Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore | Page 9

Leslie
Cairns signature," she said, shaking her head. "That is about the way I
thought it would be."
"Humph!" Leila had evidently caught Helen's meaning. The others
looked a trifle mystified.
"But Leila just now said the letter sounded like Leslie Cairns!" Jerry
exclaimed. "She wrote it. I am sure of that. Her name is signed to it.
Why then----" Jerry stopped. "Oh, yes," she went on, in sudden
enlightenment. "I begin to understand."
"Of course you do," returned Helen. "In the first place," she explained
to her puzzled listeners, "this letter has neither date nor place of writing.
It is typed and signed 'Leslie Cairns,' but I am almost positive she did
not sign it. She has either disguised her hand or another person has
signed her name to it at her request, you may be sure. Object--if Jerry
decided to make her any trouble at Hamilton over the letter, she would
say she had nothing whatever to do with the writing of it."
"It would take a whole lot of nerve to do that. After what happened last
year, she could hardly hope to be believed." This was Muriel's view of
the matter.
"Still, if the letter were typed and not signed by her, there would be no
proof that she wrote it unless someone had seen her write it." Helen
argued. "We are positive she wrote it, because the contents of the letter
tally with the Sans' attitude and actions toward Marjorie and you

Sandfordites. Yet, what would hinder her from saying that some friend
of yours, to whom you had told your troubles, or, that even one of you
five girls wrote that letter, simply for spite? I do not say that she would
do so. I only say she might. She is capable of it."
"I agree with you, Helen. Leslie Cairns would stand before President
Matthews and declare up and down that she never dreamed of writing
such a letter, if it pleased her to do it." Leila spoke with conviction.
"She took chances, of course, of being called to account for the
statements she made in the letter. Undoubtedly, she had her whole
course of action planned out before ever she wrote it. While she
couldn't be sure you wouldn't make a fuss about it, because of the way
Ronny brought the Sans to book last March, she could plan the best
way to brazen it out if she got into difficulties over it.
"Just imagine! She had a grudge against the Lookouts before ever she
met them. Leila and I were always suspicious of the way Natalie
Weyman acted about meeting you at the station. We could not fathom
the object of such a performance. We both thought there was more to it
than appeared on the surface." Vera nodded wisely.
"And all on account of the maliciousness of Row-ena Farnham. Why,
none of us had seen her for over two years! We supposed she belonged
to our departed high school days." Muriel's tones betrayed decided
umbrage.
"You can make up your minds that I don't intend ever to serve on any
reform committees--object, the betterment of the heathen; the Sans, I
mean." Jerry made this announcement with a shade of belligerence.
Unconsciously she turned her eyes toward Marjorie.
Marjorie laughed. "I know what you are thinking, Jeremiah," she said,
with quiet amazement. "Don't worry. I shall not suggest a reform
movement here for the Sans' moral benefit."
"Glad of it. Imagine me laboring patiently with that benighted heathen,
Leslie Cairns, to help her to see herself as others see her," grumbled
Jerry.

"How much the Sans would enjoy being called the heathen," interposed
Katherine Langly.
"It's appropriate. When people behave like savages, they class
themselves as such. It is a pity that we should be obliged to consider
fellow students as enemies!" Jerry continued with vehemence. "Why
should petty spite be carried to the point where it is a menace to the
whole college? An institution for the higher education of young girls in
particular should be free of such ignobility."
"Fights and fusses are not conducive to the cultivation of a scholarly
mind," Helen Trent agreed with mock solemnity.
"They are not," returned Leila, with a strong Celtic inflection of which
she, in her earnestness, was entirely unconscious.
Naturally it evoked laughter. Leila's occasional slight lapses into a
brogue were invariably amusing to her chums.
"Laugh at my brogue if you wish, I will not break your bones," she said
good-humoredly, making use of an ancient Irish expression. "I am most
Celtic when serious. Ah, well! Perhaps it is petty in us even to be
discussing the Sans, since we can say nothing good of them."
"That is their fault; not ours," Lucy Warner said incisively.
"The fault, dear Brutus, lies not