"Oh!" exclaimed Adele, clasping her hands in that intense way of hers, "won't she be happy when she hears! A little ignorant unknown freshman to win the prize for the best short story among eight hundred students! Her mother will be delighted. Her mother will be proud."

"Hist!" Jo's head reappeared. "She's coming down the corridor now. Red cheeks, bright eyes, ordinary nose, round chin, long braid, white shirtwaist, tan skirt—nothing but an average freshman. She doesn't look like a mathematical prodigy, but she is one. And an author, too—dear, dear! There must be some mistake. Authors never have curly hair."

Adele and I poked our faces through the crack. Jo wickedly flung the door wide open. "Walk right out, ladies and gentlemen. See the conquering heroine comes," she sang in a voice outrageously shrill. During the trill on the hero, she bowed almost double right in the path of the approaching freshman. Maria Mitchell Kiewit stopped short, her eyes as round as the buttons on her waist.

Jo fell on her knees, lifting her outspread hands in ridiculous admiration. "O Maria Mitchell Kiewit," she declaimed, "hearken! I have the honor—me, myself—I snatch it, seize it—the honor to announce that thou—thee—you—your own self hast won the ten dollar prize for the best short story written for the Monthly by an undergraduate. Vale!" She scrambled upright by means of clutching my skirt and put out a cordial hand. "Nice girl! Shake!"

"Josephine!" gasped Adele in horrified rebuke. My breath was beginning to come fast over this insult to our editorial dignity when I caught sight of the freshman's face. Her cheeks were as red as ever, but she had turned white about the lips, and her eyes were really terrified.

"Oh, I don't want it!" she cried involuntarily, shrinking away from us, "I don't want it."

Jo's mouth fell open. "Then why in the world——"

The little freshman fairly ran to the alleyway leading to her room.

Jo turned blankly to us. "Then why in the world did she write the story and send it in?"

Adele—I told you she was conscientious, didn't I? and inclined to be mathematical herself—stared at the spot where Maria had disappeared. "Such an attitude might be explained either by the supposition that she is diffident—sort of stunned by the surprise, you understand—she never expected to win. Or maybe she is shy and dreads the notoriety of fame. Everybody will be looking at her, pointing her out. Or—or possibly——" Adele hesitated, glanced around uneasily, caught my eye; and we both dropped our lids quickly. It was horrid of us. I think it is the meanest thing to be suspicious and ready to believe evil of anybody. But truly we had just been reading a volume of college stories, and one was about a girl who plagiarized some poems and passed them off as her own. And this Maria Mitchell Kiewit had behaved almost exactly like her.

"Or possibly what?" demanded Jo.

Adele stammered. "Or p-p-possibly—oh, nothing! Maybe she is ashamed of the story or something like that. She lacks self-esteem probably. She didn't expect it to be published, you know, and—and she is surprised. That's all. She—I guess she's surprised."

"Come along, Adele," I slipped my arm through hers and dragged her away from Jo's neighborhood, "you must help me reject these fourteen others. That's the part I hate worst about this editorial business."

"Don't you want to reconsider the decision?" called Jo, "since she doesn't wish the prize herself, you'd better choose my girl. This is your last chance. The committee for the Annual will surely gobble number fifteen up quick. Berta Abbott knows good literature when she sees it. Going, going——"

"Let her go. Now, Adele," I said, closing the sanctum door with inquisitive stubborn Jo safely on the outside, "here are the rest of the names. You doubtless know some of their owners by sight, and I hope I know others. This is how we shall manage. Whenever you see one of them securely away from her room—maybe in the library or recitation or out on the campus or down town or anywhere—you tell me or else run yourself and take her manuscript and poke it under her door. I'll write a nice polite little regretful admiring note to go with each story, and that ought to take the edge off the blow. But be sure she is not at home. It would be simply awful to hand anybody a rejected article right to her real face and see how disappointed she is. I think it is more courteous to give her a chance to recover alone and unobserved."

"But suppose she has a roommate?" said Adele.

"Oh, dear! Well, in that case we'll have to watch and loiter around till they are both out of reach. It may take us all the week."

And it actually did. It took a lot of time but it was exciting too in a way. We felt like detectives or criminals—it doesn't matter which—to haunt the corridors and grounds till we spied one of those girls headed away from her room (of course we had to find out first where each one lived), and then we scurried up-stairs and down and hung around in the neighborhood and walked past the door, if anybody happened to be near, and finally shoved the manuscript to its goal. Certainly I understand that we were not obliged to take all this trouble but I simply could not bear to send those long envelopes back through the post. Every student who distributes the mail would have recognized such a parcel as a rejected manuscript. And of course that would have hurt the author's feelings.

Naturally I was rushed that week because Thanksgiving Day came on Thursday, and I had an invitation to go down to the city to hear grand opera that afternoon. It was necessary to take such an early train that I missed the dinner. That evening when I returned I found the whole editorial board and Berta too groaning in Lila's study while Laura acted as amanuensis for a composite letter to Robbie Belle. You see, they had eaten too much dinner—three hours at the table and everything too good to skip. Each one tried to put a different groan into the letter. They were so much interested in the phraseology and they felt so horrid that nobody offered to get me crackers or cocoa, though I was actually famishing.

After poking around in the family cupboard under the window seat, I routed out a bag of popcorn. I lighted the gas stove and popped about three quarts, and then boiled some sugar and water to crystallize it. When you are starving, have you ever eaten popcorn buttered for a first course and crystallized for a second? It is the most delicious thing! I had just settled myself in a steamer-chair with the heaped up pan of fluffy kernels within reach of my right hand, when there came a knock on the door.

"Enter!" called Janet.

The knob turned diffidently and in marched Maria Mitchell Kiewit.

Lila pushed another pillow behind Jo on the couch, Laura lifted her pen, Janet exerted herself to rise politely. I carelessly threw a newspaper over the corn, and then poked it off. After all, editors are only human, and freshmen might as well learn that first as last.

"I wish to see Miss Leigh," said the visitor in a high, very young voice that quavered in the middle.

I straightened up into a dignified right angle. "What can I do for you, Miss Kiewit?"

"I wish to withdraw my story," she announced still at the same strained pitch, "I have changed my mind. Here is the ten-dollar bill."

"But it went to press three days ago," I exclaimed.

"And the Annual has gobbled up second choice," said Jo triumphantly.

"We jumped at it," corroborated Berta.

"To take out the prize story now would spoil the magazine," cried Adele.

"Impossible!" declared Janet.

"Nonsense!" said Laura under her breath.

The little freshman stared from one to another. Then suddenly her round face quivered and crumpled. Throwing up one arm over her eyes she turned, snatched at the door knob and stumbled out into the corridor.

I looked at Adele.

"Yes," she replied to my expression, "you'd better go and find out now. It's for the honor of the Monthly. It would be awful to print a—a—mistake," she concluded feebly.

Just as I emerged from the alleyway I caught sight of the small figure fluttering around the corner of a side staircase half way down the dimly lighted hall. I had to hurry in order to overtake her before she could reach her own room. She must have been sobbing to herself, for she did not notice the sound of my steps on the rubber matting till I was near enough to touch her elbow. Then how she jumped!

"Pardon me, Miss Kiewit. May I speak to you for one minute?"

She nodded. I am not observant generally but this time I could see that she said nothing because she dared not trust her voice to speak. She went in first to light the gas. The pillows on the couch were tossed about in disorder, and one of yellow silk had a round dent in it and two or three damp spots as if somebody had been crying with her face against it.

Now I hate to ask direct questions especially in a situation like this where I wished particularly to be tactful, and of course she would be thrust into an awkward position in case she should dislike to reply. So I sat down and looked around and said, "How prettily you have arranged your room!"

The freshman had seated herself on the edge of her straightest chair. At my speech she glanced about nervously. "My mother graduated here," she explained, "and she knew what I ought to bring. Ever since I can remember, she has been planning about college for me."

"What a fortunate girl you are!" This was my society manner, you understand, for I was truly embarrassed. I always incline to small talk when I have nothing to say. She caught me up instantly.

