Human Evolution And Culture Highlights Of

Anthropology

Now available at alibris.com

( 4.6/5.0 ★ | 158 downloads )
-- Click the link to download --

https://click.linksynergy.com/link?id=*C/UgjGtUZ8&offerid=1494105.26
539780205999323&type=15&murl=https%3A%2F%2F2.zoppoz.workers.dev%3A443%2Fhttp%2Fwww.alibris.com%2Fsearch%2
Fbooks%2Fisbn%2F9780205999323
Human Evolution And Culture
Highlights Of Anthropology

ISBN: 9780205999323
Category: Media > Books > Non-Fiction > Education Books
File Fomat: PDF, EPUB, DOC...
File Details: 14.2 MB
Language: English
Website: alibris.com
Short description: Good condition Size: 7x0x9; good condition, fast
ship.

DOWNLOAD: https://click.linksynergy.com/link?id=*C/UgjGtUZ8&
offerid=1494105.26539780205999323&type=15&murl=http%3A%2F%2F
www.alibris.com%2Fsearch%2Fbooks%2Fisbn%2F9780205999323
 Human Evolution And
Culture Highlights Of
Anthropology

• Click the link: https://click.linksynergy.com/link?id=*C/UgjGtUZ8&offerid=1494105.2653978020599932

3&type=15&murl=https%3A%2F%2F2.zoppoz.workers.dev%3A443%2Fhttp%2Fwww.alibris.com%2Fsearch%2Fbooks%2Fisbn%2F9780205999323 to do
latest version of Human Evolution And Culture Highlights Of Anthropology in multiple formats such as
PDF, EPUB, and more.
• Don’t miss the chance to explore our extensive collection of high-quality resources, books, and guides on
our website. Visit us regularly to stay updated with new titles and gain access to even more valuable
materials.
.
spreads or initiations, in fact to do anything. She doesn’t have to pay
dues. She simply wears her pin and is just as much one of us as
ever in her spirit toward us and ours toward her. She’s allowed to
know sorority secrets and she gets bids to the dances and all that,
just like an alumna, and the best of it all is that no one outside of
the sorority has to be any the wiser. There’s not a thing about
inactive membership that could possibly interfere with one’s
scholarship, or one’s health, or one’s pocket-book, and if the time
comes when circumstances permit the inactive member to become
active again, all she has to do is to say so. Of course I don’t want to
dictate, when I’m not going to be here myself, but I just offer these
remarks as a suggestion.”

“That’s the thing!” Flo Burton exclaimed, as Louise took her seat.

“That’s what we’ll do!” “Make her inactive for a year.” “You needn’t
do a bit of work, Jacquette, but we can’t spare you and we just
couldn’t disgrace you before the whole school. We love you too
much.”

“Oh, I’m so glad you spoke of that, Louise!” cried all the girls
together, throwing the order of the meeting to the winds as they
crowded about the chair where Jacquette sat, her face flooded with
sudden gladness.

Louise had not given her an inkling of what she meant to do, and
Jacquette had never thought of hoping that the girls might cling to
her, regardless of her active usefulness to the sorority. The whole
spirit of the meeting was so different from the thing which she had
braced herself to endure that it swept her along, unresisting, and it
began to seem as if she had created, in her own imagination, a bogy
which never existed. What harm could there be in simply keeping
the friendship of the girls?

“Oh, Louise,” she whispered, eagerly, catching the hand of her

closest friend, “do you think it’s all right? Would Tia be just as well
pleased?”

“Don’t see why not,” was the sturdy answer. “It gives you back all
your time for study and home things, and just prevents your losing
the friendship of the girls you like best. I think she’ll be glad, or I
shouldn’t have proposed it.”
 As they crowded about Jacquette, her
face flooded with sudden gladness

So it was settled, and when Jacquette, still wearing her pin,

walked home with a body-guard of devoted Sigma Pi girls following
to the door, it seemed as if a great cloud had rolled out of her sky.
Inactive membership would have seemed impossible before the
moment when she had made up her mind to endure actual
expulsion, but now, with its promise of comparative secrecy, its
assurance of continued friendship from the girls, and its possibility of
a return to activity sometime in the future, it glittered like a beautiful
reward of virtue.

She was so sure of having done the right thing, that it was hard to
be patient and explain, when Aunt Sula and her grandfather seemed
doubtful, but she succeeded, and, when she finally went upstairs
alone, she smiled at a happy Jacquette in the mirror, resolving that
Tia should see, from day to day, how truly inactive membership
would give all the benefits and none of the drawbacks of the
uncompromising other plan.

