"Bancroft, Edith - Jane Allen College 04 - Jane Allen, Junior" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bancroft Edith)

In bathrobe and slippers Judith soon followed Jane down the long
hall. Neither dallied long in the plunge, for Judith was wide awake
now, and presently, after dressing and patting herself and
belongings into place, she confronted Jane with this: "I heard Dozia
Dalton last night. And I know there will be trouble about the farmer
girl. Jane, tell me, is she the scholarship?"

"Yes," almost gasped Jane the irreproachable. "And to think that I,
in any way, should be responsible for bringing her to college!"

"But you are not, Janie dear," soothed Judith. "That your father
should give this college a scholarship each year is a noble thing,
and how can you tell who may win it? That girl is--well, a bit raw,"
she ground her mouth around the word, "but we have nothing to do
with that. She doesn't belong among the juniors, and just leave it
to little Judy to steer her off. Don't go trying any uplift; just
cut her dead and watch her wilt. From the ashes there may arise a
nice little green thing, even if it is of the common garden variety
of onion. Now Jane, you have got to do exactly that. Keep Shirley
Duncan on her own grounds. Shoo her out of junior haunts."

"You are right, Judy. I have been tortured with the idea that I
would have to play fairy godmother to that--that 'hoodlum.'
Honestly, did you ever see so ordinary a girl in Wellington?"

"Never. But then she may be a genius. I have read such descriptions
of them. There's the first breakfast bell. Smile now and disappoint
the horde. They think you have been crossed in love and the old maid
depression has settled upon you. You acted that way yesterday,"
teasingly.

Jane's laugh pealed out at this. It was like ragging a down scale,
that rippling crescendo, and Judith needed no other assurance of her
friend's good humor.

But the day's tasks left little time for trifles. College work is
serious and exacting, each day's programme being carefully and even
scientifically marked out to make the round year's schedule
complete. Jane and Judith, juniors, with a reputation made in their
previous years, "buckled" down to every period with that
intelligence and determination for which both had been credited.

Everything was so delightful and the autumn air so full of promise!
Jane could not find a true reason for the haunting fear that seemed
to follow her in the person of that crude country girl, who somehow
had won the Alien scholarship.

It was in free time late the next afternoon that this fear took
definite shape. Jane and her contingent were leaving the study hall