Brenda's cousin at Radcliffe
Date: 2015-04-16T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Women college students -- Juvenile fiction; Radcliffe College -- Juvenile fiction

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Title: Brenda's cousin at Radcliffe

A story for girls

Author: Helen Leah Reed

Illustrator: Alice Barber Stephens

Release date: April 16, 2015 [eBook #48720]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/48720

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BRENDA'S COUSIN AT RADCLIFFE ***

Copyright, 1902,
By Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved.

Published October, 1902

UNIVERSITY PRESS · JOHN WILSON AND SON · CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.

TO
MRS. LOUIS AGASSIZ,
THE HONORED FIRST PRESIDENT OF RADCLIFFE COLLEGE,
WHO HAS HAD NO SUCCESSOR IN OFFICE, AND
WHO CAN HAVE NO SUCCESSOR
IN THE AFFECTION OF RADCLIFFE GRADUATES

“One morning half a dozen girls clustered before the bulletin board”

Brenda’s Cousin at Radcliffe
A Story for Girls

BY
HELEN LEAH REED
Author of “Brenda, Her School and Her Club”
“Brenda’s Summer at Rockley,” etc.

ILLUSTRATED BY ALICE BARBER STEPHENS

BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1903

That the young girls for whom it is written may see in “Brenda’s Cousin” a clear picture of Radcliffe College undergraduate life is the sincere wish of the author, who hopes also that her fellow-graduates may overlook the one or two slight anachronisms necessary to a contemporary picture.

CONTENTS

Chapter Page

I. New Acquaintances 1

II. The Freshman Reception 12

III. The First “Idler” 22

IV. Pamela’s Perseverance 29

V. College Callers 38

VI. Setting to Work 47

VII. All Kinds of Girls 56

VIII. The Mid-years 66

IX. Two Catastrophes 76

X. Discussions and Discussions 90

XI. Efforts to Help 100

XII. Harvard Class Day 115

XIII. Various Ambitions 130

XIV. In Disguise 143

XV. Angelina 157

XVI. Who Wrote It? 168

XVII. A Private Detective 180

XVIII. Work and Play 189

XIX. The Operetta 201

XX. Juniors 211

XXI. A Fortunate Accident 222

XXII. Annabel and Clarissa 233

XXIII. Clouds Cleared Away 243

XXIV. Seniors All 255

XXV. A Strange Meeting 268

XXVI. The House Party 280

XXVII. Nearing Class Day 293

XXVIII. Commencement—and the End 311

ILLUSTRATIONS
From Drawings by Alice Barber Stephens

“One morning half a dozen girls clustered before the bulletin board” Frontispiece

“‘An American girl’—she spoke with emphasis—‘is her own best chaperon’” Page 85

“Clarissa moved about the room, explaining” ″ 174

“Lois made the bandage and put it on with a professional air” ″ 225

“‘Julia,’ said Ruth the next morning, as the two sat in the conversation room” ″ 274

1

BRENDA’S COUSIN AT RADCLIFFE

I
NEW ACQUAINTANCES

A drop of ink splashed on the cover of Julia Bourne’s blue-book.

“Oh, I beg your pardon, I wasn’t thinking,” murmured an apologetic voice, as Julia glanced up in surprise. A small, pale girl standing beside her desk had evidently held her fountain pen point down with disastrous result.

“Oh, it did no great harm,” responded Julia, dexterously applying her blotter. Like the other girl, she spoke in an undertone, for silence was still the rule of the room.

“I’m thankful, however, that my book was closed,” she said to herself, as the other passed on. “A blot on an inner page might prejudice the examiner, and I shall need all his good-will.”

It was the Tuesday before the opening of college, and examinations were going on to enable some students to take off conditions imposed by the June finals, or to permit others—like Julia—to anticipate some study of the Freshman year.

2

Before handing in her book Julia corrected some errors, for there still lacked ten minutes of the close of the examination hour. As she sat there reading the printed questions, one by one, she was thankful for the cool day. How insufferably hot had been those two Junes when she had taken her preliminaries and her finals! Old Fay House then had swarmed with girls, lively, solemn, silent, chattering, short, tall, thin, stout, dowdy, attractive,—but why enumerate? They were as varied in aspect, and probably in disposition, as those other girls who never think of college. In comparison with the spring crowds, the girls to-day were but a handful.

Julia, glancing toward the window, caught a glimpse of the yellowing elms of Garden Street, and a soft September breeze blew across her cheek. Then her eye wandered to the photograph over the old-fashioned mantle-piece, and she thought that the class-room, except for its chairs and desks, was like the sitting-room of a private house.

Julia handed in her book promptly, but some of the others gave theirs up reluctantly, as if to say, “Oh, for ten minutes more, or even five minutes. It would make all the difference in the world to me.” One of these girls, who was tall and strong-looking, with short, curling hair, expressed her feelings emphatically.

“I don’t see,” she said, as Julia and she left the room together, “how you got through so soon. You haven’t been writing for ten minutes. Why, if we had five hours instead of two, I should still need an hour more. Weren’t you frightened to death at the preliminaries?”

3

“I barely survived,” replied Julia, entering into the other’s mood. “There’s an art in taking examinations that I’m only beginning to learn.”

“Well, the worst is over! Harvard, they say (and of course it’s the same with Radcliffe), is the hardest college to enter and the easiest to graduate from. That’s why I left my happy Western home. I don’t mind struggling to get in, but I want an easy time after I’ve once entered college.”

“You’re from the West?” queried Julia.

“Oh, yes, from ‘the wild and woolly West’ as you call it here. I took my preliminaries in Chicago, although my home’s farther off. Our colleges are just as good as any East, at least Pa says so. But I said ‘the best isn’t too good for me, and if Harvard’s the best of all for men, why Radcliffe must be the best for women.’ As soon as I’d thought it out I made up my mind to come here. I couldn’t have done better, could I?”

“Why, Radcliffe has a pretty good standing in this part of the world.”

“You don’t speak with enthusiasm.”

“Oh, I was only thinking that a good education can be obtained in a Western college. I’ve lived in the West myself,” she explained.

“Let me embrace you,” cried the Western girl, impulsively, fortunately without suiting the action to the word.

4

“You see it makes me tired the way people here pretend not to know anything about the West; but I honestly believe that you realize where Kansas is, and that St. Louis and Chicago are a few miles apart, and that the Mississippi is east of the Rocky Mountains.”

“Oh, you could probably give me points in Western geography.”

“Perhaps, but let me introduce myself. My name is Clarissa Herter, and my home is Kansas. My age is a little more than it ought to be—for a Freshman—for I’ve wasted a year at college elsewhere.”

Julia smiled at this frank inventory, and she felt that she could do no less than tell Clarissa something about herself.

“So you’re an orphan!” cried Clarissa, “and you’ve lived with relatives for two years or more. Well, you must have had a pretty good disposition to stand all the wear and tear. There’s nothing so hard as living with relatives—except one’s parents. As to your personal appearance, it suits me right down to the ground—don’t look at your boots,” she added. “I include them in the list.”

Just then a proctor approaching introduced to the two the timid girl who had blotted Julia’s book.

“I asked for the introduction,” said the newcomer, whose name was Northcote, “because I wished to apologize for my carelessness.”

“Now, really,” responded Julia, “the blot did no harm.”

“But if it had gone through the cover?”

“Oh, that would have been nothing.”

5

“But I fear that I did more mischief than you think. There’s a little ink spot on the side breadth of your skirt, and I’m sure that it came from my pen.”

“Oh,” cried Julia, looking where Pamela pointed, “that spot may have come from my own pen; and besides, the gown has seen its best days.”

“Well, I’m very sorry,” continued Miss Northcote.

In the meantime Clarissa had risen from the low, red couch, on which they had been sitting. “You must be a New Englander.”

“I’m from Vermont.”

“I thought so,” cried Clarissa. “You have a well-developed conscience. You seem to be apologizing for something that perhaps you didn’t do.”

“Let us go upstairs to the library,” interposed Julia, noticing that Miss Northcote was made uncomfortable by Clarissa’s badinage.

“Isn’t it pleasant! I had no idea it was so homelike!” exclaimed Julia on the threshold of the library.

“Do you mean you haven’t been here before? Why, I explored the whole building from top to bottom last June. I didn’t wait for a special invitation,” cried Clarissa.

“It was so warm then!” Julia felt almost bound to apologize.

6

The room that they had entered justified the term “homelike” to the fullest extent. It had none of the stiffness of a college hall, although shelves of books were everywhere, always invitingly within reach. The deep-mullioned windows, the high mantle-piece and broad fireplace all had a decided charm. From the window that Julia approached, through the elms that shaded Fay House, there was a glimpse of the Soldiers’ Monument on the Common, and nearer at hand the time-scarred Washington Elm. After looking into one or two smaller rooms filled with books, Clarissa suggested that they go into the open air.

“There must be something of the gypsy in my blood, for I begrudge every minute spent indoors at this season. Clarissa! Clarissa!” she cried dramatically, “you must out and walk.”

“Is your name Clarissa?” asked the Vermont girl.

“Why not? Doesn’t it suit me?”

“Well, it’s strange,” responded the other, “for I am called Pamela.”

“How odd! Why, people may begin to call us ‘the heroines,’ unless we show them that we’re made of stronger stuff than Richardson admired.”

“Poor Richardson! How he would be horrified to see us modern girls going to college! You must belong to sentimental families to have those names.”

“I was named for my aunt,” explained Pamela with dignity.

“Well, I’m afraid that my mother took ‘Clarissa’ from a novel,” admitted the Western girl.

After leaving Fay House, the two others walked with Julia toward Brattle Street. They had gone but a short distance when Clarissa exclaimed with surprise that it was nearly one o’clock.

7

“My luncheon is at half-past one,” said Julia, “but perhaps yours is earlier.”

“Yes, at my boarding-house we are very plebeian. At one o’clock we have dinner, not luncheon, while you, I dare say, have dinner at half-past six.”

“Of course,” replied Julia, while Clarissa, echoing “of course,” added, “Then you must be a regular swell. But I thought that I’d feel better to find a boarding-place in Cambridge, where their manners and customs are like ours at home.”

Not to leave Pamela out of the conversation, Julia asked her if she had found a boarding-place, and Pamela replied that she had not yet decided on a house. She might have added that all the rooms that thus far she had seen were beyond her slender purse. Before they reached Julia’s door, Pamela bade the others good-bye.

“She’s almost too good, isn’t she?” was Clarissa’s comment as Pamela disappeared in the distance.

“I like her,” returned Julia, begging the question.

“Oh, so do I; with that neat little figure, and those melancholy gray eyes, she is my very idea of a Puritan maiden. You are something like one yourself,” she concluded, “and I hope that you’ll let me call on you occasionally.”

“Why, of course, and I will call on you, too, if I may.”

Thus with the feeling that each had made a friend, the two Freshmen parted, both looking forward with interest to the college year.

8

Julia went to Rockley that same Tuesday afternoon, and was warmly welcomed by Brenda at the station. The younger girl, it is true, teased her cousin about being a Freshman, yet at the same time she showed so much affection, despite her teasing, that she hardly seemed the same Brenda who not long before had found in every act of Julia’s some cause for dissatisfaction.

Rockley was the summer place of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Barlow, the uncle and aunt with whom, for two years, Julia Bourne had made her home. It was on the seashore, little more than twenty miles from Boston, and Julia had passed two happy vacations there. She had gone to live with her uncle and aunt soon after her father’s death, and had completed her preparation for college at Miss Crawdon’s school, the same school that Brenda and her intimate friends attended. Brenda, Edith, Nora, and Belle were inseparables, while Julia had been more intimate with Ruth Roberts, the Roxbury girl who was now her room-mate at Cambridge.

The Barlows were to stay at Rockley until late October, and Mrs. Barlow regretted that Julia must spend that beautiful autumn month in Cambridge. She remarked at dinner that Julia looked pale, and said that she and Brenda had decided that this resulted from examinations.

“Why, you can’t imagine how weak I feel,” Brenda had added, “after an examination. You know that Miss Crawdon makes us have them, though few of us are going to college.”

9

“It pleases me,” Mr. Barlow had interposed, “that you and your friends should get even this indirect advantage from Radcliffe. In time the average private schoolgirl may have an equal chance with boys.”

“Why, papa, you never have wished me to go to college.”

“No, my dear, but I often have thought that you suffered at school—”

“Yes, papa, I have suffered at school, often.”

“My idea of suffering probably differs from yours. I mean that you suffer from a lack of thoroughness. Thoroughness is the first essential of college preparation.”

“Why, papa, girls can fit for college at Miss Crawdon’s. Julia and Ruth and several others prepared for the examinations. But let us change the subject,” said Brenda, adding, “What are those Radcliffe girls like? Are they very queer?”

“Why, no indeed,” replied Julia loyally. Yet even as she spoke she had a vision of Pamela and Clarissa, to whom Brenda might apply her adjective, although to each in a different way.

“After all,” interposed Mr. Barlow, “thirty-five years ago who would have imagined girls in college? Why, even twenty years ago a man would have been thought foolish to prophesy that within his lifetime girls would be admitted to full Harvard privileges.”

“Oh, but papa, it isn’t really the same as Harvard. The boys say that it is quite different.”

10

“Then it’s a difference without much distinction. Professor Dummer the other day told me that Harvard and Radcliffe students have identical examinations in all subjects, as well as the same courses of study. But I will grant that in athletics and that kind of thing they haven’t the same chance as Harvard boys.”

At this moment the long glass door was pushed open, and Philip stood within the room. The whole family greeted him heartily, for they had not seen him since his return from Europe. He told them that his mother and Edith had decided to stay a month longer abroad, and that he was spending a day or two on his yacht in Marblehead Harbor.

“On Thursday I must be in Cambridge, and after that the ‘Balloon’ goes out of commission for the season.”

The young people soon went out on the piazza, where they made themselves comfortable with cushions and wraps.

“It’s a great thing to be young,” said Mr. Barlow, as their laughter rippled through the open window. Two girls from a neighboring cottage had joined them, and with them was their brother, also a Harvard undergraduate. They had more in common with Brenda than with Julia, and thus the latter was free to answer Philip’s many questions about Radcliffe.

11

Although two or three years Julia’s senior, Philip had of late acquired the habit of turning to her for advice. To himself he admitted that her level-headedness had more than once saved him from making a fool of himself. Philip Blair had just escaped being spoiled after the fashion of most only sons with plenty of money. His parents had always been so ready to consider his wishes that he had come to think the quick gratification of his tastes a necessity. Because he was good-looking and had agreeable manners, older men and women were apt to flatter him, and his schoolmates fed his vanity in their eagerness for his friendship. Without being really weak, Philip was easily influenced; and though in school he never had been in disgrace, more than once he had been near suspension from college. A certain indolence made it hard to shake off his undesirable associates. But even the slow-thinking Edith had discovered that Philip had a real regard for Julia’s opinion.

“Mamma and I are very glad that Philip likes to talk to a sensible girl like Julia, for we were afraid that his head might be turned, with so many silly girls always running after him.” Philip’s college friends—those whom he asked to dine with him sometimes, or took to call on Edith’s friends—were afraid of Julia.

Hearing that she was fitted for college, they could not understand how Philip had the courage to talk with her, or even to dance with her. They supposed that he was polite to her simply because she was a friend of Edith’s. “Not that she isn’t a nice-looking girl, but she must be frightfully strong-minded to think of going to college.”

Knowing the Harvard sentiment toward Radcliffe, therefore, Julia was prepared for more or less teasing from Philip, and yet as she bade him good-bye she was pleased to be able to remind him that he had said hardly a thing to discourage her about her college career.

12

II
THE FRESHMAN RECEPTION

When Julia approached Fay House on Thursday, the opening of the term, there were girls on the steps, girls in the halls, girls besieging the Secretary’s office with questions; old students stood about discussing all kinds of things, from their summer experiences to their proposed courses of study. But the Freshmen were less often in groups. In single file they waited their turn at the office, or sat in the conversation room, catching scraps of wisdom from the lips of the older girls who passed by.

“Oh, last year I had five and a half courses, but I’ve promised papa to be more sensible and limit myself to four, so as to have some time for other things.”

This from a serious-looking girl, and then from another more frivolous, “Well, I tried to forget everything this summer, except how to have a good time. It was delightful not to have even a theme or a forensic on my mind. I was a walking encyclopedia last June, but now I feel absolutely empty-headed.”

“What in the world,” came from another group, “possessed you to take Pol. Econ. this year? I thought you were trying for honors in classics.”

13

“So I am,” in a rather melancholy tone; “but I’m tired of having nothing but Greek and Latin. My future bread and butter may depend on them, as I’m to be a teacher of the classics, but I’m indulging in Pol. Econ. as a luxury.”

“A luxury! Well, you’ll pay for it.”

Julia, seated at the reading table, was not only amused by these bits of conversation, but was interested in watching the passing girls.

“Isn’t it great?” cried Ruth, joining her. “It’s a little like the first day at school, and yet it’s different. Who is that queer-looking girl, she’s actually bowing to you,” with an intonation of disapproval; “why, you don’t know her, do you?”

“Yes, I met her yesterday. She’s a Freshman from the West.”

Clarissa now reached them, grasping Julia’s hand with a hearty “Well, I am glad to see you!”

“Have you chosen your electives yet?” asked Julia, after a minute or two. “Aren’t they bewildering?”

“It isn’t the elective, I’ve been told,” responded Clarissa, “but the man who gives them that makes the difference. The younger the instructor, the worse his marks. He thinks that he shows his own importance by making ‘A’ and ‘B’ marks few and far between. I’m going in for all the starred courses I can get, for then there’ll be more chance of my having real professors to teach me.”

14

Ruth hurried Julia away from Clarissa to an appointment with a history professor. He had wished to talk with them before consenting to their entering his class. He was pleased to find them so interested, adding, as he gave his consent:

“You must be prepared for hard work, as Freshmen are rarely permitted to take this course. I hope that you read Latin at sight, for you may have to make researches in some old books.”

Then he bowed and left them, and Ruth looked at Julia, and the latter, understanding the question that Ruth would ask, replied, “Of course I’ll help you;” while Ruth, whose Latin was weaker than Julia’s, responded, “You always were a dear.”

Julia and Ruth had arranged to board in the same house, having separate bedrooms, but sharing a large study. This was a square, corner room, with three windows. One looked down on a bit of old-fashioned garden, and the other two gave a view of some of the stately houses on Brattle Street. Their landlady, or hostess, as she liked to be called, was the widow of a Harvard instructor, who, besides a widow and two children, had left a slim little book on the Greek accusative. Mrs. Colton always had the book in plain sight on her library table, and she believed that had her husband lived he would have been one of the most distinguished of the faculty. She had long refused to open her house to Annex, or Radcliffe, students. Like many other conservative people, she did not approve of the presence of women students in Cambridge, and she did not care to encourage the new woman’s college by taking its students to board. But when the new Harvard dormitories made it harder for her to get the right kind of students to take her rooms, she began to think about the possibilities of Radcliffe. When she happened to hear that Mrs. Robert Barlow was looking for a home for her niece, she immediately sent word that she would be very glad to have her consider her rooms. She saw that it would give her house prestige to have Julia and Ruth her first Radcliffe boarders. Mrs. Barlow and the girls were well pleased with the rooms, especially as Mrs. Colton was to take no other boarders.

15

Ruth and Julia would hardly have been girls, however, had they been perfectly satisfied with the arrangement of the furniture as planned by Mrs. Colton and Mrs. Barlow. With the exception of a few pictures, the study was supposed to be in perfect order on that first Thursday of the term. But Julia, when they went upstairs after luncheon, decided that the divan must be moved from the windows to the corner opposite the fireplace, and Ruth suggested that the library table should go from the centre to a recess near the mantle-piece. Chairs ranged stiffly against the wall they pulled out into more inviting positions, and moved many other things. They both agreed that several pictures must be rehung, and Ruth began to jump about from mantle-piece to table to make the changes.

“Oh, do be careful!” cried Julia, as Ruth stepped from a chair to the table, with a framed Braun photograph under her arm, and a half-dozen picture nails in her hand. “Do wait,” she added, “until we can find some one.”

16

“Wait for whom? We can’t call the chambermaid, and Mrs. Colton would be of no more use than—well, than you, Julia. Besides, I’ve hung more pictures than you could count; and—why, what’s that?” she concluded, as a very loud knocking at the door sounded through the rooms. Forgetting the picture under her arm, as she turned she let it fall with a crash to the floor.

“Gracious!” cried Master Percival Colton, astonished at the sight of one Radcliffe girl standing on a narrow mantle-piece with another sitting on the floor picking up fragments of broken glass.

“I hope nothing’s hurt,” said Percival politely, though hardly concealing his curiosity as he handed Julia two letters. Then he turned away rather sadly, as the girls neither explained what had happened nor what they intended to do about it.

“Come down, Ruth,” cried Julia, as Percy disappeared. “Clarissa Herter, that Kansas girl, has sent her card with these letters that she found on the bulletin board. She thought that we might like to have them. Oh, they’re invitations!” she added, as she opened her envelope.

“The Senior, Junior, and Sophomore classes at home in the Auditorium, Saturday, September 30. 4 to 6.”

17

“Our first college invitation, and from the upper classes, too! Well, it’s evident that they don’t intend to haze us.”

Hardly had Julia and Ruth stepped into the Auditorium that Saturday afternoon when a girl with a ribbon badge greeted them warmly. From a table near the door she took two slips of paper, and, pinning one on Julia’s dress, said pleasantly, “You must excuse my being so unceremonious, but we find that this is the best way of making girls acquainted with one another, by giving them slips of paper with their names written on them. I honestly think that you feel more like talking to a girl if you know her name. Your slips are white, but we old girls wear blue.”

“But how did you know which slips of paper to give us?” asked Ruth, as she received a decoration like Julia’s.

“Oh, I was interested, that is, I asked particularly who you were the other day,” replied the older girl in a flattering tone. “But now I must find your Senior for you,” she concluded; “perhaps you haven’t met her.”

“My Senior?” asked Julia. “Why, how in the world do I happen to have one?”

“Excuse me, then, until I find her. She will tell you all about it.”

Soon Julia found herself standing before a tall, plain girl with glasses, who wore her Senior’s gown ungracefully.

“This is your Senior adviser, Miss Townall, Miss Bourne. I am sure that you will like each other;” and the vivacious usher, asking Ruth to accompany her, turned away to find Ruth’s Senior.

“Miss Darcy is always bright and cheerful,” said Miss Townall, making an effort to talk to Julia.

18

“Yes, indeed, I like her immensely. She’s a Sophomore, I suppose?”

“Yes, and very popular.” Jane looked at Julia, as if at an utter loss for a subject of conversation, until Julia asked her to explain the system of assigning Senior adviser. In giving information Jane waxed eloquent, and explained that the Emmanuel Society made the arrangements, bringing it about that each Senior should take charge of one Freshman, holding herself ready to give her any needed advice.

“Some of them have two,” added Ruth, who had rejoined them.

“Oh, naturally, for there are always more Freshmen than Seniors; but dear me, it’s bad enough to have one on your mind,” said Jane tactlessly.

“There, I didn’t mean that,” she apologized, at once conscious of her own awkwardness. “Of course I’m delighted to be of help to any Freshman, but there is so much danger of giving the wrong advice, and—” so Jane went on explaining and explaining, as people are apt to when once they have made a mistake, without greatly improving the state of affairs.

“But where is your Senior, Ruth?” asked Julia, to put Jane more at ease.

“Oh, I left her talking to that Western girl. She seemed so deeply interested in her that I thought I might be in the way. We have been introduced, however, and if she wishes to speak to me again, she may take the trouble to find me.”

19

Julia wondered if Ruth’s annoyance had come from anything said or done by Clarissa. Already she had seen that Ruth did not like the Western girl.

As the rooms began to fill with girls, Julia and Ruth recognized many whom they had seen at examination time, and among them a number from their own classes. Coffee and chocolate and sherbets were served from small tables, and the girls who served and the ushers who helped them were kept busy.

“Not sherbet, but college ice,” corrected a girl at one of the tables. “You’ll grow heartily sick of it in the next four years.”

Then Clarissa, to whom she spoke, replied, “Oh, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet; and therefore, as a Freshman I’ll ask for another glass. I suppose that our class will never again be as important as now.”

“Probably never again at Radcliffe, at least until the end of your Senior year. We take the Freshmen up tenderly, treat them very kindly on the first Saturday of the term, and then drop them suddenly. Unless a Freshman shows unusual ability, we are apt to forget all about her.”

“Then I’ll see what I can do to make myself remembered,” retorted Clarissa, as if accepting a challenge.

In the meantime Julia and Ruth had again run across Miss Darcy, and the latter had inquired if it would be an unheard-of thing for her to change her Freshman adviser.

20

“You can do it, of course. It has been done occasionally, but if I were you I’d wait. So few girls do make a change.”

“I fear that you think me notional.”

“Oh, no,” responded Miss Darcy. “I feel that you are going to be—that is, that you are—the typical Radcliffe girl, and that naturally means everything agreeable.”

“Yes, indeed, if we may judge by those who are here to-day.”

“Ah! we are in holiday attire now, but you will like us even at our worst.” And Julia and Ruth, looking about them, agreed that Radcliffe in holiday attire was well worth seeing. The rooms were prettily decorated, and most of the girls wore light and becoming colors. There was little formality, and each girl was not only at liberty to speak to her neighbor, but was sure to be met more than halfway.

Finally, before they separated, the Glee Club girls gathered around the grand piano, and one merry song after another was sung, to the great delight of the Freshmen. One that made the most impression was “The Only Man,” which, although unfamiliar to many of the new girls, was already counted a classic of its kind. Even Jane Townall had been known to laugh at its merry strains.

The song told of a young man who was invited to a Radcliffe tea, who, when he reached Fay House, saw only women in sight:

21

“The poor young man stood trembling there,

And looked about for aid,

He’d never been afraid before,

But now he was afraid.

He gave one long, last lingering look,

Then rushed out at the door.

I think that he’ll think twice before

He comes here any more-ore-ore.

“Now all you Harvard men attend!

If ever you get a bid

To a Radcliffe tea, be sure and see

If any others did.

Do you think that you could face the fate,

From which our hero ran,

Among four hundred Radcliffe girls,

To be the only man-an-an?”

There were several other stanzas, and as the hero was described as a particularly brave athlete, the refrain following each stanza was particularly entertaining, for it went somewhat in this fashion:

“He could face the Yale rush line,

He’d been captain of the nine,

He was not afraid to dine

On the new Memorial plan;

But he’d never thought to be,

At a full-fledged Radcliffe tea,

The only—only—only—only—man.”

22

III
THE FIRST “IDLER”

“Who’s going to the Idler?” cried Clarissa one morning to a group around the bulletin board.

Then a little Freshman spoke up timidly, “Why, can any of us go? I thought that it was a club meeting.”

“Oh, the Idler is the only unexclusive institution that I’ve struck in this part of the world. Just sign the constitution and you’re in it for life. Come, you must join; we must make our class felt.”

Pressing nearer the board, one of the group read aloud that all Radcliffe students, regular or special, were invited to a meeting of the Idler Club on Friday afternoon at half-past four in the Auditorium.

Accordingly, they were all in their places before the appointed hour. The Auditorium was overflowing, and some girls even had chairs in the aisles. Ruth and Julia leaned on the ledge of the window opening from the conversation room.

“Why don’t they begin?” asked Ruth impatiently, at quarter of five. But even as she spoke there was a lull in the conversation, and a rather commanding figure rose on the platform.

23

“That is the President of the Idler,” whispered Ruth, “Mary Witherspoon. I had her pointed out to me the other day.”

Miss Witherspoon made an address that was clear and to the point. She congratulated the old students on the prospect of a successful year for the Idler; she welcomed the new students very heartily, and expressed the hope that all present would at the close of the meeting enroll themselves on the Idler’s membership list. She alluded to the fact that nothing was imposed on them beyond signing the club’s very simple constitution and paying the small annual dues.

“I hope, however, that all Radcliffe girls who can do anything to entertain us, who are willing to act or sing, or even write plays, will speak with me or with some of the Idler officers on the subject. We cannot afford to let any talent lie hidden; and if a girl is too modest to let us know what she can do, some one else will be sure to tell us, and then we shall be obliged to issue some kind of a mandamus to compel her to be amusing.”

All laughed at this, and when quiet was restored Miss Witherspoon announced as the entertainment of the afternoon a farce written by two Idler members, who for the present preferred to be anonymous. Thereupon the curtain rose on a pretty stage set for a drawing-room scene. In the background were two tall plants and a bookcase and a fine water-color on an easel; in the foreground a tea-table, daintily spread, and beside it two young girls drinking tea, and discussing the advantages and disadvantages of a college education.

24

It was clear as the dialogue proceeded why the authors wished to be anonymous; for there were many local hits, and the applause showed that the audience recognized the college types depicted. The college partisan also created much amusement by describing the homeless creature constantly roaming the world in search of culture.

Julia and Ruth, moving about after the play, saw many of the ushers of the Freshman reception. Now, as then, Elizabeth Darcy was one of the most conspicuous. The refreshments served were very simple,—a punch bowl filled with lemonade stood on a table in the conversation room, surrounded by plates of cakes.

Ruth was soon seized by some of her own special friends, and Julia wandered over toward the Garden Street windows. She probably would not have noticed the girl sitting in a corner behind the periodical case had not a nervous voice exclaimed, “Oh, I am so glad to see you!”

As she recognized Pamela, Julia felt a pang of conscience. Absorbed in her own affairs, she had hardly remembered the Vermont girl. Now she greeted her most cordially, and as Pamela came out of her corner she saw that her face as well as her clothes had a dejected expression. Her dull-brown hair was brushed back tightly, her linen collar was fastened with an old-fashioned brooch. There was no useless furbelow about her non-descript grayish gown, and she wore an expression to match her attire.

25

But Pamela brightened as Julia held her hand. “Oh, I’m so glad to see you,” she repeated; “I have been very lonely.”

“Lonely! with all these girls about you?” and Julia glanced toward the girls swarming over the lemonade table, and toward the hall where there were still girls, and girls, and girls.

“I’m lonely because there are so many girls here,” responded Pamela. “I know so few, and every one else seems to have a special friend.”

Again Julia felt that twinge of conscience. She herself had not been altogether guiltless.

“Why, I am your friend, and I’m going to call on you at once, and you must come to see us some Monday soon. We are to be at home Mondays after four.”

This cordial invitation was cordially accepted, but Julia noticed that Pamela did not give her own address.

“You know every one,” the latter exclaimed, as she and Julia walked toward the Auditorium.

“Well, between us Ruth and I have met most of our class. But you ought to know them, too.”

