It was not Barbara; it was, after all, the pretty Miss Berg who was elected chairman of the freshman class. And now the class was assembling in response to a summons posted that morning on the bulletin board.
Doris sat beside Barbara; Margaret Blake, known as "Migs," was on Barbara's left. Migs was a little girl who inevitably inspired you with a desire to cuddle her, and who as inevitably avoided you afterward if you did it. Doris had observed this characteristic as impersonally as she now observed "Tiny-for-Short" signaling Barbara to come and sit with her and "Fuzz" Herron on the front row of seats. Over by a window a delightfully pretty girl leaned forward, talking to some one in the row ahead. Doris watched her happily. The sweep of elm boughs beyond the window set the copper-colored head in a wonderful green frame.
Sally King, newly elected secretary, brisk and efficient, took count with uplifted pencil and assured the chairman of more than a quorum. Whereupon Miss Berg rapped for order.
"I have called you together," began Eunice Berg, "because it seems that we forgot one thing last time, and some of the girls thought it wouldn't do to wait for our next regular meeting. A month is rather long. Tiny, - I mean Miss Young, - will you tell us what we are here for?"
Tiny-for-Short began to rise from the front row of seats.
"I suppose we are here, Madam Chairman," Tiny said, facing toward the class, "because of something a sophomore said to me this morning. If I relate the conversation that took place you will understand better. We were walking up to chapel together, talking about how many of the things that we freshmen have to do this year we had done, and she asked me, 'Have you chosen your tree yet?' 'Chosen a tree!' I wanted to exclaim. But I didn't. I remembered just in time not to play the goat. 'Not yet,' said I, trying to lead her on. 'Have you any advice to offer?' She fixed me with her eye. 'Why, you're bluffing!' she said. 'Bluffing?' said I, and I stuffed that word with all the guileless innocence I could muster. Then she began to laugh. 'I don't believe you ever heard that it's the custom here for every even class to adopt a tree - any one on the campus - as its own special property.' Then she laughed again. 'This year's juniors don't seem to make very good coaches.' I fired up at that. 'A matter like a tree,' said I, 'needs thought. A tree - why, it's going to live years and years and years, hundreds maybe, and be so conspicuous. If you think it's easy to pick one out to stand for all that a class tree has to stand for, when there are such acres of them to choose from as there are here, I'm afraid you haven't considered the subject very carefully. Your class didn't have to choose a tree, you know,' I reminded her. She grew meek then. 'It must be hard work,' said she. I assured her that it was. 'Our class may be slow,' I said, 'but it gets there in the end every time.'"
The class clapped vigorously while Tiny sat down.
Fuzzy Herron was on her feet. "Madam Chairman, I say we pick out a tree right off and never let them guess we didn't know all along we ought to have one."
"The walnut in front of Williston! Let's have the big walnut."
"Some other class must have taken that. I'm sure it's the first tree any class would choose - standing alone like that, and so big."
"What's the matter with that lovely white birch in the grove?"
"I think one of those large trees on the hill would be better."
"There's a lot of nice little pines up on Prospect."
"Why stop at one tree? Let's annex a whole grove, and have enough to go round."
Desperately the chairman pounded her gavel. "Girls! Girls! Don't all talk at once. We can't do a thing that way. Miss - the girl standing up behind Barbara Leighton. Miss Conrad? Thank you. Miss Conrad has the floor. Everybody else keep still."
"Madam Chairman, just to bring the matter before the meeting, I move that this class adopt as its class tree the big walnut in front of Williston Hall."
"Madam Chairman," cried Migs, "I'd like to ask what we want a class tree for? What do you do with it?"
"Can anybody tell us anything on this point?" The chairman looked round the room. "I don't know myself. I never heard of the custom before to-day. Please, if any of you know, don't tell your neighbors; tell us all."
The girls eyed each other dubiously.
"Have you any idea, Tiny?"
"Nothing outside my own head," said Tiny, blithely. "But I should think to meet under, and perhaps to sing under, the way the seniors do on Williston steps; in short, to serve as a kind of rallying spot on the campus. We can find out easily enough what other classes do with their trees when we have one of our own."
"Madam Chairman, I rise to speak in favor of the big walnut. If we are to adopt a green umbrella, we need the biggest on the market."
"Isn't the walnut too near the senior steps?"
"It won't be next year, when we're sophomores."
Barbara rose.
