The footsteps were coming down the alleyway toward the door. Bea filled her lungs, and opened her mouth in valiant preparation.

"Wee-wee-wee, bow-wow!" Two little paws scratched at the door.

Bea's breath issued in a feeble squeak, as she dropped neatly down upon the floor and buried her face in her hands.

Berta swooped upon her. "The puppy!"

Gertrude felt herself freed from the encircling arms. She moistened her lips. "I am sorry, Sara, about the other night. I am—sorry."

The pale little face upturned toward hers began to glow as if touched with sunshine. "I was late because Prexie kept me. I should have explained, but—but it hurt. I knew you were sorry."

Berta sat up as if jerked into position by a wire, and briskly brushed the hair out of her eyes.

"Listen, Bea," she whispered to a small pink ear half hidden by red curls, "they're reconciled."

"So are we," said Bea, "please open the door for the puppy."



CHAPTER VIII

CLASSES IN MANNERS

Gertrude's brother paid another visit to his sister at Class Day. At least, he was supposed to be visiting his sister, but it was really Bea who took charge of him during all that radiant June morning while Gertrude, as chairman of the Daisy Chain committee, was busy with her score of workers among the tubs of long-stemmed daisies in a cool basement room. Bea had immediately enrolled the young man as her first assistant in the arduous task of gathering armfuls of the starry flowers in the field beyond the dormitories.

After that labor was finished, and even Lila had deserted her for the sake of an insensate trunk that demanded to be packed, Bea conducted her companion to the lake. There through the golden hour of midday they drifted in the shadow of the overhanging trees along the shore. Once they paddled softly around the little island at the end, and a colony of baby mud-turtles went scrambling madly from a log into the water. When the brother began to fish for one with an oar, Bea protested in a grieved tone.

"But you don't seem to realize that I am worrying about freckles every minute that we stay out here in the broad sunlight. What are trees for if not to provide shade for girls without hats? And anyhow it is unkind to seek to tear a turtle from his happy home. If you do that, I shall never, never consent to admit you to our highest class in manners."

"Highest class in manners," he echoed, "that sounds promising. Is it another story?"

"It certainly is," replied Bea, "and if you are very good indeed and will keep the boat close to the bank from the first word to the last, I will tell you all about it."

Berta called it our classes in manners, but Miss Anglin, our sophomore English teacher, said that it was every bit as bad as gossip. When Berta told her that she was the one who had started us on it by advising us to read character in the street-cars, she looked absolutely appalled, and groaned, "What next?"

This was the beginning of it. When Miss Anglin took charge of our essay work the second semester, she explained that we should be required to write a one-page theme every day except Saturday and Sunday. Lila almost fainted away, because she hates writing anything, even letters home. Robbie Belle looked scared, and I opened my mouth so wide that my jaw ached for several minutes afterward. But Berta kept her wits about her. She said, "Miss Anglin, we are all living here together, and we see the same things every day. I'm afraid you'll be bored when you read about them over and over. Why can't some of us choose intellectual topics?"

By intellectual topics she meant subjects that you can read up in the encyclopaedia. Miss Anglin sort of smiled. "Do you truly think that you all see the same things day after day? How curious! Have you ever played a game called Slander?"

"Yes, Miss Anglin," said Berta, and went on to tell how the players sit in a circle, and the first one whispers a story to the second; and the second repeats it as accurately as she can remember to the third; and the third tells it to the fourth, and so on till the last one hears it and then relates it aloud. After that the first one gives the story exactly as he started it. It is awfully interesting to notice the difference between the first report and the last one, because somehow each person cannot help adding a little or leaving out a little in passing it on to the next. That is the way slander grows, you know. The gossip may be true at first, or almost true, but it keeps changing and getting worse and worse and more thrilling as it spreads till finally it isn't hardly true at all. That is how our classes in manners turned out.

Well, to go back to that day in the rhetoric section. Miss Anglin saw that we were discouraged before we had commenced and we didn't know how to start; and so she began to suggest subjects. For instance, she said, one girl might wake up in the morning——Oh, but I am forgetting her application of the illustration from the game of Slander. She said that if no two persons receive the same impression from a whispered story spoken in definite words, it is probable that no two pairs of eyes see the same thing in the same way, to say nothing of the ideas aroused in the different brains behind the eyes. One girl might wake up in the morning, as I was saying, and when she looks from the window she sees snow everywhere—provided it did snow during the night, you understand. Then she writes her daily theme about the beautiful whiteness, the shadows of bare trees, diamond sparkles everywhere and so forth. Another girl looks out of that very same window at the same time, and she doesn't think of the beautiful snow merely as snow; she thinks of coasting or going for a sleigh-ride or something like that. And so her theme very likely will prove to be a description of a coasting carnival or tobogganing which she once enjoyed. Another girl looks out and thinks first thing, "Oh, now the skating is spoiled!" Her theme maybe will tell how she learned to skate by pushing a chair ahead of her on the ice.

Berta raised her hand again. "Well, but, Miss Anglin," she said, "suppose it doesn't snow?"

Berta is not really stupid, you know, quite the reverse indeed, but she is used to having the girls laugh at what she says. They laughed this time, and Miss Anglin did too, because she knew Berta was just drawing her out, so to speak. She went on to give other examples about the things we see while out walking or shopping or at a concert, and finally she drifted around to character-reading. She said a street-car was a splendid field for that. The next time one of us rode into town, she might try observing her fellow travelers. There might be a working-man in a corner, with a tin-bucket beside him. Maybe he would be wearing an old coat pinned with a safety-pin. By noting his eyes and the expression of his mouth the girl could judge whether he was just shiftless or untidy merely because his wife was too busy with the children to sew on buttons. She told a lot of interesting things about the difference between the man who holds his newspaper in one hand and the man who holds his in both. Some temperaments always lean their heads on their hands when they are weary, and others support their chins. A determined character sets her feet down firmly and decidedly at every step—though of course it needn't be thumping—while a dependent chameleon kind of a woman minces along uncertainly. Why, sometimes just from the angle at which a person lifts his head to listen, you can tell if he has executive ability or not.

Before the bell rang at the end of the hour, we were awfully enthusiastic about reading character. The first thing Robbie Belle did was to stumble over the threshold.

"Oho!" jeered Berta, "you're careless. That's as easy as alpha, beta, gamma."

She meant a, b, c, you understand, but she prefers to say it in Greek, being a sophomore.

"But she isn't careless," protested Lila, "she's the most careful person I ever met. The sole of her shoe is split, and that is the reason she stumbled."

"Why is it split?" demanded Berta in her most argumentative tone; "would a nobly careful and painstakingly fastidious person insist upon wearing a shoe with a split sole? No, no! Far from it. If she had stumbled because the threshold wasn't there, or because she had forgotten it was there, the inference would be at fault. I should impute the defect to her mentality instead of to her character, alas! A stumble plus a split sole! Ah, Robbie Belle, I must put you in a daily theme."

Robbie Belle looked alarmed. "Indeed, Berta, I'd rather not. I was going to trim it off neatly this morning, but I have lent my knife to Mary Winchester."

"Ha! lent her your knife!" declaimed Berta sternly, "another clue! This must be investigated. Why did she borrow your knife?"

"To sharpen her pencil," answered Robbie. "I made her take it."

"Her pencil! Her pencil!" muttered Berta darkly, "why her pencil? Are there not pens? Mayhap, 'tis not her pencil. Alas, alas! Her also I thrust into a daily theme."

"She's snippy about returning things," said Lila, "she acts as if she didn't care whether you do her a favor or not. I don't like her."

"She's queer," I said.

Now I had a perfect right to say that because it was true. Mary Winchester was just about the queerest girl in college. Everybody thought so. But I shall say no more at present, as her queerness is the subject of the rest of this story. If I told you immediately just how she was queer and all the rest of it, there wouldn't be any story left, would there?

Well, as the weeks whirled past, we studied character and wrote daily themes till we were desperate. Robbie Belle grew sadder and sadder until Berta suggested that she might describe the gymnasium, the chapel, the library, the drawing rooms, the kitchen, and so forth, one by one, telling the exact size and position of everything. That filled up quite a number of days. When Miss Anglin put a little note of expostulation, so to speak, on the theme about the corridor—it was, "This is a course in English, not mathematics, if you please,"—Berta started her in on the picture gallery. There were enough paintings there to last till the end of the semester. Of course, such work did not require her to read character. Robbie Belle didn't want to do that somehow; she said it seemed too much like gossip.

However, at first, it wasn't gossip. For instance one day Lila and I collected smiles. We scurried around the garden and dived in and out of the hedge in order to meet as many people as possible face to face. Then we took notes on the varieties of greeting and made up themes about them. Miss Anglin marked an excellent on mine that time. For another topic we paid one-minute calls on everybody we knew. When they looked surprised and inquired why we did not sit down, we frankly explained that we were gathering material for an essay on Reading Character from the Way a Person says "Come in!"

After we had been grinding out daily themes for three weeks we began to long for something to break the monotony. My brain was just about wrung dry, and Lila said she simply loathed the sight of a sheet of blank paper. One afternoon while I was struggling over my theme, Berta threw a snowball against my window, flew up the dormitory steps, sped down the corridor, gave a double rat-tat-too on my door, and burst in without waiting for an answer.

"Listen! Quick! I have an idea. It struck me out by the hedge. Why not study manners as well as character? Why not divide——"

"Go away. That snowball plop against the pane spoiled my best sentence. This is due in forty minutes. I've written up my family and friends and books and pictures, my summer vacations—a sunset at a time, my little——"

"Why not divide everybody, I say——"

"——dog at home," I continued placidly. "I've composed themes about the orchard, the woods, the table-fare, the climate, the kitten I never owned, the thoughts I never had. To-day I was in despair for a subject till I happened to borrow one of your cookies and——"

"You did! My precious cookies! Burglar!"