"Fortunate! Oh, me! Fortunate! When I hate it—I hate the college except for math. My mother teaches in the high school—she works day after day, spending her life and strength and health, so that I may stay here. I—I hate it. She wants me to become a writer. And I can't, I can't, I can't! I want to elect mathematics."

"Oh!" said I.

"When she was a girl, she longed to write, but circumstances prevented. Then I was born and she thought I would carry out her ambition and grow to be an author myself. She's been trying years and years. But I can't write. I'm not like my mother. I have my own life to live. I—I hate it so. And—and——" The child stopped, swallowed hard, then leaned toward me, her eyes begging me.

"And if you keep my story for the prize, she will hear about it, and she won't let me elect mathematics for my sophomore year."

"Oh!" I said, and I was surprised to such a degree that the oh sounded like a giggle at the end. That made me so ashamed that I sat up a little more erect and ejaculated vivaciously, "You—you astonish me."

It was the funniest thing—she hung her head like a conscience-smitten child. "I—I haven't told her about it because it would encourage her and then later she would—would be all the more disappointed. I can't write, I tell you."

"The vote was almost unanimous," I remarked stiffly.

She stared at me doubtfully. "Well, maybe that story is good but I know I couldn't do it again. And anyhow my mother told me the plot."

"Oh," I said. It was really the plot that had won the prize, you understand, though indeed I had found the style eminently praiseworthy also according to all the principles of criticism. It almost fulfilled the rhetorical rules about unity, mass and coherence.

"So you will let me withdraw?" she questioned timidly, "here's the ten dollars." She held out the crumpled bill which she had been clutching all the evening.

I thought I might as well be going. "It's allowable to use your own mother's plot," I assured her, "don't bother about that. Good bye."

Without looking at her I hurried through the alleyway into the corridor, flew past the sanctum, darted into the staircase, then halted, turned around, stopped at the water-cooler for a taste of ice water, then walked slowly back to her room.

I put my head in at the door. "You heard me say, didn't you, that the story has gone to press?"

She lifted her face from that same yellow silk pillow. "Yes," she said.

"All right." I started away briskly as if I thought I was going, but I didn't. This time I turned around, went clear into the room and sat down on the couch.

"And anyway," I said, "you haven't any right to deceive your mother like that. It is robbing her of a joy that she surely deserves. She has earned it. You haven't any right not to tell her that your story won the prize. Whether we let you withdraw it or not, it would be wrong for you to steal that pleasure from your own mother. You are thinking merely of your own selfish wishes."

"No, no, no! Don't you see?" She flung herself toward me. "It is like being a surgeon. I must cut out the ambition. I can never fulfill it. Never, never, I tell you. The news of this prize will make it grow and grow like a cancer or something, till it will hurt worse, maim, kill, when I fail at last. If she would only see that I love mathematics and can do something in that maybe some day. But in literature. Suppose I shut myself up for years, struggle, struggle, struggle to wring out something that isn't in me, while she wears herself out to support me. The publishers will send it back, one after another. I can't write, I tell you. I know it. It will be all an awful sacrifice—a useless sacrifice, with no issue except waste of her life and my life. Don't you see?"

"Don't you think," said I calmly, "don't you think that you are just a little foolish and intense?" That is what a professor said to me once and it had a wonderfully reducing effect. So I tried it on this excited little freshman. But the result was different. Instead of clearing the atmosphere with a breeze of half mortified laughter, it created a stillness like the stillness before a whirlwind. I got up hastily. "I think I had better be going," I said.

This time I heard the key turn in the lock behind me as I walked rapidly away. Actually I had to hold myself in to keep from scuttling away like a whipped puppy. That is how I felt inside. I didn't believe that she would ever forgive me. There were two compensations for this episode in my editorial career: one was the realization that the little freshman had plenty of dignity to fall back on, the other was that she would not be very likely to ask again for the return of the prize story.

Considering that this was my sincere attitude, you may imagine how amazed I was to hear my name called by this young person the very next morning. She came running up to me at the instant my fingers were on the knob of the sanctum door. Her hands were filled with those little cardboard rhomboids, polyhedrons, prisms and so forth which the freshmen have to make for their geometry work.

"I'm going to do it," she began breathlessly, "I'm going to tell my mother. Perhaps it would please her more if—if you should write me a note on paper with the name of the Monthly at the top, you know. She used to be an editor when she was in college. In it say that the board gave me the prize. I think it will please her."

"I shall be delighted," I exclaimed. Then something in the way she was gazing down at those geometrical monstrosities (I never could endure mathematics myself) made me want to comfort her.

"Why, child, it won't be necessary to sacrifice math entirely. You can elect analytics and calculus to balance the lit and rhetoric. Cheer up."

She raised eyes brimming with tears. "My mother thinks that math has an adverse tendency. She doesn't want me to take much science either. She says that science deals with facts, literature with the impression of facts."

"Oh," I remarked. You notice that I had found occasion to use the foregoing expletive several times since first meeting Miss Maria Mitchell Kiewit.

She nodded gloomily in acknowledgment of my sympathetic comprehension. "Yes, once when I described lights in a fog as 'losing their chromatic identity' instead of saying they 'blurred into the mist,' she asked me to drop physics in the high school. She said it was ruinous, it was destroying the delicacy of my perceptions."

"Doesn't your mother ever——" I hesitated, then decisively, "doesn't she ever laugh?"

Maria dimpled suddenly. "Oh, yes, yes! She's my dearest, best friend, and we have fun all the time except when she talks about my becoming a writer. She said that now at college I could show if there was any hope in me. She meant that this is my chance to learn to write. I—I——" She paused and glanced at me dubiously from under her lashes. "I sent in that story just to show her that I couldn't write. I was going to tell her I had tried and failed."

"Oh!" Then I chuckled, and the freshman after a moment of half resentful pouting joined in with a small reluctant laugh.

"It is funny," she said, "I think that maybe from your side of the affair it is awfully funny. But——"

I turned the knob swiftly. "No but about it. I shall write that note this minute, and you shall mail it home at once. That is the only right thing to do."

"Yes." She heaved a deep, long sigh. "I know that. I have worked it all out as an original in geometry. For instance: Given, an unselfish mother with a special ambition for her rebellious selfish daughter. Problem: to decide which one should sacrifice her own wishes. Let the mother's desire equal this straight line, and the daughter's inclination equal this straight line at right angles to the other. To prove——"

"See here, little girl," I interrupted her kindly but firmly, "no wonder your mother dreads the effect of mathematical studies on your tender brain! I said farewell to geometry exactly two years and four months ago. I did the examination in final trig three times. Comprehend? Now run into your own room and get that letter written quick. If you are very agreeable indeed, I may let you enclose the proof sheets, who knows?"

"Thank you," she exclaimed in impulsive joy, "that will be lovely. Mother will be so pleased." Then the vision of coming woe in exile from beloved calculations descended upon her, and she hugged the paper figures so convulsively that the sharpest, most beautiful angle of the biggest polyhedron cracked clear across from edge to edge. They were perfectly splendid clean edges, edges that even I could see had been formed by the carefully loving hands of a mathematical prodigy.

After that day came a pause in the drama (Adele declared that it was really a tragedy caused by one life trying to bend another to its will) until the day when the new issue of the Monthly arrived in the noon mail. As Robbie Belle was still in the infirmary of course, the rest of the board took hold of her share of the work. We divided the list of subscribers between us, and started out to distribute the magazines at the different rooms in the various dormitories.



Part of my route happened to include the neighborhood of the sanctum. Just as I turned into Maria's alleyway to leave the three copies always provided for every contributor, she came dashing out of her room in such a headlong rush that I barely saved my equilibrium by a rapid jump to one side. As soon as she could control her own impetus she whirled and bore down upon me once more.

"Mercy, mercy!" I cried, backing into a corner by the hinges and holding my pile of magazines in front as a rampart, "don't be an automobile any more."

She waved an open letter in her hand.

