Montana Marie O’Toole was, even as Fluffy Dutton had said, the sensation of the hour at Harding College. Indeed, she bid fair to be the chief sensation of the entire year of 19—. Her cheerful interest in the curious rites and customs of college life continued undiminished, in spite of elaborate snubs from upper-class girls and the crushing scorn of her fellow freshmen, who attempted, all in vain, to keep Marie (and so Marie’s class) out of the public eye. Nothing escaped Montana Marie’s smiling scrutiny. Her questions were frank and to the point. Her pithy comments were quoted from end to end of the Harding campus, and beyond. But her giggle was contagious, her sweetness really appealing, her appreciation of any small favors touching in its breezy Western sincerity. Montana Marie had “done” New York and the European capitals; she had been “finished” in “dear old Paree”; but she had also been born and brought up in a Montana mining camp, and she was not ashamed of that fact, nor of her very plain, as well as very peculiar, parentage. So Harding College agreed with Fluffy Dutton in liking Montana Marie. Its laugh at her was always friendly, if merciless, and in time it came to be even rather admiring. But that was not until long after the initiation of Montana Marie.

Susanna Hart planned that joyous festivity. Since Madeline Ayres had planned a similar one for Georgia and the Dutton twins and some of their Belden House classmates, and Betty Wales had explained and defended the Harding variety of initiation to an amused faculty investigating committee, there had been no official opposition to the hazing of freshmen at Harding. Hazing (Harding brand) was recognized as just an ingenious, “stunty” way of entertaining the newcomers, of finding out their best points, of helping them to show the stuff they were made of, and to take their proper places in the little college world,—in short, of getting acquainted without loss of time, or any foolish fuss and feathers.

So being initiated had speedily come to be considered an honor instead of a torment. All the most popular freshmen were initiated—in very small and select parties calculated to give each individual her due importance. And because of the extreme popularity—or prominence—of Montana Marie O’Toole, Susanna Hart decided that she should have an initiation all to herself. So she asked Marie to dinner at the Belden on a rainy Saturday night when there was nothing else going on. The initiation feature of the evening’s entertainment was not mentioned to Montana Marie; it was to be sprung upon her as a pleasant little after-dinner surprise. Susanna and her sophomore and senior friends in the Belden spent the whole afternoon arranging the “mise en scène” for the mystic ceremonies; and they made so much noise tacking up curtains and building a spring-board in Susanna’s big closet that Straight Dutton, who had a bad headache and was trying to sleep it off, came up-stairs, with rage in her heart, to find out what was happening.

Fluffy, who was acting as Susanna’s chief assistant, explained. “We thought you were asleep, so we didn’t come to tell you,” she ended.

Straight sniffed indignantly. “I was likely to be asleep—underneath this carpenter shop.”

“Stay and help us, and drown your sorrows in fudge and——”

“Noise,” finished Straight crisply. “No, thanks. I’m going to ask Eugenia Ford to massage my forehead. She’s wonderful at it. Tell me what everything is for, and then I’ll go back.”

Fluffy gleefully exhibited a glove full of wet sand which Montana Marie was to be induced to shake in the dark, as she entered the dusky Chamber of Horrors, otherwise Susanna’s single. There was a part of a real skeleton to run into; there were clammy things and hot things and wriggly things to touch; and finally there was the spring-board to fall from, down upon a heap of pillows, surrounded by a bewildering, fluttering hedge composed of Susanna’s generous wardrobe, carefully spread out on all Susanna’s dress-hangers, and those of some friends.

“She’ll never get out of that closet until we haul her out,” concluded Fluffy joyously. “Isn’t it going to be an extra-special initiation, Straight?”

Straight nodded in silence, reëxamined all the arrangements with polite attention to details, and departed, wearing the pained expression appropriate to one with a bad headache.

Five minutes later she was sitting cross-legged on Eugenia Ford’s couch, her cheeks still pale, but her eyes dancing with mirth and excitement.