Jacquette was early at school the next morning, and Mademoiselle

gave her an approving nod. Then she asked her to help two new
pupils in making out their programme.

It happened that they were both girls who had been singled out
the day before as possible members of Sigma Pi, and, though
Jacquette fully intended to keep out of the rushing, she was glad of
an innocent chance to lend a hand, and proceeded to make herself
as attractive as possible. While doing so, she took such a fancy to
the younger of the two, a shy little brown-eyed girl named Mary
Elliott, that at noon she found herself watching for them to come out
of their class so that she might take them under her wing and show
them the best kind of sandwich to buy at the “eat-house.”

As the three went out of the school building together, they met a
group of Jacquette’s Sigma Pi sisters, with two more new girls, and
all fell in together.

“Isn’t that a Sigma Pi Epsilon pin you have on?” Mary Elliott asked
of Jacquette, who nodded with an odd little ripple of gladness over
her face.
 “Marion, that settles it for me?” said Mary to the other girl.

“Settles what?” Jacquette inquired.

“Oh, nothing; only two sororities have asked us to their spreads

this afternoon, and I want to go to the Sigma Pi Epsilon one, if that’s
what you belong to.”

“Well, I should say! So do I,” Marion Crandall chimed in promptly,

with a bold, black-eyed glance at Jacquette, which, though it was
meant to be flattering, did not altogether please her.

“Do all the girls that go to this school belong to sororities?” Mary
Elliott asked Jacquette in a timid undertone.

“Mercy, no!”

The innocent question brought a smile to Jacquette’s face.

“All the nicest ones, then?”

“Well, a nice girl that didn’t make a sorority would have a pretty
lonesome time at Marston,” Jacquette was admitting, when Blanche
Gross suddenly whirled around and offered them hot roasted
peanuts from the bag she carried.

“Jack, do you know about these four Marys?” she asked,

laughingly. “You have two with you, and I have two more here. Let
me make you acquainted with Mary Barnes from St. Paul and Marie
Stanwood from Omaha.”

“And here’s Marion Crandall and Mary Elliott,” Jacquette

responded. “Isn’t that the funniest thing? They must be the ‘Queen’s
Maries’.”

“Oh, do you know that song?” said Mary Elliott. “My mother used
to sing me to sleep with it.”
 “Pretty sad going to sleep, wasn’t it?” Jacquette asked, with a
smile, and hummed a little of the haunting old melody:

“‘Yestreen the Queen had four Maries,

The night she’ll hae but three.

. . . . .

Oh, little did my mother ken,

The death I was to dee!’”

“You left out,

“‘There was Mary Seaton, and Mary Beaton,

And Mary Carmichael, and me.’

And oh, girls!—we are Mary B, and Mary S. and Mary C. and me. I
must be ‘me’—M. E.—Mary Elliott.”

“Sure enough!” Jacquette answered, gaily. “Now, all you girls have
to do is to fly around and catch your Queen.”

But, while the rest laughed, Mary Elliott surprised her by nestling
closer as they passed into the restaurant, and whispering, with an
adoring upward glance, “I’ve caught my Queen, now.”

This was how it happened that Jacquette began to be called the

“Queen”—a nickname that clung to her from that day; and, in spite
of the fact that she was never seen at spreads, and that she was
even absent from the triumphant initiation, a few weeks later, when
the “four Maries” were all taken into Sigma Pi at once, the new girls
understood that she was identified with the sorority they were
joining, and, for some reason—perhaps in the start a fanciful idea of
being the “Queen’s Maries”—they insisted on choosing her as their
sorority “mother.”

It was she who furnished them with the thousand and one little
hints on high-school dress and manners which were part of the
Sigma Pi education of new members, and, in return, all the Maries,
with the exception perhaps of Marion Crandall, whose effusive
manner never seemed quite real to Jacquette, gave their Queen the
confidence of devoted subjects.

But, of the four, it was Mary Elliott who came closest. After a little,
she fell into the habit of bringing her books, day after day, and
studying at the “Palace,” as the Queen’s modest home was
immediately dubbed, and both Mr. Granville and his daughter found
themselves growing very fond of the gentle girl, at first because of
the love in her eyes whenever she looked at Jacquette, but soon
because of her own dear, quiet little self.
 CHAPTER XII

THE REAL QUEEN

T
HE first weeks of Jacquette’s sophomore year discouraged her.
After Louise and Bobs and Marquis had gone, a blank fell into
her days. All around her the Sigma Pi good times were going
on, but, though she was allowed to share the secrets whenever the
girls remembered to tell them to her, she constantly felt herself just
outside the circle of fun. She had too much time to study, and,
without the excitement that had urged and hurried her all the year
before, she dragged through her lessons listlessly. The zest had gone
from everything.