"Mother says I may elect all the math I want. She says I can't write a little bit. She says that this prize story shows I can't. She says it is awful—all except the plot, and that isn't mine, you know. She says that the vocabulary, sentence structure, everything proves me mathematical to the centre of my soul. She says she has always been afraid she was making a mistake to force a square peg into a round hole. I'm the peg, you understand. She says I needn't struggle any more, and she'll be just as proud of a mathematical genius as of a mechanical author. She says she is grateful for the honor of the prize, but she thinks the board of editors made a mistake."

I walked feebly into the room, sank on the couch, and propped myself against that yellow silk pillow.

"It's horrid to be an editor," I said, "especially when Robbie Belle has to go and get taken to the infirmary just when I need her most."

"My mother knows," chanted the little freshman, "and she says I can't write a little bit. She says I can elect mathematics. Whoopee!"



CHAPTER XIII

JUST THIS ONCE

Ellen drummed restlessly on the window pane. "I'm 'most sure it would not matter just this once. We've had the mildest sort of a fever, and I don't see yet why they keep us shut up so long away off here. I'm crazy to send a letter home."

Lila's thin shoulders gave an irritable little shrug under the silken folds of her dressing-gown, and her finely cut features screwed for an instant into an expression of impatient dislike. It was only for an instant—then the mask of her conventional courtesy dropped again between the two convalescents.

"Why not tell the doctor or the nurse what you wish to write? They will attend to it for you. Infection may be conveyed in a dozen ways, you know. We are beginning to peel, and that is the worst——"

"Oh, are we?" broke in Ellen excitedly, "are we really peeling?" She lifted one hand and examined the wrist. "No, I'm not even beginning. Every morning the moment I wake up I rub and rub, but it won't peel. It simply won't. And I've got to stay here till I do. Are you peeling? Really?"

She darted across to her companion and seized her arm without noticing the quiver of distaste before it lay limp in her eager grasp.

"Oh, oh, it is, it certainly is! You are peeling. You will get through first and be set free and go back to the girls. I shall be left here alone. It isn't fair. We both came the same day. Think of almost six weeks lost from college! My first spring in this beautiful place! It doesn't mean so much to you, because you're a junior. You don't care."

Lila had withdrawn her hand under the pretext of picking up a case knife to sharpen her pencil. Now though her lids were lowered as she hacked at the stubby point, she was perfectly aware of the hopeful curiosity in the freshman's side glance at her. Lila despised the habit of side glances. For the past few days she had felt increasing scorn of a childishness that sought to vary by quarrels the monotony of their imprisonment. Hadn't the girl learned yet that she—Lila Allan, president of the junior literary society—was not to be provoked into any undignified dispute by puerile taunts?

"You don't care," repeated Ellen from her old position at the window. "I guess you'd rather anyhow have all your time to write poetry instead of studying." She glanced around just in time to see Lila's lips set in a grimmer line as the lead in the short pencil snapped beneath a more impatient jab of the dull knife. She laughed teasingly.

"What's the use of writing all that stuff now? You're wearing out your pencil fast. Aren't you afraid the paper will carry infection? Or will it be fumigated? I think it is silly to bother about germs. Oh, dear!" She began to drum again on the pane. "I'm so tired of this infirmary. There's nothing to do. I can't make up poetry. My eyes ache if I try to read." Here she paused, and Lila was aware of another side glance in her direction.

"My eyes ache if I try to read," repeated Ellen slowly, "and there is an awfully interesting story over on the table." She stopped her drumming for a moment to listen to the steady scribble behind her. The little face with its round features so unlike Lila's delicate outlines took on a disconsolate expression. "Do your eyes ache when you try to read," for an instant she hesitated while a mischievous spark of daring danced into her eyes. Then she added explosively, "Lila?"

She had done it. She had done it at last. Never before through all the weeks of imprisonment together had she ventured to call Miss Allan by her first name. A delightful tingle of apprehension crept up to the back of her neck. She waited. Now surely something would happen.

But nothing happened except the continued scribble of pencil on paper in the silence. Oh, dear! this was worse than she had expected. It was worse than a scolding or a freezing or an awful squelching. It was the queerest thing that they were not even acquainted really after the many weeks. There was a shell around this junior all the time. It made Ellen feel meaner and smaller and more insignificant every minute. The freshman pressed her forehead wearily against the glass.

"Oh, look! There come the girls. They're your friends away down on the lawn. Miss Abbott, I think, and Miss Leigh, and Miss Sanders. See, see! The rollicking wind and the racing clouds! Their skirts blow. They hold on their tams. They are looking up at us. They are waving something. Maybe it is violets, don't you think? Once I found violets in March. Can't you smell the air almost? I'm going to open the window. I am, I am! Who's afraid of getting chilled?"

"I would advise you not to do anything so utterly foolhardy," spoke Lila's frigid voice. A certain inflection in the tone made Ellen shrink away instinctively. For an instant she looked full into the serene, indifferent eyes, and her own seemed to flutter as if struggling against the contempt she saw there. Then with a defiant lift of her head she hurried to the writing table and seized the pencil which Lila had dropped upon rising to approach the window.

A few minutes later when the older girl turned from the greetings and messages in pantomime with her friends below, she saw Ellen's rough head bending over a paper. It was a needlessly untidy head. During the weeks of close confinement and enforced companionship, she had felt her dislike steadily growing. The girl was on her nerves. She was wholly disagreeable. Everything about her was displeasing, her careless enunciation, queer little face, coarse clothes, impulsive, crude ways, even occasional mistakes in grammar. She told herself that the child had no breeding, no manners, no sense of the fitness of things. There was no reason why she should admit her into the circle of her intimates merely because the two had been thrown together by the exigencies of an attack of scarlet fever. Such a fortuitous relation would be severed in the shortest possible time, completely and irremediably severed. Trust Lila Allan, president of the junior literary society, to manage that. Meanwhile she intended to leave the girl severely alone. Think of the impudence of calling her Lila! Lila, indeed! And that hint about reading aloud! The incredible impertinence of it! And to appropriate her pencil! Atrocious!

But of course she would keep on being polite. She owed that to herself, to her position, to her self-respect. Accordingly Miss Allan busied herself graciously about other matters till Ellen had finished her note, addressed an envelope, and advanced with it to the window.

She hesitated doubtfully, with one hand on the sash.

"It won't matter just this once," she said as if arguing, "somebody will pick it up and mail it for me. It concerns something important and private. People are silly about infection. I'm quite sure it won't matter just this once." She paused this time with rather an anxious little side glance toward Lila.

That young lady said nothing. She was engaged in contemplating with a studiously inexpressive countenance the stub of her precious and only pencil. It needed sharpening again.

Ellen raised the window half an inch. "The doctor here is so foolish," she commented with an injured air, "she's always bothering about infection or contagion or whatever you call it. It isn't necessary either. I know a doctor at home and he told a woman to wrap up her little girl and bring her down to his office, and the little girl was peeling too. He knew it wouldn't do any harm even if she did go in the street car. He was sensible."

Lila smothered a sigh of long suffering as she reached for the case knife again.

"And I am so tired," insisted Ellen with fretful vehemence. "I am bored to death, and nobody amuses me, and my eyes ache when I try to read, and my wrist won't peel, and all the other girls are enjoying themselves, and my letter is awfully important and private, and mother will be so glad to receive it, and my little sister will snatch it quick from the postcarrier, and they'll all be glad, and there isn't the least bit of danger, and I'm going to do it." She flung the sash wide and glanced around for an instant with a face in which reckless defiance wrestled with a frightened wish to be dissuaded. "I'm going to do it," she repeated, "I'm going to do it—Lila!"

Miss Allan raised her head with a politely controlled shiver. "Would you mind closing the window at your earliest convenience, Miss Bright?"

The younger girl gave her one look, then turned and leaning out over the sill sent the envelope fluttering downward till it rested square and white on the concrete walk far below. Lila shrugged her shoulder and finished sharpening her pencil.

