Page 41 - 1923 Hartridge

was there and Lib fell madly in love with and married a minister from some little town in Nebraska. The last time I heard of her she had several
children and was doing her own work. She liked it, too.” Laura half gasped, half chuckled, and whispered,
‘‘I can tell you one almost as good. Have you heard about Alice Hagan? You haven’t? Well, Alice went to college and graduated, mar­ ried and had a couple of children, and was settling down into the usual rut of married life when something happened. Nobody knows exactly
what. She is only about twenty-seven or -eight, but 1 guess she had an idea she was getting too old and settled, anyway she suddenly left home, divorced her husband, and went off on a wild jaunt to Cuba.”
I was surprised to hear this, knowing Alice’s boarding-school views on marriage and woman’s place. But I suppose college changed her somewhat.
1 he music ceased, the lights were turned low, and the title of the
moving-picture flashed upon the screen. It was not the feature, but a
comedy, one of those slap-stick, custard-pie things with pretty maidens
and cross-eyed men chasing each other through swinging doors and down slippery corridors.
Suddenly in the midst of the turmoil a calm figure in a bathing-suit appeared on the screen. The caption told us it was Marjorie Harbison.
“ Of course!” exclaimed Laura. “ No wonder she looked so famil­ iar!” We watched Marjorie’s adventures through the film and nudged each other as we noticed little movements and expressions characteristic of Marjorie, the dramatic hope of the class of ’23.
As the lights went up again after the picture and we were putting on our hats, Laura suggested that we go somewhere for tea. Emerging into the street crowded with machines and people homeward bound, we saw a little shop with a window display of tea and china. We entered, took a table far in the back and ordered tea and cakes. Over the cups we
learned from each other the fates of the rest of our class-mates.
“To me,” said Laura, as she bit into a tiny sandwich and gazed at
it reflectively, “Charlotte’s career is by far the most interesting. After she left school she dabbled in many activities, a little college, a story or two, the Lucy Stone league, she even took up landscape painting, I believe,
but she finally found her niche in journalism. And now—-you can’t imagine what she is doing. She is the editor of the joke department of Harper’s.
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