It was not long before Mademoiselle’s keen eyes noticed the

change, and one day, with a few adroit questions, she learned the
facts.

“But is it a secret, dearie—this inactive membership?” she asked,

almost before Jacquette realised that she had mentioned it.

“No, not exactly. It’s all right for you to know, Mademoiselle, but
of course we don’t care to have the other sororities making capital of
it. They’d tell all the new girls there must be something wrong with
Sigma Pi, or my people wouldn’t have wanted me to be inactive.”

“I see,” said Mademoiselle with an understanding shake of the

head. “At any rate, I’m glad it’s right for me to know, pet, because it
makes me happy. Now, about the lessons, did it ever occur to you,
honey, that, after a dear little girl has once fallen into the habit of
pinning her garments together, it is very hard for her to feel the
necessity of sewing on buttons?”
 Jacquette looked puzzled.

“This is what I mean,” Mademoiselle went on, lifting her shoulders

ever so little and giving her head a sprightly toss which Jacquette
instantly recognised as her own. “I’m a bright little girl! I’m a clever
little girl! It isn’t necessary for me to spend time on my lessons. Oh,
no, I never look up the references! I don’t bother with the grammar!
My translation is so good that it brings up my marks even if I do fail
on those stupid old rules. I’m such a lucky little girl! I’ll get through.

“That’s pinning one’s clothing together to keep it from falling off.

Wait, dearie, I haven’t done. Won’t you try, now that you have more
time, to form the habit of sewing the buttons on your lessons?”

No one could resist Mademoiselle when the pleading tone came

into her voice, and, from that moment, Jacquette’s inactive
membership became endurable. She had begun to sew on the
buttons; and gradually, as the weeks went on, she won back the old
Brookdale sense of satisfaction in making each lesson a finished
piece of work—a feeling which she had learned to regard as childish
during her freshman year at Marston.

“Tia, what makes you look so young?” she demanded, one

evening, as she and Aunt Sula finished playing a duet which ended
in a series of martial chords. “Is it just that rose-coloured waist? You
don’t know what a dear little brown ringlet there is, trickling down in
front of this ear.”

“Trickling ringlet! Your English teacher would call that a vicious

misuse of the verb,” Aunt Sula laughed as she tucked the ringlet into
place. “Perhaps I look different because I’m so happy over your
finding time for the music again. I feel as if somebody had given me
back my Brookdale girl.”

“Brookdale,” Jacquette repeated, with an odd little smile, as she

hunted through a pile of music. “That makes me think of Margaret
Howland. She asked me right out, this morning, why I wasn’t going
to spreads and things; so I had to tell her in confidence, that I was
inactive for this year. Guess what she said.”

“‘Oh, how I do envy you!’” Aunt Sula hazarded, roguishly.

“No, sir! She said for goodness’ sake not to let her mother hear of
it, or she’d surely be made to do the same thing.”

“Oh! Mrs. Howland has her troubles, then.”

“Troubles! If you think Sigma Pi makes troubles, you ought to

have a little experience with the Kappa Delts. They’ve been just
over-reaching themselves in their rushing this fall. It’s spreads every
other minute, and matinees and automobile rides and bunches of
violets for their pledges, and everything else you can think of. The
worst of it, for Margaret, is that she’s the kind of girl that tries to
keep up her studies besides, you know, and I can’t help seeing,
myself, that she’s just worn out.”

“Too bad. Don’t you think you might——”

“Coax her to be inactive? Never in the world! You ought to have

heard her pity me, this morning! She’s a dandy girl, though. I was
thinking, to-day, that if she’d only happened to be a Sigma Pi, she
and I would have had such fine times together all through high
school. Here’s that duet I was looking for. We haven’t played it for
ages. Let’s try it.”

Next morning, when Jacquette reached school she found an

unusual buzz of excitement outside the building. Newspapers were
fluttering everywhere, and knots of boys and girls were standing
about, each group with heads close together over some intensely
interesting article that they were reading.

The Sigma Pi girls were gathered near the school entrance, and,
as Jacquette came up, Mamie Coolidge thrust a paper under her
eyes.
 “See that,” she ordered, pointing to the tall headlines,

“BOARD OF EDUCATION
SCORES AGAINST

SECRET SOCIETIES”

“They’ve got our injunction set aside, Jack,” Blanche Gross hurried
to explain, without waiting for Jacquette to read the rest. “So now
they can enforce that horrid rule against secret societies, and they’re
going to do it. And do you realise what it means, right here in Sigma
Pi? No sorority girl can hold a class office any more. That makes Etta
give up the secretaryship of the junior class!”