In the course of weary time she was set at liberty. Fair and sweet and delicate in her fresh array she walked down the corridor in the centre of an exultant crowd of friends. In listening to the babel of chatter and laughter, she forgot utterly her companion in imprisonment. Just once she happened to look back from the entangling arms of Bea and Berta and Robbie Belle, and caught sight of a forlorn little figure staring after her from the shadows of the infirmary door. In the glow of her new freedom and heart-warming affection, Lila nodded to her with such a radiant smile that Ellen blushed with joy. On her journey to her room she told herself that Miss Allan liked her after all. It was a solitary journey, for Ellen had boarded in town till February. After moving into the dormitory she had barely begun to make acquaintances before the ogre of fever had swooped down upon her and dragged her away to his den in the isolation ward.

The vision of that smile must have remained with her through the troubled weeks that followed; for one April evening in parlor J she ventured to invite Miss Allan to dance. Beyond distant glimpses in the corridors and chapel, Lila had seen nothing of her fellow convalescent. To tell the truth, she had taken pains to avoid any chance association. Once she had found hardly time to take refuge behind an ENGAGED sign before the dreaded little freshman came tiptoeing shyly into the alleyway. Another time when she spied the small face waiting with an expectant wistful half smile at the foot of the stairs she turned to retrace her steps as if she had suddenly recalled an errand in another direction.

On this particular evening, Lila had been the guest of honor at a senior birthday table. The senior whose birthday was being celebrated was chief editor of the Monthly. She declared that she invited Lila because of the rhymes that came in so handy to fill up several pages in the last number of the magazine. As Lila, lovely in pale rose and blue and silver, sat at the table gay with flowers and shaded candles, she told the story of how she had written the verses in the infirmary. On her witty tongue the stubby pencil, the dull knife, and the teasing midget of an impudent freshman made a delightfully humorous tale. Even the explosive "Lila!" and its accompanying side glance of terrified joy in the daring developed into a picture that sent the seniors into tempests of laughter. Somehow she did not care to mention the letter which Ellen had dropped out of the window.

After dinner Lila pressed on with the others to the dancing in parlor J. The applause and admiration surrounding her made her look her prettiest and talk her wittiest, for Lila's nature was always one that throve best in an atmosphere of praise. She felt as if whirling through fairyland. In the midst of the gayety of music, lights, and circling figures, she lifted her head in gliding past the great mirror and beheld her own radiant face smiling back at her from the flower-tinted throng. Just at that moment through a rift in the throng she caught a glimpse of two big troubled eyes in a queer small face atop of a drooping ill-clad form. Half a minute later as she leaned breathless and glowing against the mirror's gilt frame, she became aware of a timid touch on her arm. Turning quickly she saw Ellen beside her. Her smile faded to an expression of formally polite and distant questioning as she drew her skirts a few inches away.

"Will you——" the freshman swallowed once, then pushed out the words with a desperate rush, "will you dance with me?"

"Oh, Miss Bright," exclaimed Lila in an overwhelmingly effusive manner, "I am so dreadfully sorry, but I regret to say that I am already engaged for every number. Good-bye!" She slid her hand about her partner's waist and propelled her swiftly into the concealing vortex of waltzers.

The partner in question happened to be a certain lively and independent young person called Bea by her friends. "Lila Allan," she scolded as soon as she could steer their steps to a sheltered eddy in a corner, "why in the world did you snub that poor child so unmercifully? After six weeks together in the infirmary too! I'm downright ashamed of you. You ought to be above snobbishness. And it isn't a point of snobbishness either. It is plain cruelty to children. Didn't you see how you hurt her? And the poor little thing has enough trouble without your adding to the burden."

"Trouble?" echoed Lila uneasily.

"Yes, trouble. Haven't you heard? Her little sister is desperately ill with scarlet fever. Infection conveyed in a letter, I understand. A telegram may come for her any hour. And then when she tries to cheer up, you treat her so abominably! Lila, you are growing more and more spoiled every day. People praise you too much. You were born with a silver spoon in your mouth. You've improved a lot since you first began to room with me, but still——"

Lila had vanished. Winding her swift way between the circling pairs, she hurried into the corridor where girls were strolling idly as they waited for the gong to summon them to chapel. Beyond the broad staircase Ellen's disconsolate little figure stood in the glare of the gas-jet over the bulletin-board.

Lila hastened toward her. "Miss Bright, oh, Miss Bright, I did not know. I am exceedingly sorry. You will keep me posted? If there is anything that I can do, of course—I feel—I feel—so guilty."

Ellen raised her face. Her mouth was trembling at the corners. "I sent the letter," she said, "I'm waiting." She winked rapidly and her odd features worked convulsively for a moment. "If—if they telegraph——"

"Miss Bright." It was the voice of a messenger girl who had that instant emerged from an adjacent apartment. "Will you step into the office at once, if you please? There is a message——"

Ellen was gone like a flash. Lila walked across to the staircase and very deliberately seated herself with her head resting against the banisters. It was there that Bea found her a few minutes later when the stream of students was beginning to set toward the chapel doors.

Bea was startled. "Lila, what is it? You look like a ghost. Shall I get some water?"

Lila opened her eyes. "I think that her little sister is dead," she said.

"Oh!" Bea clasped her hands in pity. "How can we help?"

"I think that I killed her," said Lila.

"What!" It was almost a shout. Then noticing that several girls turned to stare curiously in passing, Bea put out her hand. "Come, Lila, get up. It's time to go to chapel. You don't realize what you're saying."

She rose obediently in mechanical response to the gesture.

"It was my fault because I was the older and I knew the danger. She was only a freshman. She wanted me to persuade her not to drop that letter from the window. I could have kept her from feeling lonely. I made her reckless. It wasn't her fault. But now her little sister is dead."

"How do you know she is?" asked Bea.

"A message came."

"Hush!" They slipped into a pew near the rear of the chapel. During the reading of Scripture, Lila sat gazing blankly straight before her over the rows of heads, dark and fair. As if in a dream she rose with the others for the singing of the hymn. Still as though moving in a mist, she sank again into her seat and bowed her forehead upon the pew in front. While the rustling murmur was subsiding into a hush before the prayer, she stirred and lifting her face turned for one fleeting moment toward the wide doors at the back. Ah! She raised her head higher to watch, motionless, breathless. The doors were noiselessly swinging shut behind a girl with a queer small face atop of an ill-clad little figure. But the face instead of being crumpled in grief was alight with joy; and the little figure advanced with a lilt and a swing, as if just freed from a burden.

The message had been a message of good tidings.

Lila watched the child slip exultantly into a convenient corner. Then with a sudden, swift movement the older girl dropped full upon her knees and covered her eyes with her hands.



CHAPTER XIV

CLASSMATES

Bea reached for Robbie with one arm, grasped Lila with the other, and went skipping after the rest of the seniors over the lawn to their class tree. She dragged them under its spreading branches to the centre of the throng that had gathered in the June twilight. Berta was already there, mounted on a small platform that had been built against the trunk in preparation for the morrow's Class Day ceremonies.

"She looks pretty decent," whispered Bea to Robbie in order to frustrate the queer sensation in her throat at sight of the eager face laughing above them on this last evening together before the deluge of commencement guests. "I hope the alumnae who are wandering around admire our taste in presidents."

"Maybe," Robbie spoke reflectively, "they're almost as much interested in their classmates as we are in ours."

"Um-m," said Bea, "why, maybe so they are. I never thought of that before. Robbie, you're my liberal education. Now, then, attention! Berta is raising her hand to mark time for the songs to be rehearsed for to-morrow."

But Berta's hand dropped at sound of a shout from across the campus. "There!" she exclaimed, "the sophomores are coming."

They certainly were coming, on a double-quick march, two by two, shouting for the seniors. As they approached the shouting changed to singing. When they reached the tree, they spread out and joining hands went skipping, still viva voce, around the seniors who watched them, silent and smiling. The air was sweet with the cool, spicy breath of spruces. Lila thought that she could even smell the roses in the garden beyond the evergreens. She lifted her face toward the soft evening sky, and her mouth grew wistful. Bea caught a glimpse of it, and immediately became voluble if not eloquent.

