“It will be your finish some day; on that car, I mean. Get a black car. You need a new one. This one is passé. You could have it painted black, but what’s the use? Trade this one in on a new machine. Maybe you’ll do better driving a new car.”
“Perhaps you are right. I think my father will let me have a new machine.” Possession of a brand new car appealed to vain Elizabeth.
“I _know_ I’m right. Suppose you were to have trouble along the pike as you had with that driver last year. If anyone reported you the tag that gave you away would be: ‘The student I mean was driving a blue and buff car.’” Leslie imitated to perfection a high, complaining voice. “With a black car you could simply scud away from trouble and no one would remember how you looked. What?”
“You are right, Leslie,” Elizabeth reluctantly conceded. “I never before looked at the matter in that light.”
Leslie was tempted to reply, “That was because you were too stupidly vain of your gay, blue ice wagon.” She refrained. Discretion warned her to allow matters to rest as they were. She had no desire to arouse resentment in the shallow, but tricky, junior. Her advice concerning a change of cars was sound and she knew it. While Leslie had neither liking nor faith in Elizabeth Walbert, she needed her services. She thought she had learned by past bitter experience precisely how to manage Elizabeth.
“The very first thing to do, Robin, is to find out whether those properties used for boarding houses are for sale. There is no use in hoping for one little instant that Miss Susanna will ever relent enough to allow us ground on the campus for any new houses.” Marjorie spoke with finality.
“Queer, isn’t it? Hamilton doesn’t even own itself.” A flickering smile touched Robin’s lips.
“Miss Susanna doesn’t consider that she owns the college,” Marjorie explained in defense of her eccentric friend. “Miss Humphrey said Mr. Brooke Hamilton’s will stipulated that she must sanction all building, improvements or important changes on the campus. The college has free right to choose everything else.”
Not even to Robin Page, her dearest Hamilton friend, outside Wayland Hall, had Marjorie ever divulged the fact of her friendship with the last of the Hamiltons. She would have liked to tell Robin, that, only a week previous, she had taken tea with Miss Susanna and heard again the old lady’s repeated statement that never should Hamilton College receive even the ghost of a favor from her.