"——bite it into scallops. Ha! an idea! I arranged myself on the rug with much care in order that I might stretch out the process to a whole page of narration. Thereupon I nibbled off the corners of the scallops till the cookie was round and smooth again. Next I bit it into scallops and then I nibbled off the corners; and next I bit and then I nibbled; and next I bit and then I nibbled; and next I bit——"

"You did! Oh, I wish I——"

"——and then I nibbled; and next I bit and then I nibbled, till there was nothing left but the hole. Now I am writing a scintillating and corruscating theme about it. Go away."

Berta turned toward the door. "Some day you'll wish you had listened," she declared in accents heavy with gloom, "some day when you can't think of a single thing to write about, and the hand keeps moving around the clock, and the paper lies there blank and horrible before your vacant eyes, and your pen is nibbled so short that your fingers——"

"I didn't mean go away," I said, "I meant, go on. Tell me about it."

"Nay, nay! To lacerate my feelings, spurn my proffered aid, insult my youthful pristine zeal, and then to call me back—in short, to throw a dog a bone! Nay, nay!"

"Oh, Berta, be sweet. Tell me. You know that I think you have the most original ideas in college." After I had coaxed her quite a lot, she told me her new scheme. It was something like advanced character reading and biology combined. Just as scientists classify trees and plants in botany, Berta proposed that we should divide the students into different classes according to their manners.

"It will be so improving and instructive too," she pleaded, "we'll be paragons of politeness before we finish them all. We'll be so particular about our highest class that we will notice every little thing and thus take warning." She paused a moment; then, "Did you hear me say thus?" she inquired. When I nodded, she gazed at me sadly. "People who belong to the highest class never gesticulate; they use spoken language exclusively. Furthermore, as to the thus. I wondered if an up-springing sense of courtesy persuaded you to refrain from hooting at such elegant verbiage. That would be a sign of benefit already derived from the classes. By the way, it was Mary Winchester who inspired the idea."

"Oh, but she has no manners at all!" I exclaimed before I thought.

"That is precisely the point. I met her flying along like a wild creature on her bicycle, eyes staring, hair streaming in the wind. At least, some locks were streaming. She gave the impression of a being utterly lawless. Then I thought——See here, Miss Leigh, are you interested in my thoughts?"

"Yes'm," I answered meekly.

"Then drop that pen and pay attention. Even the girls who are to belong to the second class in manners know how to do that. Well, I thought that she hardly ever accepts an invitation, and she looks as she didn't expect anybody to like her, and she minds her own business and does exactly as she pleases generally. My next important thought was that sometimes she cuts me in the hall, and sometimes she doesn't, just as she happens to feel. That led to the philosophic reflection that politeness is a question of law."

"Ah, pardon me, Miss Abbott, but I remember from a story which was read by my teacher about forty years ago when I was in the fourth reader that

"'Politeness is to do or say The kindest thing in the kindest way.'"

"That's what I meant. The law of kindness—that's what politeness is. Listen to the logic. Mary Winchester is lawless, hence she breaks the law of kindness, hence she has no manners, hence it will be fun to divide everybody here into various classes according to their manners."

So that is the way our classes began.

It was awfully, awfully interesting. Robbie Belle said she didn't want to; but Berta and Lila and I talked and talked and talked. We sat in the windows and talked instead of dancing between dinner and chapel. We talked after chapel, and on our way to classes or to meals. And of course we talked while we were skating or walking or doing anything similar that did not demand intellectual application. Lila even talked about the classes in her sleep. We discussed everybody who happened to attract our attention.

Finally we had sifted out all the candidates for the highest class except three. One was the senior president, pink and white and slender and gentle and she never thumped when she walked or laughed with her mouth open or was careless about spots on her clothes or forgot the faces of new girls who had been introduced to her. The second was a professor who was shy and sweet and went off lecturing every week. The third was a teacher who looked like a piece of porcelain and always wore silk-lined skirts and never changed the shape of her sleeves year after year. Not one of the three ever hurt anybody's feelings.

Miss Anglin was obliged to go into the second class because she had moods. No, I don't mean because she had them,—for sometimes you cannot help having moods, you know—but because she showed them. She let the moods influence her manner. Some mornings she would come down to breakfast as blue as my dyed brilliantine—(how I hated that frock!)—and would sit through the meal without opening her mouth except to put something into it; though on such occasions we noticed that she rarely put into it very much besides toast and hot water. On other days she made jokes and sparkled and laughed with her head bent down, and was so absolutely and utterly charming that the girls at the other tables wished they sat at ours, I can tell you. We three were exceedingly fond of her, but we agreed at last after arguing for seven days that true courtesy makes a person act cheerfully and considerately, no matter how she may feel inside.

There were about nine in that second class, and fourteen in the third and twenty in the fourth, when we started in on Mary Winchester.

Lila and I were rushing to get ready for the last skating carnival of the season. Some one knocked at the door. It was Mary, but she didn't turn the knob when I called, "Come." She just waited outside and gave me the trouble of opening it myself. Then in her offish way she asked if we were through with her lexicon. After I had hunted it up for her, she happened to notice that Lila was wailing over the disappearance of her skates.

"I saw a pair of strange skates in my room," she said and walked away as indifferent as you please.

Now wouldn't any one think that was queer?

It made Lila cross, especially when she found that the skates had three new spots of rust on them. March is an irritable month, anyhow, you know. Everybody is tired, and breakfast doesn't taste very good. She sputtered about the rust till we reached the lake where we found two big bonfires and three musicians to play dance music while we skated. Imagine how lovely with the flames leaping against the background of snowy banks and bare black trees! Berta and Lila and I crossed hands and skated around and around the lake with the crowd. When we stopped in the firelight, Lila looked unusually pretty with her rosy cheeks and her curls frosted by her breath. Berta's eyes were like stars. Of course Robbie Belle was beautiful, but she did not associate much with us that evening. After one turn up and back again while we discussed Mary Winchester, she said she thought she would invite our little freshman roommate for the next number.

We kept on talking about Mary. Lila was insisting that she ought to be put in the tenth class or worse, while Berta maintained that she wasn't quite so bad as that. I kept thinking up arguments for both sides.

Lila counted off her crimes, and she didn't speak so very low either. "Mary Winchester doesn't deserve a place even in the tenth class. Why, listen now. You admit that she borrows disgracefully and never returns things. At least, she helped herself to my skates. It is almost the same as stealing. She has no friends. She always goes off walking alone, and sits in the gallery by herself at lectures and concerts. Everybody says she is queer."

"Miss Anglin thinks girls in the mass are funny," I volunteered, "though maybe they are not any more so than human kind in the bulk. She says that we all imagine we admire originality, but when we see any one who is noticeably different from the rest, we avoid her. We call her queer and are afraid to be seen with her."

"Mary Winchester's independence is commendable," protested Berta. "I envy her strength of character. She ignores foolish conventions——"

"As for instance, the distinction between mine and thine," interrupted Lila, "you don't live next to her, and you don't know. Her disregard for the property rights of others indicates a fatal flaw——"

"Fatal flaw, fatal flaw!" chanted Berta mischievously, "isn't that a musical phrase! Say it fast now, and see if it tangles your tongue."

I was afraid Lila would feel wounded, so I remarked hastily that we agreed that Mary was not polite; the question was as to the degree of impoliteness.

"Even Robbie Belle acknowledges that she is not a lady," chimed in Berta; "she said it when Mary wanted to take that stray kitten to the biological laboratory. She declared it would be happier if dead."

"And it wasn't her kitten either," I contributed. "Robbie found it up a tree. It is necessary to weigh every little point in a scientific study like this."

"Don't you see, girls, that Mary Winchester does not come from good stock," began Lila, "of course she isn't a lady. Her attitude toward the rights of others is certain proof that her family has a defective moral sense. Perhaps her brother——"

"Oh, let's follow out the logical deductions," cried Berta. "That course in logic is the most fascinating in the whole curriculum. See—if a girl lacks moral judgment, she either inherits or acquires the defect. If she inherits it, her father doubtless was dishonest. Maybe he speculated and embezzled or gambled or something. If she acquired it through environment, her brother must have suffered likewise as they were presumably brought up together. So perhaps Mary Winchester's brother was expelled from college for kleptomania."

"Then," said Lila triumphantly, "how can we possibly put her into even the lowest of our classes in manners?"

"Hi, there!" I started to scream before the breath was knocked out of me by colliding with some girls who had been skating in front of us. One of them had caught her skate in a crack, and we were so intent on our conversation that we bumped into them, and all tumbled in a heap. Nobody was hurt. That is, nobody was hurt physically. We picked ourselves up and went on skating as before. It was not until days later that we discovered what had been hurt then. It was Mary Winchester's reputation. Those girls in front had overheard part of our remarks. And they thought that we were talking about real facts instead of just analyzing character.

It was exactly like a game of slander, only worse. The rumor that Mary Winchester's father was a gambler and that her brother had been expelled from college for stealing spread and grew like fire. You know, as I said before, she was a queer girl—so queer in countless small ways that she was conspicuous. Even freshmen who did not know her name had wondered about the tall, wild-looking girl who had a habit of tearing alone over the country roads as if trying to get away from herself. Naturally when such a report as this one of ours reached them, they adopted it as a satisfactory explanation. They also, so to speak, promulgated it.

The first we knew of the rumor was from Robbie Belle. It was the afternoon before the Easter vacation, and Lila and I were in Berta's room to help her pack her trunk. At least Lila held the nails while Berta mended the top tray and I did the heavy looking on. When Berta stopped hammering and put her thumb in her mouth, I remarked that nobody who squealed ouch! in company could belong to our highest class in manners.