“And it takes Blanche out of the senior dramatics; that’s worse,”

Etta broke in.

“And Flo Burton off the basket-ball team,” Blanche took it up

again. “And as for football, the Marston eleven will simply go to
smash. Nearly every fellow on it is a fraternity man.”

“Oh, it will kill this school, that’s all!” Mamie Coolidge declared. “It
may not make so much difference in schools where there aren’t so
many secret societies, and of course we’ll get another injunction
very soon, but, in the meantime, Marston High will suffer more than
we will, that’s one sure thing.”

“That’s the tardy bell, girls!” cried somebody, just then, and,
before Jacquette could learn any more, the newspaper was furled
and they all went hurrying to their places.

As she reached her desk she noticed Mary Elliott looking at her
with swollen eyes, from across the aisle. A minute later Mary
reached over and laid a scrap of paper on Jacquette’s desk. On it
was scrawled the two lines:
 “Yestreen the Queen had four Maries,
The night she’ll hae but three.”

“What do you mean?” Jacquette scribbled beneath the words, and

handed the paper back, but instead of answering, Mary put her
handkerchief to her eyes and began to cry.

Jacquette watched her in bewilderment. Had she offended her

without knowing it?

Then the soft, penetrating voice of Mademoiselle, calling her name

from the roll, brought her back to duty, and she faced about with a
start.

As soon as the noon hour came, Jacquette followed Mary into the
hall.

“What is it, Mary? What do you mean?” she asked.

“Haven’t you seen the morning paper?”

“Why, yes, but——”

“Oh, it’s different with you! Your family understands. But you
ought to have seen how angry my father was when he read that
article.”

“Angry? At the Board, do you mean?”

“Oh, no! It was the first he had ever heard about the secret
societies getting that injunction against the Board, and he said it was
an unheard-of piece of insolence, and that he should think every boy
and girl connected with it would have been expelled, and that he felt
disgraced to see me wearing this pin and he wasn’t going to have a
daughter of his belonging to an organisation that was in antagonism
to the school authorities, and——”
 “But, Mary, didn’t you tell him there was no such thing as
resigning from Sigma Pi?”

“Oh, I did!” Mary had shrunk back into a dark corner of the hall
where she could mop her eyes without being noticed. “I told him I’d
have to be expelled from the sorority and that would disgrace me
before the whole school, and everything else, but nothing made any
difference. He says the disgrace is in belonging to such a society.
He’s given me three days to make up my mind to leave Sigma Pi of
my own accord and if I haven’t done it then, I think he’s going to
make me. Oh, Jacquette!” Mary began to sob again. “I haven’t any
mother, you know. There’s just a housekeeper.”

“You poor little thing!” said Jacquette, drawing Mary’s arm through
hers protectingly. “Here, take my handkerchief. Yours is soaking wet.
There! Now, come out in the air, and eat some luncheon. I’m
thinking of something that I believe will comfort you, but I can’t tell
you about it just yet. I wouldn’t say much to the other girls, until
you’ve heard my plan. Just stop worrying until to-morrow, can’t you,
please? You must, you know, if the Queen says so.”

“Oh, but I can’t bear being expelled and having the girls not like
me! Jacquette, will you have to turn against me? Will I have to give
up being one of the Queen’s Maries?”

“I should say not!” Jacquette declared, with a sudden sense of

shame as she recognised her own old fears in Mary’s panic. “You
leave the whole thing to me.”

“Oh, you don’t know my father!” Mary protested, but she dried her
tears and smiled, in spite of herself, as she followed the Queen into
the bracing October air.

“I hope to have that honour, some day,” Jacquette answered,

roguishly. She felt very motherly and tender toward this timid girl
who seemed so easily influenced by her. “In the meantime, I’m
going to take his daughter and get her something to eat. Where’s
Marion Crandall, to-day?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t come to school.”

“Etta!” Jacquette called, just then, as she and Mary overtook a

buzzing group of Sigma Pi girls, gathered under a tree. “Let me see
that paper, won’t you? I didn’t get a chance to read it before school.”

“This is the afternoon paper. There’s something worse yet, now.

Isn’t that perfectly shameful?” Etta answered excitedly, pointing to a
column which was headed,

“SIGMA PI EPSILON
SORORITY IN

DISGRACE.”