“Oh, I never dare speak first to a girl.”

“But you ought not to feel timid in the presence of mere Freshmen, like yourself or myself.”

“I never can make up my mind to speak to them. I don’t see how I ever dared speak to you.”

“A drop of ink, don’t you remember? That did it”

“Oh, of course it was my duty to apologize.”

26

“Well, then, just spill a glass of lemonade over one or two of those pretty gowns, and you’ll be justified in speaking to the wearers of them.”

Though Pamela wondered if Julia was quizzing her she was not offended. Julia, realizing that Pamela was more serious than most Freshmen, thought that she might enjoy meeting some of the older and more studious girls. Looking around to see whom among them she could introduce to her, she quickly saw Elizabeth Darcy. But Elizabeth was a conscientious usher, and as soon as she had attended to the wants of one girl she flew toward another. Her eye fell on Julia just when the latter, after following her across the room, had half despaired of a chance to speak to her.

“Good afternoon, Miss Bourne,” she said, holding out her hand. “Won’t you let me get you something, lemonade or chocolate?”

“Oh, thank you,” responded Julia, “but I wish to ask a favor. May I not introduce you to a Freshman who has not many friends? She is near the door.”

Elizabeth glanced toward Pamela, standing in a limp and uninteresting attitude. Her quick eye undoubtedly noted every detail of clothes that showed unmistakably the stamp of the country dressmaker.

Elizabeth smiled sweetly, as she would have smiled under even more trying circumstances.

27

“I am ever so sorry, but I am frightfully busy this afternoon. Some other time, Miss Bourne, but now I could not give a minute to your—your friend; and besides, I haven’t time for any new girl unless I should happen to take a very great fancy to her as I have to you.”

In spite of the touch of this flattery, Julia justly felt annoyed with Elizabeth. “After all,” she reflected, “ushers ought to make themselves as agreeable as possible to all Freshmen, and it isn’t quite right for one of them to decline an introduction.”

Elizabeth had hastened off with polite excuses, and Julia saw her join a group of lively girls at the other side of the room. “She is not working very hard now,” she thought, moving toward Pamela. She had gone only a few steps when a rather shrill voice called her by name. Turning, she recognized a bright little Southerner who sat near her in English.

“Where are you bound? You look like you had something on your mind,” cried the Southerner, whose name, Julia vaguely remembered, was Porson.

“Why, I have a fellow Freshman on my hands; she knows hardly any one, and I would like to introduce her, and—”

“Well, I am at your service if you think that I will fill in the blank. You know this is my second year, though my first as a Freshman, and I always like to meet new girls.”

“Why, thank you,” responded Julia, “I should be delighted. She is in English ‘A,’ too, so you will have one bond of interest with her.”

Pamela was still standing where Julia had left her, but as the two girls approached she held out her hand with a “Good-bye” to Julia.

28

“I must go now, it is past five o’clock,” she said.

“But that is early,” responded Julia. “I wish that you could stay longer, for I have brought Miss Porson to meet you. She is in our English class.”

But even after the introduction Pamela would not linger.

“I really must go,” she said nervously. “It is past five o’clock.”

“Why, you speak like Cinderella,” cried Miss Porson gaily; “she had to go home at some unheard-of early hour—or was it a late hour? At any rate, nobody ought to be a slave to time.”

The little Southerner with her allusion to Cinderella did not know how nearly she hit the truth. But Pamela, unduly sensitive, winced at the comparison. After bidding the two good-bye, she hastened up North Avenue toward Miss Batson’s.

“Isn’t she a little—just a little odd?” inquired Miss Porson, after Pamela had gone away.

“I cannot say,” responded Julia, “I know her so slightly. I ran across her a day or two before college opened, and in some way I feel drawn toward her, although I have seen little of her.”

29

IV
PAMELA’S PERSEVERANCE

When Pamela Northcote first found herself in Cambridge it seemed, as the children say, “too good to be true.” It had long been her dream to study some day under Harvard professors, but in this world dreams so seldom are realized that she was genuinely surprised that her dream had come to pass. Yet Pamela herself had been her own fairy godmother, and to her own efforts she owed her appearance at Radcliffe.

Pamela had been but a little girl when women first began to study at Cambridge. Even then she made up her mind that if she could she would sometime be an Annex student. The road had been a hard one, but here she was. “It’s worth all I’ve been through to come here, worth it all.” Yet she sighed, thinking of her difficulties in getting enough money to warrant her entering Radcliffe.

30

Pamela had been early left an orphan, and an uncle and aunt had given her a home, if not grudgingly, at least not always cheerfully. They did what they could for her physical comfort, but they would not encourage her in her desire to go to college; and had they been willing to encourage her, they could not have helped her. They had no money to spare for superfluous things, and a college education—at least for a woman—was certainly a superfluity.

31

That she should go to college had seemed to Pamela a filial duty. Her father, whom she remembered but dimly, had worked his way through a small New England college and later through the Harvard Divinity School. In a trunk of old letters Pamela had found one of her father’s written to her mother when Pamela was a baby. “If our boy had lived I should count no sacrifice too great that would enable me to send him to college.” A diary of her father’s in the same trunk showed Pamela how prayerfully he had dedicated his baby boy to the ministry. But the boy had lived only a year, and Pamela knew that he felt this loss keenly. “If my father had lived he would have wished me to go to college; he would have had me study with him until I was ready. It is my duty to make the most of myself, to be as nearly as I can like what his son might have been.” So Pamela worked and struggled to get a little money together for her college education. Although her desire for a Harvard course seemed presumptuous, Cambridge was her goal. There was a good academy in the town where she lived, and this simplified her preparation. In the vacations she taught a country school, and she decided that when she had three hundred dollars she would venture it all on a year at Cambridge,—provided, of course, that she could pass the examinations. Now it happened that the very year in which she was to be graduated from the academy, a prize was offered by a rich townswoman to be awarded to the student, boy or girl, in the Classical Department who should pass the best examination. Pamela wore herself almost to a shadow studying. She won the prize, a scholarship of two hundred dollars, given on the condition that the winner should spend the money on a college course. Colleges were recommended to Pamela in which this sum would have paid almost the whole cost of tuition and board, but the young girl would have none of these. She saw in the winning of the prize a dispensation that she was to attain her long-cherished hope of going to Cambridge. She passed most of her entrance examinations that spring, drawing somewhat on her slender capital for the journey to Boston, and in September she passed the remainder. On entering Radcliffe, therefore, her assets consisted of three honors from the examinations and three hundred dollars in money. Two-thirds of this money was the academy prize and one-third was her savings of several years. The brain that she had inherited from her father and the courage that had come to her from her mother were not backed by great physical strength. She was stronger, however, than she looked, and she did not fear her course at Radcliffe.

32

Yet Radcliffe does not offer unalloyed bliss even to a girl as earnest as Pamela, if she has to cogitate too long on the best way of making both ends meet. Out of her three hundred dollars Pamela knew that she must spend two hundred dollars for tuition, and she wondered how she was to make one hundred dollars cover board, lodgings, and incidentals for the year. She made no account of clothes, as she did not intend to add to her slender wardrobe for another twelve months. Half of her tuition would not be due until February, and if worse came to worse she thought that she might draw on her tuition money for her board of the first half-year. Yet this was a resource only if everything else failed. She felt that if she could carry herself through the first half-year, some way of earning the money to make up the deficit would present itself in the second half-year.

The day before college opened Pamela went to see an elderly woman who had been a friend of her mother’s who kept a small millinery shop in one of the northern suburbs of Boston.

“I admire your spirit,” said Mrs. Dorkins when Pamela had described her efforts to find a cheap boarding-place. “I knew you’d have a hard time to find a place you could afford; and if you won’t be offended, I’ll tell you how you might be comfortable without its costing you much.”

“Why should I be offended, Mrs. Dorkins? I know that you wouldn’t propose anything that wasn’t right.”

“Well, a thing may be right without being exactly what you’d like. I can’t forget that your father was my minister; and when I remember what a good man he was it seems’s if you ought to have everything you want and not humble yourself.”

“But you haven’t told me, Mrs. Dorkins, what it is that you have in mind.”

33

“Well, a cousin of my late husband’s lives in North Cambridge; she takes young women lodgers, who get their breakfast with her and their tea. They have dinner in the City in the middle of the day, for they are all of them employed—bookkeepers, or sales-ladies, or something of that kind. There’s only four or five and they’re real nice girls, and steady pay, though they can’t afford big prices. Now she wants some one to help her with her work—my cousin does. Not a regular servant, for she does the cooking and hard work herself. But she’d like some one to set the table and wait on them morning and evening a little. She said that if she could get some one that didn’t want much pay, she’d give them a good home, and they could have all the day to themselves and most of the evenings. Now Pamela, if you was willing to do this you wouldn’t have to pay board and—”

Pamela’s heart beat violently while Mrs. Dorkins talked. This was just the kind of thing she wanted. Her subconsciousness immediately set down as wrong the feeling of pride which at first threatened to stand in the way of her accepting it.

“Oh, Mrs. Dorkins, you are very kind; that is really the kind of thing I have been looking for, only—only—”

“Yes, I know just how you feel, Pamela, but remember what Holy Writ says about pride. Not that I don’t think you’ve a right to feel as you do. Your father was a perfect gentleman, though he never had much money, and was born at Bearfield where I was born, too.”

34

“Oh, it really isn’t that, Mrs. Dorkins, it really isn’t pride,” and Pamela meant what she said. “Only—”

“Well, then,” said the practical Mrs. Dorkins, “I’ll go over to Cambridge to-morrow and take you to Miss Batson’s. I’m sure you’ll suit, and I hope that you’ll like her. She has a neat little place, and she’ll treat you well.”

It happened, therefore, that on the very day after the opening of college Pamela found herself moving her possessions to Miss Batson’s French-roof cottage. She was to do certain work in consideration of room and board, and she was to have a fair amount of time to herself. Miss Batson did not offer her, nor did she desire, any money payment for her services. Indeed, she considered herself almost rich. She had room and board provided for her for the year, and after paying her tuition fees of two hundred dollars she would have one hundred dollars left for books, clothes, and incidentals. This to her seemed a very large sum.

Yet there was one thing that troubled her. She would have liked a room to herself, and she found it hard instead to regard as a bedroom the sofa-bed in Miss Batson’s little plush-trimmed parlor. But in a few days she became fairly contented with this arrangement, and toward nine o’clock each evening would close the folding-doors so that she might go to bed without disturbing Miss Batson’s boarders, who often entertained visitors in the little front room.

35

For her study she had a corner of the dining-room table; and though her work was often interrupted by questions and comments from Miss Batson, who would look in upon her occasionally, she still reflected that she might have been much worse off. Yet sometimes she sincerely pitied herself. “It isn’t exactly pleasant to be living in a house without a single corner that I can call my own. I can never invite any one here to see me. For although Miss Batson is very kind, I know that she regards me as ‘help,’ a refined species of ‘help’ to be sure, but still only ‘help.’”

She had felt strongly drawn to Julia Bourne, and she hoped that she might be able to see much more of her. Yet she reddened as she thought of Julia in much the same way that she reddened whenever the subject of her boarding-place came up. Although she was a minister’s daughter, although she realized the sin as well as the folly of false pride, she yet felt uncomfortable whenever she reflected that to the unprejudiced observer, indeed to any one except Mrs. Dorkins, she might seem to be only Miss Batson’s “help.”

Miss Batson’s boarders could not understand her. They were young women who earned fairly good pay, as expert bookkeepers or clerks. They knew that Pamela was a student, and one or two of them were sorry that so delicate a looking girl should be obliged both to work and to study.

36

“It isn’t that the work is so hard,” said the youngest of the bookkeepers, “but to think of a little thing like her studying those great books. I’ve noticed her coming in in the evenings, and she’s always loaded down with books. Anybody’d have to wear glasses if they spent all their time looking into books. I wouldn’t do it myself. Why, it must be most as hard as school teaching, and I always thought that that was dreadful.” Yet Miss Batson’s young ladies (for in this way did their landlady always speak of them) in spite of these occasional criticisms were proud to have a college student living in the house. They were inclined to be very friendly, and Pamela sometimes reproached herself for keeping them at a distance. Their well-meant familiarities annoyed her, and she found it hard to conceal her feeling. In consequence she was much lonelier at Miss Batson’s than she need have been.

It was rather an understanding than an arrangement that she should be at home in the afternoon in time to help Miss Batson prepare her half-past six tea. This meant that Pamela should be at home by half-past five; and as she always walked home from the Square, she had to leave Fay House by five o’clock. There was really no hardship in this, since all recitations were over by half-past four. On the other hand, Pamela had decided that to do her duty by Miss Batson she ought to refrain from any part in the social life of the college, for she had learned that nearly all the clubs and receptions were held between half-past four o’clock and six.

37

It was on this account that she had given up the Freshman reception. In spite of her Spartan resolve, Pamela had just a little longing for the fun that certainly formed a legitimate part of college life. Although she had had more than her share of care, although of a more serious temperament than many of her classmates, she was still girl enough to see the possibility that Radcliffe offered for social enjoyment. Yet with this perception came a sense of her own lack of adaptability to people; instead of attracting them, she felt that she rather repelled those whom she met.

38

V
COLLEGE CALLERS

One afternoon as Julia and Ruth were walking toward Elmwood a human whirlwind stormed past them, composed, as it seemed, chiefly of woollen sweaters and legs in knee breeches.

“There,” said Ruth, “what geese boys can make of themselves! Actually, I think that I recognized Philip among them.”

“Yes, I believe he’s in training.”

“Well, I’m glad that he has something to do. But I wonder that he and Will haven’t called on us.”

“Seeing us may remind them. I know that they have been intending to call.”

Julia’s surmise proved correct, and that very evening the cards of the two Seniors were brought to them. When Julia and Ruth went downstairs to see them, Philip said in half apology:

“We’ve often wandered in this direction in our evening strolls, but we have never had the courage to come in.”

“What in the world made you so courageous tonight?”

39

“Well, you see,” said Will, “Philip came back to the club after dinner with glowing accounts of you both. He said that he could not see that you had changed a hair since coming to Radcliffe.”

“What in the name of common sense did he expect?” Ruth’s voice had a note of indignation.

“Why, we expected a great alteration. In the first place, to be typical Radcliffe girls you ought to wear glasses. Then I am sure that you ought to have had a huge bundle of books under your arm, and your clothes—it gets on my nerves to see the clothes most of the Cambridge girls wear; I suppose they are Radcliffe girls. But I could see that you looked as up-to-date as Edith.”

Philip, almost out of breath with the exertion of explaining himself, was disconcerted by the laughter that greeted his words.

“It is greatly to be feared,” said Ruth, “that the typical Radcliffe girl would be as hard to find as the average Harvard student. I haven’t seen either of them yet. But it’s really too funny for you to have expected Julia and me to develop our college peculiarities so soon. Give us time and we may become typical.”

“Ah, well, of course now,” said Philip, “I did not expect to find you entirely changed, although you know yourself that college might make a difference.”

“Naturally we’d rather not belong to the tiresome class of persons who are always the same, yet we do not wish our friends to find us altered.”

“No, you were well enough before,” and Will glanced toward Ruth.

“So you thought it best to let well enough alone?”

40

“Now, really you are severe! But not to dwell on personalities—how do you like your rooms here? They seem very domestic.”

“These are not our special rooms,” explained Julia; “our study is upstairs.”

“When are we to see your study, or ‘den,’ as I suppose you will come to call it?”

“I’m afraid that you would not think it typical enough to be called a den.”

“But when are we to see it?”

“Oh, later we’ll give you a tea, with Aunt Anna or Mrs. Blair to chaperon us. You’ll have a chance then to offer any amount of advice.”

“We’ll give you points that may be useful next year.”

“Ah! next year we’ll be Sophomores, and Sophomores know everything,” retorted Julia.

“Yes, and sometimes more than everything. We did, didn’t we, Philip?”

“I should say so! I’ve never since been so wise as I was in that Sophomore year. I’d almost like to be a Sophomore again.”

“You may have the chance,” interposed Will, “if you drop down a class at a time.”

Philip looked uncomfortable.

“Be careful, please; no twitting on facts.”

“On facts?” queried Ruth. “Is it as bad as that?”

“Oh, the Faculty has a wretched habit of giving a fellow warnings, especially at the beginning of the Senior year, just to see how he will take them.”

41

“Why,” said Julia, “I should take them as warnings.”

She saw by Philip’s expression that there was more than a mere suggestion of truth in what Will had said, and she resolved at the first favorable opportunity to have a serious talk with him. She remembered that the preceding year he had spoken of one or two conditions to be worked off before the close of his Senior year, and she began to fear that he had neglected to do this. In spite of his little affectations, Philip had a charm for Julia. At least she felt a genuine interest in him, partly on his own account, and partly because she was so fond of Edith. She hoped that he would make more of himself than some of the young men in his set had thought it worth while to make of themselves.

While her thoughts were wandering, the conversation of the other three went straight on.

“If we only knew what you would like,” Philip was saying, “we might give you something more substantial than points for your room. I have a fine ‘To Let’ sign that was hung out originally somewhere down in the ‘Port.’ I haven’t really room for it, and—”

“Oh, that’s only black and white. When you make a present, you ought not to be mean,” said Will. “What’s the matter with that barber’s pole that you cherish so carefully in a corner of your room? I hear that its former owner is still searching for it. A Radcliffe room would really be a safer retreat for it than yours.”

42

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t get these girls into trouble. If I present them with anything it must be something ennobling,—a tidy, or—or—a picture-scarf, or something of that kind.”

“We haven’t a tidy in our room,” interposed Ruth triumphantly.

“Then it must have a very unfeminine appearance,” responded Philip. “I am sorry that Radcliffe influences are so hardening. It wasn’t that way when you helped in that Bazaar. Don’t you remember what work I had to find something suitable for a college room, and there was nothing to be had but tidies, and dolls, and things like that? Your minds were all feminine enough then.”

“I remember that I found just what I wanted,” said Will, smiling at Ruth. “A very beautiful sofa pillow, with a crimson ‘H’ embroidered upon it.”

As it was Ruth who had made this pillow for the Bazaar given by the Four Club, and as Will had insisted on buying it as soon as he learned that it was the work of her hands, she naturally looked conscious at this reminiscence.

Thus the conversation of the four young people flowed on; and although the girls tried not to be too serious, they really did glean some useful information from the two Seniors. The gossip of undergraduates about professors, their fancied insight into the methods of their instructors is harmless enough. Yet critical listeners might have questioned the correctness of some of the judgments so glibly put forth by Philip and Will.

43

Philip, to tell the truth, was surprised to find himself encouraging the girls in their college career by even these scraps of information. He liked Julia so well that he could not reconcile himself to her going to college.

“It is different,” he had said to her magnificently one day at Brenda’s, “it is different, of course, in the case of a man. If he doesn’t go to college he doesn’t amount to much. People think it’s because he can’t get in, and that kind of thing. But for a girl, why you know that it really hurts her in the opinion of most people if she goes to college.”

Like his sister Edith, Philip was occasionally rather tactless, although both had the best intentions in the world.

“I hope that I won’t be hurt, at least in the opinion of my friends, by going to college,” said Julia quietly.

“Of course not,” rejoined Philip. “I might feel that way about some other girl, but not about you.”

Julia accepted the apology, but she remembered the incident. She thought of it again, as she sat before her fire that evening, and then her thoughts travelled toward Brenda. Brenda, too, had never really approved of Julia’s going to college.

“It was funny, although not exactly amusing,” reflected Julia, “when she let Belle persuade her that it was an affront to the family when I wished to study anything so unconventional—for a girl—as Greek. Yet all’s well that ends well, and Brenda is so different now that I can hardly believe that it is only two years since she was so pettish and inconsiderate.”

44

Yet although Brenda had certainly improved in the past two years she was still as far from perfection as most young girls of sixteen or seventeen. She was still impulsive, and disinclined to receive advice. But remembering her past mistakes, she was less ready than formerly to find fault with Julia.

One thing that had brought the two girls together was a common interest in a poor Portuguese family. The helpless Rosas living at the North End had appealed very strongly to Julia, and for a time she had feared that she might not be able to do much for them, because Brenda and her three most intimate friends had undertaken to make the mother and children their especial protégés. At length Julia’s opportunity had come, and she had not only shared in the Bazaar by which “The Four” had raised money for Mrs. Rosa, but she had also assisted in moving the family from the North End to a healthier home in the pretty village of Shiloh.

Since then the Rosas had apparently prospered, and Julia could think of them with satisfaction. Her interest in them had a double thread, for besides sympathizing with their helplessness, she felt that but for the Rosas, and the events connected with their removal to Shiloh, she could hardly have had so complete an understanding with Brenda.

45

Yet in her heart Julia realized that as they grew older she and Brenda were likely to see less rather than more of each other, their tastes were so very different. Brenda had still a year more of school before her, and when that was completed she would enter society. For a few years life would be a whirl of pleasure, and she would give comparatively little time to serious things. She was bound to be a butterfly of fashion, though her father and mother would have encouraged her had she wished to take life more seriously. On the other hand, they would have been glad had Julia, their niece, shown some interest in other things besides her studies.

“I do care for other things,” said Julia to herself, as she sat before the fire this evening. “I do care for other things, though it is hard to make Aunt Anna and Uncle Robert believe that I am not entirely bound up in my studies. I really believe that I should enjoy a year of society almost as much as Brenda. But the trouble is, I might grow to care for it too much. I love study, too, and I should be afraid that if I were to put aside my plans for college, even for a single year, I might in the end regard college work as a task, and wake up too late to find society all hollow. No, it is better as it is, although Aunt Anna feels that she has failed in her duty to me, because she cannot introduce me formally to society.”

To some girls situated as Julia was, the line of work that she had laid out would have been hard to follow; for although not a great heiress, she had inherited fortune enough to make her perfectly independent. Her purpose in going to college was not to fit herself to earn her living.

“I should like to feel that I could earn my own living if I should ever lose my money. It is not pleasant to feel that one is only a consumer, a cumberer of the ground, and not a helper.”

46

Now Julia had already discovered that not all the girls in college were there to carry out the loftiest aims. Some were as evidently bent on enjoying themselves as the girls of Brenda’s set. Even thus early in her Freshman year Julia had noted the difference between the two classes, the workers and the shirkers. Of course, in her short time at Radcliffe, she had not attempted to put all her acquaintances into one or the other of these classes. But she had already seen considerable difference in the methods of her classmates. Some sat dreamily, even idly, through a lecture, making only occasional notes. Others hung on the words of their instructor, writing pages and seeming fearful of losing a word.

Some took down the names of any books the instructor named as useful for further reference. Others seemed absolutely indifferent to everything of this kind.

Julia was not really a severe critic, and she made allowances. “I must not forget to tell Brenda that there are, at least, two or three girls at Radcliffe who really enjoy frivolity.”

47

VI
SETTING TO WORK

Pamela never for a moment felt any lack of liberty in Cambridge, in spite of the fact that she had less of real leisure than most of her classmates. Her life at Radcliffe was so much nearer her ideal than anything she had previously known that she was in a state of constant thankfulness. Clarissa, on the contrary, found the very atmosphere of the college restraining.

So few were the rules at Radcliffe that Clarissa had a breezy way of forgetting that any existed. She disregarded, for example, the notice in the catalogue that students could board only in houses approved by the Dean. She was therefore surprised when the request came that she should call at the office to explain why she had chosen a house where several Harvard men were boarding.

“What funny ideas they have here in Cambridge,” she had said when describing the interview. “Why, Archibald is my third cousin, and we grew up together. My mother and father would just as soon have him in the same house. They’d know that he would look after me. He’s horribly serious. I wonder if the powers that be here in Cambridge ever heard of co-education?”

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“Oh, the rule is intended for the greatest good of the greatest number,” replied Julia, to whom she had told her tale of woe. “With fascinating youths in every house where Radcliffe girls board, think of the hours that might be wasted in matching wits!”

“Fascinating!” responded Clarissa disdainfully; “there’s little chance that I would waste time over them. Of course Archibald offered to move, but there were two other Freshman youths in the house, and so I had to go. My present abode is most domestic with ‘Home, sweet home’ worked in worsted on the walls, and a plush-covered album and two Radcliffe students as the chief adornments of the parlor. That ought to suit you, Julia—oh, I beg your pardon, Miss Bourne.”

“Why not Julia?”

“Oh, I notice that people here are so afraid to call one another by their first names. For my part, I always think of the Christian name first. It has so much more character.”

“So few people call me ‘Julia’ that I am always pleased to add a new friend to the list.”

“Well, then, since you are so very kind,” responded Clarissa, smiling, “perhaps you’ll let me give you some suggestions about the approaching mid-years. I believe that I am on the high road to success.”

“Then do tell us,” cried Ruth, who had just entered the room.

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“Well, I show a frantic interest in all the reference books mentioned, and I’ve even bought one or two of them. I also make a special note of any witticism—alleged witticism—of my instructor. Then I’m building up a scholarly reputation by adorning my room with books and plaster casts. When I have a brass tea-kettle I shall be ready for company. But it will be tiresome to keep that tea-kettle polished.”

“It’s less trouble than you might think,” said Julia, laughing. “That’s the advantage of owning a roommate.”

“Well, you are an angel. Miss Roberts, do you do all the polishing in this establishment?”

“Ah! it wouldn’t be becoming to disclose how much work I do.”

“Oh, well,” said Clarissa, “it’s a fair division of labor after all for you to do the rubbing and scrubbing, while Julia does the æsthetic and ornamental for the two.”

Ruth colored at this remark, and Julia looked up in surprise at the careless Clarissa. But the Western girl, unconscious of offence, was looking at the photographs on the mantle-piece.

Before Clarissa turned around, Ruth, gathering up her books, had left the room.

“Why did she leave us?” asked Clarissa, discovering her absence.

“Oh, she often studies in her own room. Only on Monday afternoon does she feel perfectly free.”

“I see,” responded Clarissa, “I am a little in the way to-day.”

“Not as far as I am concerned,” responded Julia. “I’ve been studying and I am glad to have a little rest.”

50

“A little intellectual rest,” responded Clarissa, “as the Bostonian says when he goes to New York. Well, I ought to come on Mondays, only there’s always some one else here.”

Julia was accustomed to Clarissa’s badinage, but Ruth unfortunately did not like Clarissa as well. Julia therefore regretted her ill-considered remark.

Clarissa spent much time bewailing the fact that she had to be a Freshman at Radcliffe when she had already spent a year in a Western university.

“Pa promised me,” she said, “eight hundred dollars a year for three years, and I suppose that I ought to save out of that for my fourth year. I never imagined that I should have to spend four years at Radcliffe; it’s just ridiculous to have to begin all over again. However, what can’t be cured must be endured. But Pa will always think it was my fault in some way that I didn’t get admitted a Sophomore.”

“But you’ve made it clear to him?”

“Oh, yes; but it’s hard to make any one not on the spot understand just how things are. I might get through in three years, just as some of the boys do, but I can’t make up my mind to grind. There are so many interesting things to see and do in Boston. I really can’t pin myself down to hard study. In the first place, I can’t get used to the methods. It seems as if there is nothing to do but listen to lectures and take notes. I’m only beginning to understand how to take notes.”

“It’s a science in itself,” said Julia.

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“I should say so,” continued Clarissa. “I shouldn’t like to have any one see what a hodge-podge I made of my note-books the first three or four weeks. I couldn’t make head nor tail of them until I had borrowed the notes of one of the model girls to interpret them by.”

“It was hard for all of us,” said Julia, “at least it was for me.”

“Well, our first hour examination showed that we must remember the instructor’s words, that it wasn’t enough to imbed them in hieroglyphics. Allusions that I had considered mere ornaments I soon found ought to have been taken seriously. Little innocent references to some reserved book were of more importance than hours of lectures. Alas! alas!”

Julia smiled at her expression of sorrow.

“You need not laugh,” said Clarissa. “I had meant to do most of my reading next summer, and I had not even taken the trouble to note the names of the books referred to. But I find that having electives does not mean that you can elect to study or not, just as you please. The mid-years will be serious enough, judging by the samples we have had.”

Clarissa was not the only Freshman to find difficulty in accustoming herself to Radcliffe methods. Many others, unused to the lecture system, had rested too securely in the hope that before the mid-years they could make up all deficiencies. As the college year went on they were bound to find, like all preceding Freshmen, that lectures in the end were far more stimulating than recitations from even the best of text-books, and in the course of time, too, even the dullest was likely to acquire the art of successful note-taking.

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The hour examinations at irregular intervals before Christmas were often rude awakeners for careless girls. Others were agreeably surprised to find their marks better than they had hoped.

“It’s uncertainty that kills one,” said Clarissa. “I mean to work so that my mid-years will give me ‘B,’ or at any rate ‘C’ in English. The warning, you will see, shall not have been in vain. I used to think that I knew something about Rhetoric, but it seems that I was wrong, though I studied it years ago in the High School.”

Although Clarissa’s rather original manner of expressing herself did not wholly meet the approval of her English instructor, since the first examination he had expressed a certain restrained approval of some of her written work.

In November even the shyest Freshmen had begun to find their place at Radcliffe, and to feel that they had some individuality. The classes, relatively small compared with Harvard, enabled the members of each class to know one another by sight and name, even if the acquaintance went no further. But the new girls were impressed by the fact that intimacies in no way followed class lines. The elective system made it possible in many courses for Freshmen and Seniors to sit side by side, nor did a Senior lose dignity by associating with the lower classes. Clarissa constantly commented on this evidence of a spirit so different from that to which she had been accustomed at her Western college.

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Pamela accepted everything at Cambridge as a matter of course. Nothing seemed strange to her because she had expected everything to be strange. Whatever was, was right for Pamela, so far as Radcliffe and Cambridge were concerned, and she lacked Clarissa’s bubbling energy, which constantly sought some object to reform.

“I can’t say that I disapprove of the present state of things, though I really cannot understand it. Here we are in the same town with hundreds—yes, thousands—of students, and yet we see few of them at close range, and then those we know are only our brothers or cousins or something of that kind.”

“‘Something of that kind’ is delightfully indefinite,” said Polly Porson, the little Georgian whose condescension as a Sophomore had won Julia’s gratitude at the beginning of the term. “You speak like you were disappointed,” continued Miss Porson, “but if you stop to think, it’s well that we have so little to distract us. We are not forbidden to cross the college yard if we really wish to. But only think what a nuisance if they were permitted to walk about our little campus!”

“Do you suppose that there is any rule against it?” asked Clarissa mischievously.

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Polly laughed in reply. “Well, the average undergraduate would almost rather be suspended for three months than find himself within our grounds. Some of them make a virtue of not knowing just where Fay House is, and you’d be surprised to find that many explain with pride that they’ve never met a Radcliffe girl.”