Lila's expression changed from the pained sympathy of friendship to the scientific zeal of character study. "Girls, have you noticed Mary Winchester lately? It is the strangest thing! She seems more alone and alien than ever. The girls avoid her as if she had the plague. In the library and the corridor to-day it was as plain as could be. They stop talking when she comes around. They watch her all the time though they try not to let her know it. Of course, she couldn't help feeling it. They point her out to each other, and raise their brows and whisper after she has passed. She moves on with her head up and her mouth set tight. Her manners are worse than ever."

"When I met her this morning, she looked right through me and didn't see anything there, I reckon," said I, "and, oh, Lila, you were mistaken about her borrowing your skates without leave. It was Martha who had them that morning. In rushing to class she got mixed up and threw them in at the wrong door, that's all. Our example is corrupting the infant."

Berta forgot her aching thumb. "Something is wrong. Mary's eyes are those of a hunted creature. Driven into a corner. Everybody against her. I wonder——"

Robbie Belle walked slowly into the room, her clothes dripping with water.

"Mary Winchester fell into the lake," she said, "you did it."

In the silence I heard Berta draw a long sigh. Then she dropped her hammer.

"She broke through the ice," added Robbie Belle.

"But the ice is rotten. How did she get on it?" asked my voice.

"She walked," answered Robbie Belle, "I saw her." Then she crossed over to Berta, put both arms around her neck, hid her face against her shoulder, and began to shake all over. "I helped pull her out, and she fought me—she fought——"

At that moment little Martha, our freshman roommate, came running in. "That queer girl jumped into the lake. I saw them carrying her to the infirmary. She did it because everybody knows her father is in the penitentiary. They heard about it at the skating carnival. Her brother is an outlaw too——"

Robbie Belle lifted her head. "She hasn't any brother, but it is true about her father. The doctor knows. She wonders how the story got out. It was a secret. Mary changed her name. She—she fought me."

I heard Berta sigh again. It sounded loud. Lila sat staring straight in front of her with such a horrified expression on her white face that I shut my eyes quick.

When I opened them again, Miss Anglin stood in the doorway. I never was so glad to see anybody in all my life. But we did not tell her then about our classes in manners. We waited till one day in June when she asked us how we had managed to win Mary out of her shell.

As I look back now I cannot possibly understand how we succeeded. It was the most discouraging, hopeless, hardest work I ever stuck to. Over and over again Berta and I would have given up if it had not been for Lila. She said that she dared not fail. Of course Robbie Belle helped a lot in her steady, beautiful way. Martha did her best too, partly because she was so sorry about her share in the affair of the skates. In fact all the girls were perfectly lovely to Mary after the doctor had persuaded her not to throw everything up and run away to hide. By and by she realized that it was no use to refuse to be friends.

Indeed she is a dear girl when you get to know her real self. Her unfortunate manner—it was unfortunate, you know—had been a sort of armor to shield her sore pride. She had been afraid of letting anybody have a chance to snub her. That was the reason why she had seemed so offish and suspicious and indifferent and lawless and queer.

Do you know, I never heard Robbie Belle say a sharp thing except once. She said it that day when we were telling Miss Anglin about the classes. It was: "Whenever I want to say something mean about anybody, I think I shall call it a scientific analysis of character."



CHAPTER IX

THIS VAIN SHOW

It was the first evening at college in their junior year. Upon coming out of the dining-room Lila caught sight of Bea waiting at the elevator door. Dodging three seniors, a maid with a tray, and a man with a truck full of trunks, she made a dash for the new arrival who in a sudden freak of perversity danced tantalizingly just beyond reach.

"You imp! And I haven't seen you for three months. Help me!" she beckoned to Berta who that moment emerged from dinner, "run around that side and catch her."

But Bea, swiftly subsiding from her mischievous agility, stood still and regarded them with an air of surprised, sad dignity as the two flung themselves upon her.

"Young ladies, I am astonished at such behavior. Leading juniors—real, live, brand-new juniors—and to display such lack of self-restraint, such disdain of gracefulness and repose! Oh!" her voice changed magically, "oh, you, dear sweet, darling girls, I love you pretty well."

"Then why," queried Berta, gasping as she released herself, "then why, I repeat, do you endeavor to choke us to death?"

"Because," answered Bea, as she meekly allowed Lila to straighten her hat while Berta rescued her satchel from the middle of the corridor, "because you are so nice and noble and haven't any false feeling about little tokens of affection like that. In fact, you haven't any false pride or anything false, and I have a tale of woe to tell you by and by. Hereafter I intend to be a typical college girl, not an exception."

The promised by and by proved to be the hour of unpacking after chapel services. While Bea was emptying her satchel that night she snatched up a little fringed napkin and shook it vigorously before the other girls.

"See the crumbs! Thereby hangs the tale. Now, listen.

This summer we have been feeling rather poor at home, you know. My father's firm was forced to make an assignment. It wasn't his fault, you understand; it was because of the hard times. Every few days we would hear of a bank closing its doors or a factory shutting down. People have been cutting off expenses in all directions. Of course my family has to economize. I am thankful enough to be able to come back to college. About a dozen girls in the class have dropped out this year of the panic. I knew that I could earn fifty dollars or more by tutoring and carrying mail, if I once got here. That will help quite a lot toward books and postage and ordinary personal expenses. Father said he could manage the five hundred for board and tuition. You had better believe that I do not intend to be needlessly extravagant, when my mother is keeping house without a maid, and my father is riding to his office on a bicycle.

Now I rather suspect that this explanation is no excuse for the foolish way I behaved on the journey to college that September. But the summer has been so horrid, and two or three acquaintances changed around after the failure and treated us as if we had ceased to be worth noticing. Of course I know that such persons are not worth noticing themselves, still it did hurt a little. I guess the reason why I pretended to have plenty of money while traveling with Celia was because I was afraid of being hurt again. And then too I remembered how she had said one evening the year before when we were playing Truth that she despised stinginess beyond any other vice. That had made an impression on me because I was just going to say the very same thing myself.

Celia is a new student who is to join our class this year. We met her last spring when she came up from a boarding-school in New York to visit a senior. You remember her? It was at a fudge party in her honor that we played the game of Truth, to which I have already alluded. She is the kind of person who is generally asked to be an usher at a hall play or on Founder's Day. She is tall, holds her head high, has an air. The doctor herself said when she saw her in chapel the evening of her visit, "Who is that striking girl?" She dresses beautifully too; and I think I shall ask her to let me put down her name for two dances next month, if my cousin and his roommate come from Yale for the reception.

Being new to the college atmosphere, she had an excuse for the way she acted on the journey. An excuse that I did not have, you know—and I know too. But as for that, more anon, anon! At present I start in and continue by stating that on a certain September day I was sitting by myself in the Union Station at Chicago, while I waited for my train. I had arrived two hours before, and I was hungry, and I was also, as explained above, strongly inclined to be economical. And therefore I was eating my luncheon out of a pasteboard box, instead of going to a restaurant.

On my lap was a fringed napkin upon which reposed one slice of chocolate cake with frosting, one big peach, and seven large white grapes each containing at least three seeds. Just at the very moment when I took a bite of the peach, hoping that none of the weary passengers around me was taking notes, for that peach was certainly juicy,—just at that exact moment, I happened to glance across to the door. There was Celia Lane, with her head higher than ever, looking up and down for an empty seat. And the only empty seat in the whole waiting-room was next to mine. And my lap was strewn with an economical luncheon.

It was silly of me. I admit that once and forever, and shall not repeat it again. But like lightning her remark about stinginess flashed into my mind. Before she had taken the second step in my direction, I had crammed all those seven grapes into my mouth, bundled the napkin with crumbs, cake and pit into my satchel, shoved it under the bench, and rose nonchalantly swallowing the grapes whole as I haughtily lifted my chin in order to survey my worthless companions. Then of course my eyes fell upon her, and I started forward in vivacious greeting.

I don't believe she had recognized me before, for she said, "Oh!" with a queer little gasp. Then she put out her hand in that cordial way of hers. It made me think that I was the person she had been longing to find. She inquired what road I was going on, and said, "Ah, yes, what a charming coincidence!" But honestly it seemed to me that there was a worried expression in her eyes.

And there I sat miserably shaking in my old shoes. It may appear funny to you, but it was an awful feeling. Even now months afterward I never want to smile at the memory. You see, it costs five dollars to ride in a Pullman car from Chicago to New York. I had planned to go into the common passenger coach until nightfall, and thus save two dollars and a half toward books for the new semester. That sounds a bit mean and sordid, doesn't it? And I know my family would have objected if I had told them, because the sleeping-cars are much safer in case of accidents. Oh, how I hated to say anything about it! You can't imagine. I wonder how Berta would express it with literary vividness. Maybe she might say that she "shrank in every fibre." But it was worse than that—I just didn't want to, I simply couldn't.



The hand of the clock kept moving around—oh, lots faster than it had done before Celia appeared. When it was nearly time for the train to be ready, I began to mutter and mumble and finally managed to remark that I thought I had better see about engaging my berth. What do you suppose? She gave a sort of astonished jump and exclaimed, "Why, I must too." So we both marched over to the agent's window and handed over five dollars apiece. I was dying to ask her to go shares with me, because one berth is plenty—or, I mean almost plenty—large enough for two. But though I opened my mouth a few times and coughed once, I absolutely did not dare to propose such a penurious plan. She might have thought me close-fisted, and perhaps she would not have slept very well either.

No sooner had we settled ourselves in the sleeper, than I began to worry about the meals. Naturally she would assume that I intended to go into the dining-car every time. Most of the girls do as a matter of course. In fact I remember feeling condescending whenever I saw anybody eating from a box while the other passengers were filing down the aisle, or up, whichever it happened to be. This year I was to be one of the brave unfortunates left behind in their seats.