“Of course I’m a loyal senior, and I ought by rights to be up-stairs with Fluffy helping the sophs,” she outlined her position rapidly. “But they’ve got enough help without me, and the racket did bother me fearfully, and made me mad, and besides, the juniors’ Rescue party that I’m going to organize will be a grand feature, so they really ought to thank me for seeming to bother them. How many juniors are there in the house, Eugenia? Well, Timmy Wentworth counts against two of the sophs, because she’s so big, and that big corner double room she and Sallie Wright have is the very best place in the house for our extra-special show. Now where can we borrow masks and black dominos? I have an idea that raw oysters dipped in hot chocolate sauce would taste rather weird. They never have had uncanny eats at the initiations I’ve been to, so that will be an original stroke. You go tell the others and buy the oysters and borrow chocolate and find the clothes and get the night watchman to lend you a lot of rope. I’ll take a nice little nap here on your couch, away from that sophomore racket, and at five we all round up in Timmy’s room to arrange.”

Having thus relieved herself of all minor details, after a fashion taught her by her good friend Madeline Ayres, Straight curled up among Eugenia’s downy pillows, and slept sweetly and very soundly until Eugenia and Timmy Wentworth shook her awake with the information that there were not enough black dominos and it was quarter past five.

The Belden House juniors appeared at dinner that night late and rather disheveled. Straight, because she had a headache, did not appear at all, and thereby missed seeing Montana Marie sweep through the Belden House parlors between the triumphant Susanna and Fluffy Dutton, the latter not too much worried about her twin’s unprecedented indisposition to miss any of the humors of the situation. For Susanna and her friends, being rather tired and hurried, and wishing also to be suitably clothed for darkling adventures in Susanna’s closet, had not dressed very formally for dinner. Against their background of shirt-waists and walking skirts or plain little muslins, Montana Marie sparkled radiantly in a clinging, trailing yellow satin, cut low enough to show the lovely curves of her throat and long enough to give just a glimpse of her high-heeled gold slippers and to lend her a quite sumptuous dignity among her short-skirted companions. A jeweled fillet held her piled-up hair in the exaggerated mode of the moment—it was becoming to Montana Marie. Diamonds sparkled at her throat and on her fingers. In short, Montana Marie was perfectly dressed for twenty-two and a formal dinner,—but not for a school-girl nor for any little after-dinner surprise in the way of an extra-special initiation party.

“It would be tragic to have to jump off a spring-board in those clothes,” Fluffy whispered sadly to a sophomore neighbor. “We’ll have to manage somehow to dress her over for the part.”

“She’s about my size; she can take my white linen with the braided trimming,” the sophomore agreed magnanimously. “It’s rather dirty, I’m sorry to say, but that’s really an advantage for to-night.”

“I’ll tell Susanna,” promised Fluffy, “and she’ll have to arrange. Why in the world didn’t she tell Miss Montana Marie O’Toole not to dress up like a princess?”

But Susanna, though she employed all her far-famed diplomacy, could not “arrange” any changes in her guest’s wonderful toilette. When she proposed a little walk in the rain, and said it would be a shame to risk spoiling that lovely dress, Montana Marie only smiled, and picked up her train.

“I shan’t spoil it,” she said. “I never spoil my clothes. But I’d love a walk in the rain—with you and Fluffy. Yes, or a fudge party up-stairs. Just whatever you say.”

And no amount of hints and polite protests could make Montana Marie change her mind.

So it was that, still smiling and still arrayed in clinging bejeweled yellow satin, Montana Marie shook hands with a gloveful of wet sand, at the door of Susanna’s Chamber of Horrors, stuck her arms through a hole in the Curtain of Variety, and shrieked as she grasped first a hot potato, then a large and lively lobster, and finally a paper snake freshly dipped in thick white paint by Fluffy, so that it would be sure to feel extra-crawly. Next, after she had assured her captors that she was enjoying it all,—they inquired at intervals according to the etiquette of hazing (Harding brand),—she was led up to the skeleton, which promptly tumbled over upon her with a gruesome rattle of dry bones. And finally came the spring-board and the cushions, hemmed in by Susanna’s hanging dresses, from behind which three little sophomores delivered horrible noises, accompanying soft, uncanny pats and pushes, while Montana Marie, still cheerful, though badly scared, minus one gold slipper, and quite helplessly entangled in her long train, struggled manfully to regain her feet and maintain her composure.

When they were tired of watching her try to get out, they turned on a sudden blaze of lights, pulled down the dresses that had been hung across the door, helped Montana Marie to arise, returned her slipper, and arranged her train.