“We must change all that,” cried Clarissa. “Not that we are anxious to have the acquaintance of those callow youths,—for they must be callow to look at us in that tone of voice,—but we must do something or have something here that will make them anxious to know us better.”

“We can get along very well without their society,” interposed Elspeth Gray, who happened to be passing through the conversation room where Clarissa and Polly and one or two others were talking. “We’re not exactly cloistered here in Cambridge, as girls are at some colleges. Most of us have the society, more or less, of real men, and we do not depend on undergraduates.”

“All the same,” said Clarissa, “we might have a little more fun here. Now, Polly Porson, you must admit that it’s a trifle slow here for a college town.”

“Most of us were not looking for fun when we undertook to come to Radcliffe. Cambridge never had the reputation of being very amusing. But I’ll tell you something to raise your spirits. Rumors of the charm and wit of the Idler theatricals have begun to penetrate the brick walls of Harvard, and last year we heard of sorrow in college halls because men were not admitted to the performances. What we couldn’t attain through our work we have accomplished by our play. They wouldn’t lift their hands to read one of our examination books, but they would give more than the admission fee to see us act.”

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“Aren’t they permitted to come?”

“No, indeed, although we really ought to find some way of letting them reciprocate our interest in the yearly Pudding theatricals.”

“We ought to be able to get up something to interest them,” said Clarissa.

“Can you act?” asked Polly abruptly.

“Why, yes, after a fashion,” responded Clarissa.

“Well, then, do give your name to Miss Witherspoon. It isn’t the easiest thing in the world to find girls willing to do their part. But there! you must have heard the invitation given at the first meeting.”

“I heard it without taking it to myself. I’m not the person of talent for whom the Idler is looking.”

Whatever her other faults, Clarissa could not be accused of vanity.

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VII
ALL KINDS OF GIRLS

Among the girls in her Latin course one had a particular charm for Julia. She was tall, slight, and graceful, with waving brown hair. Lois lived in Newton, and often for exercise she walked at least as far as Watertown after lectures. Sometimes Julia walked with her; and although Lois was not too confidential, Julia had gradually learned many things about her. She knew that Lois made her own clothes, and that home duties prevented her spending much time in Fay House frivolities.

So far as she could, Lois had elected studies that would count toward her proposed medical course. She was bright and cheerful, and always ready to help others.

“She is certainly very clever,” Ruth had said appreciatively one day after Lois had given her a suggestion as to the proper translation of a very difficult passage. Julia was glad that Ruth liked Lois so well, for she had not smiled on her friendship with Clarissa and Pamela.

Polly Porson liked Lois, too, although she was in the habit of saying that her energy tired her.

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“You look as fresh as a rose!” she exclaimed one morning, as Lois, with cheeks pink from exercise, came into one of the smaller recitation rooms where two or three girls were studying together.

“Well, I ought to have a color,” said Lois. “I’ve walked over from Newton.”

“Why, Lois Forsaith,” cried Polly, and “Lois Forsaith!” echoed Ruth. “Why in the world do you walk on a day like this?”

“This is just the kind of day for a walk. I had to stay indoors yesterday because my mother was ill, and on Sundays there is so much to attend to. I hadn’t time even to go to church. But the walk to-day has set me up again, and I feel equal to anything.”

“Walking is as bad as the gym.,” cried Polly Porson; “in the South we wouldn’t think either exactly ladylike. Why, until I came North I’d never walked a mile, really I never had, just for the sake of walking, I mean.”

“That’s nothing to be proud of,” commented Ruth. “Besides, I’d like to see any one try to walk on your Georgia roads—those red clay roads. I was in Atlanta once, and I know them. We were there two days on our way from Florida, and the roads were so bad that I wondered that feet in Georgia hadn’t become rudimentary from disuse.”

“Now, it isn’t so bad as that,” said Polly.

“Bad!” repeated Ruth. “Why, we started to drive one afternoon and our wheels sank deep into red clay until we were nearly buried alive.”

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“Now, it isn’t so bad as that everywhere,” reiterated Polly. “You ought to have gone out Peach Tree Street; that’s a right good road, with a fine sidewalk, too.”

“Oh, I’ve seen Peach Tree Street, too, and I’ll admit that there’s no excuse for your not walking there.”

Polly sank back in her chair. “I never could see the sense in walking where a horse could carry you.”

“Or even an ox cart,” added Ruth mischievously; “that seemed to be the favorite Atlanta vehicle.”

“I wonder that you stand her teasing,” said Lois; “you are more amiable than I should be.”

“Well,” responded Polly, “this is my second year at Cambridge, and if I would I could tell a tale of Cambridge mud that would make Atlanta shine in contrast.”

“Yes, Atlanta mud is red,” murmured Ruth. But Polly took no notice of the interruption, and the conversation drifted from Atlanta and Cambridge mud to a more general putting forth of opinions of New England weather, a never-failing topic when two or more persons from outside New England are gathered together.

“Give me the bleak New England climate before any other,” cried Lois. “I haven’t travelled, but I have seen the products of the other climates, and ours has the greater staying power every time.”

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“You’re right smart cruel,” cried Polly; “I will never lend you my note-books again.” Whereat all the others laughed, for it was Polly and not Lois who was ever the borrower. The note-books of Lois, were models of conciseness and neatness, and she was ever ready to lend them to those girls who needed, or thought that they needed, assistance. The borrowers were not always shiftless. Some were simply careless girls, who found it easier to sit idle during a lecture than to write. Some, indeed, had difficulty in following the lecturer and filling their note-books at the same time. To such girls the loan of a note-book like that of Lois was a great boon. They could copy her work in a time that was short compared with what would have been necessary to decipher, expand, and rewrite their own half-intelligible notes.

As for Lois herself, she often found it hard to lend the note-book which she liked to have by her side when preparing for the class-room. It was equally hard to refuse when a girl asked the favor in particularly beseeching tones. On reflection, however, it seemed selfish to Lois generally to refuse merely because she might wish to refer to the book, and it happened that her note-books for one or two of the courses were travelling half the time. While Polly Porson was one of the most persistent of the borrowers, Lois never refused her requests. She was fond of Polly, although it would be hard to imagine two girls more unlike than the ease-loving little Southerner and the self-restrained Massachusetts girl. The two were, nevertheless, the best of friends, though Lois was a girl who had few intimates. For one thing she was too busy, and for another she had little inclination to spend all her spare time talking or walking with other girls.

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Even on this brisk, cool morning, although she had no lecture for half an hour, Lois did not sit down with Ruth and Polly and the others. She lingered scarcely five minutes, and almost before they had missed her she was up in the library, with books and writing material before her, ready for a half-hour’s work.

“Why, where’s Lois?” cried Polly, suddenly discovering her absence.

“Hard at work somewhere, I’ll warrant you. She never wastes a minute,” replied one of the group.

“As if it would be a waste of minutes to stay here and talk with us! I’m sure we have just finished a most enlightening discussion of the difference between Southern and Northern mud. We might have progressed to a discussion of the difference in Fauna, Flora, and other natural features of the two regions.”

“You forget that I am here,” retorted Ruth; “it was I with whom you were chiefly carrying on the discussion. If the others permit it and you still wish it, we can continue.”

“Oh, no, indeed,” answered Polly, “I assure you that I do not wish it. You can see that I bear no malice, for I had forgotten that it was you who had said all those dreadful things about my native State.”

“Could contempt go further?” sighed Ruth. “You would have been willing to prolong the discussion with Miss Forsaith, but you think it isn’t worth while with me.”

“Speaking of Lois,” responded Polly, “I wish that she would amuse herself more. It’s only frivolous persons like me who can sing and act and study, too.”

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“Oh, but Lois can act splendidly, if she only will,” said one of the Sophomore by-standers. “I do wish that she could be induced to help us with the Emmanuel play this spring.”

“The trouble is,” said a deep voice, “that Radcliffe girls are too indifferent to fame.”

The other girls looked up and saw Clarissa slipping into a seat beside the table.

“It seems ridiculous that there should be such trouble to get girls for the theatricals.”

“Perhaps many would not think it fame, even if they should distinguish themselves on our Auditorium stage.”

“Then they look at things with a jaundiced eye. Already there are traditions—I have heard them myself—about girls who have acted in our college plays,” said Clarissa, “and the greatest were the girls who made up best in men’s parts.”

“There, Polly,” cried the Sophomore, “you must be on the high road to glory, for,” turning to Clarissa, “you have probably heard that she is our very best man. Last year she just brought down the house. You really ought to see her; she’s immense.”

“That’s more than you are most of the time,” and Clarissa turned to Polly. “What do you wear, seven league boots, or something of that kind?”

“Not exactly,” replied Polly, “though if you’ll come round to my room sometime I’ll show you some of my properties.”

“They’d be worth seeing,” said the Sophomore, “especially if you’ve kept that gold-laced coat, Polly, and the high boots.”

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“’Deed I have,” replied Polly; “the boots are likely to be in more than one play before summer. I’m promised for at least two.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” cried Clarissa. “You are the very kind of girl to act well. I’ve overheard you taking people off once or twice in the conversation room, and you hit them to the life.”

Polly reddened a trifle at Clarissa’s words. It flashed through her mind that she had sometimes mimicked Clarissa, and she hoped that this was not what the Western girl had overheard.

There was no trace of resentment in Clarissa’s face, though Polly made a mental note that after this she would not entertain her friends with her impersonations outside of her own room.

It was time, indeed, for Polly to make this resolve, for without intending it she had gained the ill-will of several by using her powers of mimicry too freely. “Ill-will” is perhaps too strong a word, although it takes more than the average amount of philosophy to make a girl proof against ridicule. Comparatively few persons really care to see themselves as others see them, and annoyance, if nothing stronger, is apt to be felt against the individual, whether friend or foe, who attempts to portray us as we appear to those about us.

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It was now late in December, and the greater number of Freshmen had become known to the girls in the upper classes. Here and there was one who, like Pamela, had little to say to her fellow-students, and had as little to do with those in her own class as with those above her. The majority, perhaps, were like Julia and Ruth, friendly toward all with whom they came in touch, yet never forgetful of the fact that they were at Radcliffe first of all to study, and that other things must be secondary.

Clarissa was in many ways unusual. She seemed always ready for pleasure, and she spent so much time exploring the historic streets and buildings of Boston that her friends wondered how she contrived to keep up with her college work. Nevertheless, although there was no ranking in the classes at Radcliffe, and although there were no recitations to give a girl a chance to distinguish herself, Clarissa made it perfectly evident that she did not neglect her work. She asked intelligent questions in the class-room, and it was rumored that her marks in the hour examinations had been particularly good. These hour examinations, held occasionally without much warning, were tests covering a limited ground. They gave a girl a chance to recover herself, if she found that she had not been thorough in her subject, before the severe mid-years.

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Some girls did not care for Clarissa. They thought her too pushing; and although partly right in this, they would have been more correct had they said that she was merely no respecter of persons. If she wished to speak to a girl she addressed her without hesitation, regardless of the fact that she had not been introduced. Strange though it may seem, some girls objected to this, preferring, as they said, “to choose their acquaintances.” Not many, however, were so foolishly formal, and Clarissa’s chief fault consisted in a certain harmless officiousness, a readiness to do things which really were within the province of some other girl. She had promptly joined the Emmanuel Society, for example, and had been a member hardly a month when she told the President of Emmanuel that she had invited Mrs. Skillington Squails, of Chicago, to speak before the Society on her approaching visit to Boston.

Now it happened that both meetings of the Society that were to be held during Mrs. Squails’ visit had been already provided with speakers whom it was impossible to put aside. Moreover, it was decidedly out of place for a new member like Clarissa to make a suggestion of this kind. There was an executive committee of the Society whose duty it was to make all arrangements regarding speakers, and Clarissa ought at least to have consulted this committee before writing to Mrs. Squails.

“I’m awfully sorry,” she said when the matter was explained to her. “But it seemed to be such a good chance to get Mrs. Squails, that I thought that I ought to secure her as soon as I heard that she was coming East. You know that she’s in great demand, and she never gets less than fifty dollars a lecture. But she knows me very well; she stayed at our house a week the last time she came down into our State, and she would have spoken before our Society for nothing to oblige me, and she’d consider it an honor to speak at Radcliffe.”

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Mrs. Skillington Squails was an effective speaker, and her subject, “The Organization of Women Workers,” might have come within the scope of the Emmanuel programmes. But unfortunately, Mrs. Squails had recently been speaking on the stump for a very unpopular political party, and to invite her to address Radcliffe girls would have drawn considerable adverse criticism on the college.

The President of the Society thought it fortunate that the other speakers could not be put aside for the Chicagoan, and in the end Clarissa was spared the embarrassment of having to explain that her invitation was not official by hearing from the latter that for the time being she had given up her visit to Boston. Although the President of the Emmanuel and her committee had been very careful not to speak of this officiousness of Clarissa’s, in some way, possibly through Clarissa herself, the story had leaked out, and nearly every one who had not met her asked to have her pointed out. They were all anxious to see the audacious Western Freshman.

Polly Porson, when she heard the story, had entertained a group of girls with a mock interview between Clarissa and Ernestine Dunton, the very serious and conscientious President of the Emmanuel. She remembered that this portrayal had taken place late one afternoon in the conversation room; and although she had glanced out into the hall to make sure that there were no listeners besides those whom she had undertaken to entertain, there was the possibility that Clarissa might have passed through the hall unobserved. The thought of such a possibility made the careless Polly rather uncomfortable, and in consequence she was now especially cordial to Clarissa.

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VIII
THE MID-YEARS

“It’s comical, isn’t it, to see those woe-begone faces erstwhile so gay and cheerful?” said Clarissa, meeting Julia one morning in January at the foot of the main stairs of Fay House. “Let us stand here and watch the martyrs pass.”

“Laughing at your fellow sufferers!” responded Julia; “surely you are not out of misery yourself.”

“No, indeed, I have two more; but I’d rather die with my boots on, as the miners say, than be killed by inches. Now just look there!”

As Clarissa spoke two girls approached, one stumbling along with her eyes fixed on a book, the other wearing dark green glasses that made her pale face look almost ghostly.

“You can’t pass without speaking!” Clarissa’s voice compelled attention, and the girl with the book looked up, showing the usually bright face of Elspeth Gray, while the girl in glasses responded in the accents of Polly Porson.

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“I’m nearly dead, I really am, with one examination to-day and another to-morrow! I had a perfectly lovely time the first week, for not one of my mid-years came early. I went to two matinées and a Symphony Concert, had a girl from New York over to spend the week with me; but the next week when I began to study I found I’d lost the taste for cramming, and I’ve sat up nights since. It was three A.M. when I went to bed last night, or this morning—which was it?—and my eyes are nearly wrecked.”

Polly from a seat on the stairs looked up at Clarissa, who was standing in front of her.

“I’m glad that I can’t see very well,” she continued. “I should hate to discover that you were laughing at me, Clarissa.”

“Well, I do think that you are very silly.” Clarissa drew herself up. “Look at me! I’ve gained two pounds since the first of January.”

“Why! haven’t you had to work? You are an exception, and this is only your first year, too.”

“Certainly I have been working,” responded Clarissa, “but I haven’t been worrying. There’s little difference to me ’twixt ‘A’ and ‘B’ and ‘C’ and ‘D.’”

“Very well,” said a Junior, overhearing, “we shall see. I felt that way myself when I was a Freshman. But a change came over the spirit of my dream when I received my marks. I’d always thought myself a pretty bright person before that, but when I found that I had nothing higher than a ‘B,’ and that in only one course, while ‘C’s’ were alarmingly prevalent on my record, I made up my mind after that to take examinations seriously. I did better in June—I really did.”

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“Yes, indeed,” interposed Polly. “I mean to do better in June myself.”

“According to your own account, you did not plan well for these mid-years. Wouldn’t it have been better to have spent an hour or two earlier in the year in study instead of cramming it into a week? Wouldn’t that have been more consistent?” asked Julia.

“It might have been more consistent,” responded Polly, “but it wouldn’t have been half as pleasant. I never did believe that consistency was a diamond of the first water. Besides, it’s much more exciting to leave most of your work to the last. If I were running a race I’d always make my greatest effort on the last round. To be sure, I’d feel a little better now if my eyes weren’t so troublesome. But I must go on. Elspeth and I have some German to attack—just a trifle, you know: ‘Minna von Barnhelm,’ ‘Wilhelm Tell,’ ‘Iphigenia,’ and one or two other little things of that kind,” and she made a gesture of affected carelessness. “Well, good-bye! Elspeth furnishes eyes for me at present, and looks up all the words in the dictionary, while I provide the free translations. Free enough,” she concluded with a laugh, as she disappeared up the stairs.

“There,” cried Clarissa, “I can see that Polly is worried. She’s been summoned to the office once or twice for cutting, I hear. She told of it herself,” she added, lest Julia should wonder how Clarissa had learned this.

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Many Radcliffe girls, undoubtedly, took their examinations too severely. They withdrew to their rooms at the beginning of the mid-years, and came out only to get books from the library or for examinations. Yet though cramming is a bad habit, it is so firmly fixed on all students that until examinations themselves are abolished it will last. Poor students, who have wasted the lecture hours and neglected the prescribed reading, cram because otherwise they might fail outright, and so bring their college course to an untimely end. Good students, who have neglected nothing through the term, cram to assure themselves that they have done the very best by their chosen subjects. Between the men and the women students of Cambridge, however, there is one marked point of difference. With the growth of Harvard the profession of tutor is of increasing importance. Young men of small money and large ability after their Freshman year often defray the greater part of their expenses by tutoring. Many, indeed, of the youths who seek the aid of tutors have never even tried to keep up with the regular lectures. By some occult reasoning they calculate that it requires less mental effort to wait until the approach of the examinations for their great spurt. The gist of the courses they desire is then given them by an expert who in a few hours covers the work of the half-year. Lazy men, athletic men, and men lacking the mental momentum to carry them through college are the mainstay of numbers of impecunious students. Radcliffe as yet has had no attractions for girls disinclined to study. The majority have had high standing in the preparatory schools, and they go to college intending to do their best. If the Polly Porsons have been inattentive to some lectures, or if they have neglected part of their reading, they work with a will in the weeks just before examinations. But they scorn the help of tutors, or of printed notes. At the worst they borrow the note-books of some other girl, or they meet in little groups of two or three to put one another to the test with difficult questions. Informal meetings of this kind are the nearest thing that Radcliffe can show to the Seminars (disapproved by the Faculty), devised for the smoothing of the way for Harvard students.

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Clarissa was one of those who liked to study in company.

“I am twice as sure of myself when I have done a little thinking aloud. Come on, Polly, one more hour will make us perfect in English. I need you to hear me say the ‘Canons,’ and exercise me a little on ‘shall’ and ‘will,’ and then I shall know whole pages of the English Literature Primer. It’s too bad that we haven’t had more courses together, for we work together splendidly; don’t you think so?”

“Yes,” said Polly, “especially as you have eyes and I haven’t. I am going to make up questions out of my head to test you, for I mustn’t look much on my book.”

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“Oh, that will be all right,” responded Clarissa. “Besides, I have some examination papers—those of the past two or three years—and I am going to use them for your especial torment. It will strengthen your mind to answer the questions.”

“Thank you, but if my mind required strengthening I don’t believe that cramming would help. A cup of good strong coffee would be more to the point.”

“There,” cried Clarissa, “you’ve given yourself away. I have been wondering how you kept yourself awake until three A.M. as you boast of doing. If coffee does it I have only half as much respect for you as I thought I had. If I could look in upon you some midnight soon, and find you drinking strong coffee, with your head swathed in wet towels—for this I am told is the habit with coffee-bibbers—I’d punish you as you deserve.”

“I plead guilty,” cried Polly, “to the coffee drinking. Why not, since I have a little gas-stove of my own? But the wet towels, ugh! I could not stand anything so clammy. But come! time flies, and if you are in earnest about that symposium, let us hasten to my rooms.”

Many girls studied wholly by themselves. Pamela was one of these, and Lois another. Pamela in this, as in other things, was solitary from necessity rather than from choice. She had hardly a speaking acquaintance with most of the girls in her classes, and it occurred to none of them to ask her to join them. She for her part was too timid to make the first advances. Lois, on the other hand, would have been welcomed by many a little study group. But she was of a decidedly independent disposition, and she felt that she could accomplish more by herself, and with a smaller expenditure of time.

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Her disinclination to be one of a crowd stood in the way of Lois’ popularity. Her fellow-students admitted that she was bright and amiable, and that she seldom said sarcastic things. But they felt that she was not deeply interested in them as individuals, and in consequence they were inclined to criticise her. It was harmless criticism, but it tended to increase the feeling that Lois was not exactly popular.

Julia and Ruth, studying together, rejoiced that they had the same electives. Ruth was unduly flurried and worried, and she and Julia sat up until midnight many nights when they might better have been in bed.

“The worst of it is,” sighed Ruth, after her last examination, “my cramming hasn’t helped me an atom. Not one of the four papers had a question that I could not have answered before I began to cram.”

“Yes, and if you hadn’t sat up so late grinding you would probably have been in a better state for work. You’ll take things more sensibly in your Sophomore and Junior years. Only Freshmen and Seniors work themselves into a fever. Freshmen are inexperienced and nervous, and Seniors never feel quite sure that they are going to pass in everything; but Sophomores and—”

“I can’t say that I agree with you, Miss Darcy,” said Jane Townall. “I’ve always tried to do my duty by all my instructors, but I never went into an examination, even in my Sophomore and Junior years, without an enormous amount of preparation. It seems to me that most girls do the same.”

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“Oh,” responded Elizabeth carelessly, “it all depends on the kind of girls one knows. Your friends, of course, are more serious than mine. But you all make a mistake. You have lost five pounds, and you look as if you had lost your last friend, too.”

With this Elizabeth hurried off to join Polly Porson, for they both belonged to the same clique of rather lively girls just at this time beginning to promote theatricals, tableaux, and other frivolities, calculated to show that Radcliffe girls had other talents besides the purely scholastic.

“It’s easy for Miss Darcy to talk,” said Jane Townall, turning to Ruth, as Elizabeth moved away. “The loss of a grade would not hurt her; she is not going to teach, and it will be all the same to her whether she gets a plain degree, or a cum laude.”

“She does pretty well, though,” interposed a girl who had just joined the group. “She showed me her marks last year, and there was nothing, I think, below ‘B.’”

“Oh, there’s an art in getting marks, just as there is in achieving greatness of any other sort. Perhaps you are not aware, Freshmen,” and the speaker turned toward Ruth and Julia, “that one principle in selecting courses is to choose those demanding the least work, and at the same time yielding the highest marks. There’s a curious relation between the two. The easier the course and the smaller the amount of work in it, the higher the mark. Elizabeth goes in for such things as Semitic 12 and Fine Arts 1, and—oh, well, we know the list. They are studies that make for culture and high marks.”

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“Also,” said another girl, “Elizabeth believes in making a good impression on her instructors. She will break into a lecture three times in the course of the hour to ask a question which sometimes has only the slightest connection with the subject. But often it gives the instructor an opportunity for a series of footnotes to the lecture in the shape of original remarks, and he ends by believing Elizabeth to be the most intelligent girl in his class. He keeps this in mind when her blue-book falls into his hand. This is one secret of her succeeding without working, for she says that she does not work, and you say that she gets good marks.”

“In other words, she ‘swipes’ marks,” interposed Clarissa.

Jane Townall looked uncomfortable at the tone of the discussion. Personalities were distasteful to her.

“Miss Darcy is very pleasant,” she ventured; “every one likes her. I envy a girl who has the faculty of making herself agreeable to every one.”

Jane meant to pay Elizabeth a very high compliment, but the two Juniors in the group laughed heartily.

“That’s just it,” said the taller of the two. “Elizabeth does try to make herself agreeable to every one. She would rather be called uneducated than unpopular. I shouldn’t wonder,” she concluded with a smile, “if she had designs on the Idler. But then, she’d make a fairly good President.”

“Oh, but what a change after Miss Witherspoon! Besides, I’d rather see a girl like Lois Forsaith.”

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“Oh, well, of course. By the time she is a Senior her turn may come, but at present it’s out of the question. Indeed, I doubt that she’d ever be elected, however strongly some of us might wish it. She’s too independent; and though she doesn’t make enemies, she wouldn’t have enough people to work for her at an election. She hasn’t many intimate friends. You’ve got to belong to a clique if you want to hold office, or else be tremendously and surpassingly beautiful or rich.”

“Well, Lois isn’t that exactly. She’s just a good all-round kind of girl with considerable talent, and she’s so independent that nobody ever quite appreciates her.”

“Well, I’m sure,” said Jane Townall primly, as the group broke up, “I feel as if in some way I had done Miss Darcy an injury. I really did not mean to make her a subject of discussion when I spoke of the ease with which she takes her examinations. I hope that I didn’t do her any injustice. I’m sure that I didn’t mean to.”

“Of course you didn’t, Jane; you wouldn’t hurt a fly, we all know that,” exclaimed one of the Juniors with a surprising flippancy. Jane was Julia’s Senior adviser, and her four months at Radcliffe hadn’t lessened her awe of Seniors in general, and of Jane in particular. For although Jane was awkward—unused to conventional society—and wrapped up in her studies, she had more than once gone out of her way to help Julia; and while she was timid about offering advice, when asked to give it she was always logical and painstaking in what she said.

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IX
TWO CATASTROPHES

One Monday soon after the mid-years Julia and Elizabeth were walking down Garden Street in the face of a rather sharp wind. Elizabeth, like all who are not Boston bred, complained of the spring winds as if they were more vicious than in her native New Jersey. Passing the old graveyard, she laughingly reminded Julia that Longfellow’s “dust is in her beautiful eyes,” applied to one who lay buried within the First Parish enclosure, and that some wit had commented that dust was always in some one’s eyes in Cambridge.

“Yet it’s an interesting old graveyard,” said Julia, “and sometime I hope to go inside and study some of the inscriptions.”

“We all mean to do those things,” responded Elizabeth, “when we are Freshmen. I did myself last year. Christ Church is almost next door to Fay House, and it’s one of the many that Washington honored. But I doubt if you go within it before your Senior year, unless you make it your regular church. But, dear me! What is that?”

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A white shower was falling at their feet, and, looking up, the two saw Pamela, the very picture of despair. The three girls were almost in front of the old Dane Law School, now given up to the uses of the Co-operative Society, and the sidewalk was slightly glazed with ice. The wind, blowing strong in the faces of Julia and Elizabeth, had apparently carried the slight figure of Pamela before it. Evidently, too, she had been shopping at some Harvard Square grocer’s, and in her efforts to keep herself from slipping, her black woollen bag had turned over, and its contents were scattered. If the grocer had tied up tightly that five-pound paper bag of granulated sugar there might have been no catastrophe; but in some way the string had loosened, and Pamela stood helpless, as the stream of sugar poured itself out on the sidewalk under the very eyes of the fastidious Elizabeth Darcy. Elizabeth passed on with a gesture of annoyance. On the steps of the Co-operative she had seen two or three youths whom she knew, and she did not intend to make herself one of a ridiculous group. Julia did not follow her, as she swept up the steps of the Co-operative. Nor did the Harvard youths accompany her. Elizabeth was accustomed to attention; and though these three raised their hats politely, and although one stepped forward to open the door, she noticed that the others hastened toward Julia.

Julia, too, had recognized the young men before she began to help Pamela, and had she acted on impulse, she might have passed on with Elizabeth, for she knew that Philip was only too ready to criticise anything strange in the appearance of a Radcliffe girl. But Julia would not have been Julia had she deserted Pamela.

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The bag itself had slipped from the Vermont girl’s hands, and a note-book or two, and a number of loose sheets lay on the sidewalk. To save these papers from a coming gust, Philip and Will rushed forward. Had Julia not been there they might have hesitated to intrude on Pamela. Yet their natural chivalry would probably have triumphed.

“Never mind the sugar,” whispered Julia to Pamela, and the young men as politely ignored it.

Julia, then picking up the bag, replaced the papers and note-books that had been gathered up. Pamela, thoroughly abashed, tried to take the bag from her friend, with a feeble “Let me do it,” but Julia, finishing her self-imposed task, introduced Philip and Will to Pamela.

“We’re going to the car office,” she replied in answer to Philip’s question. Therefore, across the Square, accompanied by the two young men, Pamela and Julia threaded their way between two lines of electric cars.

“We’re evidently dismissed,” said Philip, as Julia bade them good-bye at the office; and after a word or two more, Will and he went back in the direction of the Yard.

“That was rather plucky in Julia, wasn’t it?” said Will.

“What?” asked Philip, who sometimes seemed to have the obtuseness of his sister.

“Why, the way she tried to make that girl feel comfortable—I didn’t catch her name. But she’s evidently a shy creature, and she had got herself into a scrape with all that sugar on the sidewalk.”

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“I thought that she was rather bright-looking,” responded Philip, “though her clothes were pretty freakish.”

“Well, I fancy we were rather in the way as long as we couldn’t help much. Julia has probably carried the girl home with her. Did she open her mouth to you?”

“Who, Julia?”

“No, the other girl. I didn’t hear her say a word.”

“Oh, she said ‘yes’ once and ‘no’ twice,” replied Philip, laughing.

“Ah!” sighed Pamela, standing beside Julia, “I hope I’ll never see any sugar again. I’m not bound to do errands for Miss Batson.” Then, as Julia looked puzzled, she began to explain. “Miss Batson is my—” she hesitated. She could not truthfully say “landlady,” so she tried again. “She has the house where I live. She has boarders, and sometimes I do errands for her. It seems easy to carry her things in my bag, but to-day—”

“Were you on your way home?” interposed Julia, to draw her mind from the recent catastrophe.

“No, I was going to Fay House to study.”

“Well, then, please come home with me. Ruth and I are always at home Mondays, but you have never called on us.”

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Pamela hesitated. Every hour counted in her scheme of work. But the temptation was strong, and she went on with Julia. Although the latter remembered that Pamela had never invited her to call, she realized that she herself might have done various little things to make the way pleasanter for one who was so evidently alone. She could see that Pamela would not make friends easily, and she had noticed her at none of the college affairs since that first Idler.

“College ought to be broadening,” thought Julia, “and yet I believe that it has made me extraordinarily selfish. I haven’t the least excuse to offer for neglecting Pamela, for I saw at the beginning of the term that she would need a friend.”

Pamela’s eye brightened as she stood on the threshold of Julia’s pretty room. “How lovely it is!” she exclaimed.

The open fire blazing on the hearth certainly gave the room a cheerful aspect, and the little tea-table added to the homelikeness of the scene. Poor Pamela sighed, the comfort appealed to her. There on the table lay several of the newest books,—one a volume of criticism that had attracted great attention; another, and the best of all in Pamela’s eyes, a history of Italian Art, very fully illustrated. She recognized the cover, and could hardly keep her hands from it.