“Mercy!” Jacquette gasped. “What’s this?”

Her eyes ran hurriedly through the sensational account of a

deception which had been practised at Marston High School by two
members of the Sigma Pi Epsilon sorority.

For the sake of getting into a sorority that she considered

desirable, the article said, a certain girl who lived outside of the
district had given as her own the address of one of the members of
the Marston chapter of Sigma Pi Epsilon, and, by doing so, had been
admitted to the school. The names of both girls were suppressed,
but it was stated that the one who had allowed her address to be
used had been suspended, and the other expelled, from school.

“And of course there’s not one word of truth in it all!” Jacquette

exclaimed.

“I wish there weren’t,” said Etta, gloomily.

 “What do you mean?”

“I mean that Marion Crandall is the girl that gave Bessie Bartlett’s
address for hers so that she could come to Marston—and Bess let
her do it, too.”

“One of my Maries! And never told me! You didn’t know it, did
you, Mary?” Jacquette asked, turning to the girl at her side.

“I didn’t, Jacquette,” put in Mary Barnes.

“Nor I, either. It’s a perfect shock to me,” said Marie Stanwood.

But Jacquette was watching Mary Elliott.

“Yes, I did,” Mary owned, miserable in her honesty. “But it was

before I knew you, and Marion made me promise never to tell. She
said it was no harm; it was just a technical rule that kept her from
coming to Marston because she lived a block too far in a certain
direction.”

“I knew it, too. I heard Marion ask Bess if she could borrow her
address,” put in Mamie Coolidge, avoiding Jacquette’s eyes, but
determined not to let little Mary Elliott take the blame alone. “It
didn’t seem wrong to me, at the time, either. It looks different, now.
Marion said her father knew she was going to do it, and he just
laughed and thought it was cute. But of course I never dreamed she
was going to sign her mother’s name to her report card, and then
tell those awful yarns to Mr. Branch.”

Jacquette’s eyes looked black instead of hazel, and she was every
inch the “Queen” as the girls fell into a semi-circle before her and
obediently answered her questions.

“Why, you see,” Blanche Gross took up the story, “Marion cut a lot
of her classes the first few weeks after she was initiated Sigma Pi. I
suppose the sorority importance went to her head a little, the way it
does, sometimes, you know, and at the end of the month her report
was so bad that she got worried about it and signed her mother’s
name to it instead of taking it home. But her room-teacher
suspected the signature, and Mr. Branch wrote a letter to Marion’s
mother at the address she had given, and it was Bessie’s house, of
course, and she and Marion got the letter from the postman, and
tore it up, and then Mr. Branch called them to the office, and
questioned them, and they got all muddled up, and——”

“Do you mean they didn’t tell the truth?” Jacquette demanded.

“Well, you know how Bess is, Jacquette. She never had a bad
intention in her life, and she thought she was doing the whole thing
for the sake of Sigma Pi, don’t you see? Marion was her Sigma Pi
sister, and in trouble, and she felt that she just had to answer Mr.
Branch in the way that would help Marion out. But he saw right
through the story and now she’s suspended for a month and Marion
Crandall is expelled and Sigma Pi is disgraced, and the Kappa Delts
will just be in clover!”

“Oh, it’s awful!” Jacquette exclaimed. “It makes me wish——” She

stopped short, and closed her lips. “Come, Mary,” she said, gently. “I
don’t blame you. You made a mistake, and we all do that. I want
you to eat something before the bell rings. The rest of you girls had
better do the same, too,” she added over her shoulder as she drew
Mary along. “We can’t live on excitement.”

From that moment until she hurried away from school in the
afternoon, carefully avoiding the possibility of meeting any of the
girls, a busy undercurrent of thinking was going on in Jacquette’s
mind. To her disappointment, when she reached the house, she
found it deserted, but the first thing she did was to get the morning
paper and read all about the action of the Board of Education. Then,
after walking back and forth through the empty rooms, and standing
at the window, looking impatiently down the street, she turned with
a sudden impulse and going to the telephone, called Flo Burton.
 Ever since their memorable interview with Mr. Pierce in the
principal’s room, Jacquette had been finding out good qualities in
this harum-scarum girl, and she turned to her now in the hope of
sympathy. Flo had been missing from the council of Sigma Pi sisters
at noon and, remembering that Flo’s classes were arranged, this
year, so that she went home before luncheon, Jacquette thought
there might be a chance of finding her there now, though she knew
that most of the girls had probably flocked to the sorority rooms to
talk things over.