Well, very likely you understand that people while traveling really ought not to eat so heartily as usual. Much food in a dining-car clogs the system and ventilates the pocketbook, so to speak. I appreciated myself hard for being right and noble and abstemious and foresighted—with respect to the semester's expenses, you perceive, and also self-denying and self-reliant. There are a number of selfs in that sentence, likewise in the idea and in my mind at the time. I don't believe honestly that poverty is good for the character, though Berta says that she knows it isn't good for anything else.

Celia and I went out to sit on the rear platform of the observation-car. The scenery was not particularly interesting in comparison with Colorado; and consequently I had spare energy for meditating on Emerson's essays and his observation that "What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think." I wish I were strong-minded. To reflect sincerely, however, I don't believe it is so much a question of a strong mind as of a weak imagination. If I had been unable to imagine what Celia might think, doubtless I wouldn't have bothered about it.

But I was bothered. The sensation of botheration deepened and swelled and widened as supper time drew nearer and nearer, and every moment I expected to hear the waiter's voice intoning behind me, "Supper is now ready in the dining-car." What made this state of affairs all the sadder was the memory of springing gladness inspired by the same sound on previous journeys. I sat there dreading and dreading and dreading. And then, what do you think? Celia was asking me about Lila and Berta and Robbie Belle and the fun we have and incidentally something about the work. I was talking so fast that I forgot all about being poor. When the waiter's voice suddenly rang out at the end of the car, I jumped up instantly just as I had always done on former occasions of the same nature. And I exclaimed, "I am simply starved to death."

Then I remembered and sat down so quickly that my camp-chair tipped against Celia and knocked her over so that she might have fallen off the platform if there had not been a railing around it. That catastrophe created such a flurry of anxieties, apologies, and so forth, that I succeeded in letting the crisis slip past unmolested. At least, that first crisis did. The second crisis arrived a little later when the voice behind us rang out again with, "Second call to supper in the dining-car." I glanced sidewise at Celia just in time to catch her glancing sidewise at me. That made me spring lightly to my feet, I can tell you. Was she getting suspicious? Was she too courteous to suggest an extravagance the refusal of which might hurt my pride? Was she wondering why I seemed to have forgotten that I was starving to death, if not already starved?

So I said in a tone of patient consideration, "Shall we wait any longer, Miss Lane?" She jumped up like a flash, and her face was quite red.

"No, indeed! Not on my account certainly." She emphasized the my so distinctly that I was sure she suspected. That dreadful thought caused me to stiffen my manner, and as hers had been strangely stiff all the afternoon, we were awfully polite to each other during supper. Each of us insisted upon paying the bill and feeing the waiter. It was terrible. I couldn't afford to pay it all, and yet I was too silly to give in gracefully, especially as some other passengers were listening, and the waiter hovered near. Finally it resulted in his receiving twice the sum, half for the bill, and half for a fee. I hope he appreciated it.

Then we talked politely to each other for an hour or two before going to bed. And in the morning, there was the problem of breakfast confronting me.

The problem woke me early. Being poor is bad for the health as well as bad for the character, I think. Probably it is bad for the soul also. Or maybe it is not the poverty so much as being ashamed of it that perverts a person's life. Well, actually I almost cherished the deceitful plot of getting up so early that I should be already dressed before Celia would appear, and then I could tell her that I had been so hungry that I had eaten my breakfast alone. It would have been true too, because I intended to nibble my malted milk tablets behind a magazine. But this plan came to naught; for when I poked my head out between the curtains I saw Celia herself staggering toward the dressing-room with her satchel. Thereupon I lay down again and nibbled the tablets in the berth. That would enable me to assert truthfully that I was not hungry and did not care for breakfast in the diner.

Oh, dear! Wasn't it awful! I did tell her that very thing, and she said she didn't believe she was hungry either. Then we were polite to each other till noon. When the waiter's dreaded voice once more rang out, I made my little speech that I had been composing all the morning. It was as follows:

"Don't wait for me, Miss Lane. I consider that over-eating is a heinous fault among Americans, and so I have decided to omit the dining-car for the remainder of this journey. Pray, do not let me keep you."

She said, "Why, that's exactly what I think, too."

Just fancy! And there I was almost famished. I thought she would leave me at once, and I could have a chance to eat the luncheon spoiling in my box. Chicken sandwiches and jelly and olives and salted almonds and fruit and cake and everything good. I had been thinking of it for hours.

What could I do? There she sat, and there I sat in plain sight of each other, being in the same seat for the sake of sociability, though her section was the one in front of mine. She seemed rather quiet and formal—not so much stiff as limp, so to speak. Still there was no cordiality about it. Just as I felt I could not stand starvation another minute, she rose and said she believed she would go into the observation-car for a while. She did not invite me to accompany her, and I made no offer to go. I simply sat and smiled and watched her fumble in her bag for a few minutes before extricating what was apparently a rolled up magazine. Then she marched down the aisle. The instant she had vanished into the vestibule, I made a dive for my box. In just thirty seconds I had consumed half a sandwich and a slice of cake. I kept my eyes on the spot where she had disappeared, you had better believe. Oh, wasn't I silly? But then, I promised not to allude to that obvious fact again. That lunch tasted good. And I had plenty of time to eat all I wanted, though I cut short the chewing process.

When it was all down to the very last olive, I brushed off all the crumbs I could see, and decided to walk into the observation car and be polite again. So I did. And what do you suppose? Through the glass at the rear I saw her sitting sort of sidewise so that one eye could watch the door where I was entering. It seemed to me that she gave a little quiver as I came within view, and then actually she threw something overboard. People always see more than you think they do. At least I saw that, and she thought I didn't, for when I emerged upon the platform she looked up with a surprised smile of welcome and said, "Isn't the river beautiful!"

I said, "Oh, isn't it!" and then I gazed at it very hard and attentively so as to give her a chance to wipe the spot of jelly from her shirtwaist. She had been eating her luncheon too. She had carried it wrapped up in the funneled magazine. She had been ashamed to acknowledge that she needed to be economical, too. I saw it all in a flash. She had intended to ride in the common coach and save pullman fare, just like me. And there we had been racing, neck and neck, trying to keep up with each other.

"Oh, dear!" I said at last, "I wish we had taken a berth together and saved our two dollars and a half apiece."

I heard her give a little gasp and I felt her staring at me. The next minute she said, "There are crumbs on your necktie too." And then she bent down her head and laughed and laughed and laughed till I had to laugh too.

"I hope it'll be a lesson to us," I said at last.

She wiped the tears from her lashes. "It will be. I expect to be repenting for weeks ahead,—at least, until my next allowance comes in. But, you! Why, Miss Leigh, it seems so queer. I thought the college girl was different as a rule—independent and frank and—oh, pardon me—and—and so forth."

"She is," I assured her sadly, "as a rule. But I am an exception. I prove the rule."



CHAPTER X

CONSEQUENCES

For her junior year Bea was fortunate enough to secure a mail-route, the proceeds of which helped to make her independent of a home allowance for spending money. To tell the truth, however, she enjoyed the work even more than the salary. While distributing the letters she felt a personal share in every delighted, "Oh, thank you!" in each ever-unsatisfied, "Is that all?" or the disappointed, "Nothing for me to-day?"

From her own experience and observation during the years already past, she was particularly interested in the different pairs of roommates who came within the scope of her daily trips. In a certain double lived two freshmen, one of whom always greeted her with, "Oh, thank you!" whether the mail was addressed to her or to her roommate. But when the roommate answered the knock, she invariably exclaimed, no matter how much was handed to her, "Is that all?"

More than once in her reports to Lila, Bea declared that it was about time for a wave of reform in the vicinity of Ethelwynne Bruce. Perhaps she might even have contemplated the possibility of engineering something of the kind herself, if she had not been too busy to spare the necessary thought-energy. In the course of events, fate with its machinery of circumstances added an extra lesson to Ethelwynne's college course.

It happened one evening during the skating season.

Ethelwynne with her skates jingling over her arm came shivering into the room. "Oo-oo-ooh!" Her teeth chattered. "Wynnie's freezing. Do shut that window and turn on the heat, Agnes. It is hard lines to live in a double with a regular Polar bear direct from the land of Sparta. You ought to keep it up as high as forty degrees anyhow."

"Sh-h!" The smooth dark head at the desk bent lower over the water-color before her. "Don't interrupt this minute. There's a dear. I've got to catch this last streak of daylight——"

"But it isn't daylight," fretted Ethelwynne, "the moon's up already. And I'm so chilly! I wish you would help me make some hot chocolate."

"Look at the thermometer. Ah, one more stroke of that exquisite saffron on the stem! Hush, now. Look at the thermometer, look at the thermometer," she muttered abstractedly while concentrating all her mental attention in the tips of her skilful fingers.

Ethelwynne stared at her a moment before giving a little chuckle that ended in a shiver. "Look at the thermometer, look at the thermometer," she echoed sarcastically, "I reckon that'll warm me up, won't it? Like somebody or other who set a lighted candle inside the fireless stove and then warmed himself at the glowing isinglass. Suppose your old thermometer does say seventy or eighty or ninety or a hundred? Maybe it is telling a story. Why should I trust an uneducated instrument that has never studied ethics? Now listen here!" She lifted her skates and poised them to throw from high above her head. "Hist! if you don't drop those hideous toadstools of yours and begin to sympathize with me this instant, I shall hur-r-rl this clanking steel——"

Agnes still painting busily raised one elbow in an attitude of half-unconscious defense.

"——upon the floor-r-r!"

