Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/144

132 to the chase. Kenneth spent more and more of his time dangling about the Kandy Kitchen girl. He developed many of the symptoms of love; being uneasy when he was away from her, uneasy in a different way when he was with her. He had the going-going-gone feeling at the diaphragm when the appointed hour neared, and he developed extraordinary small jealousies as to the wearing of pins, rings, and knicknacks. Pearl had his fraternity pin.

"You'll have to take off that other junk if you wear my frat pin," said Kenneth, in reference to various bangles, clasps, and similar gee-gaws bestowed by other young men. Though Kenneth by virtue of his awesome social class had the inside track he was not the only one in the running.

"They were given to me by my gentlemen friends," Pearl rubbed it in, "and I certainly shall wear them. I don't know that I care for your pin."

"It isn't that I mind who gave them to you," argued Kenneth, from a high plane. "It doesn't make any difference to me. But you don't realize that my Fraternity is a very old Institution. It's been founded since 1826, and it's got more famous men as Brothers than any other frat in the world.. And you won't find chapters in every little jay college either. We only have eighteen chapters all told, but whenever you see a Kappa Omega Pi chapter you'll know that it is the best frat in that college. It isn't just only a silly club. It has high Ideals. I can't tell you about it, because all that is Secret, but if you knew about it you'd realize that it has the highest kind of aims and ideals. A girl ought really not to wear our frat pin at all. There used to be a rule against it, but that was modified at the Cleveland convention. Now they're permitted to wear it, but they can't wear any other frat pin at the same time. Wearing it makes you a Kap Sister, you see."

"But these others aren't frat pins," objected Pearl. "They're practically the same thing. There isn't any college here, and these fellows haven't been to college, or they would be frat pins," returned Kenneth with convincing logic.

The upshot was that the miscellaneous hardware disappeared and was replaced by Kenneth's shining emblem.