"Madam Chairman, my roommate says, why don't we choose something nearer our size? When you come to think of it, the walnut is so old and grown-up, and we are so young and, and a little bit fresh, perhaps [laughter], wouldn't it be nicer to select a tree we can see grow as we grow, something that will be ever so much bigger than it is now, when we come back for our fiftieth reunion?"
"Madam Chairman," said a dumpy, spectacled girl, "I don't like settling in this rush and hurry a matter of half a century's importance to the class. I move that we appoint a committee to investigate and report."
"There is a motion already before the house," said Eunice Berg, patiently, "a motion to adopt the big walnut in front of Williston Hall as our class tree."
"Vote it down, and get it out of the way!"
"Question! Question!"
The noes buried the motion. Then the suggestion for a committee of investigation was put in order, and enthusiastically carried. Eunice Berg appointed Tiny-for-Short, Barbara, and the dumpy, spectacled girl who had insisted on the wisdom of having the committee.
This girl now rose and addressed the class. "Girls," she said, "whatever else we do after this meeting breaks up, don't talk. Dumbness may not be brilliant, but it's safe. And there's time enough to be brilliant when we're done being freshmen. Don't answer any question about it, not even to tell what it was for. This tree business is the first thing we have had to do entirely on our own responsibility since we came here. Let's show the other classes what we're capable of."
The class applauded this speech, and the chairman called for any further business.
A solemn-looking girl stood up on the last row of seats. "I move that before adjourning we extend a vote of thanks to Miss Young for her able manner of conducting the conversation this morning with that sophomore."
The motion was carried amid a storm of laughter and applause, and the class adjourned.
Doris suddenly found herself in step with the girl whom she had noticed admiringly on the opposite side of the room. A tingling sense of excitement dispelled her shyness.
"Wasn't it fun?" she said. "We seemed to belong together so much more than we did at those other meetings."
The other girl nodded. "We're going to make a great class after we've been licked into shape. Are you the girl Bab Leighton called her roommate? I saw you sitting with her."
"Yes. We're skied in Mead. Won't you come up and see us? I'm Doris Dale."
"My name is Harrison, Frances Harrison. If I told you where I live, you'd get lost trying to find the place. It's the next door after nowhere up the street. They expected more freshmen to flunk out, I'm told, and as we haven't accommodated them yet, being a clever class, the powers have to go down on their knees to the people on whom we're quartered, beseeching them to keep us just one week more. You're lucky to be in Mead. I'm going there now for dinner."
"That's good! But won't you ever get on the campus?"
"As soon as there's a vacancy. Goodness knows when that will be. I'm hoping still."
In her room, hurrying to slip on a light dress, Doris wondered at the ease with which she and this perfectly strange girl had talked together. She was such a slim, dignified girl, and she had such a charming way of carrying herself, Doris thought.
"Frances Harrison?" Barbara cried, when Doris told her of the encounter. "Why, she's one of the queens of the class! Where have you been, child, not to know Frances Harrison?"
Across the dining room, gay with color and murmurous with voices, Doris stole shy glances at Frances Harrison. How lovely she was! And how stupid she had been not to know about her! And how would she ever dare to talk to her again? Bab was awe-inspiring enough, Bab, whom all the freshmen in the house ran after, and sophomores and juniors walked and talked and joked with, and upon whom even seniors bestowed their society.
"You people had a class meeting this afternoon, didn't you?"
Doris pulled in her wandering thoughts, and turned her gaze on the black-eyed sophomore across the table. The question sounded casual enough, but Doris felt herself growing subtle.
"Yes," she acknowledged. "We seem to have class meetings most of the time now."
To the sophomore, Doris looked as demure and simple as a kitten.
"What did you do? Anything interesting?"
"Oh, we talked," said Doris, vaguely. "I don't think you could say we did much. Did we, Wally?"
"Didn't go," said the fat girl.
The sophomore opened her black eyes very wide. "And you come to table, and actually brag of such an ignoble performance as deliberately absenting yourself from your own class meeting? You pain me, Miss Walters."
"Sorry," said the fat girl.
Out of the parlors floated a rollicking song. It set heads nodding in time, and drew feet dancing through the halls, as one by one the tables finished dinner and dispersed. Half an hour later, when Doris, resisting further blandishments both of the piano and the night, climbed the stairs to her room, gay voices still romped through the notes below.