At the crashing rattlety-bang Agnes sprang to her feet with a nervous shriek. Ethelwynne dived for her skates and felt them carefully. "I tried to pick out the softest spot on the rug," she complained whimsically, "but there wasn't any other way to wake her up. And I simply had to have some sympathy. Oo-oo-ooh, Wynnie's freezing!"

Agnes had returned to her brushes and was wiping them dry in heartless silence.

"Wynnie's freezing, I say."

"Say it again," counseled the other's calm voice. "I am so provoked at myself for jumping at every little noise! It is shameful to have so little control over my own nerves even if I am tired. Ah! what was that?"

"Jump again," advised Ethelwynne in a tone that was meant to be serene but proved rather jerky. "It was nothing but my teeth chattering and clicking together."

"Generally it's your tongue," retorted Agnes with interest but broke off in this promising repartee to exclaim with genuine anxiety, "Why, Wynnie, child, you have a regular chill. Lie down quick and let me cover you up. Have you been out skating ever since I left you on the lake?"

"Yes, I have," she replied with an air of defiance, "you needn't preach. I couldn't bear to come in. Everybody out. We had square dances, shinney-on-the-ice, wood tag. Perfectly glorious! Such a splendid elegant sunset behind the bare trees! I simply had to stay. Beatrice Leigh and her crowd were there. A big moon came sailing up. We skated to music—somebody whistled it. I couldn't bear to stop. I wanted to stay, I tell you. I wanted to stay."

"Hm-m," said Agnes, "I wanted to stay too. But what with the Latin test to-morrow and this plate for the book on fungi to be sent off in the morning, I managed to tear myself away."

"You're different. Oo-oo-ooh!" Ethelwynne shivered violently again. "You like to deny yourself. You enjoy discipline. It gives you pleasure to do what you hate. You love duty just because it is disagreeable."

"My—land!" Agnes clutched her own head. "The infant must have slipped up a dozen times too often. Did the horrid bad ice smite her at the base of the brain? Poor little darling! Is her intellect all mixedy-muddle-y? We will fix it right for her. We'll give her a pill."

"I think I have caught cold," moaned her roommate from the depths of the blankets.

Agnes looked judicial. "Our doctor at home has a theory that people take cold easily when they have been eating too much sweet stuff. He says that colds are most frequent after Thanksgiving. Now I wonder—I believe—why, you surely did go to a meeting of the fudge-club in Martha's room last night. Ethelwynne, did you eat it? Did you eat it even after all the doctor said to you about your sick headaches?"

"Of course I ate it. How do you expect me to sit hungry in a roomful of girls all digging into that plateful of brown delicious soft hot fudge with their little silver spoons, and I not even tasting it? I hated to make myself conspicuous before the juniors there. They would think I am a hypochondriac, and Berta Abbott might have said something to make the others look at me and laugh. I don't believe the stuff hurts me a particle. Doctors always want you to give up the things you like best."

"Oh, Ethelwynne!" groaned Agnes, "you never deny yourself anything. It is the only trait I don't like in you. Now you have caught a dreadful cold just because you could not refuse the candy. You must break it up with quinine." She fetched a small box from the bureau in her bedroom. "Here, open your mouth."

The other girl opened her mouth obediently. "I love pills. We're homeopaths, you know. Once when I was a baby, I got hold of mother's medicine chest and ate all the pellets. I thought they were candy. Sweet—oh, delicious! I used to enjoy being sick. And now this nice big chocolate-coated pill!" She sprang up suddenly, her face twisted into an expression of agony. "Oh, oh, oh!"

Agnes white as a sheet flew to her side. "What is it? Quick, quick, Wynnie! Is it your heart? Your head? A darting pain! Where, oh, where?"

"Crackie!" Ethelwynne ruefully rubbed her mouth. "I've been sucking that pill."

After a moment's struggle to retain her sympathetic gravity, Agnes gave way and dropping her head on her hands shook alarmingly for at least half a minute.

"I told you I was a homeopath," expostulated Ethelwynne, "how was I to know that allopaths always swallow their pills whole?"

"Wh-wh-why did you suppose it was coated with chocolate?" gasped Agnes.

"So as to improve the taste of course and tempt me to eat it. I am fond of chocolate. If it is my duty to eat a pill, I want it to be inviting. I don't want to do anything that I don't want to do, specially when I am sick. Well, anyhow, I shall never touch another."

However, by bedtime Ethelwynne was feeling so miserable that finally after long urging she consented to swallow another dose of quinine in the orthodox way. She allowed Agnes to put a hot water bottle at her feet and to tuck in the coverlets cozily; and then she tried to go to sleep. But that was another story. It was a story of fitful jerks and starts, of burning fever alternating with shivering spells, of terrifying dreams and wretched haunted hours of wakefulness. At last the longed-for morning stole in at the windows to find her eyes heavy, her limbs languid, her brain muddled and dull, her head roaring.

It was the quinine that had done it—she knew it was—unspeakably worse than the cold unattended. Worried Agnes acknowledged that the dose might effect some systems violently.

"But it has broken up your cold," she pleaded, "that's certainly gone."

"What?" said Ethelwynne fretfully, "don't mumble so and run your words together. I can't hear the gong very well either. And the Latin test is coming the first hour after breakfast. I haven't had a chance to review an ode. I feel so wretched! Oh, me! oh, me!"

Ethelwynne never forgot that Latin test. The very first line written by the instructor on the blackboard smote her with despair. She had never been able to translate from hearing anyhow. This morning when Miss Sawyer took her seat on the platform and opened her book, Ethelwynne bent forward anxiously, every nerve alert and strained. What was the first word? Oh, what was it? She had not caught it. It sounded blurred and mazy with no ending at all. And the next—and the next! And the third! Now she had lost it. The first was gone. She had forgotten the second. The voice went reading on and on. She floundered after, falling farther and farther behind. There wasn't any sense to it, and she couldn't hear the words plainly, and everything was all mixed up. The other girls seemed to understand. They were writing down the translation as fast as they could scribble—at least some of them were. But she could not make out a particle of meaning. It was Agnes's fault—it was all her fault. She had coaxed her to take the quinine, and now she could not hear plainly or think or remember or anything.

In wrathful discouragement she turned to the rest of the questions. One or two were short and easy. She managed to do the translations already familiar. But when she reached the last part and attempted to write down an ode which she had memorized the week before, she found that many of the words had slipped away from her. The opening line was vivid enough, then came a blank ending in a phrase that kept dancing trickily from spot to spot in her visual imagination of the page. Here she recalled two words, there three, with a vanishing, vague, intangible verse between. The meaning had slid away utterly, leaving only these faulty mechanical impressions of the way the poem had looked in print. Struggle as she would, the thought frolicked and pranced just beyond the grasp of her memory.

Ethelwynne bit her lip grimly and put the cap on her fountain-pen. It was not the slightest use. Miss Sawyer had always told them to learn the odes understandingly, not in parrot fashion. It was better to submit a blank than a paper scribbled with detached words and phrases. It was all Agnes's fault—every bit. She had forced her to swallow that pill—the pill that had muddled her brain and dulled her hearing—the pill which was causing her to flunk in Latin. She had known that ode perfectly only the previous day. It wasn't her fault—it was entirely Agnes's. She would go instantly and tell her so.

And she went the moment class was over. To be sure, she did not go so fast as she wished, for her head had a queer way of spinning dizzily at every sudden movement. Once or twice her knees faltered disconcertingly in her progress down the corridor. But at last she reached the room and walked in with a backward slam of the door.

Agnes was putting the final touches to the water-color drawing of exquisite fungi before her.

"Sh-h," she murmured, "don't interrupt. Just one more stroke—and another—now this tiny one. There, it is finished. Professor Stratton sends her manuscript off to-day and she is waiting for this. Think of it! Thirty dollars for this sheet of paper! Thirty whole big beautiful dollars to send home for Christmas. They need it pretty badly. I've worked hours and hours, and now they shall have a real Christmas! I know what mother wants and couldn't afford——"

Ethelwynne stamped her foot. "It was all your fault. I couldn't hear. I couldn't think. I couldn't remember. The pill did it. You made me take it. You always think you know best. You're always preaching and advising. You wanted to make me flunk. You knew it would make my ears ring and my head whirl. You did it on purpose. I shall never forgive you, never, never, never!"

"What!"

At the tone Ethelwynne suddenly shivered, threw herself on the couch, and fell to crying weakly. "I didn't mean it. I didn't mean it at all. I only wanted to say something horrid. I wanted you to suffer too. I just wanted to say it, and so I did say it. Oh, oh, oh, I am so miserable! I want to go home."

Agnes paid no attention. In her sudden sharp resentment at the preposterous accusation, she had swung around in her chair, and her elbow had tipped over the inkwell, spilling the contents over the desk. She sat staring in horrified silence at her ruined drawing.

Finally Ethelwynne puzzled by the continued stillness peered with one eye from the sheltering fringes. She sprang up with a jump.

"Agnes, your beautiful fungi!"

A knock sounded at the door.

"Come," called Agnes in mechanical response. There was a pause; then the knob turned and the visitor entered with diffident step.

Ethelwynne hastily smoothed her hair with one hand and felt of her belt with the other. "Oh, good evening, Professor Stratton," she stuttered from surprised embarrassment, "I mean, good morning. How do you do? Won't you sit down?"

Agnes turned to look, and rose in sober greeting.

"You see it is spoiled," she pointed to the ink-splotched drawing. "It was an accident. You don't know how exceedingly sorry I am, Professor Stratton. The work on your book can go on without it, I hope."

The older woman forgot her incorrigible shyness in dismay. "What a shame! How distressing!" She hurried forward impulsively to examine the sheet. "Since you brought it to me last night I have been exulting in the thought of it. You have great talent for such work. The time you have spent on it! How distressing!" She stopped in thoughtful fear that she might be adding to the girl's disappointment. "An accident, you say? How did it happen?"