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The general tone of the draperies was old blue, always a restful color when not used in excess. The curtains were of a soft rep in this shade, and beneath them were spotted muslin short blinds. Two of the easy-chairs were covered in old blue corduroy, and a third, of soft brown ooze leather, was particularly inviting. There were two or three small water-colors hanging there, but the pictures on the wall were chiefly photographs from the old masters. There were three Rembrandt heads, life-size, and a Madonna of Botticelli, as well as his head of a Florentine lady. A Turner etching hung on the little space at the edge of the mantle, and two or three etchings of minor importance closed the list of pictures. Julia’s piano filled one recess, and a bookcase that she had had made especially for the room filled the other.

Before Pamela could protest that she intended to stay but a few minutes, she found herself with hat and coat off, cosily seated before the fire. Julia flung herself on the divan between the windows.

“I really feel tired! That wind was very wearing. After all, home is a good place on a day like this. I will have the tea sent up before four o’clock, or rather the hot water, for I make the tea myself. Oh, here is Ruth! Do like a good girl touch the bell. I like to start with the water hot,” explained Julia, filling her kettle with water from Mrs. Colton’s kitchen. With the aid of the alcohol lamp the water soon boiled. Then putting three coverfuls of tea from the caddy into a china teapot, she covered the teapot with an embroidered cozy.

“Please notice,” cried Ruth, “our silver caddy. An old grand-aunt of mine presented it to me in her delight that we were to have a tea-table. She had feared that college would destroy our domestic tastes.”

“Yes,” added Julia, “we have made a great impression on our relatives by demanding things for our tea-table. When they asked what we wished for our rooms they evidently expected us to say dictionaries or other books. But here is a fascinating set of spoons from my cousin Brenda—every handle different; and Aunt Anna gave me this biscuit jar, and Edith Blair worked these doilies.”

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“Is that a Tanagra figure?” asked Pamela abruptly, pointing to the bookcase. “How I envy you!”

“Take it down,” said Julia, “if you wish to examine it close at hand, although it’s only a replica,” she added apologetically.

“Oh, may I?” exclaimed Pamela, lifting it from the broad top of the bookcase. And while the conversation flowed on she examined the figurine, fondly noting every graceful line.

No one who looked at Pamela could fail to comprehend that she must be more or less stinted for money. She herself would have told you, had you asked her, that she knew that her gray gown was of rather dowdy make, although she might not have realized as clearly as the onlooker just where the seams were crooked, or in what particular places the skirt hung unevenly. Pamela had at the best a limited wardrobe, and her village dressmaker had not kept pace with city styles. Pamela herself, unskilled with the needle, even when she knew that a garment might be improved, had not the ability to make the change. She consoled herself with the thought that no one in Cambridge was likely to notice her. She was too obscure to be criticised. She had always admired Julia’s gowns, so pretty and so simple, yet with the hall-mark of good workmanship. Pamela was a lover of beauty in every form, and she now wished vaguely, as she watched Ruth moving about the room, that she herself possessed at least one gown that she could wear as gracefully as Ruth wore hers. Ruth was giving little touches to the furniture, moving one chair farther from the fire, pulling another out of a corner. Julia had excused herself for a moment to rearrange her hair in the inner room, “in case,” she said, “that we should have some more critical callers.”

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Hardly had she left when there came a loud rapping at the door.

“Come in!” cried Ruth. “It must be Percy Colton. He often runs up after school,” she added in an aside to Pamela.

The door was thrown open with a bang, and there on the threshold stood Clarissa, tall, almost overpoweringly tall, with a smile on her face, a flush of crimson on her cheeks, and a winter coat of a much brighter crimson on her back. Two other girls were with her, whom she immediately introduced to Ruth as Miss Burlap, of Kansas, and Miss Creighton, of Maine.

“It is so much better,” she said, immediately explaining, “to know from just what State a girl comes. You know what to talk about from the start, and you can account sooner for her peculiarities.”

Ruth smiled at this sally, although she was not inclined to approve much that Clarissa said or did, and she was glad to see Julia emerging from the bedroom. Julia’s greeting was very cordial to Clarissa and her companions, and Clarissa when she caught sight of Pamela greeted her as a long-lost friend.

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Hardly, however, was the interchange of greetings over when the half-open door was pushed open wider. “More visitors!” exclaimed Ruth. “How exciting!”

Mrs. Blair entered Julia’s study with lorgnette raised. The action was involuntary. She had found the stairway at Mrs. Colton’s rather narrower than stairways she was accustomed to, and had used the lorgnette to help her find her way. Julia hastened forward to greet her, while Edith and Brenda, with less ceremony, pushed past Mrs. Blair into the centre of the room.

“Why, how perfectly delightful!” cried Ruth, and “What a surprise!” said Julia; and the room which a few minutes before had seemed large and comparatively quiet now appeared small, crowded, and bustling. The four girls who knew one another best were chattering, and the four other girls, Pamela, Clarissa, and the two friends of the latter, tried not to show too much interest in the trio that had just entered. Mrs. Blair continued to survey the scene through her lorgnette until she had seated herself in an easy-chair.

“Why, it’s even prettier than when I was here before,” cried Brenda in her rather high-pitched voice. “You have two new chairs and a new etching and several cups,—at least there are certainly two new ones.”

“I dare say,” responded Julia; “you must remember that you have been here only once this year.”

“It is really a very pleasant room,” added Mrs. Blair, looking about her; “not nearly as unconventional as I had supposed.” Mrs. Blair had hesitated a little before the last word. “Feared” was what she would have said had she not corrected herself in time.

“‘An American girl’—she spoke with emphasis—‘is her own best chaperon’”

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“Ever since you’ve been at Radcliffe,” said Edith, “mamma has been awfully afraid that you would turn into something unconventional. That’s one reason we brought her out here to-day. We wished her to see that even in a college room you could still be yourself.”

“Now Edith,” cried Mrs. Blair, “I knew that Julia could not change, but of course I can’t quite get used to a girl’s having rooms just like a Harvard student.”

“Well now, Mrs. Blair, you can see that ours are not just like theirs. I only wish that they were. There’s no such luck in sight as yet for Radcliffe students as a fine dormitory for our own use like Claverly or Hastings—or even Holworthy. We can’t have suites of rooms and private bath-rooms, and all the fine things that Philip and his friends have.”

“No,” added Ruth, “we haven’t any proctor, even, to keep watch over us.”

“That’s one of the things that would trouble me a little. Whom do you have for chaperons?”

Clarissa could no longer keep silent.

“An American girl”—she spoke with emphasis—“is her own best chaperon. I’ve travelled hundreds of miles alone myself. I’ve even gone to lectures alone—at night—and no one ever was rude to me. Indeed, I’d like to see any one try to be! He wouldn’t try it a second time.”

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Julia and Ruth looked slightly uncomfortable during this outburst. Brenda and Edith began to giggle, and the others discreetly kept their eyes cast down.

Mrs. Blair unconsciously raised her lorgnette again.

“Why, certainly,” she said, “a young girl need not look for rudeness. I was merely thinking that she would be better with her own family.”

“Oh, but if she can’t have her own family, isn’t it the next best thing for some other person’s family to offer her a home?”

“But I do not like the idea,” said Mrs. Blair, “of your living outside of dormitories.”

“But the great charm of our life here is its independence,” said Julia politely. “You know, too, that our boarding-places must be approved by the Dean; and if we are very hard to manage, we can be reported by our landladies.”

“But do they ever do it?”

“Well, I have heard that no Radcliffe girl has ever had to be reprimanded severely. For my own part, I feel bound to behave even better here than I would at home.” In her eagerness to do her college justice, Ruth forgot that she was taking Clarissa’s side of the argument.

“Besides,” added Julia, “many Radcliffe girls live at home in Boston, or Cambridge, or the suburbs, coming to the college only for lectures, so that we ought not to be under more restrictions than they.”

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“I did not mean to start so serious a discussion,” said Mrs. Blair. “I’m glad to see your piano here, Julia; music is so womanly an accomplishment;” and Mrs. Blair sipped her tea with satisfaction. “You make a good cup of tea, too.”

“Then you can report that we are fairly feminine?”

“Yes, indeed, Julia. But come, girls, we promised to look in on Philip toward five o’clock.”

While Brenda and Edith were saying their last words Pamela in her corner sat unnoticed with the Tanagra figure in her lap. Clarissa, meanwhile, talked to Mrs. Blair with surprising ease.

Mrs. Blair was accustomed to deference even from her special friends, and it seemed strange to have this young person meet her on impersonal grounds, and talk to her merely as any girl might to any woman. Mrs. Blair looked at Clarissa intently, without the lorgnette. She had always heard that there was something queer about college girls. Here was one of the species close at hand, and those other girls in the corner, who had had so little to say to her. They were all rather badly dressed, at least one could see that their gowns were not tailor-made. Julia, of course, was not an ordinary college girl. She was Mr. Barlow’s niece who had chosen to go to college, and it did seem a pity that she had to know all kinds of people. These were the thoughts flitting through Mrs. Blair’s mind as she stood there waiting for Brenda and Edith. As they stood there the handle of her umbrella became entangled in her lorgnette chain. “Permit me,” said Clarissa, trying to help her. But after a little effort a sudden jerk sent the umbrella against the brass fender, and a bit of the delicate ivory carving was broken.

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“Now, it’s of no consequence,” protested Mrs. Blair, as Clarissa apologized for her carelessness. Then with a farewell that was as cordial for Clarissa as for the others, Mrs. Blair, with her furs and rustling skirts and polished manner, had departed, and the room seemed large and quiet again.

“After all,” sighed Clarissa, “there is something in a society manner, for I suppose that’s what you’d call Mrs. Blair’s pleasant way of saying things that she doesn’t exactly mean. Though I must have seemed a clumsy creature, she almost made me believe that I’d done right in breaking that bit of ivory. It’s the first time I’ve seen a grande dame at close range, and it’s refreshing—for a change. Dear me!” and Clarissa turned to Pamela, “nursing a doll? I hadn’t noticed before just what you were doing.”

Pamela reddened under this chaffing, for at Clarissa’s words Miss Burlap, of Kansas, and Miss Creighton, of Maine, turned their eyes toward her.

“It’s a Tanagra figure,” said Pamela; “it belongs to Miss Bourne.”

“Oh, I’m just as wise as I was before. It looks like some kind of a heathen idol, and you gaze at it as if you adored it.”

“Come, Miss Herter,” said Julia, hastening to the relief of Pamela. “Even Freshmen in Cambridge are expected to know something about Greek Art. You’d better get a catalogue of the Boston Art Museum, and the next time you go there you can study the Tanagra figures.”

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“Well,” replied Clarissa, “I’ll take your advice. But now I must be off. ‘Answers to Correspondents’ always declare that it’s rude to outstay an earlier caller, but Mrs. Blair and your cousin so fascinated me that I forgot my manners.”

So Clarissa and her friends went away, but Pamela, at Julia’s request, stayed a little longer. Two or three other pleasant Radcliffe girls dropped in, and she enjoyed their bright, informal conversation. She found afterwards that to meet any one at Miss Bourne’s was sure to open a pleasanter acquaintance than any casual introduction.

The memory of this Monday afternoon cheered her as she set the table that evening, and waited on Miss Batson, and washed the dishes. Fate, indeed, had been particularly kind to her, for Miss Batson, who was apt to be absent-minded, had herself bought sugar that afternoon, forgetting entirely that she had asked Pamela to get it.

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X
DISCUSSIONS AND DISCUSSIONS

The Easter vacation had come and passed, and Pamela was pleased to find herself again attending lectures. She had been a little lonely, for almost all of her classmates had been away somewhere “for fun or for clothes,” as Polly Porson put it. Polly and Clarissa had gone together to New York, where the former had an aunt, and their talk now turned on Art exhibitions, Waldorf musicales, and things of that kind. Julia, yielding to her aunt’s entreaties, had fixed her mind more or less attentively on clothes. Lois had had to put her own time and strength into remodelling and shaping the lighter summer clothes. Whereas in Julia’s case her greatest sacrifice of time came in the unescapable “fittings” which she had to undergo at the dressmaker’s. Pamela had had neither fun nor new clothes to console her in the vacation. She had been unable to afford the trip to Vermont, and indeed she did not intend to return home for the summer holidays, unless she should fail to find some employment in vacation that would help her pay her expenses during the next college year. Her one luxury through the recess had been frequent trips to Boston. She had wandered to her heart’s content through the Art shops, and she had spent many hours in the Art Museum. She had saved car-fare by walking one way to Boston, and this exercise in itself had probably been an advantage to her, as in winter she had had little time for long walks. The fresh spring air as she walked along blew many cobwebs from her brain. For Pamela was not of a hopeful temperament, and she could not help wondering where she should get her income for the coming year. Her aunt’s letters were not altogether cheerful. Between the lines she could read that continued disapproval of her ambition for a college degree. “If you had gone to the Normal School,” read one of the letters, “you’d be almost ready now to take a school. Perhaps you might have had a chance at the Academy. They say that Miss Smith is going to be married.”

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“They’ll feel better if I tell them that I’m likely to get a scholarship at the end of another year. Oh, I do hope that I shall take second-year honors! That will make the scholarship almost certain. If I could earn fifty dollars above my expenses this summer, and if Miss Batson will give me the same chance next year, why, I can certainly hold on until I get a scholarship. Ah, me!”

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The sigh was perhaps not to be wondered at, for Pamela saw clearly the uphill road that lay before her. Sometimes she could not help contrasting herself with Julia and Clarissa, and the others before whom life seemed to spread out so delightfully. She listened with interest to all that these lighter-hearted girls had to tell of their vacation experiences, and she bent with redoubled energy to her work. May was at hand, and nobody can be utterly down-hearted in May, with the trees bursting into bloom, and the air growing softer and sweeter, and the bright spring sun touching everything with gold, making even literary Cambridge a pleasant place for the hundreds of students who cross the Yard to the halls of Harvard, or walk through Garden Street to Fay House. Yet despite spring sunshine, Pamela shrank into herself, and even Julia could not drag her out of her routine.

“It isn’t right,” Clarissa remonstrated, “to think so much of Xenophon, Plato, and Euripides. They may have been very able men, but to think of them alone will make you one-sided.”

“If you had studied Greek you’d be less frivolous,” remarked Julia, as Clarissa picked up a slip of paper with printed questions that fluttered from one of Pamela’s books. Clarissa read aloud from the paper:

“‘IX. Write on the results, to logic and ethics, of the work of Socrates, and the impression which it made on his contemporaries as illustrated in “The Clouds.”’ Is it strange,” she commented, “that Pamela is half in the clouds and here? ‘Write an account of the life and professional activity of Lysias.’ It would be more seasonable to write an account of the professional activity of the catcher on the Harvard nine. Throw aside this foolish paper, Pamela! Why, the heading says, ‘Divide your time equally between Lysias and Plato.’ Your aunt in Vermont ought to know about this.”

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“Don’t crumple it,” cried Pamela, flushing under this badinage. “I save all my examination papers; that was a mid-year.”

“To make a scrap-book?” queried Polly, who had joined the group. “Excuse my smiles, but it seems so comical to care tenderly for examination papers. Why, I tear mine up, and throw my blue-books into the fire. Lecture notes are more entertaining. Clarissa’s, for example! Clarissa, if your notes in History 100 should be published, they would contribute greatly to the gaiety of nations. You must not let them fall into the hands of the profane.”

The lecturer in History 100 had a rather original method in dealing with his subject. His style was colloquial, and when in his opinion the occasion demanded it, he used expressions that bordered pretty closely on slang. Nevertheless, he had a fine command of his subject, and that he was a valued member of the Faculty was shown by his standing near the head of his department. That he shattered some of the idols that his students had worshipped did not lessen the value of his teaching. After expressing his own views fully (and sometimes jocosely), he would always refer them to numerous books, by reading which they could inform themselves on the other side of the subject. Although open, perhaps, to some criticism from an academic point of view, Professor Z (for so he was nicknamed from one of his most popular courses) was a stimulating instructor, and his Radcliffe students set a high value on what they learned from him.

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Nevertheless, Polly and even the sedate Pamela were almost convulsed with laughter as Clarissa read from her note-book what she claimed to be one of Professor Z’s lectures. “Stage directions,” as Clarissa called them, had been used very freely. “Here he frowned.” “At this point he stroked his moustache and looked inexpressibly bored.” “At quarter-past three he told us that he thought that Cromwell did not deserve any further attention, at least from him, and that we’d all be happier for a little respite from Puritanism. Whereupon he left us—fifteen minutes to the better.”

“How would you like Professor Z to see your note-book?” asked Polly mischievously.

“Why, I shouldn’t care. I never do behind any one’s back what I could not just as well do before his face. The worst, I suppose, that he could give me would be a ‘D;’ but I think, on the whole, that he would be rather amused that I had had sufficient interest to take notes at once so literal and so copious.”

“Yes, but don’t let that book fall into the hands of outsiders. They might feel that we were not under sufficiently serious influences. You New Englanders are so serious.”

“Julia’s the only New Englander here. You mustn’t be too severe,” said Polly.

“No, indeed,” rejoined Clarissa; “but speaking of Jane—”

“Who spoke of Jane?”

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“Well, if we were speaking of Jane, it seems to me that we should all say that she looks tired—too much work and no play. She’s something like you, Pamela, only more so, though she has the excuse of being a Senior. But speaking of Seniors (we really were speaking of Seniors this time), there’s Jane herself. Come, Jane,” and Polly raised her voice slightly, that Jane, who was passing the door, might hear her.

It was after half-past four, and Polly, Pamela, and the others were sitting in one of the vacant recitation rooms.

“Come, Jane,” said Polly, “we wish you to tell us why you have abjured society of late. There have been several teas lately where you were especially expected, which were remarkably desolate on account of your absence.”

At this Jane looked uncomfortable. Was Polly making fun of her?

Julia’s more serious tones reassured her.

“Yes, tell us, Jane. Ruth and I had the special honor the other evening of pouring chocolate at Professor Judson’s; his wife is some kind of a cousin of Uncle Robert’s. But why weren’t you there? You belong to the Philosophical Club.”

“Yes,” added Polly. “You would have enjoyed meeting some of your fellow sufferers from Harvard; there were several sedate youths among them, Jane, exactly your style. The paper was most improving; every social gathering in Cambridge has to be opened with a paper. Why weren’t you there?”

“Clothes,” replied Jane laconically, smoothing the folds of her black student gown.

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“Oh, I suppose that you do not care to go where you cannot wear that becoming cap and gown.

“Oh, Jane! oh, Jane! oh, Jane! oh, Jane!

Never did I think that you were so vain.”

Jane’s discomfort increased under Polly’s fusillade.

“I might be more comfortable in my cap and gown,” she retorted, “but they would be as unsuitable as my brown merino in some places, and that is the only best gown that I own.”

“I’m sure that it’s, it’s—”

“No,” said Jane gravely, as Julia stumbled; “no, it is neither beautiful nor becoming. But it has been very useful to me this winter. I wear it at our college functions with few qualms. It is only when I am invited outside that I am disinclined to wear it.”

“Isn’t that rather foolish? In these days woman can be perfectly independent about her clothes.” And Clarissa gave her curly head the toss of independent “Young America.”

“No one can live entirely to herself, even in the matter of clothes,” Jane explained. “If a hostess goes to the trouble and expense of providing a pleasant evening for her friends, her guests should wear festival attire. You are ‘asserting a false mood.’ Isn’t that what Shaftesbury would say?” And she turned to Polly, who of all present alone happened to be in her Philosophy class.

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“Yes,” said Clarissa, “I agree with you there. I never could understand why people in the East wear ugly clothes at times when they ought to be in their best bib and tucker. When I am invited anywhere—which isn’t often—I always try to wear something bright and cheerful.”

“The poster girl!” murmured Polly under her breath.

“I’d rather be called a poster girl than a mummy,” said Clarissa, “though you, Jane, in your brown merino would be more welcome at some functions than others I could name in purple and fine linen.”

“And I will wear my brown dress and never look too fine,” hummed Polly. “You remember that Jennie Wren married Cock Robin, who seems to have been a fairy prince among the birds. Every one knows that you are sure of a summa cum, Jane Townall, so that you ought to be able to wear what you like at any time.”

“I can’t speak for Jane,” interposed Julia, “but I am sure that in accepting invitations we ought to think of what the hostess would like. Don’t frown, Clarissa.”

“Oh, of course you are more in society than we are.”

“Nonsense, that isn’t fair,” replied Julia. “But college girls ought to place themselves above the criticisms of those who do not look below the surface.”

“One shouldn’t think too much of appearances. Who cares for narrow-minded people? We must take the world as we find it.”

“I suppose so,” sighed Clarissa. “If I had worn a conventional Boston costume, perhaps Mrs. Blair would not have gazed at me the other day as if I were some newly discovered species. Next year I’ll appear out in—”

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“Excuse me for interrupting,” cried Polly, “but let us do the proper thing by putting the matter to the vote.”

“Resolved, that no Radcliffe student shall accept an invitation to a festivity in Cambridge, or the adjoining suburb Boston, unless arrayed in a becoming light gown.”

“Low-necked?” questioned Clarissa.

“Cream-white?” asked Jane with unwonted levity.

“Color and style to suit the complexion of the wearer,” replied Polly. “Only no more dingy street gowns and hats at evening receptions.”

Though there wasn’t a dissenting voice, all knew that they were in earnest to only a limited extent. Yet the discussion showed that dress was a subject demanding some attention from even the busiest college girl. It could not be dismissed with a word. “If a hostess fears that I shall mortify her she needn’t invite me.” A busy girl naturally cannot give much time to shopping and dressmakers. Often she has little money to give to either. Yet by exercising care and taste, the girl with a small purse can often work wonders. The world of college undergraduates long since decided that there is no real connection between genius and dowdy dress, and that the wearer of a well-fitting gown need not lack mental ability.

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There was some point to this discussion because invitations to affairs outside of the immediate college now came occasionally to even the quietest of the Freshmen. One or two of their professors invited them to receptions. Some of the girls living at home in Cambridge or Boston entertained more or less. In addition there were various college affairs to which the outside world was invited, and those students who acted as hostesses or ushers were especially conspicuous.

Simplicity was the keynote of most of the entertainments offered outside of Radcliffe, as well as in the college itself. This was disappointing sometimes to the occasional girl, conscious of her father’s wealth, who had come to Cambridge expecting this wealth to count for as much in her college life as it had counted at her own home. Yet no girl at Radcliffe was ever so dull as not to discover speedily that plain living really set the standard in Cambridge, and that any departure from simplicity was really regarded as blamable rather than praiseworthy.

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XI
EFFORTS TO HELP

Julia, one spring afternoon, waiting in Edith’s library for Edith to return from down town, was in the midst of a conversation with Philip. His woe-begone face might have made her laugh had she not fortunately realized that one cannot long retain her influence over the person she has laughed at.

“If she hadn’t written me herself,” Philip was saying, “I couldn’t have believed it. It seems he’s a member of Parliament, too. Well, I may be something myself sometime. She might have waited. I can’t fix my mind on anything now, and I fancy mother and Edith will be disappointed when I can’t get my degree.”

“What have they to do with it?” cried Julia. “I’m sure that they have always encouraged you.”

“Why, if they hadn’t disapproved of Adelaide Cain, she might not have been so heartless, and then I should be in better spirits now.”

“You can’t imagine,” said Julia, “that Adelaide Cain threw you over just because your mother disapproved of her? She hasn’t the reputation of being so conscientious.”

“How hard girls are to one another!” exclaimed Philip in his most cynical tone.

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“Nonsense! nonsense!” and Julia laughed. “I’m positive that in three months you will rejoice that Miss Cain preferred some one else. But did you mean what you just said about your degree?”

“Well, my degree is certainly awfully shaky. There was a scrape I was in in my Freshman year. They kept me on probation, and they do not seem to think that I have lived it down. Then I have two exams. to make up, one I lost when I was sick and another I failed on, and some of my work this year is a little uncertain. I’ve a good mind to cut it all now and quit.”

“What! leave everything, without taking your degree? No, indeed, Philip, you mustn’t do it!”

“Well, I’ve only a few weeks, and—and—well, I suppose that I might as well make a full confession. I have a lot of debt hanging over me, and I cannot tell my father.”

“Oh, Philip!” Julia threw a great deal of feeling into her tone. This last trouble seemed much more serious than either of the other things of which Philip had spoken. She felt that it was to his advantage that Miss Cain had set him aside, and she knew that if he applied himself he could make up his deficiencies in his studies. But a matter of money—she hardly knew how to advise him.

“It’s three thousand dollars.”

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“Three thousand dollars! An enormous sum for an undergraduate to owe.” Although Philip had lately come of age, Julia knew that he had no money of his own. She knew, too, that although Mr. Blair was liberal to his children he had a strong dislike for debt. She wondered if he would come forward and pay this for Philip.

“It’s an old debt,” said Philip. “It was made last year. Part of it is money I really owe, but the greater part is on notes I endorsed for Farlong.”

Julia had heard of Farlong. He was a law student from a distance, who had made a great display for a year or two. Then the failure of his father—a rather notorious stockbroker—had brought his college career to a close.

“Yes,” continued Philip, “I was so foolish as to let Farlong invest a little money for me. Of course I lost it, and more, too, than I put in. Then Farlong lent me some money, and when the crash came I was considerably in his debt. I’ve been able to renew the notes, but now they have to be paid, and with interest the whole sum is three thousand dollars. So you can see that I have enough on my mind just at present.”

As he talked Julia realized that she could not help him.

“The very best thing,” she said, “is for you to go at once to your father. It’s a large sum, but for a year or two you can economize, and it will be worth a great deal to get this load off your mind.”

“I don’t know,” and Philip sighed heavily, at the same time closing with a snap the watch-case in which he carried the picture of Adelaide Cain.

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Except for the danger of offending Philip, Julia would have liked to laugh at his feeling for Adelaide Cain. Adelaide was a distant cousin of his, several years his senior, who had been engaged several times. She was fond of attention; and as her latest engagement had been broken off the past summer, she had let Philip dance attendance upon her while she was travelling with Mrs. Blair’s party in Europe. Philip had imagined that she really cared for him, and had written her many letters after his return. At last Miss Cain had announced her engagement to another. Philip felt greatly aggrieved by this news. His self-love had been injured. Yet, if he had been willing to admit it, his present discomfort was caused by his money loss rather than by the loss of the friendship of Adelaide Cain. But it relieved his feelings a little to complain of the unkindness of this fickle young lady.

“Now make a clean breast of it to your father,” cried Julia in parting. But Philip merely shrugged his shoulders.

June came in as a hot month, making harder the final examinations of the year. There was hardly a Radcliffe girl who did not go about with a wilted air, as if life had lost all its charm. The cool corners of Fay House were occupied by students, and the beauty of the tree-shaded streets and the flower-laden gardens was wasted on them.

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Julia, Ruth, and even the discreet Pamela herself were no better than their fellows in this matter of examinations. Pamela, indeed, was especially nervous in her dread of falling below “A” in something. With the hope of a scholarship before her, she felt that she could afford nothing less than perfection. Julia and Ruth, coaching each other in Latin and English, studied throughout long, fragrant evenings, when they would infinitely have preferred sitting idly on Mrs. Colton’s little piazza.

On her way from town one day as she stepped on the open car, Julia saw Philip upon the running-board. He carried his dress-suit case, and in a hurried glance Julia saw that he looked worn and tired.

“Why, what is it?” she asked, as he took a seat beside her.

“What is what?”

“Why, you have a very melancholy air.”

“I thought I told you that I had several things to worry me.”

“And I advised you to tell your father.”

“Well, I’ve told him. I’m going in town to tell him something else now, and also to bid my mother and Edith good-bye. They sail for Europe to-morrow.”

“To sail to-morrow? Why, how strange! They will miss your Class Day.”

“My Class Day!” Philip laughed sharply. “My Class Day! Why, I haven’t any Class Day. I haven’t any Class, for that matter.”

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Julia was almost overcome by what he had said. In the first place, she found it almost impossible to realize that Edith was starting for Europe without letting her know her plans—without bidding her good-bye. At least at the first moment it had been very hard to understand this; if Philip’s second statement should prove true, that he was to have no Class Day, it threw some light on Edith’s departure. The car thundered over Harvard Bridge; a fresh breeze blew from the river, and life seemed a little better worth living than it had a half-hour before. Julia looked down the river toward the city. Her eyes fixed themselves on the tower of the old gaol, and on the streets that ran up the hill, until at last they rested on the golden dome of the State House. The golden dome seemed to burn itself into her brain, and whenever again she thought of this interview with Philip it seemed to dance before her eyes.

“What do you mean, Philip, about your Class Day?”

“Why, just what I said. I’m going to throw it all up. I told you that if I couldn’t straighten things out I wouldn’t stay. Well, I’ve slipped up entirely on one of my examinations, and that has settled the question of my degree. My father is beside himself, he is so disappointed. He’s making a great fuss about that money, too. I suppose that he’ll pay it, but I’m pretty sure that he wouldn’t pay any Class Day bills, too. So that even if I could stay for my degree, I couldn’t have much fun Class Day. I’m going to cut it all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, I’m going to cut it all—Cambridge, College, everything.”

“But the Law School—you are coming back to the Law School?”

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“No, indeed, I’ve had enough of study.”

Had Philip looked closely at Julia he might have noticed an involuntary smile. It did not seem to Julia as if in the past few months Philip had been overworked.

“Yes,” he continued, “I’m going on a ranch, or something of that kind. Jim Devereux is out in Dakota, and he has always been asking me to come out. I’ll go for the summer and see what chance there is for a fellow out there.”

“But I can’t help thinking how disappointed your mother and Edith will be. I know that Edith has set her heart on your Class Day. Why, her dress is all ready. She wrote me about it the other day.”

“Well, she could wear it just the same if she weren’t going away. There are others in the Class, and she has had invitations. But my mother won’t stay. They’re going straight to London. Anyway, Edith isn’t really out yet, and next year will be time enough for her Class Day.”

Philip’s tone made Julia think of the boy who whistled to keep his courage up. They were near the Square.

“I hope I’ll see you soon,” she said, as Philip began to gather up his belongings preparatory to leaving the car.

