to see those beautiful things going for a few pennies?” said Peggy.

“It is,” nodded Katherine. “What can that girl be thinking of?”

“Thinking of turning into a savage, I should say,” Peggy speculated in answer. “You can see she isn’t going to have many clothes left.”

“She looks as picturesque as ever, anyway,” sighed Katherine. “It’s too bad there are not more of our classmates here to see her.”

“Yes, she was certainly a lucky choice for president,” agreed Peggy.

“Your choice.”

“Well, my choice first and the class’s afterwards, and I’m sure we’re both proud of our good taste.”

The radiant one was again holding up an article of apparel before their interested gaze.

“Now, this,” she began her advertisement, “is all of handmade lace——”

An imperative knock sounded on the door.

Every girl in the room started nervously. For auctions, while not against any college regulation, were not exactly the sort of thing that would meet with a matron’s approval when indulged in to the wholesale extent of this one at Weldon House.

Perhaps that puzzled and anxious matron they had seen downstairs had followed the directions on the sign and was even now upon the threshold. How annoying, when there were many delectable and unsold articles still lying negligently over the chair backs.

“Well,” cried Gloria, in the midst of her harangue, “come in.”

But the door opened only a crack and a muffled voice came through it.

Zelda Darmeer felt a certain responsibility since it was her room, but she would literally have had to wade through six rows of husky girls to get to the door.

She stood up anxiously.

“Peggy Parsons, go and see what it is, will you, please?” she begged, her face dark with annoyance.

Peggy, by clutching at the knees and then the shoulders of the girls on either side, arose with difficulty and went out into the hall.

What she saw there made her shut the door behind her.

The matron, just as they had feared, was outside the door. But there was another woman with her. A horrid-looking woman, Peggy thought, very different from any one usually seen in campus houses.

The matron’s face was troubled, and Peggy felt instinctively that it was something more than their reckless auction that was causing her uneasiness.

The other woman’s expression was sullen and aggressive.

She came forward threateningly as Peggy came out, but in a moment fell back with a scowl, as the light from the window at the end of the hall streamed more clearly over the little figure.

“That’s not Miss Hazeltine,” she said snappishly.

“No,” murmured the matron, still with that look of doubt and distaste. “This isn’t one of my girls at all. Are you—perhaps—a friend of Miss Hazeltine’s?”

“I hope I’m one of her best friends,” said Peggy quickly. “And”—with a quick smile that said it all—“I’m a freshman.”

“Well, I—don’t know,” hesitated the matron.

The other woman frowned. “I want my money to-day,” she demanded.

Peggy shivered as if she had suddenly been brought in touch with something ugly and sordid, something meant to remain without her share of experience.

She was torn between the feeling that she had no business, in justice to Gloria, to listen to any more—and the desire, the need to keep Gloria away from the menace of this woman’s eyes.

She felt that Gloria was even less able to meet and cope with this strange un-college-like situation than she, Peggy.

For Gloria seemed of finer clay, and she herself—what was she but just an everyday young person, glad to be alive and curious about everything that life might hold,—happy or otherwise?

Perhaps Gloria would hate her for stumbling upon a situation like this which didn’t concern her.

“I think,” she said to the pained matron, “I think I’d better get Gloria. She’s in there——” Then, with an inspiration, she turned suddenly upon the unpleasant woman.

“Won’t you go down to her room,” she questioned, “Number 20, and wait until she comes? I’m sure that would be better; then if she cares to see you, she can find you there.”

“Oh, she won’t want to see me,” retorted the woman. “I’ll just wait here. There ain’t any other door to that room she’s in, is there?”

Peggy’s heart turned sick.

“I will send her out to you,” she said quietly. “What is your name, please?”

“I’ll tell her my name,” answered the woman ungraciously.

“I think,” observed Peggy in a low tone, “that you had better tell me—wouldn’t that be best, Mrs. Ormsby?”

She appealed to the matron for confirmation.

“Certainly,” agreed Mrs. Ormsby, catching a little of Peggy’s quiet fire. “You shall at least send in your name.”

“Well,” grudged the woman, with a hateful smirk, “just tell Miss Hazeltine it’s Hart and Bates’ Dressmaking Establishment.”

“All right,” murmured Peggy, and laid her hand on the door.

The matron bit her lip uneasily, and Peggy turned the handle and went back into the babble of bidding that was going on inside.