"Something startled me so that I twirled around in my seat, and my elbow knocked the ink over. I—I am very sorry." Her lips felt stiff. Ethelwynne watching with miserable eyes saw her moisten them. They were drooping at the corners.

"It is my fault," she burst out hurriedly, "it is all my fault. I made her jump. I startled her on purpose. I said mean things to her because I felt like saying them. I felt like saying them because I had flunked in Latin. And I flunked in Latin because I took a p-p-pill—oh, no, no! I mean, because I caught cold from staying out on the ice too long. And I stayed out long because I wanted to. And the reason why I caught cold from staying out too long was because my digestion was upset from eating fudge when the doctor told me not to. And I ate the fudge because I wanted it. And it is all my fault. It is all because I do things just because I want to do them and not because I ought to do them or ought not to do them. I ought to leave them undone, you know. And Prexie says that most miseries in life come from that attitude of I-do-it-because-I-want-to-do-it-and- I-don't-do-it-because-I-don't-want-to-do-it. And now Agnes won't have thirty dollars to send home for Christmas. And it is all my——"

"Hush!" said Agnes, "hush, now, dear! That'll be all right. It was my fault anyhow. I should have had better control of my nerves and learned not to let myself get startled." She smiled reassuringly across the bowed head into Professor Stratton's concerned eyes.

"I will see what I can do about holding back the manuscript till you reproduce the drawing," said the older woman, "it is barely possible that I can manage it."

As the door closed softly behind her, Ethelwynne lifted her tear-wet face.

"Agnes, do you think it was the pill that did it?"

"Did what? Everything?"

"Oh, no, no! Was it the pill that made me flunk in Latin?"

"I don't know," she answered doubtfully, "perhaps it helped."

"I want to say it was the pill. I want to believe it was the pill. I want to, but I won't, because it wasn't—not really way down underneath truly, you know. It was my own selfish self." She reached up both arms to draw Agnes closer in a repentant hug. "Wynnie's sorry," she said.



CHAPTER XI

A GIRL TO HAVE FRIENDS

"Laura!" It was a soft little call sent fluttering in through the keyhole. "Laura, are you there?"

Laura with her chin propped on her hands at one of the broad sills stirred uneasily in her chair and glanced sideways at her roommate who was seated before the other window. Lucine had stopped reading aloud and was regarding the door with an irritable frown on her vivid dark face.

"I do wish, Laura, that you would tell Berta Abbott that an engaged sign on our door means nothing if not the desire for undisturbed privacy. She is the most inconsiderate person in the junior class. This is the third time——"

"Laura!" called the voice again, "answer me! I know you are in there. I've simply got to speak to you one minute. It's awfully important."

Laura half rose with a pleading smile toward Lucine who motioned her indignantly back to her seat.

"Laura Wallace, stay right there. You promised to help me revise this essay. You know that I can't do it alone, because I haven't a particle of critical ability; and the editors say they cannot print it as it is now. You are exceedingly selfish to think of deserting me just when I most need your suggestions. The board of editors meets to-night to choose the material for the next number of the magazine, and if they decline this again I shan't be eligible for election next month. You promised."

"Laura, there's something I've got to ask you. If you don't come out, I shall have to take this sign down and walk in my own self. Laura! Ah!" The door swung open and tall Berta popped in. Slamming it behind her, she stood with both hands on the knob, her eyes fixed with an expression of innocent inquiry upon Lucine who had halted in the middle of her sudden dash across the floor, her hand still outstretched toward the key.

"Excuse me, Miss Brett. Were you just going out? I'm glad I did not disturb you. Shall I hold it open for you?" She stepped to one side and waited gravely without moving a muscle till Lucine after a withering stare had stalked angrily back to her window. The corner of Berta's mouth gave a quick, queer little twitch before settling back into proper solemnity.

"Come, Laura. You'd better. I shan't keep you long." At her imperious gesture Laura slid out of the room at an apologetic angle, her head twisted for a final shy glance back at Lucine who was apparently absorbed in her papers.

When safely outside in the corridor Berta seized her about the waist and whirled her away from all possible earshot through cracks and transom.

"Now then, exit the ogre, or rather eximus nos, leaving the ogre alone. For what particular reason is she trampling all over you to-day? I didn't catch all her last speech. You don't mean to say that you have promised to help her with her writing?"

"Yes," Laura nodded her rough curly head. She was a delicate little thing with the irregular features that generally accompany such hair. Her beauty lay in her expression which brightened charmingly from minute to minute since her escape. "Oh, how good the air smells!" she stopped to lean from an open window. "Lucine shivers at every draught. It is hard to manage the ventilation to suit two persons in the same room. I smother——"

"Of course you smother—and you smother a good many more hours than she shivers. Trust her for that. Such a little ninny as you are! Don't forget that you have agreed to room with my best little sister when she enters next fall. You would not have been thrust in with Lucine Brett this year if I could have prevented it."

"Oh, but if I can't come back—you know, I'm almost sure I shan't come back. And anyhow I'm the only friend she has. I've got to stick to her. If you could hear her mourning over her loneliness! Nobody cares for her—nobody in all the world! And the girls don't like her. I promised to be her friend. She—she needs me."

"Humph!" growled Berta sourly, but somehow her arm was stealing around the slight shoulders so far beneath her own, "that's the silly kind of a person you are. If any creature needs you, from a lame kitten to a lion with a toothache, you'll cling. Idiocy, that's what it is! Your brother warned me last summer to restrict your charities. And now to help her with her writing, and she your most dangerous rival for the editorship!"

"Ah, but she doesn't know it, you understand. She doesn't know that I am eligible. The editors have been so awfully kind to me and gave me book reviews to do and reports to make, and they printed my verses and two editorials. Every freshman who has had so many words published is eligible for election on the board at their annual meeting next month. Lucine's last story was clipped so much that she is short about two thousand words; and this is her last chance to qualify by getting her essay accepted for the next issue. I've got to help."

"Yes, certainly you've got to help a rival qualify for a competition in which she is likely to defeat you. Do you realize that?" Berta swung Laura around in front of her and studied her curiously while she spoke. "You are a good steady worker, you understand. You have critical ability and a simple, sincere style. If elected you would make an excellent editor, but—now listen, but, I say, you are not a genius like Lucine Brett. She is brilliant. Oh, I acknowledge that, even if I do despise her for being selfish and disagreeable and ego——"

"Hush! She tries—she doesn't understand——You mustn't talk that way. I won't listen. I promised to be her friend. She wonders why the girls don't like her."

"And yet she expects you to help her defeat you! She is willing to accept that sacrifice from you! When it means so much to you that——"

"Oh, hush, Berta!" Laura slipped out of the range of that keen straight-ahead gaze and nestled under the protecting arm again. "She doesn't know that I am eligible, I tell you. My articles weren't signed usually except with initials. And she is not thinking about other girls' qualifications—she's bothered about her own. It's got to be a fair race with everybody in it, if they want to be. Of course she will be elected—there isn't a doubt—and I'll be as glad as any one."

"Yes!" Berta's voice veered from sarcasm to genuine anxiety. "You'll be glad—but you'll be glad at home. You can't come back to college—you told me so yourself—unless you are elected editor. That's why I called you out just now. Did your uncle really say that he was disappointed in your career here?"

Laura cleared her throat. "He doesn't like it because I haven't won any honors yet. Don't you know how almost every girl here came from a school where she was the brightest star and carried off all the prizes and things like that? My uncle doesn't understand. He thinks it is the fault of the college because I haven't done anything great. Oh, you know, Berta. I—I do hate to talk in such a conceited way. He doesn't realize that I am not brighter than the rest and can't dazzle. He wants me to win an honor that he can put in the papers at home. He says if I don't distinguish myself this year, I might as well stop and go to the Normal next fall. He thinks college is too expensive. This editorship is the only chance, because—because there isn't anything else for our class now that the offices are filled and committees appointed. He didn't like it because my articles in the magazine were signed with initials and not the whole name. He said, 'Well, niece Laura, let me see your name printed plain in that list of editors, and then we'll decide about next year.' He—he's disappointed."

"And yet," Berta spoke slowly, "you are going to help Lucine Brett with that essay. And you know how much my little sister cares about being at college with you."

Laura gave a startled jump and turned to run. "Oh, Berta, I had forgotten. She's waiting. I've stayed too long. She'll be so angry!"

"Let her," growled Berta; but Laura had fled.

Meanwhile Lucine when left alone had dropped the sheets of her essay in her lap and planting her elbows on the sill crouched forward, staring miserably out at the brown soaked lawn flecked with sodden snowdrifts in the shadows of the evergreens that were bending before a rollicking March wind.

"Nobody cares," she mourned, "even Laura doesn't care whether I succeed or not. I want the girls to like me, but they won't."

Tears of self-pity dimmed her lashes when Laura slipped timidly into the room and after a worried glance at the scattered papers resumed her former seat.

"Now, Lucine, if you will read that last paragraph once more, I will try to see where the difficulty lies. It—it's fine so far."

Lucine looked down at her essay, then across at the attentive small face that appeared quite plain when fixed in such a worried pucker. "No," she said at last, "I won't. You are not interested in the essay or in my hopes of success. You offer to help merely because you think it is your duty. I refuse to accept such grudging friendship. You toss aside my affairs at the slightest whim of an outsider, and then expect me to welcome the remnant of your mental powers. No, thank you."

Laura bit her lip. "I'm sorry," she said, "you ought not to feel that way about it. I do truly wish to help you all I can. Please!"