Flo answered the telephone, and Jacquette plunged into her

subject with the first words.

“I want to talk with you,” she said. “Do you realise that we’re in
disgrace with the school authorities?”

“You mean on account of Marion and Bess?”

“Of course, that; but I was thinking, just now, about what the
Board has done. Seems to me all fraternities and sororities are in
disgrace from now on, with this rule in force, shutting us out from all
the school honours and privileges.”

“But—Jacquette Willard!” came in a scandalised tone. “Surely you

can’t mean you’d turn traitor to Sigma Pi for the sake of holding a
class office?”

“Turn traitor—no! I’m not thinking about offices. But you know,
yourself, that the boys are planning to collect more money and fight
the Board again, and doesn’t it seem to you, Flo, that it’s a question,
now, of deciding between our sorority and our school?”

“But, Jack,” Flo answered, with tears in her voice. “Surely you’ll
decide right!”

There was something so childishly one-sided in this appeal that

Jacquette smiled, and, as she did so, she realised for the first time
that she herself had almost outgrown Flo’s tragic view. But she
understood that view too well to make the mistake of laughing at it.

“Aren’t there two sides, Florrie?” she coaxed. “Oughtn’t we to

have a little of the same feeling toward Marston that college
students have when they talk about their ‘Alma Mater’?”

“We aren’t hurting Marston!” came the retort. “It’s that horrid old
Board that has spoiled the foot-ball team—and everything! It’s just a
case of persecution.”

“Oh, Flo! Why, I don’t see what else the Board could do, if it
wanted to discourage secret societies. It can’t forbid our joining
them, you see, if our fathers and mothers let us, but perhaps it can
manage to make them unpopular, by this rule.”

“Make itself unpopular, I guess you mean.”

“See here, Flo,” Jacquette asked, abruptly. “I want you to tell me

something. If I should decide to give up Sigma Pi, would it break our
friendship?”

“What a question! It would have to, of course. Do you suppose, if

it really came to choosing between Sigma Pi and you, it would take
me a minute to decide? But you’ll never do such a thing. You’re
teasing me.”

“No, I’m not teasing,” Jacquette said, in a disappointed voice, and,

after a few minutes more of fruitless discussion, she hung up the
receiver, and sat thinking.

“Miss Jacquette,” said Mollie, the maid, putting her head in at the
door, “the woman that sews for your auntie is here, and wants to
speak to someone.”

“Bring her into the library, Mollie,” Jacquette answered, and, with
her thoughts still on the talk with Flo, she listened to the
dressmaker’s errand, and asked her to be seated until Miss Granville
should come in.

“Glad to do it, I’m sure,” Mrs. Waller agreed, as she put back the
floating brown veil which covered her shabby turban, and settled
herself comfortably. “I’m glad of the rest. I’ve walked about fifteen
blocks to see your aunt, and now she’s not here. Just home from
school, aren’t you, my dear? Go to Marston? Say, there’s plenty of
excitement over there to-day, I guess. One of those sororities got
into print, didn’t it? Well, I think they’re a dreadful bad thing for
girls, anyhow.”

“What’s that?” Jacquette’s wandering attention was fixed in an

instant. “I’m a sorority girl myself, Mrs. Waller,” she added rather
coldly.

“You don’t say! Well, now, I didn’t suppose your aunt would hear
of such a thing. She’s so sensible, as a general rule! But, of course,
they’re not all off one piece, and yours may be better than most.
This one that’s in disgrace, now, is about the worst, from what I
hear. I sew for one of the teachers over there, and that’s how I
come to know so much about it. She’s good friends with the
principal, herself, so she gets things straight, and she tells me those
Sigma something girls—whatever it is—had a pretty bad name with
the faculty before this thing happened. They toss their heads at
rules, and all that, you know.”

“But that isn’t true, Mrs. Waller,” Jacquette protested, her Sigma Pi
spirit bristling like a porcupine. “I’d like to know which teacher made
that remark. The Sigma Pi girls are as nice a set as there is in
school. Any sorority is liable to make a mistake and take in the
wrong kind of a member, once in a while, and then trouble may
come of it, of course, but that’s no reason to think the rest are all
bad!”
 “Well, there, now, my dear, don’t get excited! I really couldn’t
mention the name of the teacher that told me. ’Twouldn’t be right.
But she knows the facts. I didn’t dream you had friends among
those girls. It’s real too bad for them, isn’t it? I mean the nice ones—
that is, if there are any nice ones, as you say. For of course ‘Poor
Tray is known by the company he keeps,’ don’t you know?”

