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ALICE
41

"Expire about her, you mean?" asked Alice.

"No, dearest; in droves they'll expire. They'll breathe their last at her word. They won't see anything amusing, I mean. At moments I was seized with the almost ungovernable impulse to borrow a bugle and rush to the roof of stanch old Willard and blow to college and town 'save himself who can'; but no man would thank me. No one would trouble to save himself, if he could. They're demons for that danger." And Myra arose, shaking her small, plain self belligerently.

"She needn't be an enemy," Alice asserted after a moment's silence.

"She? She can't help it."

"Then, we shouldn't hold it against her. I don't like her, My," Alice confessed. "But that's mostly because I do feel afraid of her; and that's silly, I suppose."

"Silly?" said Myra, the plain, staring at her dearest friend. "For you, it's raving lunacy!"

Alice flushed hotly and then brought Myra and herself to business. "We're just thinking about our personal feelings, My, and not about her. She's a Tau Gamma; she's here now; she's our 'sister'!"

Myra, interrupted. "She's not mine, or she wouldn't be, if I'd had the vote on her. If Minnesota hadn't wished her into Tau Gamma, she'd never have got in here."

"But that makes no difference now; we've got to ask her to join us."

"Not right away," Myra reminded. "We can't,