"This is impromptu," she commented, generous with her least thoughts. "I enjoy impromptus, except speeches—or that last lecture when the man couldn't read his own notes. Now my history which is to astonish the world to-morrow will doubtless glitter with extemporaneous wit which has cost me two weeks of meditation. Likewise this impromptu on the spur of the moment——"

"I think it's beautiful," said Robbie. She was watching Berta's eyes as the last lingering strains died away. Oh, dear! why did they sing that good-bye serenade again? Berta was going to cry. Hark! A robin's twilight call rose melodiously from the heart of a shadowy spruce. In the thrill of it Robbie felt the sting of sudden tears. She turned to Bea.

"Now I know how Berta feels when she listens to music. I'm beginning to understand. But I think a robin is different from a brass band."

"Is it now? You astonish me." Bea squeezed her understandingly, nevertheless. "I know. Being with Lila has taught me a lot. She is like a windharp—every touch finds a response. Berta's a violin, I guess. It takes skill to play on her. And you—oh, I believe you're a splendid big drum. You've been marking time for the rest of us all the four years. As for me, I'm only an old tin horn. You need to spend all your breath to get any music. Even then it isn't sickeningly sweet, so to speak. Still for an audience in sympathy with the performer——"

"That is what college has given us," put in Lila who had been listening, "it gives us sympathy. Being with different persons, you know, and loving them."

"Oh, yes!" Robbie's sigh of intense assent left her breathless, "loving them."

"Now, then, girls!" Berta's hand was lifted again to beat time as the clapping for the sophomores subsided. Then the seniors sang. They sang the songs that were to be interspersed as illustrations in Bea's class history. There was the elegant stanza which they had shouted all the way to the mountain lake that first October at college.

"'Rah, 'rah, 'rah! kerchoo, kerchoo! We are freshmen— Who are you?"

From that brilliant composition the selections ranged through four years of fun and sentiment with an occasional flight to the poetry of earnest feeling as well as many a joyous swoop into hilarious inanity.

When tired of standing around the tree, the class fluttered across the campus to the broad stone steps in front of the recitation hall.

Bea clung to Robbie's arm again and reached for Lila in their flight. "I'm 'most sure we look like nymphs flying through the glades, with our draperies blowing in the lines of swift motion. I love to run when I feel like it. Robbie Belle, shall we ever dare to run when we get home?"

Robbie did not hear her. From her seat on the steps she gazed at Berta who was standing before the ranks of familiar faces, her eager face alight with the exhilaration of the hour. Once she threw back her head, laughing at some ridiculous verse. Her eyes sought Robbie's for an instant, smiled, then danced away again. Robbie swallowed once, unconsciously, and moved closer to Bea.

In a semicircle sweeping around the group of singers, sophomores and stray juniors and many a wandering alumna in a flower-decked hat had gathered to listen. In a pause between the songs. Robbie surveyed them gravely, unrecognizing any of the older guests until presently one face stood out vaguely familiar in the clear twilight. It was a beautiful face, framed by dusky hair beneath the wreath of crimson roses on her hat. The eyes were dusky too and deep-set. They were staring at Robbie with an intensity of grieving affection that contrasted sharply with the stern, almost resentful, expression of her finely cut mouth.

As Robbie gazed back in fascinated perplexity, the face suddenly curved into a smile so tenderly radiant that Robbie felt quite dazzled for a moment. Involuntarily she smiled back, while striving to grasp the dim recollection. Who could it be? She had surely seen her before somewhere. But where? At college? At home? Where was it? Slowly a vision grew distinct in her groping memory. It was a vision of Elizabeth, her sister, lifting a photograph from a pile of others. "This," she had said, "is my Jessica. She knows all my family from their pictures, and some day she shall come home with me and meet you your own selves. She wishes Robbie Belle were to enter college before we finish. Robbie will be a senior when we go back for our fifth year reunion."

Robbie's chest heaved abruptly under the shock of identifying the face amid the encircling throng. It was Jessica More, Elizabeth's best friend at college. This was the June of her class reunion. Robbie Belle was a senior. But Elizabeth was not there, as she had planned. Jessica had been expelled before she graduated, and Elizabeth had died.

Before the singing was over, Jessica had disappeared. Then in the rush of last things Robbie forgot her for a time. Some of the seniors hurried away on hospitable duties bent, for numerous relatives had already arrived. There were to be informal gatherings in different rooms. A few went to the Phi Beta Kappa lecture in the chapel. To tell the truth, however, these were but few indeed, for to the seniors the last evenings were too precious, to be wasted on mere scholarly discourse. Probably Jessica had gone there with the rest of the alumnae, reflected Robbie Belle as she sat beside Berta and the others in the soft sweet darkness. With arms intertwined they talked low or fell silent, lingering over this farewell to the dear college days.

"I love everybody in the class," whispered Lila once.

"In the college," amended Bea promptly.

"Oh, in the whole world!" exclaimed Berta.

Robbie nodded assent so solemnly that Bea leaned down to peer at her more closely. "A regular Chinese mandarin," she teased, "or are you nodding in your sleep? You approve of Berta's breadth evidently. Why do people always speak about the value of being broadened? I think it is nobler to be deep than broad, I do. I'd rather divide my heart in four pieces than in forty billion."

"There are two hundred in the class," said Robbie, "and there were only one hundred in my sister's class, but I am quite sure that they did not love each other any more than we do."



The next morning saw the seniors assemble at the amphitheatre which had been prepared for the Class Day exercises. Berta was already on the platform, assisting the committee in the arrangement of seats for the class. Among later comers who were hurrying across the campus Bea caught up with Robbie Belle.

"I am hastening across the sward," she announced in cheerfully inane greeting, "what is a sward anyhow, and why isn't it pronounced the same as sword?"

"It's grass," said Robbie Belle. Bea felt a speaking silence fall and glanced up to catch the direction of her gaze. Between them and the expanse of mingled chairs and girls around the platform against the wall of the nearest dormitory, a stranger was moving rapidly toward them, her eager eyes on Robbie.

"Little Robbie Belle! I knew you last night from your picture." She held both hands, smiling.

Bea considered the two pairs of shoulders on a level. "Little!" she sniffed to herself, "it must be a very old alum."

Robbie turned to introduce her. "This is my friend, Beatrice Leigh, Miss More. Bea, this is my sister's best friend. I remembered you too, last night, Miss More. I remembered—I—I wondered——" Robbie's tongue stumbled in embarrassment at the verge of candor.

Miss More's mouth hardened slightly, though her eyes still smiled. "You wondered how I happen to be here for the reunion of a class from which I was expelled. Is that it? Perhaps you are unaware that I have been reinstated. The faculty has at last reconsidered their unjust decision. They acknowledge that it was based upon a misunderstanding. I have made up the work at home. To-morrow I shall receive two degrees, the Bachelor's with your class, the Master's with the post-graduates. I am sure you congratulate me."

"Oh!" gasped Robbie Belle, "oh, yes!"

Bea succeeded in depressing somewhat the round-eyed stare with which she had listened to this extraordinary speech. "I think it is perfectly lovely, Miss More," she said. "Your class must be delighted. It is a triumph—a splendid triumph. Oh,—ah!" She turned at the sound of a faint call behind her: "Jessica!"

From a group of alumnae under a cluster of spruces, somebody was walking quickly toward the three. Bea recognized in her a brilliant young instructor at the college.

"Jessica, I am—glad. How do you do?" She put out her hand.

Miss More lifted her eyes, coolly scanned the other woman from the tip of her russet shoes to the crown of her sailor hat, then gazed vacantly over her head, before addressing Robbie again.

"Then to-morrow, Robbie. Don't forget that I wish to see you after the commencement exercises for a few minutes. There are questions I desire to ask. Your mother is well, I hope."

Two minutes later Robbie had reached one of the chairs and dropped into it with a limpness strangely inharmonious with her statuesque proportions. "Bea, they belong to the same class."

Bea sank down beside her. "That was awful—awful. Those others were watching her from the path. Why did she do it? I don't understand."

Robbie passed her hand across her forehead. "I don't quite remember everything," she said, "but I have an impression that it was Miss Whiton who was to blame for having Miss More expelled. She was class president, or something, and felt responsible. Elizabeth said she thought it was for the honor of the college. She meant to do right. And now to think it was all a mistake! Miss More will receive her degrees to-morrow."

