“You’ll never be celebrated as a great thinker, Nat,” Leslie drawled, ignoring her companion’s displeasing question. “Leave it to me to make matters hum for Bean. I’m going to Hamilton on the six-thirty train in the morning. I’ll have something to tell you, you’d better believe when I come back.”
“Oh, yes, ‘Leave it to me,’” mimicked Natalie, an angry light in her gray-blue eyes. “You’re crazy, Leslie Cairns,” was her added scathing opinion.
“I’m not so much of a nut. What?” Leslie took no more umbrage at Natalie’s rudeness than she would have at the buzzing of a fly. “Try to get it across your brain that I’m a business shark now, Nat. Will you?” she said with exaggerated patience. “I’ve sixty thousand dollars tied in a hard knot in that bunch of rickety shacks just off the campus. Those ancient corn cribs have to come down. What about my garage?”
“That for your garage.” Natalie snapped contemptuous fingers. Leslie’s insinuation that she was “thick” was the final drain on her patience. “You’ll never make a go of it. It’s too far from the campus,” was her wet blanket prediction.
Leslie merely threw back her head and laughed in the noiseless, hobgoblin fashion for which she was noted among her few friends. Her silent, insolent merriment stung Natalie far more deeply than a retort could have done.
“Well it is.” Natalie repeated, determined to hold her own.
The laughter died out of the other girl’s face to be replaced by a lowering, bullying scowl.
“I tell you it is _not_,” she emphasized in tones intended to forbid further contradiction. “Because it isn’t in the same vicinity as the other garages is no sign it won’t pay me to put up a garage on my new property. I’m going to build the kind of garage the Hamilton gang will cry for. I may run it myself.”
“Wha-t-t!” In her astonishment Natalie half rose from her chair. She sat down again and gave Leslie a long-suffering glance, as if she could not credit what she had just heard.
Leslie was enjoying her chum’s amazement. Of the eighteen girls who had composed the San Soucians, the club of girls who had been expelled from Hamilton College during their senior year, Natalie Weyman was the only one who had remained friendly with Leslie Cairns. The other members of the Sans, though betrayed into expulsion by the treachery of Dulcie Vale, chose to place the major share of the blame upon Leslie’s shoulders. If Leslie had not arraigned Dulcie and ousted her from the Sans in their assembled presence, Dulcie would not have betrayed them. Or thus they argued. Leslie, who had been their leader, became a detested stranger.