we hit the Hall.A charming pair, we’ll mount the stair;
Dear one, then take my arm:
Safe to fifteen, bewitching Bean
I’ll guide you without harm.”
CHAPTER IV
THE SPRINGTIME OF THE HEART
“And you will please trouble yourself to recite that jingle again before it vanishes into nothingness,” commanded a laughing voice from the doorway of the large, old-fashioned sleeping room. Leila Harper stood in the half-opened door, an attractive figure in the newest of English leather motor coats and sports hats.
“Leila Greatheart, what a dandy coat and hat!” Marjorie cried. She came forward, hands outstretched to meet Leila.
“Here I come with a fine Irish dash.” Leila made a funny cat-like leap into the room and caught Marjorie’s welcoming hands in hers. “It is a hundred years since I saw you; or so it seems,” she said in her whimsical way. “Now I shall say not a word more until I have taken down Jeremiah’s jingle. I happen to have a pencil, and bewitching Bean herself will furnish her Celtic friend with a bit of paper.”
“At your service. Let me conduct you to the writing desk,” Marjorie took Leila’s arm and escorted her to an open antique mahogany desk. She motioned Leila into the mahogany chair before it. “There you are.” She indicated several sizes of pale gray note paper bearing the monogram of the Arms. “Isn’t this beautiful paper, Leila?” she commented. “Miss Susanna put it here on purpose for us. She never uses it. She prefers white. This was Mr. Brooke Hamilton’s own stationary.”
“You are two lucky children in a fairy castle,” Leila declared. “Now say me the jingle, Jeremiah. Then we will talk about everything and anything.”
“Ahem.” Jerry coughed importantly. “I may have to depend upon bewitching Bean to help me. I never remember my own ravings – inspirations, I should say. Inspiration is – it is – well, it just is.”
“Is it?” Leila inquired with raised brows and an engaging grin.
“It certainly is,” Jerry responded with a difficult solemnity. It broke up in an amused high-keyed chuckle. Merely to glance at Leila, posed in an attitude of expectant and ridiculous affability was to laugh.
After one or two hitches and a little prompting from Marjorie who also had designs on Jerry’s funny effusions, Leila managed to record the three jingles, though she had arrived in time to hear only the last one of them.
“Now we have a beginning.” She exhibited open satisfaction of the penciled copy of Jerry’s lively doggerel. She folded it twice and placed it in a pocket of her leather motor coat. “I shall expect you to take down and save me all future jingles of Jeremiah, Beauty, since you are the inspiration. Never fail to do so. Now you may talk to me about anything. I am so gracious.”
“I have copies of two jingles that Jeremiah spouted last week on an occasion when I brought her four letters from the mail-box. I’ll mail you copies of them tomorrow. Where is Midget? I know she can’t be far away.”
Marjorie glanced inquiringly at Leila.
“She is lost somewhere in space downstairs. She is but a small doll in this great house. And you now promise me two more jingles. Two and two are four, and four is better than two. Soon we shall have a book. It must have a green crushed Levant binding with a portrait of Jeremiah reciting one of her own jingles as a frontispiece and the story of her life printed in gold letters on the front cover.”
“It looks as though I might become as famous as Bean, Harper, Page or any other campus high light if that crushed Levant edition doesn’t flivver,” Jerry said hopefully.
Full of their usual light-hearted raillery the trio of girls presently went downstairs to find not only Vera Mason in the sitting room with Miss Hamilton. Ronny Linde, Muriel Harding, Lucy Warner and Robin Page as well were there, clustered around Miss Susanna. They greeted Jerry and Marjorie with a concerted shout and rushed them affectionately.
“How did the four of you manage to keep so quiet?” Jerry demanded. “I’m amazed.”
“You needn’t be. You were so noisy yourselves you didn’t hear us. But we heard you,” Vera assured. “We heard three different varieties of giggle, all going at once. Leila was told to hurry upstairs and bring you down instantly. Instead – ” She cast an accusing glance at Leila.
“Ah, but you were in good company, so I may be forgiven.” Leila made a gallant bow to Miss Susanna.
“You certainly are a fine Irish gentleman with your lordly manner and nice leather overcoat,” complimented Miss Susanna, her brown eyes dancing.
“Am I not?” modestly agreed Leila. “What I need most to make me impressive is a pair of green leather boots and a chimney pot hat.”
“I’ll cast you as the romantic Irish hero of a play in precisely that costume. See if I don’t,” Robin Page laughingly threatened.
“Who will write the play?” Leila quizzed interestedly.
“You of course.” Robin leveled a designating finger at Leila. “That’s a bully idea; to give a romantic Irish play. And for once you may act as well as be stage manager. So glad I happened to see you this afternoon and hear about your green leather boots and chimney pot hat.”
“As you will not require anything of me but to write the play, manage the stage and play the leading part I’ll not change your gladness to sorrow by snubbing you. Still I am wondering where I am to find the boots and the hat. And let me add a condition of my own. I will not be stage manager, actor or playwright unless Miss Susanna will promise to come to the show.” Leila launched this proviso with her most ingratiating smile in Miss Hamilton’s direction.
“I’ll come,” the old lady obligingly promised. Now that she had “surrendered,” as she humorously termed her change of heart toward Hamilton College she was almost as eager as her girls to have some part in campus fun and enterprise. “Will it be a house play?”
“No it will not.” Marjorie and Robin spoke the same words, and almost together. They looked at each other and laughed. The same thought had prompted the same answer.
“Wise Page and Dean. They see money in featuring Leila as the hero in her green boots and chimney pot hat,” was Ronny’s light explanation of the exchange of eye messages.
“Do we? Well, rather!” Marjorie said with warmth.
“Uh-huh,” emphasized Robin. “The campus dwellers will mob the gym to see Irish Leila as an Irish hero in an Irish play. We’ll reap a bully harvest of dollars for the dormitory.”
“You and Vera can do that Irish contra dance you danced at Page and Dean’s first show when we were junies.” Muriel grew animated. “In itself it’s worth the price of admission.”
“Oh, do have it in the play, Leila,” rose the general plea.
Leila bowed, hand over her heart. “How celebrated Midget and Leila are! That means Midget must play the part of the maid from Lough Gur, of the county Limerick. That is the place in Ireland where the fairies yet hold their invisible revels. And I think Midget might be taken for one of the Lough Gur fairy queens,” she said fancifully. “I am afraid to invite