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Philip paused for a moment, bending down to shake hands with her before jumping off. “I am not quite sure,” he said hesitatingly. “I should like to have a talk with you, but I am really going away at once.” Before she could ask him when, he had swung himself down and was hastening toward the Yard. He had murmured an explanation about an engagement, and Julia had taken this as an apology for his leaving her so abruptly. As she recalled the interview word by word, she wished that she might have had a good talk with Edith. The next day was so hot that Julia went down to Rockley for Sunday, and there, naturally enough, she found them all talking of Philip’s failure to get his degree. “It all comes,” said Mr. Barlow, “from letting a boy have his own way in everything. I suppose that Philip has never had an ungratified wish. When his father was in college students had to study. I know how it was, for we were in the same class. But now—why, study is merely incidental. They elect this or they elect that, and it is all a matter of whim.”

“So students were altogether perfect in your day, Uncle Robert,” said Julia a little mischievously. “Then it wasn’t you who told me of a whole class that was at least half expelled?”

“Rusticated, my dear, or suspended; not expelled,” responded Mr. Barlow with a smile. “Oh, I dare say that we were not exactly perfect, but then, you know boys will be boys.”

“Yes, but as I understand it, Philip hasn’t even been rusticated, and still less expelled. It’s only that he can’t get his degree this year.”

“Well, well,” said Mr. Barlow, “it seems to me that that is bad enough.”

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“Oh,” interposed Brenda, “I shouldn’t wonder if he’d get it next year. Philip always could get anything he wanted if he’d take the trouble.”

“It’s a pity that he hadn’t taken the trouble this year. Really, I sympathize with his father. He has spent much money on Philip, and here he sees him leave Cambridge with a kind of stigma, for that is what it amounts to. I doubt that that ever happened to a Blair before. They may never have been brilliant, but they’ve always had a respectable standing in college. I don’t wonder that Mr. Blair is annoyed.”

“But Edith,” cried Brenda, “just think of Edith! She told me when she came home last autumn that she was very tired of Europe, and here she is dragged off again at a few days’ notice, and she wanted so much to have a jolly Class Day. Even if Philip isn’t there she might manage to have a good time. She has as many invitations as I have, and there are Tom Hearst and Will Hardon and all the others whom she knows so well.”

“Remember, Brenda,” cried Mrs. Barlow warningly, “that you are going this year only by special favor. You are a year younger than you ought to be on your first Class Day.”

“I know it, I know it, mamma, but I shall enjoy it just as well as if I were a year older. Besides, I shall go next year, too,” and Brenda pirouetted several times around the piazza.

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Later in the evening, as Julia sat on the piazza looking out at sea, at the lamps revolving in the distant lighthouse and the moon rising from the water, her thoughts still lingered with Philip. The moon, at first a large crimson disk near the horizon, had been transformed into a smaller golden sphere nearer the zenith, and still Julia sat there wondering if Philip had left Cambridge, wondering if he would become a ranchman, wondering if he would think it worth while ever to come back for his degree.

Fay House, when Julia returned to it, had begun to take on its summer expression. The finals were over, and the entrance examinations had not begun. Very few girls were visible in the house, although there was a double set on the tennis ground and a group watching the game. But within there was an almost deathly stillness. The conversation room no longer re-echoed to undergraduate quips and jokes, and the little brass figures, appliquéed to the black wooden pillars of the mantle-piece as Polly had described them, gazed on deserted chairs. The magazines and periodicals were strewn untidily on the tables. Into this room Julia wandered this Monday afternoon. She fingered some of the magazines idly and then she turned toward the window. As she did so she gave a start, for there in a chair with her handkerchief over her face was a girl. Evidently she was asleep, for she did not stir as Julia drew near. The sight of the Vermont girl there—for it was Pamela—seemed to Julia like an echo of something that had happened. She remembered that it was in this very corner of this very room she had found Pamela looking so forlorn on the day of the first Idler reception. As she gazed at her now, Julia realized that in her absorption of the past few weeks, with a kind of unintentional selfishness, she had really hardly seen Pamela. Indeed, she had scarcely thought of her. Julia’s approach wakened Pamela, and as she pulled the handkerchief from her face, Julia noticed that she looked worn and thinner than usual.

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“How cool you look!” Pamela exclaimed, as Julia took her hand. Pamela herself wore a stiffly starched shirt waist of rather clumsy cut, a high linen collar, and a heavy woollen skirt. Julia, in an écru muslin finished with a ruffle at the wrist and a soft ribbon at the neck, appeared in contrast the picture of comfort.

“What are you going to do this summer, Pamela?” asked Julia suddenly. She wondered if Pamela might not be worrying about the future. As the latter seemed to hesitate over her reply, she added, “Why couldn’t you come home with me to dinner, and then ride somewhere with me on the electric cars, to Newton, or to Arlington, if that would suit you better?”

“Oh, I wish that I could!” cried Pamela. “But you know I am busy still at Miss Batson’s. Couldn’t you call for me after tea?”

“Yes, indeed. Will seven o’clock be too early?”

“Oh, I can be ready then, easily.”

Julia was prompt at the appointed hour, and before Pamela could interpose she was warmly greeted by Miss Batson and introduced to three of the boarders who were seated on the steps.

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As they reached the car, Julia, with her arm in Pamela’s, said rather brusquely, “You haven’t failed in your finals, have you?”

“Why, no! But why do you ask?” Pamela’s tone was one of extreme surprise.

“Oh, I wished to startle you into telling me what troubles you.”

“Perhaps I am foolish,” responded Pamela, “but I’ve been wondering whether it’s really worth while to go on. Perhaps I oughtn’t to come back next year.”

“I suppose you haven’t had a mark below ‘B.’”

“I’ve had only one ‘B.’”

“And everything else was an ‘A’?”

“Yes,” she replied, “but I am afraid that you think me very conceited to tell you.”

“Not when I asked you. Well, if the trouble isn’t marks, it must be money. I should think that you might tell me just what it is. You do not look as well as you did when you entered, and you were not exactly robust then.”

“I suppose it’s partly the hot weather,” responded Pamela, sighing. “Then, besides, I’m pretty tired of Miss Batson and her household. I’m glad that she is going to close her house this summer. Otherwise I might be tempted to stay on—to save expense. She’s going to take the first vacation she has had in years, and visit some relations in the West, and she has been able to rent her house for three months.”

“Then I suppose that you will go up to Vermont for the summer?”

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Pamela received this question in silence, and Julia saw that it had been ill-advised. Thus for several minutes they rode on without speaking. The cool air was refreshing; the electric lights here and there at the side of the road threw strange shadows from the trees. There was a certain pleasant weirdness in the scene.

Pamela was the first to speak. “I do not really wish to go up to Vermont. They think that I ought to teach. They think that it is foolish for me to continue at college when I might be earning. Besides, my aunt’s house is crowded now, and there isn’t a room that I could have. If I knew what I ought to do next year, I could tell better about this summer.”

“Do next year?” repeated Julia. “Why, you wouldn’t think of doing anything but come back to college—with your record.”

If Julia had noticed Pamela’s smile, she would have known that its wanness was not entirely the result of the flickering electric light. Her voice, however, betrayed her.

“It may not be wholly a matter of choice.”

“But you’ve applied for a scholarship?” Julia realized now that the question was a question of money.

“Yes, but I can’t know about it until the autumn. There are so few scholarships and so many applicants.”

“I suppose that we ought to turn our faces homeward. It’s getting late,” said Julia.

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Then as they waited by the side of the road for the car bound Cambridge-ward, Julia saw what she ought to do. During the ride she had been pondering, and had it been any one but Pamela she would have made an offer of direct help for the next college year. This would have meant so little to her, and so much to the Vermont girl. But there was something in Pamela—an independence of spirit in spite of her shrinking demeanor—that prevented her doing this. Yet now as from a clear sky she seemed to hear the echo of a speech that had actually fallen unheeded on her ears a week or two before. It was the lamentation of a friend of Mrs. Barlow’s who bewailed her young son’s deficiencies in Greek.

“It’s disgraceful that Teddy is so unwilling to study, and his father is determined to have him enter with Greek. If I had my way he’d give it up. Now I suppose that we shall have to have a tutor. It will be a nuisance to have an extra man in the house, but I suppose it can’t be helped. If it were anything but Greek I suppose that we might have a woman, but as it is, I suppose that we must make the best of it.”

As this conversation came back to her, Julia wondered that at the time she had not thought of Pamela. Possibly it was because the words had not been addressed to her directly that they had made so little impression. That very night she would write to Mrs. Hadwin, and if it was not too late, she would do her best to get the position for Pamela.

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“Pamela,” she whispered, after they had taken their seats in the returning car, “Pamela, I feel almost certain that I can find something for you to do this summer. If it isn’t the thing that I have in mind this minute it will be something similar. I can’t say more at present, but I wish that you would trust me and believe me entirely your friend.”

“Thank you, of course I trust you. You have been so kind ever since the very first day. You remember my fountain pen?”

Both girls laughed at the remembrance.

“Because I’ve been so despondent this evening you mustn’t think that I am always forlorn,” said Pamela, “only it is very hard sometimes for a girl to work out things all alone, and I really have no one to advise me.”

“Sometimes I feel very lonely, too,” said Julia; and as Pamela’s hand touched hers in a mute response, she felt that they were now really going to understand each other.

That very evening Julia wrote to Mrs. Hadwin, and so strong did she make her case that before the end of the week all the arrangements had been made, and Pamela was the engaged tutor for Teddy. Her term was to last three months from the last week in June, and Pamela was to accompany the family to the seashore. The change of air was in itself likely to be good for Pamela, and Julia congratulated herself on the sudden thought that had brought this piece of good luck to her friend.

“Yet if Pamela had not been able to show such a fine record for her work in the classics, any effort of mine might have been perfectly useless.”

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XII
HARVARD CLASS DAY

Had Jane Townall stayed in Cambridge until Commencement, Julia might have had more interest in the Radcliffe Class Day. But illness in her family had called Jane home as soon as her examinations ended.

“I am sorry not to get my degree from the hands of the President at Commencement, but I’m glad to escape the flurry of Class Day. I really could not afford the expense. I’m coming back, though, for my Ph.D. sometime. I’ll take that in person.”

“There’ll be no Radcliffe Ph.D. next year, nor yet the year after,” said Polly, shaking her head.

“Oh, it will be years before I return,” responded Jane cheerfully. “I must save the money first. By that time women will be receiving the Ph.D. from Harvard itself.”

“Doubt it!” cried Polly.

“Well, I’d come back cheerfully for the two years of graduate study, even without the Ph.D. at the end.”

“I’m not with you there,” interposed Clarissa, who had joined the group. “When I’ve earned a Ph.D. I’ll try to get it.”

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“Then you wouldn’t have been a contented Annex graduate, with a certificate instead of a degree, stating that you had received an education the equivalent of that for which the degree of A.B. is given at Harvard College.”

“Poor things!” replied Clarissa. “No, I couldn’t have borne all that they bore. I’m not that kind of a pioneer.”

Jane had secured a fine position in an Indiana High School for the coming year, and her regrets at leaving Cambridge were mingled with pleasure at the prospect opening before her of having a fair income.

Julia and Ruth returned to Cambridge the day before Harvard Class Day. As evening came they worried about a few overhanging clouds, yet when Friday came, the girls, looking through the trees shading their window, saw that it was a regular Class Day sky, blue, cloudless, while the air coming in over the casement was warm and sultry.

“Julia,” cried Ruth at breakfast, “how can you be so calm? I feel as if I might be Brenda, I am so excited. I’ve always longed for a real Harvard Class Day. I was only a little girl when my cousin Augustus was a Senior, and I remember how I stood about and watched his sisters dressing for his spread. Even a year in Cambridge hasn’t destroyed the glamour surrounding the day. Yesterday, when I saw that the seats had been put up around the Tree, I felt that the curtain was about to be lifted from the show. You are too calm, Julia, you really are, and you have such a lovely dress!”

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“It is no lovelier than yours, Ruth. Come to my room when you are dressed; I am very anxious to see it on you.”

The girls were now on their way upstairs, and when a half-hour later Ruth entered Julia’s room, each girl gave an exclamation of delight. A third person might have found it hard to tell which dress was the more beautiful, Julia’s white organdy, with its rows and rows of tiny lace-edged ruffles, or Ruth’s yellow muslin worn over a pale yellow slip. Ruth was a brunette with Irish blue eyes, and her yellow gown and leghorn hat with yellow crush roses was very becoming. Julia’s white hat had a pink lining, and was very becoming to her rather colorless type. “You look like a white rose just touched with pink,” exclaimed Ruth, in a rather unwonted vein of poetry.

The two girls walked in a leisurely fashion to Fay House, where, according to the arrangements made by Mrs. Barlow, Toby Gostar, Nora’s younger brother, met them to escort them to Memorial Hall. Here in the Chapel Brenda and Nora and Mrs. Barlow were waiting.

“We were so afraid that you would be late,” cried Brenda as they approached. “You know that our tickets won’t be good for anything after half-past ten. The doors are opened to the public then.”

“As it is now only quarter-past ten, Brenda, your anxiety was rather misplaced, but as we are now all here we can hasten to our seats.”

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Mrs. Barlow, gathering up her voluminous skirts, marshalled her quartette to the narrow wicket gate through which so many, many thousands of persons have entered Sanders Theatre, and up the broad stairs into the great amphitheatre. Toby stayed behind to take his chances with the ticketless throng, crowding around the outer door.

“It’s like a garden,” said Ruth, gazing about on the rows of seats rising tier above tier, filled for the most part with young women and girls, whose light gowns and flower-trimmed hats gave the place the aspect of a flower garden.

There were mothers there, of course, or an occasional father; but on the whole the great interior was given up to girls, who fanned themselves and listened to the orchestra, and wondered if it wasn’t almost time for the Class to appear. Very promptly at eleven o’clock the Class did appear, fresh from the service in Appleton Chapel and the breakfast at the President’s. The Marshals led the way, one of whom was Philip’s friend, Tom Hearst; and as the rest of the Seniors in cap and gown followed closely and took their places in the seats on the floor, every girl in the theatre tried to identify her own brother or cousin or friend.

“It does seem too bad about Philip,” and Nora leaned over toward Julia; “besides, if he hadn’t failed so, Edith would have been here. Just think of her near England at this very minute, when she ought to have been here.”

“I dare say that she is more comfortable at this very minute than we are. Only imagine how refreshing an ocean breeze would be blowing over our heads.”

“Oh, Julia, how terribly matter of fact you are!”

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Julia’s feelings, however, were deeper than her jesting words implied. In the group below, as she recognized one after another of Philip’s friends, she realized how much he was losing. There is only one Class Day for each undergraduate; and although he may make up scholastic deficiencies, and get his degree with some other class, if he loses his Class Day, something has gone that can never be made up to him.

So although Julia listened to the Oration with its review of the Class history and its promises for the future, although she gazed with admiration at the fluent Poet whose lofty lines were delivered in a rather feeble voice, although she laughed at the witticisms and local hits of the Ivy Oration (without always seeing the force of the joke), her thoughts sometimes were wandering far away. Indeed, it is to be feared that the last part of the Oration was lost upon her, for when the Class rose in a body to sing the Class Ode to the air of “Fair Harvard,” she was surprised to find that the first part of the Class Day programme was ended. Of course, like many others, Nora and Brenda and Julia and Ruth lingered to scan the scattering throng for familiar faces. Naturally, too, Tom and Will and other Seniors whom they knew came up to shake hands with them, and receive their congratulations on having reached this point in their career; and naturally, too, these same young men escorted Mrs. Barlow and her charges first to the “Pudding” spread (where nothing resembling pudding was to be had, except, perhaps, the ice called frozen pudding), and then from the “Pudding” to one or two private spreads, and then—why, then before they knew it it was four o’clock, and every one was wondering if it wasn’t almost time to go to the Tree. Where had the day gone?

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“Ah, here you are!” exclaimed a cheerful voice, as Nora and Julia stood on the lawn of Wadsworth House, a little tired, a little the worse for wear, holding their empty plates, and wondering how they had managed to lose sight of Mrs. Barlow and Brenda and Ruth.

“Oh, papa!” cried Nora, for the cheerful voice belonged to Dr. Gostar. “Oh, papa, I didn’t know that you were coming out. How delightful! Are you going to the Tree? But there, I suppose that you haven’t a ticket; they’re so very hard to get.”

“Ticket!” and there was genuine merriment in Dr. Gostar’s laugh. “Why, you are forgetting who I am. I’m a graduate, and Class Day belongs partly to the graduates. At least, the Tree part of it does.”

“Oh, then we’ll see you there. What fun!”

“You’ll hear me certainly. Really, I ought to be saving myself now for the cheering. But I met Mrs. Barlow just outside; she had to go with Brenda and Ruth to Matthews for a little while. Elmer Robson was with them; there was something in his room that he was anxious to show Brenda. Mrs. Barlow felt that she could go when I promised to take you under my wing. We are to meet in Stoughton, where Will Hardon has a room looking out on the Tree.”

“But I thought that his rooms were in Holworthy?”

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“So they are. But he thought that it would be pleasant for his guests to have a room to rest in before going to the Tree and near it. By the way, we have no time to spare,” looking at his watch. “If you are ready, young ladies, I shall be happy to escort you, although I’m rather surprised that you haven’t some younger cavalier.”

“Well, papa, we have had, but you see the Seniors have all gone off now to dress for the Tree, and even Toby, after he had gone with us to one or two spreads, seemed to grow restless. I suppose he thinks there’d be more fun with some of his classmates. There are a few undergraduates hanging about on the outskirts of things.”

“I hope that he hasn’t neglected you.”

“Oh, no, indeed”—Julia was the speaker—“oh, no indeed, he has been remarkably entertaining. He pointed out all kinds of amusing college personages, and cleared the way for us through several crowds, and saw that our plates were heaped with ices, and altogether has been very helpful.”

“He really has, papa,” added Nora. “You see the Seniors can pay little attention to any single person, they have so many to look after. It’s the greatest fun to see them trying to be equally attentive to half a dozen persons at once when all the time they’re dying to talk to some one person by herself. Even Will Hardon, who seldom is disturbed, was half beside himself. He hadn’t had a chance for a word with Ruth, and wherever he was to-day there were three tall, thin cousins of his from New York who wished to know about everything and to see everything, and who hardly left his side for a moment. I think that Ruth was disappointed, too.”

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“Why, Nora!” and Julia shook her head in disapproval. But Dr. Gostar was too much absorbed in the scenes in the Yard to notice this speech of Nora’s.

“Why, papa, you seem to see a great many people you know.”

“I certainly do, daughter; that is one of the charms of Class Day. Presently I may run upon some old classmate whom I have not seen for twenty-five years. He is here escorting his daughters; and although my head is gray, and his may be bald, we shall rush into each other’s arms and—”

“Why, who is he, papa?” cried Nora, without realizing that she was interrupting.

“Oh, I haven’t the least idea; the particular man does not matter. It will be some one with whom I can renew my youth. Why, if it wasn’t for Class Day some of us old fellows would forget that we had ever been young.”

“Why, papa, nobody considers you old. I heard Mrs. Everlie the other day call you a perfect boy.”

“I certainly feel like one to-day, escorting two fair damsels through the College Yard.”

“Oh, listen! listen!” cried Julia, as the sound of gruff huzzas came to them.

“They have begun to cheer the buildings; you know that that is the ceremony,—a pause before each old building, and a loud cheer for it,—the Seniors’ farewell to Harvard.”

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They had now almost reached Stoughton, pushing their way through the crowd. On the steps of University Hall and other buildings, rows of people were seated, who evidently were mere sight-seers, without any real connection with the Class. There were small boys and girls among them, and men and women in holiday dress, evidently sight-seers from the City. In the throng hurrying across the Yard there were now a good many undergraduates, and anxious chaperons trying to collect their charges, and pretty girls in delicate dresses hurrying toward the Tree enclosure.

From the door of Stoughton Dr. Gostar and his party hastened upstairs to the upper room which had been secured for them. It was a large, square, old-fashioned room, furnished rather more simply than those occupied by Philip and Will in Holworthy, and it was far plainer than the elegant apartments of Tom Hearst in Claverly.

As the others had not yet arrived, Julia and Nora tiptoed around, looking at the curious gray and blue steins on the mantle-piece, the fencing foils and masks on the wall, the two or three old colored prints of stage coach and sporting scenes.

“Hm, hm,” cried Nora, “whoever he is, the classics do not occupy all his time. Just look at those membership certificates; he seems to belong to every athletic society in the college. And his books, where are his books?”

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“Why, here,” cried Julia, “on this shelf behind the door. There are a whole dozen of them;” and Nora, stepping forward, read off their titles, which proved, by the way, to be the titles almost entirely of college text-books.

“But, my dear, you mustn’t expect them all to be book worms; it takes every kind of individual to make up a college, just as in the outside world,” remonstrated Dr. Gostar in answer to Nora’s gibes at the non-literary taste of the owner of this room.

Before more could be said, Mrs. Barlow and Ruth and Brenda appeared, attended by Toby and another undergraduate, who was introduced as the owner of the room. The latter was a mild-mannered, young-looking Junior, not at all the athletic individual—at least in appearance—whom the girls had pictured from the trophies and other adornments of the room.

“There, Mrs. Barlow, I hand my charges over to you,” and Dr. Gostar hurried off to join the Alumni around the Tree. In a few minutes Mrs. Barlow and the others followed, leaving the room in Stoughton to some other guests of Will’s, who were to watch the Tree exercises from the windows.

Already the throng in the Yard was crowding toward the Tree enclosure, and the ticket holders had hard work to thread their way among curious by-standers. Within the enclosure the sun beat down hotly, except in one corner where the brick walls of the neighboring buildings cast a shade. Following the boys, Mrs. Barlow and the girls scrambled up over the rough wooden benches,—“just like circus seats,” said Nora,—and at last, a little out of breath, and with many apologies to those whom they disturbed in their progress, they reached their own places.

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Now, although Brenda and her friends did not then realize it, these Tree exercises were to have a peculiar interest from being almost the last under the walls of Stoughton. The space was too limited for the thousands who felt that they had a right to be spectators, and already plans were making for a change of place and a somewhat different performance.

As the Alumni came in, taking position some distance from the Tree, the girls caught sight of Dr. Gostar and two or three sedate Bostonians of his age seating themselves on the grass, and looking as cheerful and merry as the youngest undergraduate there. The Alumni had marched within the enclosure with a band of music at the head, and then had followed the Freshmen, with the Sophomores second and the Juniors last. Each formed a separate circle around the Tree, and when the signal was given all rose and cheered lustily for every college official from the President to John the Orangeman. The Chief Marshal, a tall, handsome fellow, led the cheering, and at last at a given signal the students in each circle, joining hands, whirled at a mad rate around the Tree. When they had sung the Class Ode, the Marshal threw his hat against the Tree, and then the wild scramble for the flowers began. It was difficult for those who knew them best to recognize their especial Seniors in the shocking bad clothes and old hats that they wore. But many a mother, when she discovered her boy, was sure that he must come away with broken limbs, if he escaped alive from the wild scrimmage. They pommeled one another, formed themselves into human ladders, flung one another off from the sides of the Tree. Yet strange to say, no one received serious injury, and the few who reached the glowing wreath were loudly cheered, even by those who thought the whole affair rather brutal. Those who stripped the wreath from the Tree flung the fragments down among their classmates, and in the end nearly every one had a flower or two as a memento. As Tom and Will pressed through the crowd with fairly large bouquets—at least they could be seen by Brenda and her friends—the girls wondered if any of the trophies should pass to them. While they stood for a moment waiting a chance to pass down to the Yard, Mrs. Barlow pointed out one distinguished person after another among the spectators at the Tree, including the British Minister, the Secretary of the Navy, the Governor of New York, and innumerable literary and professional men of note. Many of them undoubtedly were there as relatives of Seniors, and some probably found it a distinction to be the father of a boy who was the idol of his class for this thing or that,—athletics and social graces sometimes ranking ahead of scholarship.

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When Will and Tom reached Mrs. Barlow’s group their flowers were rather impartially distributed among the four, and the boys hurried on to array themselves in proper Senior garb. They all met again at the Beck spread, and from that they went to one or two smaller teas, sitting in windows that overlooked the quadrangle until the Yard had been illuminated.

“Fairyland only faintly describes it,” said Julia, looking at the wonderful labyrinth of lanterns and colored lights shining above the crowds in gay attire threading the paths, or seated on the grass.

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Julia was loath to leave the scene even for a glimpse of the dancers in Memorial and the Gymnasium. When an opportunity therefore came for her to go back to the rooms in Holworthy under Toby’s protection, she was glad enough to go. She was a little tired now, and did not sit in the window, and when Toby seemed restless, she advised him to go back to Memorial, as she would be perfectly comfortable in the easy-chair that he had drawn up for her. She added that she would not be at all lonely.

Hardly had Toby left her when a familiar voice fell on her ear.

“Toby told me that you were in here, Julia, but where are you?”

Julia rose from the easy-chair, the deep back of which hid her from view.

“Why, Philip! How in the world do you happen to be here? I thought—”

“No, I haven’t actually left this part of the world. I’ve been down to the shore for a day or two getting my things together. I’m off to-night by the midnight train. But I couldn’t resist a glance at Class Day. Besides,” a trifle less defiantly, “I thought that I might see you, Julia.”

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“Oh, yes,” replied Julia, “we’re all here, Ruth and Brenda and Nora; they’ll be coming back from Memorial after a while.”

“Oh, I’ll be out of the way before that. I made Toby swear not to say a word about me. No, I didn’t expect really to see any one, though I hoped that I might run across you.”

“I’m awfully sorry that things have gone badly with you, but next year—”

“No, I’m not coming back next year, nor am I going to cry about spilled milk. What’s the good? Nobody really cares what becomes of a fellow. Of course a family is mortified when he doesn’t get his degree, and I’ve had it heavy enough from my father for the money he’s had to put up for me. But you are a sensible girl, Julia, and I’ve wanted to tell you that in many ways you’ve done me a lot of good. Sometime, perhaps, I may show you that I’ve profited by some of your advice.”

“I’ve never given you any real advice.”

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“Indeed you have. Of course I’ve had it from other people, too. But you’ve said some things that really have made an impression. But there, what’s the use of talking? Sometime you’ll see that I’m not as black as I’m painted. So now I must be off, for I’ve some things to attend to in the Square, and I don’t want the others to find me here. There’d be such a beastly lot of explaining,” and so with a sudden farewell, Philip hurried out of the room. Julia, looking from the window, followed him for a moment until he was lost in the crowd. At this moment the Glee Club, stationed on the green, sang “Fair Harvard,” and Julia wondered if the pathetic music struck Philip’s ears with the sadness with which it fell on hers.

Not long after this Mrs. Barlow and the girls appeared. The latter were by no means ready to go home, tired though they were after their long day. But Mrs. Barlow was firm; and in spite of the protests of Tom and Will and one or two others, they left the Yard before half-past ten.

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XIII
VARIOUS AMBITIONS

The summer passed quickly away, as vacations have a fashion of doing, even when one is young, and Julia and Ruth and Polly and Clarissa and Lois and all the other college friends met again in October, well and happy. Polly had been at Atlantic City, Clarissa had joined her family at the White Mountains, Pamela had been on the South Shore with her pupil, Nora had spent the summer in Maine. Lois alone of this group of friends had had practically no change of scene; she had stayed in Newton all summer, and yet she returned to college looking as bright as any of the others. Julia’s summer does not form properly a part of her Radcliffe days, and yet it is only fair to say that Julia’s summer had been somewhat different from what might have been prophesied in June. The first weeks had been spent in attendance on her Aunt Anna, who had fallen ill with a slow fever in the early spring. When she was better the doctor had ordered a complete change of air, with the result that Mr. and Mrs. Barlow and the two girls had made a tour of the British Provinces. Coming back to college from so many points of the compass, the Sophomores all had naturally much to tell. They registered themselves promptly on the first Thursday of the term; they chose their electives and changed their minds as often as the authorities would permit. They studied the notices on the bulletin board and the schedule of recitations, and advised one another in tones much more confident than a year ago. They did their part at the Freshman reception to make the incoming class feel perfectly at home, and they began to develop a class spirit. Now “class spirit” is something which had only just begun to develop at Radcliffe, and indeed at this time some of the upper class girls, absorbed in their work, were disinclined to believe that it had an existence. Different things were contributing to this class feeling. One was the increasing interest in athletics. Each class had its basket ball team and its own athletes, or gymnasts as perhaps we ought to say, in whose triumphs it took a genuine pride. Clarissa had come to the front as one of the best athletes of her class, and the Sophomores with her help expected to lead in the spring meet. Julia, too, found herself suddenly conspicuous from a very simple thing, or at least it seemed simple to her. She had always had some talent for musical composition, and had studied Composition before entering Radcliffe. But the course in Harmony under the distinguished head of the Music Department had been a revelation to her, and she had begun to venture on little flights of her own. One of her songs, a setting of William Watson’s, “Tell me not now,” Polly had picked up as it lay in manuscript on her desk. Now Polly had a sweet, bird-like voice, and she rushed to the piano and trilled off:

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“Tell me not now, if love for love

Thou canst return,

Now while around us and above

Day’s flambeaux burn.

Not in clear noon, with speech as clear,

Thy heart avow,

For every gossip wind to hear;

Tell me not now.”

Julia herself, as she listened, found her own music more interesting than she had imagined it. Polly, when she had finished, turned around with an amused expression:

“Well, well, I am perfectly surprised that you are so sentimental, Julia Bourne.”

“Oh, nonsense!” responded Julia, “but you sing it like an angel.”

“Yes,” said Polly, “this time I’ll accept the compliment without protest, for with your leave (or without it) I’m going to sing this at the next Idler. I’ve been asked to sing something, and I’ll take care to let every one know that you are the composer of this sentimental ode. You! the stern person who used to frown on me last spring when I wanted to go to Riverside on canoe expeditions that meant a solitude à deux. Ah, Julia, this song shows that you are human like the rest of us;” and Polly held high above her head the manuscript that Julia tried to seize.

Thus Julia made her first appearance before her fellow-students as a composer, for Polly sang “Tell me not now” with great effect that Friday afternoon; and Julia, who hitherto had had comparatively few acquaintances outside of her special set, now found herself an object of interest to the whole club.

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“The next thing,” said Ruth, with genuine pride in Julia’s triumph, “the next thing we’ll have you composing an operetta.”

“Nonsense!” cried Julia. “An operetta! I couldn’t do it.”

“Why not? Three or four operettas have been composed and given by Radcliffe girls with great success. Why, I came out with my mother the year ‘A Copper Complication’ was given, and I never saw anything more entertaining in my life. What one girl can accomplish another can, I mean if she has the same kind of talent. Why, there have been several Radcliffe operettas—‘Princess Perfection,’ ‘A Copper Complication.’”