Lucine made a half-involuntary movement to gather up the sheets; then checked herself. "No, I have too much pride to play second fiddle. Your neglect has wounded me deeply, and I do not see how I can ever forgive you. To forsake me for such a shallow, disagreeable person as Berta Abbott is an unpardonable insult."

Laura gave a little shiver and lifted her head sharply. "I have tried to be your friend. I have endured—things. But I won't endure this—I won't—I can't. Berta is my friend. You shall not speak of her like that to me. Say you're sorry—quick! Oh, Lucine, say you didn't mean it and are sorry."

"I am not sorry," said Lucine distinctly, "and I did mean it. I am glad I have dared to speak the truth about her. She is shallow and disagreeable."

"And what are you?" Laura sprang to her feet. "A conceited selfish inconsiderate——" She clapped her hand to her mouth with a quick sobbing breath. "Oh, Lucine, we can't be friends. I've tried and tried, but we can't."

From beneath lowered eyelids Lucine watched the slight little figure hurry to the door and vanish. Then rising abruptly she jerked a chair in front of her desk, slapped down a fresh pad of paper, jabbed her pen into the inkwell, shook it fiercely over the blotter—and suddenly brushing the pages hither and thither she flung out her arms upon them and buried her face from the light.

A few minutes later Laura entered noiselessly and stopped short at sight of the crouching form with shoulders that rose and fell over a long quivering sob. Laura took one step toward her, next two away; finally setting her teeth resolutely she glided softly across the room and patted the bent, dark head. For an instant Lucine lay motionless; then with a swift hungry gesture she reached out her arms and swept the younger girl close to her heart.

"Laura, I can't spare you, I can't spare you. You are all I have. Forgive me and let me try again. It is an evil spirit that made me talk that way. And, oh, Laura, dear, I want you to like me better than you like Berta. I need you more."

Laura put up her mouth in child-fashion for a kiss of reconciliation. "I like you both," she said, and freeing herself gently stooped to pick up the loose leaves of the essay. "Shall we go on with revising this now, Lucine? It is due this evening, you know. The board meets at eight in the magazine sanctum."

Lucine watched her with a wistfulness that softened to tenderness the faint lines of native selfishness about her mouth. "Laura, I want you to room with me next year. We can choose a double with a study and adjoining bedrooms. It will make me so happy. Do you know, last autumn when I lived in the main building and you away off in the farthest dormitory, I used to sit in a corridor window every morning to watch for you. I care more for you than for any one else. I shall teach you to care most for me next year."

Laura seemed to have extraordinary trouble in capturing the last sheet, for it fluttered away repeatedly from her grasp and she kept bending to reach it again. Lucine could not see her face.

"Will you," she repeated, "will you room with me next year, Laura?"

Laura coughed and made another wild dive in pursuit of the incorrigible paper. "Let's not talk about next year," she mumbled uncomfortably, "it is so far off and ever so many things may happen before June. Of course," she faltered and swallowed something in her throat, "I'd love to room with you, if—if I can. But now we must hurry with this essay."

"Well, remember that I have asked you first," said Lucine, "and I can't spare you."

Laura said nothing.

After the essay had been read and discussed by Laura whose critical insight was much keener than Lucine's, the older girl settled herself to rewrite the article before evening. Dinner found her still at her desk, fingers inky, hair disordered, collar loosened in the fury of composition. In reply to Laura's urgent summons to dress, she paused long enough to push back a lock that had fallen over her brow.

"Don't bother me now. I'm just getting this right at last. Go away. I don't want any dinner." The pen began again on its busy scratching.

"Lucine, you know the doctor warned you to be more regular about eating. Whenever you work so intensely, you always pay for it in exhaustion the next day. Do come now and finish the essay later."

The rumpled head bent still lower. "I wouldn't drop this now for thirty dinners or suppers. It's good—it's fine—it's bound to be accepted—it means the editorship. To sacrifice it for dinner! Do go away. I wish you would leave me alone."

Laura turned away silently. If the success of the article was in question, she certainly could not interfere further. Lucine wrote on, paying no heed to the gong except for the tribute of an impatient frown at the sound of many feet clicking past in the corridor, with a rustling of skirts and light chat of voices. At seven when the bell for chapel again filled the halls with murmur and movement, she only shrugged uneasily and scribbled faster. By half-past she had finished and was re-reading it for final corrections. Then folding it with a smile of weary contentment, for at last she knew that it was sure of success, she set out to carry it to the magazine sanctum.

Down the stairs and through the lower corridor she hastened toward the plain wooden door whose key she hoped next year to claim for her own fingers. The transom shone dark, and no voice yet disturbed the quiet of the neighborhood. Evidently the editorial board had not yet begun to assemble for the business session. Lucine decided to wait till they arrived, so as to be certain that the precious essay reached their hands in safety. If she should drop it through the letter slit in the door, it might be overlooked.

Curling up on a window ledge in a shadowy corner behind a wardrobe she waited while dreamily gazing at the moon which was sailing through clouds tossed by the still rollicking wind. Ever since her first glimpse of the magazine's brown covers, she had determined to become editor-in-chief some time. Now this essay would surely be accepted, and when printed this month would render her eligible for election as the first sophomore editor. From that position she would advance to the literary editorship next year, and then to be chief of the staff when she was a senior. Then—ah, then the girls would be eager and proud to be friends with her. And Laura would be glad she had not forsaken her in her early struggles. So far she had been too busy with her writing to make friends and keep them. It took so much time and was such a bother to be friendly and do favors all the while. But by and by she would have leisure to grow unselfish and show the girls how noble and charming and altogether delightful she could be—by and by. Meanwhile her work came first. She simply had to succeed in winning this editorship.

While Lucine lingered there, leaning her forehead against the cool pane, footsteps sounded from around the transverse; and two figures, arm in arm, strolled nearer. They glanced at the dusky transom, laughed over the tardiness of their stern editor-in-chief, and sat down on a convenient box to wait.

Lucine after an intent scrutiny to identify the two seniors as subordinate editors turned again to the moon, and listened half unconsciously to the low trickle of words till suddenly her own name roused her alert.

"Yes, they're the favorite candidates." It was Bea's voice that spoke. "If Miss Brett completes her quota of lines this month she will undoubtedly have the best chance in the election, even if she is personally unpopular. She is exceedingly self-centred, you know, and does not trouble herself even to appear interested in anybody else. Her manner is unfortunate. However she is unquestionably the ablest writer in the class though little Laura Wallace is a close second. Berta knew her at home and is very fond of her. Laura and Berta's sister Harriet have always been special friends."

"Is Laura eligible? I do think she is the sweetest child!"

"Didn't you know it? Her work has been mainly inconspicuous contributions signed only with initials. Stuff like that counts up amazingly in the long run. She is a better critic though not so original as Miss Brett. For my part I think the editor-in-chief ought to be primarily a critic, but perhaps I am wrong. Anyhow the theory is that the election goes to the best writer. I'm sorry. I half wish Miss Brett would fail to qualify. The editorship means such a heap to Laura."

"How?"

"Her uncle who pays her expenses here is rather queer—thinks he ought to see more results of her career. He's disappointed because she doesn't gather in prizes as she did in the country schools. She may in her senior year, but freshmen don't have much chance to win anything more than an honorable record. He doesn't believe in college anyhow and consented to send her under protest. Now he threatens to stop it if she doesn't do something dazzling this year."

"Poor infant! What a ridiculous attitude! But since that is the case, why not vote her in? Lay the circumstances before the board, and they'll elect her."

"Oh, no, they won't. The board is altogether too scrupulous and idealistic this season to let personal feelings interfere. You're rather new to office as yet. Mark my words and trust me: if Miss Brett qualifies, she will be elected. I know—and that's why I wish she wouldn't."

"There come the others. See that pile of manuscript. We'll be lucky if we get away at midnight. I only hope nobody will ask me to compose a poem to fill out a page; my head feels as if stuffed with sawdust."

Lucine turned her head slowly to watch the group of girls wander into the office and light the gas amid a flutter of papers and dressing-gowns mixed with sleepy yawns and tired laughter. Then some one shut the door. Lucine was still sitting in the shadowy window-seat, her essay clutched tightly in her hand.

After a minute she rose, walked toward the door, and lifted her arm as if to knock. Then giving herself an impatient shake she swung around and hurried down the corridor as far as the transverse. There she hesitated, halted, half swerved to retrace her steps, stamped one foot down hard, brought up the other beside it, and clenching both fists over the essay fled from the neighborhood.

When she reached her room, she paused to listen. Hearing no sound she slipped inside, threw the essay into a drawer, locked it, and put the key in her pocket. Then after a wistful glance around she stooped to pick up Laura's white tam from the couch, pressed it against her cheek for a moment, and laid it gently in the empty little chair where Laura had sat while listening to the essay that afternoon.

"Laura," she whispered, "I can't spare you, Laura. You shall come back next year, and we shall room together again, you and I."

Without a backward look toward the drawer where the manuscript lay buried, Lucine gathered up note-book and fountain-pen and departed for the library. She walked slowly through the long apartment, glancing into alcove after alcove only to find every chair occupied on both sides of the polished tables that gleamed softly in the gaslight. Finally she discovered one of the small movable steps that were used when a girl wished to reach the highest shelf. Capturing it she carried it to the farther end of a narrow recess between two bookcases and doubled her angular length into a cozy heap for an evening with Shelley's poem of "Prometheus Unbound." That was to be the English lesson for the next day.

As she read verse after verse, the music of the wonderful lines soothed her restless mood, and the beauty of the thought that love and forgiveness are stronger than selfishness lifted her to a height of joyous exaltation. The idea of Prometheus suffering all agonies for the sake of men came to her like a revelation. While she pondered over it, suddenly like the shining of a great light she understood the truth of "he that loseth his soul shall find it." The Christ-ideal of self-sacrifice meant the highest self-realization.