She got out her geometry; and then Frances Harrison delighted her by appearing.
"You asked me to come, you know," said Frances. She seated herself in Barbara's morris chair, and Doris looked at her and talked to her with delight.
They got on finely together, and then came Barbara and Wally and Migs, and half a dozen more freshmen. How easy and "college-y" it all seemed! Girls spread out on both couches in the comfortable disarray of kimonos and jumpers - Wally in the inevitable white poplin, Frances and Barbara and Doris in pretty summer gowns.
Doris, looking about the room, had a swift perception. College was a huge mixing bowl, and these girls had just been thrown in by the hand of inclination or circumstance, fate or chance, as you chose to call it. Who knew whether they were rich or poor, except as you saw them spend their money? It was the quality of the girls themselves that told in the mixing.
"Where were you during the class meeting, Wally?" Barbara asked.
"Up on the hill. Ought I to have gone?"
"Of course you ought."
"Ought I, D. D.?"
Doris nodded.
"Some little notion like that seems to have weighed on the minds of our friends at table."
"You cut all the meetings there are, Wally."
"Hate 'em," said Wally. "All meetings are bores But when in Rome do as the Romans do. Bad advice which seems popular. What di dyou do in your old class meeting?"
"Our class meeting," Doris corrected.
"Ours, then."
"Let's not tell her for punishment."
"No, tell her on her solemn oath to go next time."
"Guess I'll go home," said Wally. "I think my steam pipes want me."
At the door she collided with Tiny-for-Short, a breathless, disheveled Tiny.
Tiny dragged the fat girl back into the room, cast one glance at the closed transom overhead, and dropped limply to the floor.
"Girls!" she whispered. "Girls - oh, how can I ever tell you! There's never been a class here that had a tree. It's just another of my dreadful breaks."
Tiny's words produced a hush of astonishment, then an uproar of questions.
"Sh! Sh!" cried Barbara. "Even if the transom is shut, don't talk so loud, girls Tiny, tell us what in the world you mean."
"I'd got so in the habit of learning new things!" Tiny lamented. "I'd come to think that was a freshman's whole business in life, to soak up information - like a sponge. So when that naughty sophomore invited me to bite, I bit. The worst is, I made you all bite, too. Oh! Oh!" Tiny clutched her head. "When I think of that class meeting, and the things we said in it, I could tear my hair!"
"But the sophomore told you it was the custom," said some one.
"No, she didn't," Tiny answered "She told me she didn't believe I had heard it was the custom. And of course I hadn't. I went on and made it all up in my own head, just as she meant me to do."
"How did you find out the truth?" Barbara asked.
"I noticed that whenever I passed a bunch of sophomores, they would stuff their handkerchiefs in their mouths, and nearly have a fit. And this evening I came up behind some girls who couldn't walk straight for laughing. I was on the point of going by, when one of them said, 'Everybody keep still, and let them go on just as far as they will. There's a gorgeous joke for the "Llamy" in this.' At that, another one sang out, 'Oh, we'll keep still! But when I think of those children sitting up solemnly in class meeting, and adopting one of the trees on this campus because it's the custom of the even classes -' There a giggle choked her. And there's the hideous fact. We've conformed to a custom that doesn't exist, and now we're the laughing stock of the campus. What shall we do?"
"Do?" Barbara cried. "Why, there's only one thing to do. Make it a custom!"
The inspiration proved a welcome one to the class. The word was passed round from one freshman to another; each one pledged herself to keep the plans that were being developed a secret. Through having made the brilliant suggestion, Barbara acquired fame; she was recognized as a leader.
And at last the freshmen held another and more hilarious class meeting that culminated in a march to the grove.
Tramp - tramp, tramp - tramp, tramp - tramp - with hands resting lightly on shoulders in front, the long ribbon of girls unrolled with seeming endlessness from the door of the administration hall. Down the path, skirting Brigham and Safford, turning north at Porter, defiled the freshmen, twinkling in and out among the brown trunks of the grove.
"A cheer for the crimson, a cheer for the blue,
To college and classmates we'll always be true -"
The song carried far on the autumn air. Windows flew up. From every quarter of the campus other girls came hurrying - seniors, with the wind ballooning in their black gowns; juniors, roguish and half disdainful; sophomores, staggering under their burden of glee. The college had not dreamed of anything quite so good as this. The children had been so completely duped!