The postman’s ring at the door just then gave Jacquette an excuse
to get away without answering, and she walked out into the hall,
startled by the tumult of indignation which Mrs. Waller’s words had
roused within her. “That’s the way it would always be if I should give
up Sigma Pi,” she thought to herself. “At school, they would think I
was queer, and, outside of school, people would just shake their
heads and say what a wicked set those sorority girls must be—
because Jacquette Willard had to cut loose from them! Nobody
would ever understand.”

“It’s a letter for you, Miss; that’s all he brought,” said Mollie,
turning back from the door which she had opened, and, as Jacquette
took the envelope, she recognised the big, honest handwriting of
Bobs Drake.

For a minute, sorority troubles were forgotten, and a pleased smile

replaced the worried look, while Jacquette, dropping down on the
hall bench, opened her letter and began to read. The first few pages
were full of college news and nonsense, and the dimples played in
her cheeks. Then the tone changed.

“Jack, I hope you won’t think I’m turning preacher,”

Bobs wrote, “but there’s something on my chest that I
wanted to say before I came away, and I didn’t have
the sand. It’s about the way you fell down on that
sorority resolution.” (Jacquette’s eyebrows lifted.) “I
say ‘fell down’ because inactive membership isn’t the
same as what you planned to do, by a long sight. And
here’s the point: If it isn’t good for you to be an active
member of a sorority, why is it good for other girls?
Your health isn’t so much more delicate—you don’t
require so much more time for your lessons—than the
general run of girls. Of course they can’t all be inactive,
as you are now, and escape the bad effects of the
thing, that way, and yet, by wearing your pin and
keeping your position more or less of a secret, you’re
all the time influencing other girls to get into the very
things that you made up your mind it was best for you
to get out of. What you write about the four Maries, for
instance, especially that little one you like so much,
makes it plain that you have a great influence with
some of the girls.

“I would have said all this before I left, only I didn’t

like to disturb you when you were so happy about the
arrangement you had made with the girls. But I have a
teacher, here—the finest man I ever knew—and talking
with him about some other things to-night, got me to
feeling that I was a coward unless I gave you straight
goods on this. The fact is, Jack, things that seemed
mighty important in high school begin to dwindle when
you get to college, especially if you have the luck to
know a man like Prescott. I’ll tell you more about him
when I see you.

“Always the same old

“Bobs.”

“P. S.—I had a letter from Clarence Mullen, to-day,

the second since I’ve been here. You’d be surprised to
read it. That military school is a fine thing for him.

“R. S. D.”
 Jacquette’s hands, with the letter in them, fell into her lap. Things
were happening strangely to-day.

“What—going, Mrs. Waller?” she said, with a start, as the

dressmaker appeared in the hall, buttoning her coat about her.

“Yes, my dear. I’m rested, now, and it may be a long time before
your aunt comes in. I think I’ll just run along and ’phone her this
evening.”

As Mrs. Waller went down the steps, old Mr. Granville came up,
supporting himself with his cane.

“Now, Grandpa Granville!” Jacquette reproached him lovingly, as

she drew him to his easy chair, and sat down on a stool at his side.
“Didn’t you say I was your gold-headed cane, and that you couldn’t
take walks without me? What made you go before I got home?”

He smiled at her tenderly. “It wasn’t fair,” he admitted, brushing

back her soft, bright hair. “And this ivory-headed cane doesn’t
compare with the gold one either. But I was restless, my dear—I was
restless. Sula had to go out, and I got to worrying.”

“I know why,” Jacquette murmured, laying her cheek against his

shoulder. “You were bothered by those articles about Sigma Pi in the
paper to-day.”

“You’ve seen them, then?”

“Yes, indeed! It’s the only topic there is, over at school. Did Tia
feel bad?”

He nodded. Then he asked solemnly, “Was it true, dear, that any

of our sorosis did those dishonest things?”

“‘Our sorosis!’ Oh, grandpa, you darling!” Jacquette exclaimed,

between laughing and tears. “Who cares if you do call it sorosis, as
long as you say ‘our,’ that way! Yes, it was true, but it isn’t quite so
bad as it looks in the paper. You see in the first place we made a
mistake when we initiated Marion Crandall. We didn’t take time to
know her well enough. We were too anxious to get more new
members than the Kappa Delts—that was the trouble. But she’s
expelled from Marston, so she’s out of Sigma Pi, and as for Bess
Bartlett, she just didn’t realise that she was doing anything wrong,
at all. I know how she is. She’s a nice girl, but thoughtless.”