"My cup runneth over, my cup runneth over," sang Lucine in her heart, as she read on and on. "I have been blind but now I see. It has been always true, always, always. My cup runneth over. Listen:

"'It doth repent me; words are quick and vain; Grief for awhile is blind, and so was mine, I wish no living thing to suffer pain.'"

"Laura!" Lucine raised her head dreamily. She was unconscious of how the evening hours had drifted past, leaving only a few lingering students here and there in the library. She could not see the two girls bending over the table on the other side of the bookcase behind which she was nestling. But their voices floated mistily to her ears.

"Laura, remember that you have promised to live with my sister next year. Don't let Lucine coax or frighten you out of it. You have promised."

"But if I don't come back?"

"Well, anyway you have promised to room with Harriet if you do. We'll choose a parlor away off at the other end of the campus from Lucine, so that I can protect you from her demands. You've been growing thinner and whiter all the year. Now, remember. Don't you give in to her selfishness. She is able to take care of her precious self without killing you in the process. Promise."

Lucine heard a sigh. "I've promised to be her friend and I do care for her dearly; but I want with all my heart to room with Harriet, if I can manage to get back for next year. I'm almost sure I shan't. Now, see here, does this verb come from vinco or vincio? I'm so sleepy I can't read straight."

Lucine very white about the lips was sitting erect in her corner. "My cup runneth over, my cup runneth over," echoed faintly in her brain. "My cup runneth over and Laura likes her best and the essay is up-stairs and I wish no living thing to suffer pain—suffer pain. My cup runneth over. 'Pain, pain ever, forever!' I won't, I won't, I can't do it, I can't, I can't, I can't! To sacrifice it all for her and then—and then to be forsaken!"

Lucine glided from the recess, passed swiftly from the library, climbed the stairs to her room, moved toward the drawer which held the essay, and felt for the key in her pocket. It was gone. It must have fallen out while she read, doubled up on the low step. In wild haste now, for the minutes were flying and the board of editors might even now have adjourned, she hurried back to search. The green baize doors swung open in her face, and Berta and Laura came loitering out, their arms around each other, their heads bent close together affectionately.

"Lucine, oh, Lucine!" Laura at sight of her slipped away from Berta, "what is the matter? What has happened? Didn't they accept the essay?"

Brushing her aside Lucine swept on into the library, turned into the recess, and dropped on her knees beside the step to look for the stray key. Her eyes fell upon the open book which lay face downward where she had forgotten it. Then she remembered. "I wish no living thing to suffer pain."

It was long past ten o'clock and the corridors stretched out their dusky deserted length from one dim gas-jet to another flickering in the shadows, when Lucine crept back to her room. Laura raised a wide-eyed anxious face from the white pillow.

"Lucine, I couldn't sleep until I knew."

The older girl sat down on the bed and drew the little figure close.

"When you are editor, Laura, will you try to like me still? And will you keep on forgiving me and helping—helping me to deserve to have friends? And will you—will you teach me how to make Harriet like me too?"

"Oh, Lucine!" Laura flung her warm arms around the bowed neck. "I know what we shall do next year, if I can come back. The idea has just struck me. You and Harriet and I shall room together in a firewall with bedrooms for three!"



CHAPTER XII

AN ORIGINAL IN MATH

When Gertrude's brother turned up at college just before the holidays of their senior year, he boldly asked for Bea in the same breath with his sister's name. When the message was brought to her, that fancy-free young person's first thought was a quick dread that Berta would tease her about the preference. But no. Miss Abbott, chairman of the Annual's editorial board, clasped her inky hands in relief.

"Bless the boy! He couldn't have chosen better if he had looked through the walls and discovered Bea the sole student with time to burn—or to talk, for that matter. Trot along, Beatrice, and tell him that Gertrude is coming the moment she has dug her way out of this avalanche of manuscript. I can't possibly spare her for half an hour yet. Go and distract his mind from his unnatural sister by means of another story."

"Tell him about your little original in math, Bea," called Lila after her, "that's your best and latest."

Bea retraced her steps to thrust back an injured countenance at the door. "I guess I am able to converse as well as monologue, can't I?" she demanded indignantly, "you just listen."

However, when confronted by a young man with a monosyllabic tongue and an embarrassingly eloquent pair of eyes, she seized a copy of the last Annual from the table in the senior parlor, and plunged into an account of her own editorial trials.

Gertrude is on the board for this year's Annual, you know, and Berta Abbott is chairman. At this very moment they are struggling over a deluge of manuscripts submitted in their prize poem contest. Of course, I sympathize, because I have been through something of the same ordeal. The Monthly offered a prize for a short story last fall, and we had rather a lively sequel to the decision. Shall I tell you about it from the beginning? At our special meeting, I read the stories aloud, because I happen to be chief editor. Nobody said anything at first. Janet, the business editor, tipped her chair back and stared at the piles of magazines on the shelves opposite. Laura, who does the locals, pressed her forehead closer to the pane to watch the girls hurrying past on their way to the tennis tournament on the campus. Adele and Jo, the literaries, nibbled their fountain-pens.

I spread out the manuscripts, side by side, in a double row on the big sanctum desk, picked up my scribbled pad, leaned back till the swivel screw squeaked protestingly from below, and said, "Well?"

Janet brought her chair down on all four feet with a bump. "Nary one is worth a ten dollar prize," she declared pugnaciously, "especially now that Robbie Belle has gone to the infirmary for six weeks and she can't help me in soliciting advertisements."

Laura turned her head. "Robbie Belle had promised to write up the first hall play for me. She was going to review two books for Jo and compose a Christmas poem for Adele's department. I think maybe there are perhaps a dozen or so girls who might have been more easily spared."

I brushed a hand across my weary brow. It did not feel like cobwebs exactly,—more like cork, sort of light and dry and full of holes. I had been up almost all night, studying over those fifteen manuscripts, applying the principles of criticism, weighing, balancing, measuring, arguing with myself, and rebelling against fate. If Robbie Belle had been there she could have recognized the best story by instinct. Ever since I became chief editor I had depended upon her judgment, because she is a born critic and always right, and I'm not. And now just when I needed her most of all and more than anybody else, there she had to go and get quarantined in the infirmary.

"Girls," I said, "do express an opinion. Say what you think. We simply must decide this matter now, because the prize story has to go to press before the first, and this is our only free afternoon. I know what I think—at least I am almost sure what I think—but I want to hear your views first. Adele, you're always conscientious."

Adele was only a junior and rather new to the responsibility of being on the editorial board. She glanced down at her page of notes.

"Every one of the stories has some good points," she began cautiously. "Most of them start out well and several finish well. Six have good plots, nine are interesting, five are brightly written. Number seven is, I believe—yes, I think I consider it the best. The trouble is——"

"Altogether too jerky," interrupted Jo, "a fine plot but no style whatever. This is a cat. See the cat catch the rat. That's the kind of English in number seven. Now I vote for number fifteen."

"Oh, but, Jo," I broke in eagerly, for number seven was my own laborious choice also, and Adele's corroboration strengthened me wonderfully. "Jo, it is the simplicity of the style that is its greatest recommendation. You know how Professor Whitcomb has drummed into us the beauty of Anglo-Saxon diction. It's beautiful—it's charming—it's perfect. Why, a six-year-old could understand it. Fifteen is far too sensational for good art. Just listen to this——"

Jo was stubborn. "The use of short words is a mere fad," she said, "it is like wearing dimity for every occasion. Now listen to this!"

She snatched up one manuscript and read aloud while I declaimed from the other. Adele listened with a pained frown on her forehead, Janet laughed and teetered recklessly to and fro on her frisky chair, Laura fidgeted at the window and filled every pause with a threat to leave us instanter for the tournament positively had to be written up that day. Finally I put the question to the vote, for Jo is so decided in her manner that she makes me feel wobbly unless I am conscious of being backed up by Robbie Belle. I suppose it is because my own opinions are so shaky from the inside view that I hate to appear variable from the outside. It would have been horrid to yield to Jo's arguments and change my ideas right there before the whole board. The rest of them except Jo had fallen into a way of deferring to my judgment, for I had seemed to hit it off right almost always in accepting or rejecting contributions. Nobody knew how much I had depended on Robbie Belle.

The board awarded the prize to number seven, my choice, you know. Janet was on my side because the story had a nice lively plot, and that was all she cared about. Laura put in a blank ballot, saying that her head ached so that it was not fair to either side for her to cast any weight upon the scale. Adele of course voted with me. Jo stuck to number fifteen till the end.

"Well, that's over!" sighed Laura and escaped before any one had put the motion to adjourn. Janet vanished behind her, and Jo picked up the manuscript of which she was champion.

"By the way, girls," she said, "I will return this to its writer, if you don't mind. And I shall tell her to offer it to the Annual. The committee will jump at the chance. Find out who she is, please."

I slipped the elastic band from the packet of fifteen sealed envelopes and selected the one marked with the title of the story. The name inside was that of a sophomore who had already contributed several articles to the Monthly. Then I opened the envelope belonging to number seven.

"Maria Mitchell Kiewit," I read, "who in the world is she? I've never heard of her. She must be a freshman."

Jo who was half way out of the room stopped at the word and thrust her head back around the door. "Did little Maria Kiewit write that? No wonder it is simple and jerky. She's a mathematical prodigy, she is. Her mother is an alumna of this college. See! The infant was named after our great professor of astronomy. She wants to specialize herself in mathematical astronomy when she gets to be a junior. Her mother was head editor of the Monthly in her day. Maria rooms somewhere in this corridor, I believe. It will be a big thing for her to win the prize away from all the upper class girls. I didn't vote for her. By-bye."