Montana Marie blinked at the lights, and smiled blandly at the assembled company. “Nothing like this in dear old Paree,” she announced, gasping but happy. “Now at Miss Mallon’s Select School for American Girls——”

“Hush,” commanded Fluffy. “We aren’t interested in any silly little boarding-school stories. This is a grown-up college. But as you seem to want to talk, go ahead—make a speech.”

“On the subject of the Fourth Dimension,” put in Susanna hastily. “We are all very tired of dear old Paree.”

“But I never heard of——” began Montana Marie.

“Sh!” commanded Susanna sternly. “If you say you’ve never heard of a thing like the Fourth Dimension, why, here at Harding that means social ostracism. To use simpler language suitable for very verdant little girls like you, not to have heard of the Fourth Dimension is a mark of complete and utter greenness, perfect and unbearable freshness, and even worse. If you haven’t heard of it, all right, but don’t say so, unless you want to be finally and forever dropped like—like a hot potato,”—Susanna glanced smilingly at the Curtain of Variety,—“by the best Harding circles. If you haven’t heard of it, why, bluff. Now don’t tell me you never heard of bluffing.”

“Well,” began Montana Marie, still smiling composedly, “you see I never heard of a lot of things that you do here, because I was mostly educated in a convent, I suppose. President Wallace understands that. That’s why he let me in when——”

Marie was too much absorbed in her speech, and her audience were too busy laughing at her confidential disclosures, to notice a slight commotion near the door. A second later the room was full of masked figures in black dominos. Two especially stalwart ones guarded the door. The rest drew a cordon around the amazed initiators and producing pieces of stout rope—procured, according to Straight’s directions, from the night watchman, who was under the impression that it was wanted by the Belden House matron for strange purposes of her own—they silently bound their prisoners, who were too astonished even to struggle, and started them in procession out the door and up the hall.

Suddenly a black domino cried, “Stop—I mean—halt, prisoners! We’ve forgotten something.”

For Montana Marie O’Toole still stood as she had been commanded to do to make her speech, on the quivering middle of the spring-board in the closet, viewing the performances of the black dominos with mingled surprise and amusement, manifested, as usual with her, by a smile, rather faint now, but still somehow infectious.

“We’ve forgotten the principal feature,” the voice went on. “Montana Marie O’Toole, get down. You’re no longer a persecuted little freshman. You’ve been nobly rescued by your junior protectors. Now come and see justice done on these base tormentors of youth and beauty.”

“All right,” agreed Marie calmly, scrambling down from her uncertain perch and losing off a slipper again in the process.

Susanna picked it up and handed it to her meekly.

“You’re a champion bluffer, if you don’t know what it means,” Fluffy told her admiringly. “I suppose you knew all the time that they were coming, and that was why you just giggled at everything and let us do our worst.”

Montana Marie O’Toole smiled vaguely back at Fluffy. “Oh, no, I didn’t know——” she began.

“Of course she didn’t know,” cut in a black domino. “Do you think we ask the advice of freshmen——”

“Straight Dutton,” cried Fluffy indignantly, “what are you doing helping a lot of juniors? You belong with us.”

The black domino, thus reproached, shrugged her shoulders defiantly. “You spoiled my nap and made me mad.” Then she laughed. “You won’t be a bit mad after we’ve finished with you. Truly you won’t. We’ve got lovely stunts and the weirdest eats. Forward march, captives,—and hurry, or we shan’t have time for everything.”

Enthroned on Timmy Wentworth’s writing table, with Eugenia Ford to coach her in the lines of her part, Montana Marie O’Toole acted as mistress of the Rescue ceremonies.

“Fluffy Dutton, turn your dress backside front and inside out and speak a piece.”

“Eugenia Ford, tell us the whole and complete story of the Winsted men you have flirted with since last week Wednesday.”

“Mary Mason, sing the Rosary without stopping to laugh.”

“Tilly Ann Leavitt, do your Chantecler stunt—all through.”

Montana Marie announced each “lovely stunt,” after Eugenia had whispered it to her, with much dignity. She watched its performance gaily, and greeted its climax with a gurgle of appreciative laughter.

