Grace Harlowes Golden Summer | Page 9

About that time he began to make sentimental remarks. I carefully explained that I did not believe in love. That only made matters worse. He rolled his eyes and vowed that he would convince me. Then he began sending me letters and love lyrics. The lyrics were so original they were positively weird.
"But in my darkest hour of oppression I stumbled upon a remedy. I happened to remember a girl who was an art student. I also remembered that she was terribly sentimental. So I dragged my pursuer along with me to a water-color exhibition that I knew she expected to attend. They met. I perpetrated the introduction. It turned out even better than I had dared to hope. The funny part of it was that both of them were afraid I'd be angry. The deeper they fell in love, the harder they tried to keep it from me. After a while Charles, that was my perfidious idol's name, came to me with a long face and confessed. I suppose his conscience troubled him. He told me that he had made a terrible mistake in thinking himself in love with me. I humbly agreed with him that he had. He assured me that he now knew that he could never have been happy with me. Before he got through explaining, it struck me as being so funny that I laughed in his face. Now he doesn't speak to me. Neither does the girl. She evidently believes that she snatched away my last chance."
The cheerful smile Elfreda turned on her amused listeners as she ended her recital was hardly an indication of deep sorrow for her double loss.
"That reminds me of Emma Dean's one romance," smiled Grace. "I shan't tell you about it. Wait until we have the reunion and I'll ask her to dig up her sentimental past for your benefit."
"I hope I can arrange my vacation so that I can attend the reunion, too," sighed Kathleen. "As Patience Eliot and I have been invited to be the Sempers' guests of honor, naturally I don't care to miss it."
"Can you get away from the paper at any time during August?" asked Anne thoughtfully.
"Yes; but only for a week," Kathleen spoke regretfully.
"Then let us decide upon the time now," proposed Miriam. "I am sorry to be a kill-joy, but one week will have to be my limit this year. I wish I could spare two, but it's impossible."
"I intended to speak of that," nodded Elfreda. "I'd love to have you girls with me longer but I know that most of you are cramped for time. So I'll be magnanimous and say, 'thank you for small favors.'"
The subject of the reunion thus renewed, it was decided to hold it during the second week in August, and the six friends began an avid planning for it. From that the conversation drifted back to Overton College, always a fruitful topic for discussion. It was truly a heart-to-heart talk. Because of the perfect fellowship that existed among them, they could look back and speak frankly not only of their lighter hours, but also of the graver moments when the struggle to reach their aims had seemed well-nigh impossible.
Half-past eleven o'clock found them still lingering on the veranda, the incessant murmur of their busy voices proclaiming their mutual satisfaction in being together once more. When at last a voluble procession wended its way upstairs to bed, the usual amount of visiting between rooms was carried on with the old-time fervor of college days.
"It's exactly like old times," declared Elfreda to Miriam. "Here we are, you and I, rooming together again just as we did at Overton. Sometimes when I stop to think that those days are gone for good and all, it gives me the blues. I can't realize that you, Miriam Nesbit, and Grace Harlowe, too, are actually grown-up and getting ready to be married. Why it seems only yesterday since I was the verdant freshman who invited herself to room with you and kept you in hot water for a whole year because she didn't know enough to behave like a human being."
"What about the Elfreda Briggs who proved herself the most loyal friend and roommate one could ever hope to have?" demanded Miriam, laying a friendly hand on Elfreda's shoulder.
"Oh, I had to get in line," returned Elfreda with a flashing affectionate glance that belied her brusque words. "I could see that the way I had started out wouldn't take me far. You and Grace made me over."
"Yet, if it hadn't been for Grace I would have stayed a hateful, conceited snob all my days," returned Miriam soberly. "There isn't one of us who doesn't owe her a debt of gratitude that we can never hope to repay. If happiness is the certain