The urgings of Polly and Ruth, however, might not have led Julia to take up the work had not the Emmanuel Society needed funds. It had committed itself to assist in maintaining a reading-room at the North End for working girls, and its expenses had been heavier than the first estimates. In no way could money be so readily raised as through an operetta, and as Julia was especially interested in this Society, she at last consented to see what she could do.

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“For any one with talent like yours it isn’t so very hard,” said Polly persuasively. “Ruth and I will help you with the book, and then you must have some good soprano solos—for me—and some manly contralto solos, probably for Clarissa, if we can only get her to take them; and then there must be a soubrette song or two—we’ll find the soubrette, and there must be a man’s funny part, like Charles River, the ‘winter man’ in ‘A Copper Complication,’” and Polly spun round the room, singing:

“Now since men are always busy in this lovely summer time,

I get my little innings when I can,

As I wanted to offset a bit the summer girl’s éclat,

I call myself a winter man.

I drive out, I dine out at functions divine,

At parties I dance with the belle of the ball.

It is in the winter I have my good time.”

“Oh, no indeed!” interrupted Ruth. “Julia’s opera will have no frivolous Charles River. Her hero, I’m sure, will be a most serious person with high purpose.”

“And a low voice, that is, low for an alto,” cried the irrepressible Polly.

“There,” said Julia, smiling, “as my part is to be so small, I need not have hesitated about undertaking it. You are arranging for the words and the speakers, and the music is only—”

“Now, Julia, of course the music’s the thing, the chief thing, but there’s a certain type of song that’s taking, and we have to think what will best suit our prima donnas, when once we have secured them. You have no idea how shy they are. I shouldn’t care to be the business manager of this affair,” and Polly flung herself on the couch, while the others laughed at her affected melancholy.

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Yet in spite of this badinage, the girls of Julia’s group, as well as some others with special literary or dramatic talent, began to work for the success of the operetta. The music was left entirely to Julia; but the libretto, or “book” as they all preferred to call it, was to be a composite production. The sentimental lyrics were nearly all assigned to Ruth; the comic words for the most part grew. Girls are more considerate than boys. Their jokes are seldom “grinds” on the professors, and they are even fairly tender toward the various branches of a college curriculum. The gibes, therefore, of Radcliffe plays were more apt to be directed toward local faults, such as muddy sidewalks and dusty streets.

Yet after all, the operetta was entirely secondary to regular college work. Hardly a girl in Julia’s class sought the name of “grind,” and few deserved it. The absence of the dormitory system, the very fact that many Radcliffe students reside with their parents while attending college, makes for a normal life in which home interests and society have their place as well as study. This is as it should be, and is not to be criticised unless a girl assumes too many social duties in addition to her college obligations.

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The autumn calendar was marked by several events of special significance to the Sophomores. Not the least of these was the class election, in which Julia and Ruth took more part than in that of the preceding year. There happened to be in their class about twenty girls from a large preparatory school,—a public High School,—and these girls had been a power at the Freshman elections. Indeed, so certain was their ticket to be elected that the rest of the class had put up few candidates. By this second autumn, however, the situation had changed somewhat. Girls like Julia and Ruth, who had entered with none of the advantages of a backing of comrades, were now pretty well known. The Freshman Class President proved unpopular, and had shown so little special ability that not even her personal friends favored her re-election. Several were anxious to have Clarissa a candidate, and the friends of Annabel Harmon intended to put her up. Somewhat to Julia’s surprise she found Ruth favoring Annabel. The latter had been a Special, until late in the year she had become a Freshman. Annabel was a pleasing girl, able to talk eloquently on any subject,—so eloquently that those who looked beneath the surface sometimes doubted her knowledge of the things she talked the most about. Julia, reproaching herself for unfairness, disliked having Ruth so intimate with Annabel.

Julia championed Clarissa as a candidate, because she saw that the Western girl was a born leader, and because she admired her frank, open nature.

“I object to Clarissa,” Ruth had said, “because she makes so many foolish jokes. She doesn’t seem to me to represent the class properly. Now, Annabel is always dignified, and college girls are so criticised that one who is conspicuous ought to be conventional.”

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Julia perceived that Ruth was already under Annabel’s influence. She was a year or two older than the average Freshman. This was not due to lack of ability, but to her having decided rather late on a college course. She had entered at the beginning of February—just after the mid-years in the winter before Ruth and Julia entered Radcliffe. She was rather proud of having become a regular Sophomore: and indeed for a girl of Annabel’s rather indolent disposition, this was something to be proud of. Only a girl of her egotism would have aspired so early in her career to become Class President. Julia felt almost positive that Annabel could not succeed, but Annabel herself knew better. She had begun to work for the office the preceding year. What had been the meaning of the little luncheons that she had given from time to time, to which she had bidden not only her intimates, but those girls most likely to be of use to her? As she was not a Freshman then, they may not have suspected her motives; but the little luncheons, and the lending of valuable books, and the flattering letters written at just the right time, and, above all, a manner which said to each one to whom she was talking, “You really are the cleverest girl in the class, and I wish that other people had the good sense to find it out,”—all these things had done their work; and when the ballots were counted, Miss Harmon was President, and Clarissa Herter had no office. Ruth had been the only candidate for Secretary, and the office of Vice-President had gone to a Latin School girl. It couldn’t be said that there was much feeling over the election, or anything approaching dissension. Yet two or three who, like Julia, were dissatisfied felt that Annabel did not deserve so marked an honor. The sharper-sighted had seen too much of her wire pulling. Nevertheless, a little later when the Sophomores had their class luncheon, even those who did not especially like her had to admit that Annabel made a charming presiding officer, and as toast mistress (though the toasts were drunk only in cold water) she was, as the newspapers might have said, “particularly felicitous.”

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Soon after the class luncheon the Sophomores gave the Freshmen a dance in the Auditorium. Although girls danced with girls and no masculine person was present (except the youth who assisted in moving the furniture), all said that they had enjoyed it as much as if it had been a co-educational affair (this was Clarissa’s general term for the occasional affairs in which Harvard and Radcliffe students mingled). Even Pamela was seen in some of the square dances, with a pretty little Freshman. The principles of the little Freshman as well as her ignorance of waltzing prevented her dancing anything but the lancers and Portland fancy. So while the others were whirling in the waltz, or leaping through some of the more modern dances, Pamela and the Freshman, in Clarissa’s words, “carried on a desperate flirtation.”

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Prosperity had agreed with Pamela; she looked stronger, and her cheeks had more color than formerly. Although she still lived at Miss Batson’s, and although the loud colors of the furniture and the loud manners of the boarders still grated on her nerves, she found the work that she had to do less burdensome than in her Freshman year. The money earned by her summer of tutoring sufficed to pay more than half the tuition fee of her Sophomore year; and to keep her young pupil up to the mark, she had been engaged to go to him twice a week during the school year. Thus all her tuition fees were more than provided for. Although she had not secured the scholarship on account of the number of competitors, an allowance had been made her by the Students’ Aid Society. She could thus see that she could make both ends meet for the year, and as to the future, she felt sure that she could provide for that when the time came. Pamela, though always independent and persevering, since coming to Cambridge had acquired a hopefulness formerly unknown. To this extent, if in no other way, she had felt the broadening influence of Radcliffe,—or shall we say of the great University under whose shadow lies the woman’s college?

At the Open Idler, Pamela wore a pretty pale pink gown of soft veiling, simply made, but extremely becoming. Julia found it hard to get Pamela to accept this simple gift. She had thought at first of a subterfuge, of pretending that the gown had been made for her, and that because of the dressmaker’s mistake she had had to discard it. But on second thought she decided that frankness was the best. When she found that Pamela had decided not to go to the Idler because she had no suitable gown, she brought forward the one that she had had made.

“How pretty it is! What an exquisite color, and so simple!”

“Yes,” Julia had responded, “and it is for you! I had it made because I knew that you couldn’t possibly attend to anything so frivolous, with all that you have to do this year. If you do not wear it, it shall hang in my closet until the moths eat it. Come try it on!”

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So almost before she realized what she was doing, Pamela had arrayed herself in the pretty, soft, clinging gown, and as she looked in the long mirror she hardly recognized herself. “If I could pay for it,” she murmured, “if you would let me.”

“Why, yes,” responded Julia, “certainly, in five years or twenty years, whenever you can do it as well as not, I shall be happy to let you pay for it. Of course I would rather make it a present. But if you prefer, I will accept payment for it any time after five years—not before. That will be so much clear gain for me. For if you should not take the gown it would hang in my closet until the moths had made way with it.”

“Oh, Julia, what nonsense!” And then Pamela, though seldom voluble, expressed her gratitude very warmly. Hoping to pay for it in the future, she was very glad to accept the gown; and Julia, observing Pamela so perfectly at ease,—such wonders will good clothes work,—felt more than repaid for her forethought.

This Open Idler of their Sophomore year happened to be the first one for Julia and Ruth. They had not sent many cards of invitation, but a few of their friends came out from Boston, and pushed their way through crowds of gaily gowned girls to the large room where the Sophomores received their friends. Among these were Nora and her mother.

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“I’m not sure, Julia, that it is safe to bring Nora here. Already she has begun to talk about coming to college, and what I have seen here to-night makes college life seem too attractive.”

“But why ‘too attractive’?”

“Ah, Julia, I am one of those old-fashioned persons who cannot quite see the wisdom of a college education for girls. Of course I would not wish Nora to consider her education finished simply because she has left school. Indeed, I have had her continue several of her studies; but she owes something to society, and college cuts a girl off so from social life.”

“But we have social life here—and masculine society, too,” she concluded with a smile.

“Yes, indeed,” responded Mrs. Gostar, glancing around the room, in which Harvard students were almost as numerous as Radcliffe girls. Standing in corners, seated on divans, walking toward the refreshment tables, were youths and maidens enjoying one another’s society to the same extent as if in a crowded ball-room. The walls were bright with orange and white festoons,—the class colors. A touch of crimson twined across the end of the room where the year of the class was inscribed showed the connection with Harvard. Rugs on the floor, tall palms in the corners, great vases of primroses, and bands of yellow ribbon on the refreshment tables, had transformed the plain recitation room into a bower of beauty. Each class had a room to itself, similarly decorated, and there was one for the Specials. Downstairs the officers of the Idler, the Dean of the college, and the Secretary received the guests, who were introduced individually by ushers. There was a table with refreshments in the parlor; there were refreshments and an orchestra in the Auditorium; there were, as Polly said, “tête-à-têtes unlimited” in the Library and in the recitation rooms; and any one whose knowledge of Radcliffe was obtained first through an “Open Idler” would have pronounced it the most frivolous of institutions.

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Tom Hearst, now in the Law School, and one or two other friends of Philip’s accepted the invitations sent them by Ruth and Julia. The latter would have liked to ask some questions about Philip, for not a word had come to her directly since that Class Day evening. He was in her thoughts constantly, but she would not say a word.

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XIV
IN DISGUISE

“Learned Sophomores! full of information,

‘Yes, we know it all,’ your manner seems to say.

Learned Sophomores! In each generation,

Sophomores will be Sophomores in the same old way.”

Thus under her breath Clarissa, from her seat in the Auditorium, hummed a strain from a Radcliffe song. Girls were gathering in the room to witness an Idler play.

“Sometime,” said Clarissa, “I’ll be a Senior, and have a front seat. But if you can’t have the first, the fifth row isn’t so very bad.”

While waiting for the play to begin, the girls in Clarissa’s neighborhood chatted gaily. The play had attracted many of the Alumnæ, because it was the work of a Radcliffe girl who had been out of college a year or two. They waited a little impatiently, for the Auditorium was really overcrowded, with girls sitting on the steps and leaning on the ledges of the windows leading into the conversation room.

“Oh, I do wish that they would begin!”

“Why can’t girls ever do anything on time? It is so uncomfortable sitting in this stuffy room!”

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These and other murmurs came from various parts of the Auditorium. It was certainly much past the hour, and yet the curtain did not rise. At last the President came forward. “I must ask your indulgence,” she said, as she stood in front of the curtain. “Something has gone wrong with the curtain, we cannot raise it; but while we are waiting for a carpenter, Miss Harmon has kindly consented to read.” At this there was much applause, for Annabel had a well-trained voice, and sufficient self-confidence to make whatever she did very effective. Accordingly, she came forward attired in a white muslin gown, pale blue sash, and a leghorn hat lined with blue. She was to wear the costume in the play, and no one could deny that it was most becoming. Annabel read in a plaintive tone. She read old ballads and modern love songs, two of each, and the audience applauded most heartily. Then she tried a bolder flight, a dramatic monologue, and still her hearers were enthusiastic. She bowed her thanks, smiled, and then a movement of the curtain was seen. Annabel stood there unconscious of anything but the audience before her. There was a vigorous clapping of hands from a distant corner.

“Why, that sounds like a man, doesn’t it?” said a girl behind Julia, leaning over toward her. Just then a huge bunch of carnations fell at Annabel’s feet with a heavy thud, as if thrown by some one used to handling missiles. Again Annabel smiled and courtesied, and again the audience applauded, with one pair of hands sounding louder than the rest.

Clarissa looked at her watch, and closed the cover with a snap.

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“It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have the play begin; we didn’t come to a reading.”

The Idler President again appeared in front of the curtain and said something to Annabel. The latter, smiling pleasantly, opened a book. The curtain rose behind her, with the stage set for the play; but she began to read again, slowly and with great expression, while in the background the heads of various girls were seen peering from behind the scenes, evidently impatient for Annabel to stop.

Some of the audience, with a sense of the ridiculous, began to laugh, but Annabel was unconscious of everything but the applause. She stood as if waiting an encore.

“Is it a wonder,” whispered Julia to Clarissa, “that she got the Class Presidency? I believe that she hypnotizes people.”

“Ah, she reads like—like—a bird,” said Clarissa magnanimously.

“You couldn’t honestly say ‘like an angel,’” said Julia, and Clarissa shook her head.

How long this unpremeditated performance might have continued no one can say. Before Annabel could recite again the President came forward, announcing firmly that the play was to begin. On Annabel’s face as she withdrew there was a decidedly aggrieved expression. Nevertheless, when she appeared in the play she looked as cheerful as her wont, and said her lines in a melodious voice. Ruth was a middle-aged Englishwoman, with a becoming lace cap. The girl who played a man’s part wore high boots and a long drab coat, the skirts of which came below the tops of her boots.

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The setting was good, the dialogue bright, and the audience at last dispersed with the feeling that the whole performance had been a great success.

“Who was that tall girl who passed us?” asked Julia, when the play was over.

“I am sure I do not know, at least I did not notice her.”

“I always feel,” Julia continued, “as if all the Alumnæ are acquainted. But I can see that it would be hard for them all to know one another. The girl that I speak of was tall and rather awkward, and she pushed her way through the crowd without speaking to a soul.”

“Oh, she may have been a friend of some one in the play. Each was allowed to invite a guest from outside. Somebody told me that Annabel Harmon thought that they might have been permitted to ask men.”

“Yes, because she thought that she would look particularly fetching. For a sensible girl, she is certainly almost as vain as they make them.”

“What is the objection to men spectators? The costumes are harmless enough, compared with what they were in my day,” said the graduate.

“Only that it’s against the rule,” replied a Junior. “But in your day the girls who played men’s parts used to wear real clothes, didn’t they?”

“Yes, real clothes,” and all laughed at the undergraduate’s slip.

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“Yes, men’s real clothes,” the graduate added, “borrowed usually from some brother or cousin at the University. Really, some girls made up wonderfully like Harvard men.”

“I should like to have seen them. I hate our present stage dress for men; it is neither ancient nor modern.”

“Yet it’s very proper!” interposed Clarissa sarcastically. She had just joined the group.

“But why was manly attire given up? Since only girls saw the plays, it couldn’t have done any great harm.”

“Oh, it was a man who spoiled it all, you know; they deserve their reputation of marplots. I can’t vouch for the story, but they say that a Senior who came once to an Open Idler thought it necessary to express his gratification to some one in authority.”

“No one could find fault with that.”

“No, but he was awkward. ‘I’m delighted to be here,’ he said, ‘for I’ve often hoped to visit Radcliffe. My clothes have been here many times at the Idler dramatics, but this is the first opportunity that I have had for coming myself.’”

“What a stupid creature!”

“Well, it seems he had a sister in Radcliffe who was in the habit of borrowing his clothes. He had a rather small and neat figure, and a large wardrobe, so that he could be drawn upon for almost any kind of dress. The rule, however, was made immediately after this speech of his that men’s costumes were not to be worn at our performances, and great was the lamentation.”

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“It isn’t as bad as it used to be,” said another; “we can wear a kind of man’s dress now, provided that the coat has a skirt effect. It isn’t exactly an up-to-date costume, but it is fairly picturesque.”

“And to think,” interposed Clarissa, in a tragic tone, “that at the Pudding plays, or indeed at the Cercle Française, or anything else at Harvard, the boys can put on ballet costumes or any dress that a woman might or mightn’t wear.”

“There’s no equality of rights, even in so frivolous a thing as theatricals,” cried one of the girls in mock sorrow. “Why, Polly, why are you so late? You’ve missed some fun.”

“I’m sorry, but I had to go to the City this afternoon. I suppose the play was fun. But I’ve just seen something quite as funny,” and Polly began to smile at the remembrance.

“Oh, tell us, Polly, for if there is anything funny to be seen, you are sure to see it.”

“Well, I met a girl at the head of Garden Street smoking a big meerschaum pipe.”

“That isn’t funny, it’s pathetic!”

“She must have been ashamed, for when she saw me she tried to put the pipe in her pocket.”

“How ridiculous!”

“Then she couldn’t find the pocket, and so she started to put the pipe back in her mouth. It was clear that either she wasn’t used to pipes—or to dresses.”

“Why, Polly!”

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“So I asked Frank Everton, who was with me—no, he hadn’t been in town with me, I only met him in the Square—I asked him to follow her into the college grounds. She crossed the street at a trot when she saw us coming, and it seemed to me that she was making for Weld Hall.”

All the girls in the group were now thoroughly interested.

“Consequently I stood at the corner of Appian Way until Frank came back with his report, and—”

Here Polly paused to note the effect of her words.

“Well, well, what was it?” asked the impatient listeners.

“Well, it was Loring Bradshaw. Frank followed him to his room, where he tore off his skirts. He had forgotten that he was masquerading as a woman when he lit his pipe. You see it was in the pocket of the waistcoat which he wore beneath his cape. I had recognized him almost immediately; you know he has a funny little scar under his eye, and then that manly stride! Even in Cambridge you wouldn’t see a girl with a gait like that.”

“But why was he parading in woman’s clothes? Was it a college bet?”

“Oh, I haven’t heard the whole story yet. Frank came back in a hurry because he had left me standing there.”

“What kind of a hat did he wear?” asked Julia with interest. “Was it large and drooping, with yellow roses?”

“The very hat. But I never knew you to take so much interest in a mere hat!”

“And was the cape a black one, with a chenille collar?”

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“Yes, I think so.”

“Then he was here at the play. I wondered who she was. But why in the world did he do it?”

One afternoon soon after this, as Polly and Ruth loitered in the hall they noticed a young man entering the Secretary’s office.

“He’ll find no one there,” said Polly, “for I’ve just been in myself.”

Stepping out of the office door, the visitor happened to see Annabel Harmon crossing his path, and he stopped her, apparently to ask a question.

“I wonder who he is,” said Polly. “Annabel will think herself in luck if he asks her to show him the building. She loves to act as guide, philosopher, and friend to strangers.”

Apparently some such duty had fallen on Annabel, for she and the stranger ascended the stairs toward the Library.

“There,” cried Polly, “I don’t mind Annabel’s being the chief usher at all our social functions, and presenting herself everywhere as the typical Radcliffe girl. But the rest of us know something about the building and its contents—including the students. Why didn’t that youth ask us to show him over the building? In the Secretary’s absence, Annabel will be able to say whatever comes into her head.”

“Aren’t you a little unfair?”

“Perhaps, but I’ll run upstairs. Annabel might not give us a perfectly impartial account. Won’t you come?”

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“No, thank you,” replied Ruth, “I was on the point of going home.” So Ruth went home, and Polly mischievously hastened up to the Library. She found Annabel and the stranger looking apparently for some book.

“Oh, Polly,” cried Annabel, “couldn’t you find the Librarian? Mr. Radcliffe, excuse me. Mr. Radcliffe, let me introduce you to Miss Porson.” Polly started at the name, while acknowledging the introduction, and Annabel continued: “Mr. Radcliffe is deeply interested in our college on account of the name. You see he is descended from the same family as our foundress, and he thinks that it would be most interesting to establish some memorial of the family here. Didn’t I understand you to say that you thought of giving a collection of books, or something of that kind?”

Mr. Radcliffe modestly bowed his assent, for Polly broke in before he had time to reply in words. “I shouldn’t exactly call Anne Radcliffe our foundress.”

“Oh, well,” and Annabel’s smile was sweeter than ever, “the college certainly took its name from her, and it seems so interesting to have one of her descendants here.”

“Not exactly a descendant,” interposed Mr. Radcliffe, “but—”

“Oh, one of the family—it’s almost the same thing in these days when every one is so interested in genealogy.”

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Although Annabel was always fluent, Polly looked at her in surprise, for she was soon launched on a long account of the origin, rise, and present condition of Radcliffe. Mr. Radcliffe listened attentively, apparently with no inclination to say more than “Yes,” “No,” “Indeed,” “Only fancy,” and the other little things that keep conversation from becoming entirely a monologue. Polly had moved to one side, and from time to time she gave the two a curious glance. Was it imagination, or did she really see a smile on the young man’s face?

Presently as they strolled into the hall, Polly heard Annabel say, “I am really sorry, Mr. Radcliffe, that we have no books relating to your family. To-morrow, however, when the Librarian is here she may find something. Her assistant is rather new to the work.”

“Oh, I can assure you,” the young man responded effusively, “I have been more than repaid for coming. To see the interior of this building is indeed an experience, and under such auspices!” Annabel accepted the compliment with a becoming blush. “She always can blush to order,” one of her critics had been known to say.

Mr. Radcliffe’s next remark was inaudible to Polly, but Annabel’s, “Why, certainly, I will see what I can do,” rang out quite distinctly. Leaving the young man alone for a moment, Annabel went into one of the smaller rooms leading off the hall. In a few minutes she returned.

“Excuse me for keeping you so long. I had some difficulty in getting it,” and she held out to Mr. Radcliffe a slip of white paper.

“Oh, thank you, thank you a thousand times; no book-plate in my collection will be more valued than this.”

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“Well, I declare,” thought Polly, “a book-plate for a souvenir! Perhaps it’s all right to give it to a descendant of the Radcliffes as we haven’t any relics of the immortal Anne Radcliffe to show; but really, I wonder if Mr. Radcliffe thinks that Annabel is President, Dean, and Secretary all combined? It’s a pity that he couldn’t have come at an hour when more of the powers could have been seen.”

When Polly reached the first floor of Fay House, Mr. Radcliffe was no longer there, and Annabel, seated in the conversation room, with a magazine before her on the table, had her eyes fixed dreamily on space.

“Thinking of Anne Radcliffe?” queried Polly, as she went by. But Annabel did not answer, and, passing on, Polly met Clarissa at the outer door.

“Such fun!” she exclaimed. “I’ve been laughing for five minutes.”

“Tell me,” responded Polly, “that I may laugh, too.”

“As I was crossing the Common I met my cousin Archibald apparently waiting for some one. I stopped for a second to speak to him, and of course I asked whom he was waiting for.”

“Of course.”

“Well, it seems that Somers Brown is up for one of those Greek letter societies,—I’ve forgotten which, and part of the programme, the novitiate, or whatever they call it, is for him to bring a book-plate away from the Radcliffe Library by means of some bluff. He wasn’t to get it by breaking and entering, but he was to have it freely given to him by some one in the college. So he decided to rig up as an Englishman, and call himself a descendant of Anne Radcliffe’s family, and—”

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“I know,” said Polly, smiling.

“Oh, then you saw him? Perhaps it was you who gave him the book-plate?”

“Not I,” replied Polly, “although I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Radcliffe.”

“Surely neither the Dean nor the Librarian gave it to him.”

“No, indeed! It was Annabel. He ran across her when he started on his search for information. Poor Annabel, she believed every word he said, although she prides herself so on her insight. She gave him any amount of information about Harvard as well as about Radcliffe. But then, he really had an English accent.”

“Oh, yes, but imagine Annabel’s rage when she finds that she has been imposed on! I shouldn’t like to break the news to her.”

“But she ought to know.”

“Well, it isn’t our duty to tell her. Let us see what happens.”

The outcome was that Annabel the next morning was ready to tell the Dean of the honor paid the college by the visit of Mr. Radcliffe. “He is willing to make researches in England regarding Lady Moulson herself, and I should not be surprised if he should found a scholarship for us. From what he said I judge that he has a large estate in England, and he seems deeply interested in Radcliffe, especially after hearing my account of things.”

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Julia happened to be the girl to whom Annabel had begun to unfold her great expectations from Mr. Radcliffe.

“But haven’t you heard the true story?” she asked.

“Why, no, what do you mean? What true story?”

“Why, Polly told me, she and Clarissa.”

Annabel began to lose her usual placidity. She suspected a practical joke.

“Why, who was—that is, wasn’t he—”

“No,” replied Julia, “at least as I understand it, he wasn’t a Radcliffe. It was a test quiz, you know, for one of the college societies.”

“Then who was the man?”

“His name was Brown, Somers Brown. He was ordered to get some girl he didn’t know to show him through Fay House, and to bring away a new book-plate to prove that he had been in the Library. At least that is as I understood the story from Clarissa.”

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It would have been better had Julia not mentioned Clarissa’s name. Annabel turned from white to red and from red to white. Like most persons with a fair amount of self-love, she regarded a practical joke as almost unbearable. She remembered how Polly had stood about in the hall while she was talking with the Englishman, and she felt not unnaturally aggrieved. Beyond the change of color and a certain increase of dignity, Annabel did not express her feelings. “When there is any mischief brewing Polly and Clarissa are pretty sure to be in it,” she said. Then she moved off with a smile hardly less amiable than the one she usually wore, before Julia could explain that Polly and Clarissa had really had nothing to do with the visit of the pseudo Mr. Radcliffe, to Fay House. The story, however, had widely circulated, and most of those who knew Annabel, even her friends, were highly entertained that one who so prided herself on her insight should have been thus imposed upon.

“I saw Somers Brown walking about with Annabel yesterday, and I wondered why he held up his hand as if to enjoin silence on me. I had no idea that he was moving about under false colors. I can see, though, how he might impose on any one as an Englishman. He has lived abroad a great deal, and he really has an accent. Now that I think of it, his get-up yesterday was rather amusing, the plaids in his suit were so very plaid, and he used his monocle so steadily—and that cane!”

“He is so well known in Boston and Cambridge society that I wonder Annabel did not recognize him. I supposed that she knew everybody—at least by sight,” said one girl, sarcastically.

But so far as words were concerned, no one ever knew exactly how Annabel felt. An observer, however, might have noticed that from this time her demeanor toward Clarissa and Polly was far less cordial.

The book-plate episode led to a revival of interest in the story of Anne Radcliffe. Girls who had never heard just how the name came to be chosen for their college began to inform themselves more exactly.

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XV
ANGELINA

Late one afternoon as Julia sat in her study, the maid, rapping at her door, announced, “A young girl to see you.”

“Didn’t she give her name?”

“No, she is—well, she is a young person.”

“Show her up, please,” and Julia, stepping outside, soon saw Angelina coming up the stairs.

“Why, what brought you so far this cold day, Angelina?” she asked in greeting her.

“Well, Miss Julia,” she replied from the depths of an easy-chair in which she had immediately seated herself, “well, I did have a time getting here. You see I started this morning, and I told my mother not to worry if I didn’t come home to-night. I knew you’d make room for me, and there’s things I want to talk over that I couldn’t write.”

Julia had not heard from the Rosas since the Christmas vacation, when she had spared a day to visit them and take a basket of presents.

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“I wasn’t sure that you wanted me to come to Cambridge,” said Angelina. “I don’t remember your ever inviting me, but ever since I heard you were at college I’ve been anxious to see what it was like. I thought that colleges were just for men?”

“Oh, no, for girls, too, in these days.”

“I think I’d like to go to college myself,” said Angelina, with a sidelong glance at Julia, “but I don’t suppose that I’ll have the chance.”

Julia shook her head. “Angelina, you may not go to college, but you know that we wish you to go on with your studies. I am sorry that there is no evening school at Shiloh.”

“That’s just it,” responded Angelina, “that’s just what I wanted to talk about. I don’t feel as if I cared much for Shiloh; it’s terribly quiet there in the winter after the summer people are gone. I can’t seem to think that I want to stay there all the time.”

“Your mother must decide that. Are you not needed at home?” asked Julia weakly, knowing that Mrs. Rosa had very little authority over her children, and that she was only too ready to refer all difficult questions to Julia and Miss South.

“Well, my mother does kind of depend on me,” said Angelina. She did not care to admit that she was of too little consequence in the household. “But still she could get along without me. The boys help considerable after school. I don’t think I’m appreciated; I’m not perfectly happy,” and Angelina drew out her handkerchief, to be ready for any tears that her self-pity might start.

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“I cannot encourage you to leave Shiloh,” said Julia. “You are not sixteen, and you are not strong enough, I am sure, to go out to work. You would not find it half as pleasant to work in a strange family as you find it now at home; and should you get a place in town, you could not possibly earn enough to pay your board.”

Angelina applied the handkerchief to two or three invisible tears.

“Now, Angelina,” added Julia, “I will do what I can. I will write to Miss South. She can tell much better than I what is best. You spoke about going to college. That, at present, is out of the question. But is there any special thing that you would like to study?”

At first Angelina made no reply. Then she replied rather petulantly, “I hadn’t thought of studying anything in particular, only I don’t care much to stay in Shiloh this winter, and that’s the truth.”

By her manner as well as by her words, Julia saw that Angelina was likely to give her and Miss South more or less trouble. They had assumed a certain responsibility in regard to the Rosas, and they could not easily shake it off.

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During their two years in Shiloh the Rosas had seemed to be contented. They had never before been so prosperous. Instead of the two crowded tenement rooms they had a neat little cottage, which had been put in perfect order for them. In the course of the two years, to be sure, the newness and freshness had decidedly worn off, as Julia had observed to her regret when she called there in December. But their Shiloh home was infinitely more comfortable than any home they could have had in Boston. Mrs. Rosa’s health had failed in the city, but she had so improved now that she was able to earn a fair part of the family income. The rest of it was made up in various ways. Miss South and Julia paid the rent of the little house. Nora and Brenda and Edith had charge of a fund made up of their own savings and contributions from their friends. Since she had so cleverly recovered the money stolen from Mrs. Rosa by Miguel Silva, Brenda felt that she could be very liberal to the Rosas.

