Stanford Stories: Tales of a Young University. Will Irwin
rooms last Monday, not very long after you left," said the clerk. "A lady took your friend to her house."
"Who was she?" asked Jimmy, with dark foreboding.
"A Mrs. Payson."
Perkins collapsed on his suit-case. Jimmy made for the desk and began to scan the directory.
"What are you looking for?"
"The P's. I'm going to haze that rattle-weeded Freshman and slay the doctor."
When the two defeated joshers paused inside the Payson gate, a scene of touching domesticity met their gaze. Under a jasmine-covered corner of the piazza, nestling in the depths of a great easy chair, lay Freshman Van Dyke. Señorita Dolores, in the rôle of ministering angel, was bending unnecessarily close. Dr. Mead, as near his patient as was consistent with delicacy, was lounging in a hammock, and smoking a good cigar. It is a tradition in Los Angeles clubdom that John Payson imports his cigars direct. In the middle-distance, Mrs. Payson was approaching with a cup of nourishing beef-tea.
Jimmy Mason, afraid to trust himself to the expression of his thoughts in the presence of ladies, was about to vanish gracefully, but Van Dyke caught sight of them.
"Hello, fellows. Hear you had a frost in San Diego," cried he.
"You must be very much better—able to be moved, I notice," with a look in Jimmy's eyes that pointed to future trouble.
"Oh," said the Freshman, "almost recovered. I've had the very best of care—and a very satisfactory nurse," and for the last time, in this story, he gazed into those Andalusian eyes.
"But not the nurse we engaged," said the aggrieved Perkins.
"No," said Van, "this young lady was engaged only last evening."
"S-sh," said Señora Payson, pointing to the open window, "Papa may hear you."
POCAHONTAS, FRESHMAN.
Pocahontas, Freshman.
"But when they lookt round for the Ladye Pocahontas, she hadde gone to her Yorke woodes, weepyng they saye."
Rowe's Life of Pocahontas.
I.
To begin with, the college never called her Pocahontas to her face, and no one would have found anything pat in the name until a long-remembered spring afternoon in her Freshman year. After that day, although her instructors still registered her as Hannah Grant Daly, she was generally known as "Pocahontas." Students with visitors would point her out in the Quad. "That's the girl they call Pocahontas." Then they would tell briefly her story. She knew through her room-mate that the college had nicknamed her, and she grieved over it. She did not know that John Smith himself never called her Pocahontas; she had never dared to look at him since the day they had named her.
Early in September the noon train brought her through the oaks and the burdened olive orchards, past the lonely redwood Tree to the University. The brakeman's call: "Next station is Palo A-al-to!" stirred her with fluttering excitement. The crowded carriages and people at the station bewildered her. Eager 'busmen struggled for the hand-baggage of strangers, men with "Student Transfer" on their caps clamored for trunk-checks. Fellows in duck seized some of the men who came down the car steps, carrying away their suit-cases and throwing lusty student arms about their shoulders. The men thus welcomed introduced younger fellows and the whole group piled into a 'bus and shouted "Rho House, Billy," to the driver.
The man who got out just ahead of Pocahontas was greeted by cries of "Come on you Ca-ap!" and "Hello, Smithy, old boy!" He was evidently someone of whom they were very fond. One fat fellow with a comical face hugged him theatrically. Pocahontas watched them drive away, laughing and slapping one another's knees. The man they called Smithy was the nicest looking.
She had given her new valise to a gray-haired 'busman who looked a little like the minister at home. On the way up the long avenue of palms toward the sandstone buildings low in the distance, this 'busman chatted kindly with her, telling her wonderful, almost incredible things about the University, so that she began to feel a little less strange. As she paid her fare in front of the Roble he said:
"Now, whenever you want a 'bus, Miss, just ask for Uncle John. That's what they call me."
"Yes," answered the Freshman, gratefully, "I will—Uncle John."
She passed up the dormitory steps, running awkwardly the gauntlet of experienced eyes scanning the new arrivals. The Theta Gammas wrote her down as material for a quaint little, quiet little dig—not of sorority interest. One of them ventured that there was an Oxford teacher's Bible and an embroidered mending-case in the shiny valise. Another prophesied that the newcomer would wear her High School graduation-dress to the Freshman reception. These ladies had been at college for three years and their diagnosis was correct.
So Hannah Grant Daly hopped with no unnecessary flapping of wings upon her perch in the Roble dove-cote. The matron put her into 52 with Lillian Arnold, a Sophomore leader of local society. This was "to make things easier for her." Their wedded life lasted three days. It was long after lights when Miss Arnold returned the first night. Hannah had read her chapter and was lying awake, bravely resisting a homesick cry. Her roommate groped in with an animated tale of a Freshman spread on the top floor at which the chief attraction had been oyster cocktails. Pocahontas shuddered. In imagination she detected a faint odor like that from her mother's medicine-closet.
"I'd have asked you to go along with me," apologized Lillian, scrambling into bed without any conventional delay, "but I thought you wouldn't care for such things."
"I hope I never shall," said the new girl, solemnly, and turned her face to the wall.
The following morning while Pocahontas arranged her share of the bureau, the Sophomore draped a tennis net on their wall and fixed in its meshes the trophies of her first year. She was putting a photograph in place when Hannah spoke:
"Who is that, Miss Arnold?"
"That's Jack Smith," answered Lillian; "stunning, isn't he?"
"He's very interesting, I think. He was on the train yesterday. There were ever so many boys to meet him."
"He's a Beta Rho—belongs to that fraternity, you know. They have a swell house here. I know most of them very well—been over there to dinner several times."
"What class is he in?"
"Mine—Sophomore. He's a splendid athlete—football and pole-vaulting—and he sings in the Glee Club. He was the only Freshman to make the team last year—he's really a perfect hero."
"I knew he was somebody by the way they acted down at the station. I think he has a good face." The new girl had come over from the bureau and was looking up at the picture in the net.
"Everybody thinks he is the handsomest man in college. You wait till you see him in his red sweater. Don't say anything, Hannah, but I'm going to have Jack Smith for my very own this year; you see if I don't manage it," and Lillian, laughing, blew a light kiss to the photograph.
Decidedly Pocahontas disapproved of her room-mate. Later, when she found that a half-dozen girls who had dropped in after dinner were there for the evening, she went out into a music-room to look at her new text-books. Routed from here by more butterflies, with "beaux," she did her reading on a bench in the hallway. Another day and she was rooming with a Junior who was a hard student. Her departure caused Miss Arnold sincere regret. A girl she knew had roomed