"Did Miss Whiton accuse her of any wrong or make complaint?"

"No, not exactly. I think she believed that Miss More's behavior somewhere reflected on the college, and she considered it her duty to report the circumstances. Or maybe it was appearances—it seems now that it must have been only appearances. That started the trouble, and Miss More resented it. She was stubborn or indifferent about some requirements. I don't remember quite what, and Elizabeth never liked to talk about it. Elizabeth wrote to her every week until she—until she left us." Robbie's lip twitched suddenly. Bea saw it and gently passing her arm through the other's arm drew her on to join the class assembled at the amphitheatre.

The next day brought commencement. Bea from her place among the rows of white-clad seniors in the body of the chapel could by bending forward slightly catch a glimpse of Miss More's profile at the head of the front pew at the right. When she raised her eyes she could see Miss Whiton's coldly regular features conspicuous in their clean-cut fairness among the younger instructors in the choir-seats behind the trustees on the platform. Bea had never liked Miss Whiton. It seemed to her now, as she studied the immobile face, that she had always recognized there a suggestion of the self-righteous Pharisee. There could be nothing but misunderstanding and antagonism between the possessor of such a countenance and Miss More with those eyes of hers, that nose and that mouth. Bea's labors over the classes in manners had included some research in the subject of physiognomy. Now she leaned forward to secure another view of that profile in the front pew. Then she settled back with the contented sigh of an investigator whose surmise has proved correct. Miss More's features certainly expressed an impulsive, reckless and lovable temperament as opposed to Miss Whiton's conscientious and calculating prudence. Oh, yes, there was conscience enough in the icily handsome face among the instructors. It was conscience doubtless that had driven her across the campus to speak to Miss More on Class Day morning. Bea sighed again, this time with a faint twinge of sympathy. She generally meant well herself. A conscience was a very queer thing—she thought so still even if she had heard it all explained and analyzed in senior ethics.

"Surgite." That was Prexie's voice. The class rose in obedience to the word. Bea found herself standing with the others while the Latin sentences rolled melodiously over their heads. She never could translate from hearing. Absently her glance sought the front pew where Miss More had turned to watch them. The girl's wistful gaze caught the expression of passionate regret in her deep-set eyes, and clung there fascinated for an endless moment before tearing itself free.

After it was over, after the class had filed upon the platform to receive their diplomas, after Prexie had delivered his annual address and the procession of graduates, alumnae and faculty had marched out into the golden sunshine, Bea drew aside to wait under an elm. Berta spied her and beckoned, then came hurrying.

"Lila is over at the doors on guard to capture the various relatives and start them toward the cottages for dinner. The trustees entertain the alumnae in the main dining-room. The seniors will go to Strong Hall. Aren't you ready?"

"I'm getting an impression," answered Bea, "gothic portals, graceful elms, bare-headed girls in white, sun-flecked lawns and glimpse of the sparkling lake beyond, groups intermingling——"

"I'll help give you that impression."

Bea slipped nimbly out of reach in time to escape the promised pinch—or it may have been a squeeze.

"I've got it already—a hundred of them. You're in two or three. And Robbie—do you see Robbie anywhere?"

Robbie approached at the moment. "Bea, have you noticed Miss More pass? I found something last night in my sister's college scrapbook—her memory-bill, you know. It is something for Miss More."

"Yes, over there half way to the main building. Look—that one in white all alone. You can overtake her if you hurry, Robbie. Oh, Berta!" Bea turned and held out one hand impulsively. "If you could only have seen her eyes while she watched us in chapel! She was thinking of her own class, how she had been driven away from them in disgrace. It was tragic. She—she——" Bea gulped and caught herself back from falling over the brink into the pit of palpable emotion. "In fact, I am almost sure she—hm-m,—envied us."

She glanced apprehensively at her companion in dread of the usual quick teasing rejoinder; but Berta was soberly gazing after Robbie.

"Robbie has dropped a paper, Bea," she said, "I saw it flutter. Come."

Bea flitted across the grass, her bright hair an aureole in the sunlight. Her fingers seized the bit of white; her eyes read the message:

* * * * *

"Sunday evening after Bible lecture.

"Jessica and the rest of us are choosing mottoes to live out just for experiment this week.

"Marian: 'Love seeketh not her own.' (She always gets to places first.)

"Alice: 'Is not easily provoked.' (Oh, oh!)

"Louise: 'Is not puffed up.' (Ah!)

"Jessica: 'is kind.' (And when she is good, she is very, very good.)

Elizabeth: "envieth not." (My brain doesn't suit.)

"Jessica says hers is the easiest because it means just to keep from hating anybody, and she loves the whole college."

* * * * *

"Oh, I didn't mean to read it." Bea almost clapped her hand over her impetuous eyes. "Robbie," she broke into a run, "Robbie Belle, here is something you dropped."

As Robbie turned at the call, one of the trustees, an elderly woman whose white hair seemed to soften the effect of her energetic manner and keen gaze, paused to speak to Miss More. The two seniors strolled on at a leisurely pace while waiting for an opportunity to ask attention without interrupting a speech. The distance intervening lessened step by step till Bea could not help overhearing the trustee's distinct low tones.

"——exceedingly difficult to choose between the two candidates. Their qualifications balance distractingly. Personally I incline to Miss Whiton, and I should very much like to see her win this unusual position. Her original work certainly deserves it. However I know her so slightly that I am reluctant to give my decisive vote until I learn more of her from her contemporaries. You were in her class, Miss More, I understand."

"Yes."

At the smothered intensity of that simple word, Bea's head rotated swiftly to stare at the source of it. She had never seen that beautiful face like this before. On the campus Class Day morning it had been friendly though with the hint of hardness about the mouth. In chapel it had been tragic with regret over the irrevocable. Now the dusky eyes were blazing with the light of coming triumph over an enemy at last delivered into her power.

"It is an exceptional distinction for so young a woman," continued the trustee, "and because it means so much to each of the rivals, a feather's weight of evidence may turn the scales for one or the other. I am anxious to be impartial. I invite this discussion merely to assure myself of Miss Whiton's irreproachable record. I wish sincerely to see her win."

"You never heard the exact circumstances that led to my expulsion from college?"

The defiant ring of this abrupt question brought Bea to her sense of the situation. She put out one hand to draw Robbie beyond earshot. But Robbie did not notice her. She was already touching Miss More's arm.

"Miss More, pardon me. I have hurried to give you this. I—I think Elizabeth would have enjoyed showing it to you. I—wish—she could have been here to-day. She would have been—glad."

Miss More took the paper mechanically. "Thank you, Robbie Belle. Will you wait one moment, dear? I want to speak to you." She turned again to the older woman. "It may be an enlightening little tale," she began, "and Miss Whiton plays a part in it. These are the facts."

Bea watched her, fascinated. The eyes seemed to be gazing away beyond the evergreens at old, unhappy, far-off things. Slowly they returned to nearer objects, dropped suddenly and caught for an instant upon some one passing by. At sight of the swift gleam of bitter recognition, Bea followed the direction, and beheld Miss Whiton. She looked back again in time to see a wonderful change as Miss More's glance traveled unconsciously to the paper in her hand.

Robbie's wistful regard was also lingering upon the paper.

"Elizabeth loved it all—the class—the whole college."

The trustee was evidently in haste. "And this enlightening little tale of yours, Miss More? Pardon me for urging you on. The importance of the issue—ah!" Bea saw her nod acquiescence in response to a gesture from some one who was waiting at the porte cochere. "I fear I shall not have time for it now. May I consult you later? You are sure, Miss More, that the story is something that I ought to hear?"

Miss More hesitated. "I don't know," she said slowly. "It may have been merely a schoolgirl misunderstanding. I will—think it over and let you know after the dinner. In any event, I thank you for your confidence. Miss Whiton certainly merits the honor."

It seemed to Bea that Miss More looked after the older woman with an expression of half-puzzled surprise at her own indecision. Then she turned to Robbie.