Mr. Granville sighed, without answering.

“Here’s a letter from Bobs Drake,” Jacquette went on with

determined cheerfulness. “I want you to hear something he says.”
And she read aloud what Bobs had written about her inactive
membership.

As she finished, her grandfather lifted his white head and looked
her straight in the eyes. “Well?” he asked.

“Well,” she answered, steadily, “I was trying to keep it to tell Tia

first, but you’re so blue, I think she’d want me to——”

“Here they are, girls,” a bright voice cried, just then, and Aunt
Sula, still in her outdoor wraps, walked into the library followed by
Mary Barnes and Marie Stanwood and Mary Elliott. “I found three
forlorn girls outside, Jacquette, trying to make up their minds
whether they should come in or not, so I brought them with me.”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t want to see us, because you didn’t wait
for me to walk home with you,” Mary Elliott explained, crossing the
room to Jacquette.

“Of course I want to see you,” Jacquette answered, slipping one

arm around her. “Don’t I always want to see my Maries? Sit down,
girls,” she added, as Aunt Sula, motioning them to chairs, took one
herself.
 But the girls glanced at Mr. Granville and his daughter. “It’s about
Sigma Pi,” Marie Stanwood hinted mysteriously.

“Talk it right out before Grandpa and Aunt Sula,” said Mary Elliott,
with unusual decision, and she glanced lovingly from one to the
other of the relatives she had adopted in the speech. “It’s all about
me, and I want to know what they think.”

So, while Jacquette stood by her grandfather’s chair, with one arm
round Mary’s waist, Marie Stanwood told them of Mr. Elliott’s stern
decree, and went on to present the reasons why it was too much to
expect that Mary should obey him.

“We’ve been to Miss Billings—my Latin teacher,” she said, “and she
thinks no father would ask such a thing of his daughter if he knew
what it meant. She belongs to a college sorority herself, but she’s
fair to both sides. She says a high school sorority probably does
sway a girl away from study toward—society, and if she had a
daughter, she’d try to keep her out of such things until she went to
college, but she thinks the getting out, after you’re once in, is a
different matter. A girl that would turn against her sorority—this is
just what she said—would be despised and boycotted by the whole
school, as much by the non-fraternity and non-sorority crowds as by
the others. And we girls think, Jacquette,” she concluded, “that you
can talk the best of any of us, and that if you’d just go to Mary’s
father and tell him how things are at Marston, he’d feel differently.
What do you say?”

Jacquette’s hand stole down into her grandfather’s, and she drew
Mary closer. Then she spoke, with a sweet, womanly ring in her
voice.

“I’m glad you came, girls. I was just going to tell my grandfather
something that I’d like to say before all of you. I’ve made up my
mind that the Board is right—that we’d all be better off without
sororities, and I don’t think I ought to hide that belief behind
inactive membership another day. To-morrow I’m going to tell the
girls, and give up my place in Sigma Pi, once for all. Mary, will you
be afraid to come—with me?” she asked, smiling down into the
upturned face which had suddenly grown luminous.

“Now, Tia, don’t you look sorry this time, when you want to be
glad!” she went on, turning to Aunt Sula. “It isn’t tragic the way it
was before. Then, I was doing it because you thought it was right,
but now I know it’s right myself, and I’m happy about it, too. Why,
even if the girls decide that they’ll have to ‘dishonourably expel’
Mary and me, I guess we can stand it, as long as we know we’re
doing right!”

“Bravo!” cried old Mr. Granville, bringing his cane down on the
floor, while Jacquette, with a shining face, caught Aunt Sula in her
arms for a hug and then turned to the bewildered girls, with both
hands outstretched.

“Don’t think I’m breaking the vows easily,” she said, reading the
doubt in their faces. “I’m not, girls. It’s only because a ‘bad promise
is better broken than kept!’ And, even if you can’t follow your Queen
in this, I know you’ll never make Mary and me feel like outcasts
when we see you at Marston High.”

“Outcasts!” ejaculated quiet Mary Barnes, opening her lips for the
first time during the interview, and speaking up stoutly. “Why,
Jacquette Willard, you’re the splendidest girl I ever saw in my life!
Marie, I don’t know how you feel, but I’m going to follow the
Queen!”

A little later, as three loyal Maries started down the steps together,
Mary Elliott lingered to throw her arms around Jacquette’s neck and
whisper happily,

“Remember what I wrote you this morning: ‘The night she’ll hae
but three’? I thought I was going to be the one left out, and there it
was poor Marion Crandall, all the time!”