Under a thrifty oak stood the freshmen. To the west the grove drew off a little; to the east, a long green slope slid between stately avenues of maples to the brook. In circles within circles, shoulder to shoulder, arms interlocked, the freshmen rounded the tree.
"Sprits of earth and air,
Green boughs and branches bare,
Spirits of brook and fall,
Lakes, hill - investing all,
Spirit of college!
Attend this rite to-day;
Witness our deed, for aye
Cherish and guard this tree,
Chosen for us to be
Heart of our college."
Louder the chant rose, rising and falling in weird cadences. The inner circle broke, and Eunice Berg stepped forward.
"Oak tree," she said, "we charge you, grow strong and stately. Keep the sap sweet in your veins and your heart sound. Shelter us now throughout our college life, in joys and sorrows, in victories and defeats. Welcome us home in after years returning. Live long, O tree, and keep our memory a refreshment in summer, a glory in autumn, a beauty still in winter. In the name of this freshman class, I adopt you as our tree. In sigh whereof" - Eunice lifted a broad crimson ribbon, with which Tiny helped girdle the tree trunk - "I place on your our colors." She tied the bow.
Instantly long, sinuous lines of crimson shot out among the branches, catching, floating free, streaming from bough, and twig, and ruddy leaf, and dropping lazily down. Far out over the heads of the freshmen, and settling round their shoulders, the streamers darted. Unfurled by the handful, tossed high, caught up and tossed again, they spun this way and that, eddied, adn shivered, and quivered.
A shout went up from the onlooking classes, admiring and surprised.
"Isn't it pretty!"
"Bright idea, having those girls up in the tree to shake out the serpentines."
Eunice Berg was speaking again:
"And now, by right of what we have done to-day, we decree to hose even classes that shall come after us the custom hereby inaugurated. To wit: that they also shall each choose a tree, which they shall keep as their class tree, in season and out of season, rainy days and fair, as long as they both shall live."
A sophomore jumped to the front of a section of the crowd, faced about, uttered a quick order, and began to saw the air with uplifted arms.
"Three cheers for the freshmen, the freshmen, the freshmen,
Three cheers for the freshmen, the freshmen,
Three cheers for the freshmen, the freshmen, the freshmen,
Three cheers for the freshmen, the freshmen!"
The cheer was caught up and carried from group to group. Then Tiny-for-Short and Barbara sprang into the open space round the tree.
"Now, then, girls! Give it to them. Seniors first. Ready now! One - two - three -"
"Three cheers for the seniors, the seniors, the seniors,
Three cheers for the seniors, the seniors!"
On they went through the list of classes, applauding by each in turn.
Doris, with one arm laid across the shoulders of a girl to whom she had never spoken before in her life, and the other hand reaching up the great breadth of Wally's back, saw Barbara across the circle, among the acknowledged leaders of the class. How alive she was! How gloriously alive!
"Isn't she great?" said the girl at Doris's side, nodding toward Barbara.
"Yes," said Doris. "She's splendid."
"Do you know her?"
"I ought to. I'm her roommate."
"Her roommate! Well, you're the lucky girl! Did you know her before you came here?"
"I'd met her."
The next minute Doris heard the girl telling the next freshman that Doris was Bab Leighton's roommate.
"Lucky girl!" responded the freshman.
Suddenly Doris wondered whether she were really lucky. Two freshmen had said so. Most of the girls under the tree probably would agree with them. Nevertheless, doubt entered her mind. Either two people must like each other very much, or else they must have many tastes and inclinations in common, if they are to be happy rooming together. If one was very popular, and the other just a shy little mouse, surely they would both be luckier to room with their own kind. "After this it is going to be harder than ever to live up to her!" Doris sighed to herself.
"Leighton! Leighton! Speech! Speech! We - want - Leighton!" they were calling now.
Barbara laughed and flushed. Many hands pushed her forward close to the trunk of the tree.
"I haven't a thing to say except - isn't it great! O girls, we're a class now! We're a class! Can't you feel it? We didn't flunk our test, after all. We've won. Oh, I'm so happy I don't know what to do!"
It was not much of a speech, but the freshmen began singing again:
"Here's to Barbara Leighton, drink her down,
Here's to Barbara Leighton, drink her down,
Here's to Barbara Leighton,
She's the girl we'll rest our weight on,
Here's to Barbara Leighton, drink her down, down, down!"