"I remember that evening," she spoke in a curiously softened tone. "Elizabeth sat in the glow of the drop-light and scribbled this card, while the rest of us watched her idly, and talked, half serious, half in fun over the novelty of choosing our mottoes. It was Elizabeth who had proposed it. She had such a shy, sweet, humorous way of being good. Everybody loved her."

Robbie nodded speechlessly. After a moment she said, "The rest of your verse is 'Love suffereth long and is kind.'"

The deep-set eyes clouded again under the dusky hair.

"I—have—suffered," she said slowly.

Bea pinched her own arm in a quick agony of vicarious embarrassment. How could a person show her feelings right out like that before anybody? What was the use of going around talking about such things? It was not very polite to make other people uncomfortable. Bea smothered a quick little sob and walked on, staring straight ahead.

It was Robbie who turned to look into the face so near her own. She saw the clouds lift before the dawning of an exquisite smile like a ray of sunshine after a stormy day.

"'Love suffereth long and is kind,'" repeated the oddly gentle voice. "I have suffered, and I will try—to be kind. I think Elizabeth would have been glad."

"Elizabeth is glad," said Robbie Belle.



CHAPTER XV

VICTORY

At her escape into the corridor Berta paused for a moment in the shadow of the staircase to brush the excitement from her glowing face. She winked rapidly once or twice in hopes of smothering the sparkle in her eyes, but succeeded only in nicking a happy tear drop from her lashes. Then she smoothed the dimple from her cheek and tried to straighten her lips into the sober dignity proper for a senior who was on the honor list and had just come from an interview with the critic of her commencement essay.

Her efforts were all in vain, however, for at the very minute that the dimple came dancing out again and the rebellious mouth quivered back into its joyous curves, somebody with a swift tap-tap-tap of light heels flew down the stairs in a rustle and a flutter and darted toward Berta.

"They've come! They're here! The Board of Editors is going to meet in the lecture room immediately to open the boxes. Four big beautiful boxes full of splendid great books all in green with gilt lettering. Hurry! Hurry quick yourself! You're head literary editor. It's really your book—the ideas, editorials, verses, farce, everything! The sale opens at five. Everybody's crazy to see the new senior Annual. Our Annual! Oh, Berta!" She seized the taller girl around the waist and whirled her down the hall till loose sheets of paper from her dangling note-book flitted merrily hither and yon.

"Bea, take care! You're crumpling my essay."

"Your essay? Oh, that's so! Senior president, Annual editor, honor girl, commencement speaker, graduate fellow-heigho! She 'bore her blushing honors thick upon her.' No wonder you look uplifted. Listen! Behold! Tell me, do her little feet really touch the solid humble earth?"

As mischievous Bea stopped, with anxiety and awe written large on her saucy features to investigate Berta's shoes, a door near them opened and a slender woman with fast-graying hair and a curiously still face emerged. There was the ghost of a twinkle in her gray eyes. The transom had not been entirely closed.

"Miss Abbott, may I take that essay again, for a few minor suggestions? If you will drop in after chapel I shall have it ready for you. Permit me once more to congratulate you on its excellence and originality. It has never been my pleasure to read any undergraduate work of greater promise." She withdrew after the nicker of a quizzical smile in Bea's direction.

That young lady gasped and then happening to notice that her mouth was ajar carefully closed it with the aid of both hands.

"Berta Abbott! To have your essay praised by Miss Thorne the terrible, who never approves of anything, and yet you stand there like a common mortal! You live, you breathe, you walk, you talk, just the same as you used to do! She says it has promise. I do believe that she never said as much before about anybody except maybe Shakespeare when he was young. Oh, just wait until she sees the Annual!"

Berta had colored hotly. "Bea, don't tell anybody, please. Of course, I care what she says. I care most of all—I care heaps—about her opinion that the qualities are—are promising. But if I should fizzle out and never amount to anything! It's all in the future, you see, and I'd be so ashamed to have the girls quoting her now. If I shouldn't win the fellowship, if I had to go to teaching next year and give it up——"

Bea pounced upon her. "You're a nice sweet girl, and I love you to distraction. Don't you worry about that fellowship, but trot up-stairs with me this instant and help hammer the covers off those boxes. You'll be surprised!"

"Shall I?" said Berta idly, as she followed in Bea's eddying wake, "I don't see how, since I read the proof and corrected the lists of names."

"Hm!" Bea turned confidentially and shot an alarming sentence toward her companion. "Well, I'll tell you; everything you wrote is signed. The other editors did it last thing—sometimes your initials, sometimes your name. It's for the sake of your reputation."

"My reputation!" exclaimed the victim. "Oh," she groaned, "they did that? Oh, my land! My name on everything. I shall sink through the floor. Run, run quick!"

The corridors were almost deserted during that recitation period. There was no stray freshman in sight to gaze scandalized at the vision of two reverend seniors racing toward the lecture room door. Berta dashed in just as the chairman of the board, with hair flying and cheeks flushed from the exertion, was brandishing a hatchet in one hand and a splintered fragment of wood in the other. The business editor hammered away with characteristic energy at the ragged remnants. The rest stood around waiting as patiently as possible in their weaponless zeal. Several glanced up and grinned provokingly at the appearance of their head literary editor.

"So you've heard the news, have you?" began the artist, "you look wild. We knew you'd never consent to sign the things yourself, and it was rank injustice to let you do the work and receive no special credit. Even the ideas are yours, but we couldn't tag a name to them. Wish we could. That one for the main feature—the pictures of distinguished alumnae——"

"Hold on!" the chairman backed into a convenient corner before Berta's frenzied reproaches, "it's all right. We added a note of explanation. Nobody will blame you for writing so well. And the initials are very small anyhow. Here, look!" She made a dive for the box, ripped off a second board with quick blows, snatched away the wrapping paper underneath, and dislodged a handsome green volume from its snug nest. She thrust it into Berta's hands. "It's your book really more than anybody's—your first published book."

Berta took it, sat down in a desk-chair near by, and turned the leaves slowly with fingers that trembled from nervousness.

Bea bent over her shoulder. "It seems as if that name of yours is on every page," she teased, "pretty name, don't you think? And isn't it a beautiful, beautiful book! Wide margins, heavy paper, clear print, fine reproductions. Won't the girls be delighted with those pictures of the basket ball teams! See, ah, there is the page of photographs. You suggested that the editors should appear as the babies they used to be forty years or so ago. What a dear little curly-head you were at the age of two, Berta! I want to hug you."

The embarrassment began to fade from Berta's expression as she gazed at the baby faces before her. "That's the great thing I miss at college, don't you, Bea? There aren't any babies here. We ought to borrow some once in a while to vary the monotony of books. I have three little nieces at home, you know. Such darlings! I wish I had one here now this minute."

"Which do you choose—the baby or the book? Oh, Berta! Would you sacrifice this book for a mere child? This beautiful, splendid, green book with gilt lettering and your name scrawled everywhere?"

"The oldest baby looks a good deal like that photograph of me," continued Berta softly, "she is named after me, too. I wish you could see her. The way she holds up her little arms and clings to you! I haven't seen her since last September."

"Hark!" Bea sprang from her perch on a desk-arm. "There are the girls now clamoring for admission. It must be the hour for the sale to begin. Isn't it fun! Fly, Berta Abbott, flee and bury your blushes. The play is now on."

Berta fled. She felt an impulse to creep away into some dark corner till all the excitement—and criticism—had subsided. Of course, it was rather pleasant, she acknowledged reluctantly to her candid self. There was something down underneath tingling and glowing. Very likely it was gratified vanity. Everybody liked to be praised and admired, but not too much, for that was uncomfortable. It was like being set upon a pinnacle and stared at. And she did care. She had worked hard and long for success. She had proved that she could work. Now if she should be granted the foreign fellowship, she could go on and on, step by step, till some day perhaps she might become a famous college professor or maybe the president of a university. That would be accomplishing a career worth while.