The fund was Mrs. Rosa’s dependence for food and fuel. Part of her fuel was gathered by the older children in the woods, and a small vegetable garden supplied not only summer vegetables, but something towards their winter needs.

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In season Angelina earned her board and a dollar a week at a summer boarding-house. This she was allowed to handle under Miss South’s supervision, and she had already started a bank-book. The sum in the bank, however, was very small, for Angelina had availed herself to the utmost of Miss South’s permission to use part of her own money for clothes. Suitable garments were chosen each year by Brenda and her friends from their own stock of discarded clothes, which, altered, answered for Angelina. But shoes and hats and some other things Angelina insisted on buying from her own savings, and in consequence the amount in the bank showed small increase. Mrs. Rosa herself had once worked at tailoring, and so she was able to remodel the garments given her for her boys. In the case of so helpless a family, neither Miss South nor Julia felt that they were likely to do harm by fairly liberal gifts. They had removed Mrs. Rosa from the city where she might have had regular relief from various charitable societies, from her church and from the Overseers if from no more. They had made her understand that all that she received from private individuals was conditioned on the care she showed in bringing up her family,—that it was a kind of reward of merit. Thus far all the people interested in the Rosas had been gratified by their progress, and Julia knew that Miss South had some plans for Angelina which might make the girl more contented. Ever since summer, however, Miss South had been occupied with the care of her aged grandmother, Madame Dulaunay, and she had been unable to do more for the Rosas than write to them and see that they received their money regularly. That very week she had started for Florida with Madame Dulaunay, and Julia saw she must make plans for Angelina. She was beginning to be so busy now preparing for the examinations that she hardly saw how she could spare much thought or energy for the young girl. Behind these thoughts was a background of disappointment that Angelina had so quickly tired of Shiloh.

“You must tell me what you especially wish to do, or to study,” she said.

“Yes’m,” responded Angelina, too much interested in a box of photographs on the table to reply with her usual loquacity.

“Then there is something?” Julia questioned.

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“Well, nothing in particular. I wouldn’t mind living at the North End again. It’s livelier than Shiloh.”

“But surely,” said Julia, “you are all much more comfortable at Shiloh than you could possibly be at the North End.”

“I don’t know,” rejoined Angelina. “I don’t feel so very comfortable at Shiloh. I ain’t busy enough, and I ain’t idle enough really to enjoy it.”

Julia understood Angelina, poorly though she had expressed her meaning.

“Does your mother know where you are to-night? Won’t she be worried if you stay away so late?”

“I told her that I was coming to Cambridge to see you. She’ll know that you will look out for me.”

“When you next come to Cambridge you must start earlier. It is altogether too late for you to go home now. I will have a bed made for you on this divan, and to-morrow you can go back to Shiloh.”

“Oh, thank you,” cried Angelina, her face beaming at the thought of a night away from Shiloh.

“Now, I’ll tell you, Angelina, what I propose to do. I will see if your mother will let you come to Cambridge once a week. There is one day when I am not very busy. I can probably arrange to have you sleep in this house. I will pay your way over here and give you your meals. In return I shall expect you to do whatever mending Miss Roberts and I have ready for you. Besides, I will give you a lesson to study at home, and each Wednesday I will hear you recite it and show you how to study.”

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Angelina both looked and spoke her thanks. “I don’t see how you ever came to think of anything so beautiful.”

“I am glad that you like it,” responded Julia, “and I hope that you will do your best to help carry it out.”

Angelina chose history as her subject of study, and as she had had American History at school, Julia began with a little outline of the World’s History.

It was a good plan and it worked very well. Shiloh evidently had not given Angelina enough to do in winter, and it was well for her to have an interest outside her home. Yet her mother needed her help to a certain extent, and it would have been a mistake to encourage Angelina to work entirely outside of the house. The weekly visit kept Julia in closer touch with the Rosa family than would otherwise have been possible, and this in itself was a good thing. Then, too, she gained deeper insight into Angelina’s character than she could have gained in any other way.

She engaged a small room from Mrs. Colton where Angelina slept when in Cambridge, and in it she placed a wicker-work table with a large basket and all the appliances for mending stockings, sewing on buttons, and the simple repairing of which Angelina was capable.

“I have always heard,” said Ruth, who shared in the advantages of Angelina’s services, “that lazy people take the most pains; for, honestly, it would save you time and money to do your own mending, and let me do mine, rather than have all this bother with Angelina.”

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“Oh, it’s a good thing for me, too,” replied Julia. “Our great danger here in college is in thinking that we have no duties except those connected with our studies, as if the only thing worth living for were to get ‘A’ or ‘B’ in some course.”

“I know girls who wouldn’t think ‘B’ worth living for,” retorted Ruth, “but I agree with you that there is always a danger that we may be too narrow in our interests. That’s why I am glad that so many girls are taking an interest in the operetta. In doing it they will be assisting the fund for the North End reading-room, which is calculated to do an immense amount of good. You have no idea, Julia, what a success the operetta will be.”

“I hope so.” Julia spoke absent-mindedly. A plan that Miss South had suggested for Angelina and girls of her kind was running through her mind. But she knew that until she should leave college there would be little chance of carrying it into effect. She would have been glad to work with some of the organized charities, but she felt that college must claim the most of her time. Comparatively few of her classmates, however, were without some bit of philanthropic work. Several taught Sunday-school classes. Several others gave an evening a week to some Boys’ or Girls’ Club in Boston or Cambridge. The Emmanuel Society, so named for John Harvard’s College, had regular meetings before which appeared various organizations, who made clear their claims to the support of thoughtful young women. The College Settlements appealed strongly to the undergraduate, and a chapter to raise money for the work had been formed at Radcliffe. The Emmanuel Society supported an annual scholarship, and maintained a library of text-books to be lent to students who could not afford to buy all the expensive books needed in their courses.

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Julia and Ruth and Clarissa, and even Pamela, contributed something to the various causes that appealed to Radcliffe girls, for time as well as money was asked for.

When her aunt remonstrated with Julia for giving too much thought and time to Angelina, Julia replied that she believed that the time would not be altogether thrown away.

“Now that I know that Angelina needs help and advice, I should feel it wrong to give her up.”

“If she appreciates it,” said Mrs. Barlow doubtfully.

“Oh, I’m sure that she will,” responded Julia cheerfully. “Besides, she really is of some use to me and Ruth.”

Yet there were times when Angelina’s little vagaries were hard to overcome. She was, for example, very fond of newspaper reading, and the advertisements seemed to have a special charm for her.

“Oh, Miss Julia,” she said one day, “I do wish that I could have a bottle of this,” and she pointed to an advertisement of “The Pearl of Beauty.” “They say,” continued Angelina, “that it will make the sallowest complexion a delicate pink. Now, Miss Julia, you know that I’m as sallow as most Portuguese, and I do wish that ‘The Pearl of Beauty’ did not cost so much; it’s a dollar a bottle. But one of the boarders at Shiloh asked me last summer if I wasn’t a colored person—kind of light-colored, and that wasn’t pleasant.”

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But Julia, unmoved by this, explained that it was unwise to believe every newspaper advertisement.

“But look at this,” pointing to the lithographed lady who held a placard in her hands on which were printed words of praise of the beautifier. “‘Look at me, please. I once was dark as night, but now am fair as a lily of the valley.’ That shows that she must have improved,” said the confiding Angelina, reading the closing words: “‘Beauty is a duty.’ Oh! I wish that I could have a bottle.”

“It would be throwing money away, and I should be very much displeased with you. Remember,” added Julia, “that advertisements are written simply to induce people to buy the thing advertised.”

“Don’t they tell the truth?” and Angelina looked utterly surprised. “I always believe every word I read.”

“You have a great deal to learn, Angelina, and I do hope that you will remember what I have said about patent medicines.”

One Wednesday, a week or two later, Julia found Angelina standing before the mirror in the little room with a bottle in her hand.

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“What are you doing?” she asked, suspecting the truth, and Angelina, starting guiltily, dropped the bottle, and a pinkish fluid poured out on the light carpet. As the bottle lay there, Julia read the words “Pearl of Beauty” on the outside. Angelina shamefacedly seized a towel and began to mop up the carpet, murmuring as she did so, “I bought it with my own money.”

Realizing that she had little authority over Angelina, Julia could only say, “I am sorry that you have so little regard for my opinion.” Yet neither then nor at any other time did Angelina apologize for what she had done. When Julia, consequently, reflected on the matter, she wondered if, after all, she might not have made a mistake in showing so much confidence in Angelina.

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XVI
WHO WROTE IT?

“It’s bad taste, anyway,” said Annabel Harmon.

“To call it by no worse name,” responded Elizabeth Darcy.

“Almost nothing can be worse than bad taste,” rejoined Annabel.

The two girls, at a table in the conversation room, were looking eagerly at the page of a newspaper.

“Why, what’s the trouble?” asked Polly, who had been standing near the window. “Has anybody had the bad taste to commit a murder, or burglary, or some other crime? I see that you have a yellowish journal there.”

The two, absorbed in their paper, did not reply, and Polly drew near them until she could read the headlines: “Is a College Education Worth While for Girls?” “Lowering of the Standard by a University Professor to meet the Demands of Woman.”

“Dear me!” cried Polly, “this does look interesting.”

“Yes,” responded Annabel, “read further and you will find it more so. You can take the paper for a few minutes. I’m glad that I happened to buy one in the Square when I came out from town.”

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Polly sat down with the newspaper. Under the large headlines were others in smaller type that showed that the professor to whom reference was made was a Harvard professor, and then she began to read. Surely there was something very familiar in what followed. It purported to be the transcript of a few pages from the history note-book of a student at Radcliffe. It was all very familiar. Why, of course! Clarissa’s notes! No one who had ever gazed upon them could mistake the style. She remembered having read this very lecture last year when preparing for her examinations. Clarissa was always generous in lending her note-books, and Polly had had the use of this for a day or two. But what had seemed only funny within the covers of a note-book seemed very impertinent thus exposed to the gaze of every one who cared to buy a penny paper. Reading further, Polly learned that the article was copied from an obscure magazine to which the Radcliffe notes had been sent with a plaintive inquiry whether such lectures could greatly benefit woman.

“Poor Professor Z!” sighed Polly. “He certainly lectures in this style sometimes. For my own part, I used to enjoy the colloquialisms, and he used to give us so much besides that it isn’t fair to pillory him.”

“What do you think of Clarissa now?” asked Elizabeth Darcy.

“Clarissa?” repeated Polly. “What has she to do with it?”

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Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders. “Most of us have seen Clarissa’s note-books; if she didn’t write this, who did?”

“I won’t say that this is not Clarissa’s style, I won’t even say that these are not her notes; but I will say that she didn’t print them.”

“I wish that I had your confidence in Clarissa.” Elizabeth spoke with an accent of pity. “You must admit that she loves to make fun of people.”

“She is not half as bad as I am,” rejoined Polly, stoutly defending her friend. “Why, I have even made fun of her,—that was before I knew her so well. But she bore me no malice. In fact, she never takes revenge, and there is malice in this article.”

“You admit that these are Clarissa’s notes, and yet you don’t think them malicious.”

The last speaker was Annabel, who had joined the group.

“Come, Miss Harmon, be fair; it is one thing to write nonsense intended only for one’s own eyes, and another to put it before the public. Clarissa, I know, did not have the notes published.” Then Polly turned away.

Polly was by no means comfortable as she left Fay House, and the better to disprove the accusation made by Elizabeth, she went to the stationer’s in the Square to buy a copy of the newspaper. It was the last one to be had. “It’s been in the greatest demand,” explained the attendant. “Some kind of a college article, I believe; I haven’t had time to look at it myself.”

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Polly folded the paper and walked down Brattle Street. “I believe I’ll ask Clarissa point blank.” Polly had a slightly uncomfortable doubt as she thought of the article, and it happened, as it so often does happen in such cases, that when she met Clarissa she could not ask the question. “If she hasn’t heard, it would only disturb her,” was her excuse. Afterwards she was sorry that she had not at once gone to her.

Within twenty-four hours almost every one at Radcliffe had read the article. Those who did not own papers borrowed them, and the critics and partisans of Clarissa ranged themselves strongly on one side or the other. Some, while blaming Clarissa for letting her notes get into print, said that it was no more than Professor Z deserved, since the tone of his lectures had never been sufficiently academic. Others were glad that he was now absent on his Sabbatical year, for if he were lecturing in Cambridge they were sure that his wrath would have been pretty keenly felt. Ruth, of course, took Annabel Harmon’s view of the affair. Julia, while loath to think that Clarissa had done this in a spirit of malice, thought that she had allowed herself to be carried away by the spirit of fun, without realizing that the whole thing was a deflection from the straight line of honor. She and Pamela discussed the matter at some length, and very quickly agreed that the relation of a professor to a small class was a confidential relation, and that only an instructor who was on very good terms with his class would talk to them after the fashion of Professor Z. Consequently, to quote his direct language was like telling family secrets.

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Yet with it all nobody dared speak to Clarissa. They quoted what this professor or that professor’s wife had said; how one had declared that nothing would induce him to lecture at Radcliffe, how another had termed this the natural result of trying to benefit women,—they would merely hold up their benefactors to ridicule,—and still no one dared reprove Clarissa. The Western girl wrapped herself in a forbidding manner, and not even Polly dared speak of the article or its effects.

But one day, turning the matter over in her mind, she came to a decision. “A party will be the very thing,” she said to herself, “and Clarissa shall give it. Ruth and Julia and Lois Forsaith, oh, yes, and Pamela, and two or three others,—as many as she can afford chairs for,—it will be the very thing.”

Clarissa’s room was in a small, neat house in a neat side street. Her landlady had other boarders, but she took a real interest in them all.

Clarissa’s room looked on a little yard filled with pear trees, and the children of the neighborhood played constantly under her windows. This did not disturb her, for her nerves were not near the surface. Sometimes she called the children to her room and gave them a treat of fruit or sweet things. Mrs. Freeman’s other boarders thought Clarissa rather frivolous. One of them was a timid Freshman who studied unremittingly. Two of the others were graduate students, delving into zoölogy, and other “mussy sciences” (Clarissa’s phraseology), and the fifth was an inoffensive Sophomore. The two graduates roomed together. Clarissa had the best room in the house, but the Freshman had a small room under the eaves. The Freshman sometimes complained that she had made a mistake, and that she should have had a room in a lodging-house where she could have boarded herself with the aid of a chafing-dish and gas stove.

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“And starve to death, with nobody nigh to hinder,” said Clarissa. “I’m glad that kind of thing is not encouraged at Radcliffe. But I wish that you had the room on my floor, instead of those zoölogists. Often about ten P.M. when I’ve finished studying I’d slip in and talk with you. Sometimes I knock on the zoölogical door, but if they let me in I feel like a criminal, for I can see that they are making a great effort to be polite, while they wish me a thousand miles away. They like to study well into the small hours, but as they pay for their own oil nobody can well object. I’m not half as entertaining to them as those squirmy things they keep in bottles. The only real gaiety in which they ever indulge is an ethical discussion with Pamela; just imagine the combination, ethics and zoölogy!”

The other girl laughed. “You might start a discussion at your party.”

“No, thank you, it’s to be a poster party, nothing more nor less improving than posters will be considered worthy of mention.”

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Clarissa had yielded to Polly’s plans for the party, understanding the spirit in which it had been arranged. It had been talked of indefinitely before the affair of the newspaper; and although Polly did not now explain why she was so anxious to have her friend turn entertainer at this particular time, Clarissa understood, and Polly knew that she understood.

Nearly all who had been invited responded to Clarissa’s invitation, and one windy evening they gathered very contentedly around the open fire in her room. Clarissa’s room was as different as possible from Julia’s. To its rather homely furnishings she had added various things that had caught her fancy without regard to any scheme of art. There was a vivid Navajo blanket over her couch, and two Indian baskets from the Southwest on a bracket in a corner. Some Japanese fans were displayed over the mantle-piece, and just above them hung in a black frame a fine photograph of the Arch of Titus. But the other three walls, whether beautiful or ugly in the matter of their everyday decorations, for this evening were hidden by posters—posters large, small, ugly, beautiful, covered every spot.

“I know,” said Clarissa, in explanation, after welcoming her guests, “I know that posters have gone out of fashion. That is partly why I’ve taken them up. I had thought of offering prizes to the girl who could guess the artist of the largest number, but instead of that I’m going to explain them myself. Lo! here is a pointer that I brought over from Fay House this very afternoon.” So armed with the long wooden stick, Clarissa moved about the room, explaining much after the fashion of an auctioneer who has something to dispose of.

“Clarissa moved about the room, explaining”

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“This you will see is undoubtedly French. You could tell it by the anatomy of the cats, if in no other way. Such creatures were never seen on this side of the Atlantic. Jim got it for me. The real name of the work of art is ‘Lait Pur Sterilisé;’” and as she paused for a moment, they all gazed with fitting admiration on the child in a red dress drinking from a bowl under the envious eyes of three cats.

“Well, it’s better,” said Polly, “than some of those greenery yallery things. No wonder Aubrey Beardsley died young.”

“Oh, Polly, you artless creature, didn’t you dote on the Yellow Book?”

“Not I,” replied Polly. “I measured Mrs. Patrick Campbell as once portrayed there, and in proportion to the length of her head as there shown she must be about ten feet tall.”

“Why, Polly, I didn’t realize that you knew so much about Art.”

“Oh, I know more things than I am sometimes credited with,” and there was an undertone of deeper meaning in Polly’s voice.

“Here’s a Grasset,” continued Clarissa, resuming her explanations. “Isn’t it a beauty?”

“No, no, Clarissa,” said Julia, “I like this better;” and rising, she put her hand on a poster with a Puritan maiden carrying mistletoe.

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“You show your taste,” said Clarissa, “that’s a Rhead.” Though hung near Dudley Hardy’s “Gaiety Girl” in poster land, the two did not seem inharmonious neighbors. Not far from them was Bemliardt’s Jeanne d’Arc, and for fifteen minutes or more Clarissa kept her friends amused with the poster show. Before her art lecture was quite at an end, Julia as assistant hostess had lit the lamp under the chafing-dish, and then when the others found that fudge-making was the next thing on the programme, each one wished to offer her own receipt, and to the great surprise of the company it was found that each receipt varied a little from the others.

“First you grate a pound of chocolate into the chafing-dish,” began Polly.

“Oh, not a pound—half a pound at first,” interrupted Julia.

“It’s a great deal better to begin by melting your butter, and then put in a pint of milk,” added Ruth.

“I never use any milk,” interposed Clarissa.

“Then you let it simmer half an hour,” resumed Polly.

“Oh, there isn’t any fixed length of time,” cried Ruth again; “just let it cook until it’s done.”

“How do you know when it’s done?”

Then followed a Babel of voices, as each one told what she thought the proper test; and a listener, I fear, who knew nothing of fudge-making, would have had hard work to select a working receipt from the directions given by these merry girls.

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By the time the fudge was ready the ball had been set rolling, and it was evident that Clarissa’s party was a success. While Ruth and Lois were superintending a second chafing-dish, in which a rarebit was preparing, Polly picked up a guitar and began to accompany herself, as she sang the opening lines of one of the Radcliffe classics, “The Mermaid.”

“That’s just the thing to cheer us up.”

“As if you needed cheering! But here it is!” And Polly struck the chords with a firm hand, as she sang about the little mermaid who

“Could not even speak Acroparthianic Greek,

And she’d no instruction in Theology.

One day she found, as she swam around,

A Radcliffe catalogue,

Which shone afar like an evening star

From out the mist and fog.

She paused to rest on a billow’s crest,

In a wreath of sparkling foam,

And when she had read what the catalogue said,

She decided to leave her home.

She saw at once that she was a dunce

And ought to go to college.

So dressed in her best with a hat from Céleste,

She set out for the shrine of knowledge.

The cars were so filled she was almost killed,

But she found she could easily swim

Up Garden Street, that road so neat

That has Radcliffe on its brim.”

The last two lines were loudly applauded, for the mud of Garden Street was constantly ridiculed by the college girls to be beyond description. The song proceeded to describe the advent of the mermaid at Fay House:

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“She told her race, and her boarding-place,

And her age (less a year, maybe),

But when the question came,

‘What’s your grandma’s middle name?’

She wept and turned to flee.”

“The regular Boston question,” said Clarissa, with an expression of scorn.

“Don’t interrupt,” cried Ruth, as Polly sang the chorus of each verse.

“Oh, the ocean swell is all very well

For frivolous sport and play,

But the cultured mind you’ll seldom find

Beneath the salt sea spray.”

Other songs followed this,—the “Hunting Song” from the “Princess Perfection,” snatches from one or two real operas; and at last as they sat around the open fire drinking lemonade—for the rarebit was now a thing of the past—Clarissa turned down the lights, and proposed that they should tell weird stories. No one of the eight or nine present was excused. Even Ernestine Dunton had to do her part, and she had unbent to an extent that was astonishing to Ruth and Clarissa; for in the preceding year when she had been their Senior adviser, she had seemed the personification of seriousness. She was now back at Radcliffe as a graduate student, and in certain ways she had begun to unbend.

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As her friends bade her good-night, Clarissa knew that her party had been a success; for Polly, lingering a little behind the others, put out her hand and whispered, “You know that we don’t believe that you did that foolish thing, don’t you?” and Clarissa, returning the pressure, replied, “Of course you could not believe it.”

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XVII
A PRIVATE DETECTIVE

In spite of the surface frivolity, there was in Polly a strong vein of common sense. Therefore, as she thought more and more deeply about the newspaper article she became convinced that great injustice had been done Clarissa. She was naturally puzzled, for the notes so unkindly quoted were certainly from the Kansas girl’s note-book. Only too well she remembered having read them herself, and having laughed at some of the hits. But how had the newspaper obtained them? Without having talked with Clarissa directly, without having had more than the whispered word at the party, she yet knew that the Kansas girl was not to blame. She began to set her wits at work. To solve the mystery she must turn private detective.

One Wednesday afternoon she dropped into the pleasant drawing-room at Fay House; “the most homelike place,” she often said, “this side of Atlanta.” Indeed, many other Radcliffe girls were in the habit of saying the same thing, only instead of Atlanta they named Pittsburg, or Topeka, or Kalamazoo, or, in short, the particular city or town which each called her home.

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“The first month I was in Cambridge,” Polly had said to the President, “I was right smart homesick and miserable. I felt like I couldn’t stand it. But when I came in here, and saw you seated at the tea-table, beside the open fire, I felt like I were with my grandmother, and that this was a place where I could lay aside all my forlornness. You don’t mind my comparing you to my grandmother? I reckon it isn’t perfectly polite.”

But the widow of the great scientist, who was proud to admit her threescore years and ten, smiled with her accustomed grace, saying in reply:

“No, indeed, my dear, I am only complimented by the comparison.”

Nor was Polly the only one who felt the restful influence of the drawing-room at Fay House; the quaint old-fashioned room, with its oval ends, curving outward, with its dull green satiny wall-paper, and the old-time couch and easy-chairs covered in flowered crimson.

Girls who entered it for the first time were impressed by the dainty silver and china of the tea-table, and they would turn from the life-size portrait of Mrs. Agassiz between the windows to the majestic figure of the President herself presiding over the teacups, and neither picture nor living figure suffered by the comparison.

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On this particular Wednesday afternoon, not so very long after the publication of the alleged lecture of Professor Z in the yellow journal, Polly, after paying her respects to Mrs. Agassiz, seated herself at the further side of the room. She did not linger as was her wont around the tea-table, for two distinguished guests had entered just behind her. One was a Frenchwoman, of international reputation, and the other a distinguished Englishman, making a study of our institutions. The former was accompanied by a well-known member of the Harvard Faculty, and the latter by two Bostonians whom he was visiting.

“Isn’t it just lovely,” said a little Freshman seated near Polly, “to see such great people? That’s what I like about Boston and Cambridge. You’re always meeting people who seem to belong in books.”

“Yes,” replied Polly mockingly, “it’s a liberal education just to look at them. Let’s talk French, and see if our accent improves through breathing the same atmosphere with Madame X.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean exactly that,” replied the Freshman, “only we certainly do learn things here that we couldn’t get out of books.”

“Yes, yes, dear, you’re certainly right, and I only wish that we could get yon Englishman to tell us how he manages to wear that monocle, and yet look perfectly happy.”

The Freshman glanced at Polly to see if she was in earnest, and made some remark to which Polly returned no answer.

Polly’s thoughts indeed had begun to wander, sent off by a word or two from a girl standing with her back to her.

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“She hasn’t found it out yet, or she wouldn’t speak to her,” were the words that fell on her ear. Looking toward the door she saw that Clarissa had just entered, and had paused for a moment to say a word to Annabel, who as usual was the centre of an admiring group.

Clarissa passed on to pay her respects to the President; and while Polly was reflecting on what she had heard, she saw the girls in the group leave Annabel one by one to join Clarissa, standing at the other side of the fireplace. Annabel frowned as she moved toward Polly’s corner. She and the girl with her did not notice Polly, for they stood with their backs to her.

“Yes, it is rather bold—really very bold, but she never cares what any one thinks. She has so much—so much—”

“Effrontery, I should call it,” replied the other, who was well known to be a worshipper of a rising star, such as Annabel was now supposed to be. “But I know that you never like to say anything disagreeable.”

“Well, of course, one should be very careful;” and Annabel sighed the sigh of the needlessly perfect person.

Upon this, Polly, rising suddenly, faced around, and with a hasty nod to Annabel joined Clarissa at the other side of the room.

The few apparently unimportant words that she had heard had helped her far along with her detective work. She could not, however, altogether conceal her feelings, and slipping her arm through Clarissa’s, she led her back toward Annabel and her friends.

“Behold the rising star!” she exclaimed; “for of course,” she added in explanation, “you’ve heard that Clarissa is to have leading part in Julia’s operetta.”

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“Why, Polly,” said Clarissa, “I had not—”

“Don’t contradict,” responded Polly, “our plans are made, and there isn’t a question but that you have the most manly tone, and gait, and—”

“Why, Annabel, I thought that you were to have the chief part!” interposed her friend.

“Oh, she’ll be in it,” rejoined Polly, in a somewhat patronizing tone, assumed for the occasion, “if not in the chief part.”

Then she moved away, still leaning on Clarissa’s arm, and Annabel had no chance to retort. The foreign guests had gone to inspect the other parts of Fay House, and the drawing-room was filling with girls whose lectures for the day had ended.

“Oh, Polly,” cried Clarissa, as the two friends left the room, after paying their respects to the President and Dean. “Why, Polly, I can’t act; I don’t belong with those girls at all. Ruth Roberts, you know, barely tolerates me, and she’s to be the manager.”

“Nonsense, she isn’t the whole thing. Besides, I happen to know that she does want you.”

“What about Annabel?”

“Well, we can’t really leave her out. Her voice isn’t remarkable, but she acts pretty well; and since she’s been playing with the Cambridge Dramatic Club, she’s been considered our representative actor. Besides, she’s a great friend of Ruth’s.”

“I know it,” responded Clarissa. “You surely ought to have Annabel; but can I pull all right with those girls?”

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“Of course, and I am to be a dapper little dandy. Though we are to be rivals in love, we can support each other.”

So at last Clarissa yielded, and after the mid-years, rehearsals went on pretty rapidly. There were, after all, several good parts in the operetta; and Ruth, viewing everything with the critical eye of a business manager, was certain that the performance would bring even more than she had hoped.

“Clarissa herself wouldn’t be so bad,” said Ruth one evening, as she and Julia sat in the study after dinner, “but I can’t say that I like her friends. She has a rather scrubby lot of hangers-on. Look at those two this afternoon!”

“Why, I saw nothing to criticise.”

“You never do, Julia, but they certainly hadn’t a word to say for themselves, and their clothes were frightful. Clarissa’s red coat is bad enough, but she is rather fine-looking, and she is so decidedly unlike any one else that you don’t have to apologize for her. But those others were so—so nondescript.”

“Ruth,” exclaimed Julia, with a shade of reproach, “you have changed very much the past year. You used to think Belle’s exclusiveness silly, but you are tending that way yourself.”

“You are not in earnest!”

“Of course, you’ll never be just like Belle. But you have begun to think too much about appearances.”

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“But you are too amiable, Julia. As we can’t be intimate with all the girls we meet, we might as well choose the most congenial. We can’t let all kinds of girls take up our time.”

“My time isn’t so valuable. I can spare a little even to all kinds of girls.”

“Yes, but even on Mondays, sometimes, there are such queer girls. They make an unfavorable impression on people from town who call. Don’t you remember when Mrs. Blair came out? Now, if she had only met Annabel Harmon or Elizabeth Darcy, how different it would have been!”

“Annabel Harmon!” Julia wondered why she so disliked Ruth’s intimacy with Annabel, for Annabel was a popular girl, hardly less so than Elizabeth Darcy. She was well-bred and interesting. “I never can thoroughly trust any one who spends her spare time reading French books,” Clarissa had said laughingly, although Julia would have hesitated to put it quite so definitely.

Ruth, however, was apparently fascinated by Annabel, and constantly quoted her with admiration. Annabel had a dislike for plain things and plain people. By this, she was careful to explain, she did not mean necessarily things that were ugly or people who were poor. “Some ugly things are really very beautiful, and some poor people are far from plain. The only kind of plainness that I object to is commonness; I hate ordinary things.”

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Yet if any one had taken the trouble to note down the things that Annabel called “common,” it would have been found that in her eyes these were the inexpensive things, and the girls whom she described as ordinary were usually those who were not rich either in money or influential connections.

Julia saw that Ruth’s intimacy with Annabel had made a change in her, not altogether to be commended.

“I wish you liked Lois Forsaith as well as you like Annabel. I do wish that she had a little more fun. She takes life so seriously. Really, I can’t understand it. I should die, or at least I should want to, if I had as much to do.”

“She has only four courses this year.”

“Oh, I do not mean her studies entirely, but at home. She has a certain amount of housework to do. She helps her two younger brothers with their lessons, and she always has some regular sewing on hand.”

“Really!” exclaimed Ruth in some surprise. Julia had never said much to her about Lois’ family.

“They say that Lois would have had the highest record in the class last year if she hadn’t stayed out to nurse her little sister. It was just before the finals, and she had to lose one of her examinations.”

“Couldn’t she make it up?” asked Ruth.

“Oh, she will have a chance, but of course it makes a difference in her year’s record.”

“I never feel quite sure of Lois,” said Ruth. “She always has that far-away manner, as if she were looking right over your head. I am never sure that she remembers me.”

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“Why, I have not noticed that,” responded Julia. “I think her delightful. She shakes hands so warmly, and she always says something worth hearing.”

