Gussie and Florence utterly refused to accept a penny from the three for their personal losses. Miss Remson, however, accepted a settlement for the damage done to the room.
With their departure went the last really pernicious element in Hamilton College. Elizabeth Walbert had been, if anything, more unscrupulous than Leslie Cairns. Lack of a certain sense of balance, which Leslie had possessed, had prompted her to enjoy a kind of malicious mischief of which Leslie would not have entertained a thought.
“Well, your last enemy has been routed in confusion, beautiful Bean. I just saw her depart in a station taxi. Guess she sent her car home ahead of her.” Jerry came in from the campus late one afternoon with this pleasing information.
“Glad of it.” Marjorie looked up from a translation she was making. “She’s to blame for my trouble with Miss Susanna, indirectly. She deserved expulsion. I felt sorry for the Sans, a little. I don’t feel sorry for her. I think she was outrageous; worse even in disposition than Rowena Farnham.”
Jerry agreed, glad to see Marjorie evince resentment against the disgraced junior. She realized that nothing save the utmost bitterness of spirit could have wrung that denunciation from her charitable room-mate. Jerry knew how deeply Marjorie felt the loss of Miss Susanna’s friendship and wished she could in some way manage to set things to rights between them.
The more she thought about it the more she felt impelled to go to Hamilton Arms and “have it out” with Miss Susanna. It lacked only two days until May Day, when she definitely decided to go on May Day evening and plead Marjorie’s cause. The fact that Miss Susanna had evidently not reported Elizabeth Walbert was to Jerry an indication of her leniency toward Marjorie. Jerry shrewdly suspected that the old lady would welcome a peace ambassador.
On May Day evening, at a little after seven o’clock, she lifted the heavy knocker of the Arms and waited rather sheepishly for an answer to her ring. She had not the least idea of what she should say to Miss Susanna, provided the latter would see her.
Jonas greeted her with delighted surprise in his fine old face. “I’m so glad you came, Miss Jerry,” he said. “She’ll be glad, too. She misses the little girl, God bless her.”