When the sun—it was a big jack-o’-lantern, and it had been hastily sent for from Tilly Ann’s room, to make her Chantecler stunt complete—when the sun came up over Timmy Wentworth’s screen and sent long, streaming rays of orange ribbon over the room and the audience, Montana Marie O’Toole lay back gasping in Eugenia’s arms.

“I saw that play acted in French, in dear old Paree. Did Miss Leavitt see it there too? Did she make up that take-off herself? Oh, my, I feel so perfectly at home here now!” Montana Marie rocked back and forth in an ecstasy of mirth and satisfaction.

“The world is such a small place,” she added with much originality, and smiled impartially on all classes present.

Then they turned out the lights and had the “weird eats”—the largest raw oysters to be bought in Harding, dipped in very thick, very hot chocolate sauce. And then they had “real food,” namely: Cousin Kate’s cookies and pineapple ice. Eugenia had requisitioned the “real food” of Betty Wales, at Straight’s instigation.

“If we gallantly rescue her freshman, she certainly ought to do something nice for us,” Straight had declared. “Tell her that we prefer ice to ice-cream, because we—I—have recently had a headache, and I feel for ice. Tell her she will be an angel to send the things because we haven’t had a dessert that I like this whole long week.”

And Betty, who understood all about campus fare, smilingly promised, and was better than her word to the extent of a huge pitcher of lemonade.

Montana Marie was proving rather an amusing protégée, she reflected that evening, after Thomas, the new door and errand boy, had been dispatched to the Belden with the “real eats.” The girls liked her, in spite of her queerness, and so did the faculty; at least several of them had spoken of her to Betty in very friendly terms. College had been open nearly a month now, but Montana Marie had not asked for any help from her official tutor except with her entrance conditions. The one in history she was almost ready to pass off, Betty thought. She made a note on her engagement pad: “Ask M. M. how freshman work is going, specially math.” Betty smiled to herself, as she remembered how scared all the Chapin House crowd had been over their freshman math. And then in the end nobody had been even warned except Roberta, and that was because she was always too frightened that first year to try to recite; Roberta was labeled a “math. shark” before she graduated.

Betty wondered how the Rescue party was progressing. She wished she were not a “near-faculty,” with faculty dignity to sustain. She longed to borrow a black domino and a mask and join the Rescue party incognito. She thought of a deliciously funny “stunt” to suggest as Susanna Hart’s penalty for having instigated Montana Marie’s hazing party. She hoped her freshman would be game—would make them keep on liking her—now that they had begun.

She stayed late at the Tally-ho working on her accounts, and reached the campus just in time to run into Montana Marie O’Toole being escorted home,—at top speed, owing to the exigencies of the ten o’clock rule,—by Eugenia, the Dutton twins, reunited without loss of time, and Susanna Hart.

Straight detached herself from escort duty to tell Betty all about the party. “Part two, the Rescue, was a grand, extra-special success,” she explained, “and the sophs say that part one was just as good. I say, Betty, did you give us away? Did you tell Montana Marie about the Rescue?”

Betty hadn’t even seen her freshman for two days, until to-night’s brief encounter.

Straight considered. “I wonder if somebody else told her. She didn’t act a bit surprised. But then she never does act surprised, no matter what happens or what wild tales we stuff her with. Betty, have you noticed how you can’t ever tell what she thinks?”

Betty laughed. “I never can tell what people think, Straight, unless they tell me. It’s only Madeline and you clever twins who can read people’s minds.”

“Only some people’s,” Straight corrected modestly. “And I don’t believe even the wonderful Madeline could read Montana Marie’s. She’s queer. That’s the only word that describes her,—except pretty, of course,—just queer. First you laugh at her, then you like her, and before you get tired of her foolishness you get awfully interested in studying her out. And you can’t. Can’t make her out, I mean. Betty——” Straight paused at the door of Morton Hall.

“Yes,” laughed Betty.

“Ask her if she knew about to-night’s Rescue party, will you?”

“Of course,” Betty promised. “Fly now, Straight, or you’ll be locked out.”

“Never.” Straight prepared to fly her fastest. “I’ll bet you anything, Betty Wales, that you won’t ever find out. Whether she knew, I mean. Good-night, Betty.”

Straight had flown.