Berta never quite remembered how she screwed up resolution enough to enter the dining-room that night and face the storm of congratulations, affectionate jests, and laughing taunts over her eminence. The last copy of the Annual had been sold before the gong whirred out its summons to dinner; and dozens of dilatory students were already besieging the chairman for an extra edition. After dinner Berta was captured for a dance in parlor J till chapel time. The lilt of the music was still echoing in her ears, her heart beating in happy rhythm to its harmony, when at last she slipped into the back pew and leaned her head against the wall, her lips relaxing in happy curves, her hands lying idle in her lap.

Prexie's voice sounded soothingly far away. Generally he read a chapter first, then gave out the hymn, and after the singing he always led in prayer. It hardly seemed worth while to listen when one's own thoughts were so pleasant. Berta dropped her lashes to hide the shining light of gladness. Weren't they dear, dear unselfish girls to rejoice with her and for her! She loved them and they loved her. The best part of any triumph was the consciousness that victory would please her friends and her family. Her mother would be glad, and her father, the small brothers and sisters, and even the pretty little sister-in-law. Eva would not understand entirely, for she hated to read and cared about nothing but the babies since Robert had died. Robert would have sympathized, since he had loved study almost as much as he had loved Eva. When he decided to marry, he gave up his science and went into a bank. He chose a wife and children instead of congenial ambition. If he had lived, he would have been glad in Berta's success. Maybe when the baby nieces grew old enough to understand, they would be proud of their famous aunt. It was very, very sweet to feel that people were proud of her.

Listen! Berta straightened suddenly and then leaned forward. What was Prexie saying? Why, he hadn't even opened the Bible yet. "—and so, as the essays submitted in competition were all remarkably good, the judges would have experienced great difficulty in reaching a decision if it had not been for one exceptional even among the dozen most excellent papers. The prize for the best Shakespearean essay has been unanimously awarded to Miss Roberta Abbott."

A low murmur swept over the bright-hued congregation. Several faces in the pew before her turned to smile at Berta. She smiled back half involuntarily and gripped her fingers together, conscious only of a smothering sensation and a wonder that her chest kept heaving faster and faster. It frightened her to have things happen like this one after another. She had won the Shakespearean prize. How much was it? Thirty dollars? Fifty? It didn't matter. She could take baby Berta to the seashore with her. She had won. The girls would get tired of congratulating her.

Hark! Prexie had gone on speaking.

"Accordingly," he was saying as Berta braced herself once more to attention, "I am sure you will agree with me that the faculty acted justly and wisely this afternoon in electing Miss Roberta Abbott to hold the European Fellowship this coming year."

The murmur this time swelled to a soft tumult of fluttering and whispering, which broke here and there into a muffled clapping, for everybody liked Berta. But when more faces turned in joyous nodding toward the back pew they found no answering smile. Berta in panic had slipped down the aisle and vanished through the swinging doors into the dusky corridor.

"Ah, Miss Abbott!" The messenger girl overtook her at the foot of the broad staircase. "Here is a special delivery letter for you. It was brought from town five minutes ago."

Berta glanced at the address. Yes, it was from her sister-in-law as she had expected. Eva was always falling into foolish little flurries and rushing to consult friends and relatives by mail or wire or word of mouth. Possibly this important communication was a request for advice about the babies' pique coats. It could wait for a reading till Berta had found a safe refuge from the girls who would certainly surround her as soon as chapel was over. They would follow Robbie and Bea.

Where could she go to escape the enthusiasm? Her room would be the first point of attack, and Bea's the second. Ah, now she recalled Miss Thorne's speech about calling for the commencement essay at this hour. She might as well go there now and wait till her critic should return from services, if indeed she had attended them to-night.

At the door Berta knocked and bent her head to listen, then knocked again. Still no answer. She waited another minute, her eyes absently hovering over the plants that banked the wide window there at the end of the transverse corridor. The evening breeze sweet from loitering in clover fields drifted in through the open casement. Miss Thorne was very fond of flowers. That was a queer trait in a person who seemed to care so little for persons. There always seemed something frozen about this gray-haired, immobile-faced woman with her stern manner and steely eyes. Sometimes Berta thought of her as like a dying fire that smoldered under smothering ashes.

Berta turned the knob gently and entered. A faint rosy glow from the lowered drop-light shone on the piles of papers and scattered books on the library table. The curtains rippled in the sudden draught caused by the opening of the door, and a whiff of fragrance from a jar of apple-blossoms on the bookcase floated past the visitor. Berta glanced around with a little shrug that was half a shiver. A room frequently partakes of the nature of its occupant; and the atmosphere of this one always made her heart sink with a quiver of loneliness over the strange chill of lifelessness there in spite of the rosy drop-light, the fluttering curtains, and the drifting breath of flowers. It was a large room with many easy chairs in it—and they were all empty. Even when Miss Thorne was there it seemed lonesome, perhaps because she was such a slender little woman and so icily quiet.

Berta chose one of the empty chairs and read the letter. Then she let the sheets fall loose in her lap and sat there without moving while the minutes went creeping by and the transparent curtains rippled now and then in the evening breeze. Through the window she could see a great star hanging above the peak of a shadowy evergreen that stirred softly to and fro against the fading sky. Once the twilight call of a distant robin sounded its long-drawn plaintive music, and Berta felt her lip tremble. She raised her hand half unconsciously to soothe the ache in her throat.

Miss Thorne glided in. "Good evening, Miss Abbott. May I add my congratulations, or am I right in concluding that you have taken refuge here from the persecutions of your friends? It is a great pleasure to me to know that you will have the opportunity to keep on with your studying this next year. You must allow me to say so much at least. And now, with regard to the essay——"

Berta watched the slight figure move noiselessly about in the act of making tea.

"I wished to call your attention particularly, Miss Abbott, to the qualities which strike me as most promising. A vast amount of futile effort is wasted every year by workers who have not yet recognized their special talents. There is continual friction between the round peg and the square hole, and vice versa. Now in your case, when you are ready to plan your course of study for your graduate work abroad——"

"Don't!"

The tone was so sharp that Miss Thorne lifted her head quickly and shot a keen glance at the girl before her. The attractive face had grown strained and the eyes were burning restlessly.

"What is it, Berta?" No student had ever heard her voice so soft before. "You are in trouble."

Berta looked at her for a moment without replying. Then she picked up her letter, folded it carefully in its original creases, and fitted it into the envelope. "Yes," she said at last, "I am in trouble. My sister-in-law has lost her income from a foolish investment, entirely her own fault, and she is utterly helpless. My parents have no money to spare. There is nobody else but me to support her and the three babies. She writes that a position in the high school will be vacant next year and I ought to apply at once."

Miss Thorne sat silent. "And there is no other way?" she asked after what seemed a long, long time.

"None," answered Berta.

"You will give up the fellowship, your hopes of doing exceptional work? You will sacrifice all your ambition and take up the drudgery of teaching in an uncongenial sphere for the rest of your life?"

"Well, I can't let the babies go to an orphan asylum, can I?" demanded the girl brusquely to conceal the pain, "there is no one else, I tell you."

The woman rose and put both arms around the girl. "Berta, dear," she said, "you are right. Once I hesitated at the point where you are now. I had to choose between the demands of home and the invitation of ambition. I let the home-ties snap, and—here is my empty room. Now there is nobody that cares."

Berta glanced around again with a little shiver. "There isn't any question about it for me," she said, "I've got to take care of the babies. And"—she straightened her shoulders suddenly as if throwing off a weight, "it won't be so hard when I get used to the idea, because, you see, I—love them."

Faithful Robbie Belle had found out her refuge somehow and was waiting in the corridor. With that comforting arm across her shoulders, Berta poured out the story of her sudden disappointment.

At first Robbie was silent. Then she spoke gently: "But, Berta, you have had the four years at college, you know, and four years are a good deal. There are thousands and thousands of girls who never have even that."

"I know," answered Berta, her voice smothered against the convenient shoulder. "And that thought helps—at least, I think it will help to-morrow."

Robbie's strong, warm hand sought and clasped Berta's nervous fingers. "All right," she acquiesced cheerily. "Now who do you suppose wrote that epilogue in last year's Annual?

"'We go to meet the future, strong of soul, In sunlight or in shadow, holding fast The inviolable gift the years enroll; The Past is ours; nothing can change the Past.'"

THE END