“But I don’t think that she’s a really popular girl.”

“That’s not to her discredit. Popularity is no evidence of—of—”

And Julia hesitated, seemingly at a loss for a word.

“True greatness,” interposed Ruth. “No, popularity is not a test of true greatness. But I would not say that Lois is unpopular.”

“If Lois could, she would take a larger part in our social life,” added Julia. “It’s very hard for a girl to live at home while she’s going to college. It’s like serving two masters, and one of them has to suffer. Lois will get the most possible out of her studies, but she can’t be interested in every little thing.”

“You’re a regular champion,” and Ruth threw a kiss to Julia, as she turned to leave the room.

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XVIII
WORK AND PLAY

The added strain of rehearsals was more, perhaps, than some of the performers ought to have had. But few of them neglected lectures, and they buoyed themselves with the hope that all this work would be over before the middle of May, when they could devote themselves wholly to study.

Julia, perhaps, felt the strain more than the others. To do the operetta justice she gave up many things that she would have enjoyed. Rehearsals came so often on Fridays that she was rather glad that this year she had not attempted to attend the Symphony rehearsals in the City. She had taken four tickets for the Cambridge course, and Ruth and Mrs. Colton regularly accompanied her. The use of the fourth ticket she offered from time to time to various girls who had not subscribed for the course.

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She had had to draw the line at social gaieties, although she made occasional exceptions, as, for instance, in the case of the coming-out parties of Brenda and Nora. She entered into both of these affairs with the zest of a débutante, and was greeted cordially by a number of those of whom she had seen so much during her first year in Boston. But she noticed that some of Brenda’s special friends either avoided her or treated her with a deference that made her uncomfortable, since her years did not seem to warrant it.

“It’s because you know so much,” Brenda had explained. “They’re afraid of you.”

“Well, they needn’t be. I’m sure that I never display my knowledge, and besides, I haven’t much to display. They’d find it out if they’d talk with me.”

“Oh, Julia! You do know a tremendous amount. I feel all shrivelled up when I think of it. Besides, every one has heard about the operetta. I feel proud enough, I can tell you, when any one speaks to me about it.”

“You used to object to a learned cousin.”

“I don’t now, as long as she doesn’t make her learning a reproach to me. That’s one thing very nice about you, Julia, you never scold me for not going to college.”

“You may come to it yet. Besides, you are studying this winter, are you not?”

“Now, Julia, don’t ask me how many times I’ve gone to my Literature class. There’s so often a luncheon or something more interesting that comes the same day, and when there isn’t I’m too tired to enjoy it. So I’ve missed more or less, but there’s a Current Events on Mondays and I’m always there. It gives me something to talk about, and I’m thankful enough, with a stupid partner, to fall back on Armenian atrocities, or the Abolition of the House of Lords, or even the Silver Question.”

191

“A little learning is a dangerous thing,” quoted Julia, and Brenda replied brightly:

“But less is more dangerous, and Nora says—there, that reminds me, have you heard of the engagement?”

“Not Nora’s?” queried Julia.

“No, indeed. Nora says that she’s going to Radcliffe next year, and she isn’t likely to let herself be interfered with by anything so frivolous as an engagement. But I should think that you might have guessed. It’s Frances.”

“I’ve had suspicions,” responded Julia, “from a letter Frances wrote me some time ago.”

“Yes, she’s always been so chummy with you since that time she thinks you saved her life. But I was surprised, and isn’t it funny that he’s a minister, at least he’s going to be? This is his last year in the Divinity School. Just imagine Frances a minister’s wife!”

“It would have been harder to imagine a year or two ago.”

“Yes, Frances has changed since that accident, and then, of course, he’s her second cousin—or third—and she can do lots of good with her money,” Brenda concluded somewhat incoherently.

192

Although Julia did not go to many parties, she yet had more or less enjoyment from certain phases of Boston life. Her aunt’s house was still “home,” and thither she went every Saturday. Many Radcliffe students, like their fellow-students at the University, were surprised to find that Saturday was not a holiday, and that only by a skilful arrangement of courses could one have the day free. But on Saturday afternoon, all who could went home or paid visits. At her aunt’s behest Julia often took with her one guest or another to the Beacon Street house, and often after dinner a little party went to a reading, or a lecture by some great authority, or to a musicale. Julia always regretted that Pamela could so seldom be one of her Saturday guests. But Pamela, who, in this her second year at Miss Batson’s, was less sensitive than formerly about her position, was apt to say laughingly that Sunday was her busy day, since all the young ladies were then at home.

She might have added that she never liked to miss the Sunday morning service in the little Memorial Chapel beyond the Washington Elm. There, as in other churches, seats were reserved for Radcliffe students. The music and the liturgy, so unlike the simple Congregational service to which she had been accustomed, rested and helped her, and she atoned for departing from the rigid forms of her father’s church by holding a little Bible Class at Miss Batson’s on Sunday afternoon. There in the dining-room she collected three or four small girls from the quarry district some distance away, and gave them a helping hand, and taught them many things that they could hardly have learned from books. No wonder that she could not accept Julia’s invitations! If she had had no other reasons she would have plead that she was not in touch with the young circle that gathered in Mrs. Barlow’s hospitable house. Occasionally she went there to dine on Saturday. This was usually after she had paid a visit to the Art Museum, where her beloved Tanagra figures and the Parthenon friezes still charmed her. She had had some scruples this year in electing Fine Arts, for she knew that it was considered one of the soft courses chosen by certain students more anxious to get marks than to learn. But if many other students had taken Fine Arts in Pamela’s spirit, it would soon have ceased to be a reproach. For she verified every statement in her text-book, and looked up every reference made by her professor, and some of her friends laughingly plead with her not to set the standard so high, as henceforth every student taking the course would be expected to do equally well.

193

Pamela was not in the operetta, for the artistic side of her nature had not been developed in the direction of music. Yet from time to time she looked in at rehearsals. She was proud of Julia’s work, for she felt as if no success could be too great for one who had been so kind to her. She was fond of Polly, too, and she had enough good sense not to be offended even when the laugh was directed against the class of girls of which she herself was a type. For though she was only one of many who were at Radcliffe for study exclusively, she felt that she could bear a little ridicule, since the butterflies themselves were sure to come in for a share.

She was interested, too, in Clarissa’s part in the operetta; and although she knew that many otherwise charitable girls had held Clarissa in suspicion since the publication of the newspaper article, she, too, like Polly, had more faith in the Western girl. She even thought of doing a little detective work herself, in a quiet way.

194

One mild morning in early May a group of girls stood at the foot of the side entrance to Fay House. “Get your hats! get your hats!” cried Polly, approaching the group from the house. “I’m going home for the largest hat I own, and I intend to tie it on with a veil.”

Clarissa and one or two of the other hatless girls began to ask Polly her meaning. But Polly, declining to answer, walked off with a paper, apparently a letter, held dramatically to her heart.

Clarissa followed her to the shade of a tree at the edge of the tennis ground, and there Polly read the note to her:

“My dear Miss Porson,—May I see you Friday or Saturday between nine and eleven o’clock.”

And the signature was that of the Dean.

“Yes,” said Polly reminiscently, “it’s true that I’ve been walking hatless to the Square,—like several others I could mention,” and she glanced significantly toward Clarissa.

“But you ought to know,” said Elspeth Gray, who had joined them, “that that isn’t the thing in a conventional place like Cambridge.”

“Yes, but going without a hat seems to be in the direction of the plain living and high thinking toward which we’re always encouraged.”

“But what did the Dean say to you, Polly? I cannot imagine her being unduly severe.”

195

“She wasn’t severe. She couldn’t be. I left her feeling not that I had been reproved, but simply advised.”

“Was nothing said about sitting on the stairs? I saw you on the landing yesterday, and some of our instructors complain bitterly of this. They say that it is too much like the behavior of schoolgirls, and—”

“As long as they express their feelings merely in words,” responded Clarissa, “I can bear it. I wish that they would bestow our marks upon us in words. A postal card is so much harder to bear when it is stamped officially, ‘French Department. Your mark in French 11 is C.’ The big, blue ‘C’ that they make of such an enormous size, sprawled across the card.”

“I never mind,” said Elizabeth, who had joined the others.

“Nor would we,” responded Clarissa politely, “if our marks, like yours, were most likely ‘A.’ You see the postmen, like the policemen and the car conductors in this cultured community, set a value on real intellect, and I hate to have them know that I am not at the very head of my class. I don’t wish to sail under false pretences, but I should be happier if my instructors would only spare me the big, blue ‘C.’ It always makes me feel giddy, as the English say.”

“Oh, Clarissa, you’d pun if you were dying.”

196

“Well, I can afford to be cheerful, for I’ve had an invitation,” and she read from a card that she drew from a note-book, “Le Cercle Français de l’Université Harvard requests the pleasure of your presence on Tuesday evening, May 17.”

“You are in luck. I hear that it is to be a delightful affair; but now before we go home for our hats, let us stroll over to Vaughan House, and patronize Mrs. Hogan and her buns.”

A luncheon-room had been fitted up in Vaughan House, a dwelling recently bought by the Radcliffe Corporation. It was only a step from Fay House, across the little campus, and both inside and out it preserved the aspect of a comfortable dwelling. The lunch-room, to be sure, had small wood tables of true restaurant style and a counter; and the coffee and chocolate were drawn from metal reservoirs, with spigots, in true restaurant fashion.

The three friends, for Elizabeth had not come with them, sat at a table beside an old graduate, who was spending the year in Cambridge for post-graduate work.

“Why, it doesn’t seem long,” she said, “since we used to carry our own sandwiches to Fay House in a little pasteboard box, and feel extremely thankful for the cup of hot tea or chocolate brought by the housekeeper to the little room back of the conversation room. If she went off before we could pay her, we would hide our dimes or half-dimes in the sugar bowl, and she always trusted us as we trusted her.”

“Can you remember the very beginning of Radcliffe?” asked Polly, “when it was called ‘The Annex’?”

197

“I wasn’t here myself, then,” said the other, smiling; “that was in 1879, but my sister came a year or two later, when the classes met either at the houses of the professors or in the little house in Appian Way. The library, I believe, comprised two or three shelves of books in another house, and a course with half a dozen students was considered extremely large.”

“Just think of it!”

“My own experience goes back to 1886 when we moved into Fay House. But it was so different then. I sometimes wonder if you students of to-day realize your advantages.”

“I rather think that we have more fun,” said Polly. “I am afraid that you used to take life too seriously.”

The older girl smiled.

“We had to be very much in earnest because we felt that if we made our college work secondary to social interests we were likely to be criticised. The college girl was not so numerous then as she is now, and she was a target for almost any one who wished to criticise her. But I don’t blame you undergraduates for getting all the fun you can, and your music and your athletics in many ways must be very beneficial.”

“She means you, Clarissa. She has heard what an ornament you are to the R. A. A.,” cried Polly.

“Oh, no; you mean Polly, do you not?” asked Clarissa of the graduate. “You have heard of her prowess as an actor, and then you know she’s written nearly all the book for the operetta. The rest of us have just put in a few jokes.”

198

“I have had my eye on you both,” responded the older girl, “and I approve of you, for you have not yet begun to make study secondary to fun.”

Nor was the graduate wrong in her criticism. While work may have been to a certain extent neglected by the actors and singers in the operetta in the weeks immediately preceding the performance, they all knew that when the rehearsals were over they would work with redoubled energy.

The advance sale of tickets was so good that Ruth went about with a beaming face. She was interested in the North End reading-room to a rather unusual extent, and had set her heart on their clearing five hundred dollars from the two performances.

A week before the last rehearsal Julia had asked Angelina to spend all her time in Cambridge. There were so many little things that she could do in helping the girls about their costuming that it seemed as well to have her near for a week or two. Angelina could be spared, and Julia knew that the week or two in Cambridge would be almost as thoroughly a treat to her as a trip to New York to many another girl. Angelina had become more reconciled to her life at Shiloh, although she still continued to say frankly that she would prefer the city. Yet she had so enjoyed being of acknowledged use to her mother, and Julia had so praised her for her growing skill in housekeeping, that she was almost reconciled to her quiet life. All “The Four” had continued their interest in the Rosas. Brenda and Nora had provided their Christmas tree, with assistance, of course, from Julia. Julia had planned a little collection of books arranged in two or three small travelling libraries for the use of the Rosas and their neighbors, and when a check of good size came from Edith, to be applied to the use of the family, there was hardly any evident need to supply.

199

Edith and her parents were in Europe. They had felt keenly the fact that Philip had left college under a cloud, and it was even rumored that they might stay away another year. Julia, naturally enough, thought often of Philip, for that last interview with him had been rather thrilling, and while many of her friends were planning for the coming Class Day, she had made up her mind to leave Cambridge as soon as she could after the examinations. “If I live through the operetta,” she said to herself, for she felt the strain of the last rehearsals. When she thought of Philip, putting even the most charitable construction on his silence, it seemed as if he might have written to her.

200

Indeed it was only by a chance word dropped by Nora and other girls that she heard anything about him. They had their information from their brothers or some of their friends. Julia herself might have heard more directly had she been willing to bring up Philip’s name to Tom Hearst or some of his friends. But she would not ask questions, feeling as she did that Philip might have kept her informed of his whereabouts. Yet she knew that he had spent the most of the winter on a ranch in South Dakota, not so very far from the Black Hills; and when reports of the extreme cold in that region came to Eastern readers, who wondered how Philip enjoyed this rather hard life—Philip who had been used to all the luxuries provided for a rich man’s son at Harvard. But Philip did not write, and Julia would not ask even Ruth about him, although Ruth and Will Hardon were great friends.

201

XIX
THE OPERETTA

It was the last rehearsal but one, not the dress rehearsal, but the “half-dressed rehearsal,” as Clarissa called it. At the dress rehearsal a large number of undergraduates, and special friends of the performers were to be admitted, and then was to come the performance from which so much was hoped. But the dress rehearsal would be so much like a real performance that the present occasion was regarded as something very important.

Nearly all the chorus were wearing the short peasant skirt, and strutted about seeming on the whole well pleased with their own appearance. But the prima donnas were in ordinary attire, for their bespangled robes were too elaborate to be dragged about on the dusty stage. Polly and Ruth in bicycle skirts were rushing among the players, now giving directions to this one, then to that.

“You must stand better, and do come nearer to the front; and when Miss Harmon is singing, look toward her. You are supposed to be hanging on every word of hers (which we’re not usually in reality).”

202

The last words, of course, were sotto voce, and the chorus for the time being made a great effort to obey the energetic Ruth. Occasionally some girl, forgetting how much depended on her, would draw her neighbor aside for a tête-à-tête, to the great annoyance of the energetic managers.

Julia, in her chair in the centre of the floor below the stage, held the score, and from time to time contributed her word of criticism. But she was glad enough to have Clarissa and Annabel and Polly and Ruth bear the most responsibility, as it troubled her to have to pay too much attention to details. Clarissa and Annabel were lovers in the play, and to Polly this seemed rather ridiculous, feeling as she did that she had special insight into the dislike of Annabel for Clarissa. Clarissa, however, seemed unaware that Annabel was less than friendly; and although the latter was not always as perfectly amiable as the Princess in a light opera ought to be, the rehearsals had, on the whole, passed off pretty well. Polly herself, as it happened, was almost the centre of interest in the play. This had come about by accident rather than by actual intention on the part of Julia. She was a disguised Queen, disguised as a youth of humble birth, who had escaped from court for a frolic, whose grace and wit carried everything before her. Although she was apparently Clarissa’s rival for a while, everything was explained when at the very end her disguise was revealed. The operetta abounded in pleasing duets, bright dialogues, and witty hits and gibes. But the jokes and hits were never bitter nor purely personal. They were directed against the peculiarities of certain groups of students rather than against the students themselves. Cambridge, too, came in for its share of ridicule, although the jokes on this subject were rather threadbare, as they had all been used in other years by Harvard or Radcliffe undergraduates, in their dramatic performances or college publications.

203

On the whole, it was a composite production rather than the work of any one individual. Even in the matter of the music, Julia had accepted more than one suggestion made by her friends, and in one or two instances she had composed the words of the lyric, while Polly had composed the music. In the work of composing and arranging the operetta there had been really no friction, and all had been eager to make the affair a success. On this day, when the final performances were so near, there was hardly a girl who did not rejoice that they had come to the end of their weeks of work. Ruth was particularly gratified as they turned away from the hall. She gave a hop, skip, and a jump, undignified, perhaps, for a Sophomore, though expressive of her feeling.

“Hundreds of dollars!” she cried. “My dreams have been filled with them since yesterday, and we have sold nearly all our tickets.”

“But there will be expenses, dear child. You mustn’t forget that,” said Polly, who was one of the group.

“Oh, of course, but there will be enough left. I’m glad, too, that the whole performance will be so creditable, and we ought to be thankful enough that no one has been ill, or for any other reason obliged to give up her part. Anything like that would drive me to distraction, for we have no understudies.”

204

“Oh,” said Julia, “every one has given every one else so much advice that I am sure that any one who has watched the rehearsals could take the part of some other girl at a moment’s notice.”

“I’m not so sure,” responded Ruth, accepting her friend more seriously than the latter intended. “One or two of the parts might, perhaps, be taken, but not Polly’s. She puts a new touch in at almost every rehearsal, and honestly, I think that she has made the thing the success that it is. Excuse me, Julia, I didn’t mean that we owe more to the performers than to the composer.”

“Why, indeed,” replied Julia, “I understand exactly what you mean, and it is fortunate that Polly’s father was not as ill as she feared a week or two ago, for if she had had to go South it would have made a great difference to us.”

205

Nor were the girls wrong in their expectations. The dress rehearsal went off with all the sparkle and life that they had hoped. The regular performance they felt to be a more trying occasion than the rehearsal, for the audience included so many persons from Boston, as well as from Cambridge, whose judgment carried great weight. But critical or not, they were thoroughly appreciative of the pretty operetta. More than once were the singers and actors called before the curtain; and had Julia not been too modest, she, too, would have answered the calls that were made for her. Some of those who were not ardent admirers of Annabel were pleased that she did not—apparently could not—eclipse Polly and Clarissa. Sweet though her voice was, it was not powerful, and her self-consciousness often spoiled the effect of her acting. Brenda, of course, was at the play, and a large party of her gay young friends from the City. In the party were Tom and Will and a number of college men, and Julia, sitting among them, felt that she was almost as merry in spirit as they. Yet more than the praises of these young people, Julia appreciated those of her uncle and aunt who sat in the tier of seats just behind; for her aunt was apparently satisfied by the commendation she received for the operetta that her devotion to her work was not going to separate her entirely from young people of her own age.

“But this operetta, my dear, is on the whole so frivolous that I have some hope that college is not going to deprive you entirely of your interest in society.”

At the close of the performance, as the actors stood behind the scenes listening to the commendations of their friends, a telegraph messenger pushed his way among them with a dispatch for Polly.

Polly’s color faded as she heard him ask for her, and she turned to Julia with an appealing “Read it” as she laid the slip of yellow paper in her hand.

Quickly grasping its contents, Julia threw her arms around her friend.

“Come, my carriage is ready.”

But the carriage did not appear for more than five minutes, during which Polly’s sobs were painful to hear.

206

“It’s her father,” explained Clarissa to a group of girls who had withdrawn some distance from the weeping Polly. “He died this morning, according to the telegram.”

“This morning!” cried one of the girls. “Then it’s a wonder that she wasn’t notified earlier. Why, it takes no time for a telegram to travel from Atlanta to Boston.”

“A telegram!” cried Ruth, who had just come behind the scenes; “why, that reminds me. But what’s the matter with Polly?”

“Why, she’s just had news of her father’s death, and she must feel dreadfully to think that she has been acting this evening, for he died, they say, this morning.”

While Elspeth was speaking Ruth had turned very pale. She put her hand in her little velvet chatelaine and drew out a yellow envelope, apparently another telegram. Without a word to the others she walked up to Polly and Julia.

“This is a telegram that came early in the evening, before we began; you ought to have had it.”

But Polly did not wait for further explanation; she tore open the envelope. Then after reading the telegram, she thrust it inside her dress.

“I cannot forgive you,” she cried. “How could you let me sing? My father died to-day, and what will they think of me when they hear that I sang just the same! I will not forgive you.”

The stern words were followed by violent sobs.

This outburst was so unlike the lively, amiable Polly that her friends were only too glad when Julia’s carriage was announced; and leaning on Clarissa’s arm, she was led away, closely followed by Julia.

207

The girls who were left behind speculated as to what Polly would do; whether she would start for home immediately; whether her feeling would continue to be bitter toward Ruth for withholding the telegram.

“Yet it doesn’t seem altogether like Ruth,” said Elspeth. “Fond as I am of Polly, I feel that there may be some mistake. I am sure that Ruth could not have known about the telegram; could not possibly have held it from Polly if she knew what was in it.”

But unluckily among those whose thoughts were favorable to Ruth, Julia was not to be counted. Her disapproval of Ruth’s intimacy with Annabel now seemed to have been well founded. She felt sure that unintentionally Ruth had adopted Annabel’s rather easy standards of duty to others. “The greatest good of the greatest number,” Annabel was apt to offer as an excuse for some action which other girls called selfish. For when criticised she would try to prove that while one or perhaps two girls were injured by something that she had said or done, an indefinite number of indefinite people would approve, and therefore might be benefited by it. Annabel had a smattering of philosophy, as she had of other subjects, obtained before studying them; and had she learned more of the philosopher whom she quoted almost unconsciously, she would have known that above all other rules he set the Golden Rule. To do unto others as she would have others do to her was certainly not a guiding star of Annabel’s conduct.

208

Thus, after all, there had been an element of tragedy in the operetta that had once meant only sunshine to those who were working and planning for it. Polly Porson, speeding Southward, would have felt doubly forlorn had not Clarissa been with her. For the Western girl had insisted on going with her friend, and though her absence from Cambridge at this time meant some loss in the coming examinations, she would not have listened had any one attempted to dissuade her from going. She did her part, too, in softening Polly’s feeling toward Ruth, and she was surprised to find how earnestly she could champion the cause of a girl who had so often seemed anything but friendly toward her. But while she knew that Ruth had taken no pains to conceal a certain dislike for her, she realized that it was a case of mere personal antipathy, unaccountable, perhaps, as such things often are, or to be accounted for by the fact that in every way the two girls had received a very different training.

“But I’m sure that Ruth wouldn’t do a mean thing, and to have kept that telegram from you would have been mean beyond description.”

Polly, absorbed in her sorrow, and thinking more about the meeting with her mother and little sisters, had little to say, although firmly fixed in her mind was the thought that Ruth really had served her own ends by holding the telegram from her.

209

Clarissa was soon back at Cambridge, and by good luck lost not a single examination through her absence. She would not even admit that her sudden trip, by interfering with her study, had lowered her standing. When the blue-books were all in she was able to announce triumphantly that her average was higher than ever before. “Which proves,” she had said to Elspeth, “that cramming is a luxury and not a necessity.”

Julia did not stay in Cambridge this spring for either the Radcliffe or the Harvard Class Days. She went with her aunt and Brenda to New Haven for the ball game, where Arthur Weston was their host; and although he was as polite as he could be, Julia knew that all his interest was really in Brenda. Arthur, whose brother had married Brenda’s sister, was fond of calling Brenda sister-in-law, and for the same reason he had adopted Julia as a cousin. By a strange coincidence, he, like Philip, had failed to take his degree the preceding June. This was due to ill-health, which had kept him from college part of the year. But unlike Philip, he had been willing to take his place with the next class, and indeed seemed as well pleased as if graduating with his own class. Brenda’s disposition, too, was as volatile as Arthur’s, and she carried a blue parasol, wore blue flowers, and altogether seemed to have forgotten the existence of Harvard and her former love for Harvard red. It was hard for Julia to understand such heartlessness as this,—for so she had to regard it,—as until very lately all Brenda’s college feeling had been for Harvard. Yet Brenda herself would not admit that it was really a strong personal preference for Arthur that had made her forego her Harvard allegiance. She fell back on the excuse of relationship, and on the fact that she had caused the accident which had finally resulted in Arthur’s losing a year at college.

210

“For although he knows that it was an accident, still it certainly was my bicycle that hurt his foot, and I ought to make up by showing all the interest I can in his college. Between us,” she added confidentially, “I think that Harvard Class Day is really more fun; still, I’m having about the best time of my life here at New Haven, although I do not quite see why it should be.”

But Julia understood, and Mrs. Barlow understood, and they smiled indulgently when they saw the two young people strolling off under the New Haven elms.

When the gaiety of the late spring was over, Julia was glad to be back again at Rockley. She needed rest, and she had the good sense to spend her summer quietly. In the early autumn, with her aunt and uncle, she made a tour of the mountains, and the keen air put her in even better trim for her autumn’s work.

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XX
JUNIORS

To follow all the happenings in the college course would take more time than may well be given now. The beginning of the Junior year found Julia and her friends all so accustomed to college life that they could hardly imagine themselves existing without a well-planned scheme of work. As Juniors, they were more constantly deferred to by the girls in the two lower classes, and they could not but realize that they were near the Senior class, and that at the end of another year they would be almost at the end of their college course. Many new girls wandered about the halls of Fay House, and among them Julia was delighted to have Nora included, for Ruth and Julia had not fully made up their misunderstanding of the spring. If they had spent the summer together, things might have been different. But they had been separated for a longer time than ever before since their friendship began; and while neither reproached the other, both realized the coolness between them.

212

Nora was only a Special student, and she always referred to her studies in rather humble tones. But she worked zealously, and confided to Julia that she might possibly enter the regular course, and end by studying medicine, if her parents would only consent. But Julia, though she did not doubt Nora’s sincerity, still realized that there were many things that might prevent her carrying out these rather impossible plans.

Polly, in sombre black and somewhat quieter in manner, was still Polly, and she and Clarissa were constantly together. With Julia and Lois she was always cordial, and she still continued to tease Pamela whenever the occasion presented. But at sight of Ruth her flow of words always ceased. It was plain that she found it very hard to forgive.

This year Annabel and Ruth were a little less intimate than formerly. Yet this did not bring Julia and Ruth any nearer. They still roomed together, still went back and forth to Fay House together. Those who knew them best did not realize that anything had come between them. But they themselves, while realizing the change, would not touch on the subject that lay so near their hearts. The spot on the apple, the rift in the lute, of these and many other similes Julia often thought, but she would not take the first step to mend the breach. She waited for Ruth’s explanation, and Ruth waited for Julia’s apology, and each day the two moved farther away from each other.

As to Polly, in some way she and Ruth contrived never to meet face to face, a feat not impossible, since they happened to have none of the same courses, and since Polly’s mourning for her father kept her from taking an active part in the social life of the college.

213

There were various changes in the grouping of those girls who had been most together in their first two years.

Pamela alone, among those whom we have known the best, went on her way undisturbed. She had not been present at the little outbreak at the close of the operetta. In a general way she knew that there had been trouble, but she had asked no questions about it. In any case, she would have been sure that Julia was entirely right. Her summer, spent as before in tutoring, had helped greatly to free her from care. The scholarship, again awarded to her, the two Boston boys whom she was to tutor twice a week in Greek, had made her third year at Radcliffe a certainty. She continued to live at Miss Batson’s; and although her duties were lighter and she had a room to herself, the good boarding-house keeper declined the weekly payment that Pamela conscientiously offered.

“If you had a room twice as big as that little attic, and on the first floor front, it would just be a comfort to have you here, without your paying a cent. All my young ladies say they have just been getting culture ever since you came here, and that’s worth more than money to all of us.”

So Pamela felt herself to be almost rich, as she gathered her treasures about her in the little French-roofed chamber. Chief among them was a Tanagra figurine, a replica of the lady with the hat that Julia had insisted on her accepting the year before. On the shelf below were her Dante books, and near them some of her father’s Greek books, as well as those that she used in her own classes.

214

Under the great professor, who in this country stands for the study of Dante, she was reaching heights even more blissful than those reached through her study of Greek.

As to Clarissa, she and Polly each had a grievance, and each was bound to help the other right a wrong—or perhaps I should say, each meant to help right the other’s wrong. Polly kept her eye on Annabel, and Clarissa—well, Clarissa had a theory that in time she hoped to prove true.

There were many girls, unluckily, who looked on Clarissa with decided disfavor, believing her the author of the objectionable article; or at the best, they thought that she had unwisely let others use her note-book improperly. Two or three little coteries, therefore, some of them made up of very agreeable girls, were inclined to avoid Clarissa. So Polly, realizing this state of affairs, was all the more anxious to prove that her friend had been wronged. But how prove it?

One morning half a dozen girls clustered before the bulletin board. The assortment of notices touched every side of college life. One in which Polly Porson had had a large part read:

Freshmen and New Specials
are
Cordially invited by the Juniors to a reception, Wednesday, October 31, in the Auditorium, at 4.30 P.M.

215

Polly’s part had consisted of the dainty pen-and-ink drawing showing at the top a vivacious girl with arms extended, while at the side was a troop of smaller girls, presumably the Freshmen and Specials, with accompanying verses:

“School is over, oh, what fun!

Lessons finished, work begun.

Who’ll laugh gayest? Let us try.

Who’ll talk loudest, you or I?”

Near by was a card giving information about the College Settlement Association, and others announcing a trial of voices for the Glee and Choral Clubs. But most conspicuous of all were the notices of the various athletic clubs, and these notices seemed to awaken a lively discussion among the girls standing before the board.

“R. A. A.—Will all who wish to join please pay,”

read one of them, adding, “Oh, I’ve joined and paid, too. I’m more interested in the basket ball.”

“Well, the managers mean business,” added another, pointing to a notice:

“Basket Ball, 189—

“Great need of candidates. All that can, come out and try for the teams, whether they played last year or not.”

“That isn’t for me,” said one of the girls, who happened to be a Sophomore.

“We’re going to have a strong team this year.”

“Oh, yes,” continued a classmate, “the Juniors can’t do a thing to us unless Miss Hert—”

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“Hush!” exclaimed the first speaker, and turning her head slightly, the second girl saw Clarissa and Pamela approaching, arm in arm.

But as the two friends disappeared in the distance, a third girl, a Junior, said, “Yes, Clarissa’s the girl we want but Alma Stacey is determined—”

“I know that she’s been pretty severe toward Clarissa.”

“Well, Annabel says—”

“Oh, Annabel—”

“Well, Annabel says that she believes that Clarissa would do almost anything after playing that trick on her.”

“What, about Mr. Radcliffe, the so-called Mr. Radcliffe?”

Polly at this moment had passed them a second time, although now without Clarissa.

Quickly guessing the subject of their conversation, she interposed.

“Oh, breathes there a Radcliffe girl so silly as to think that Clarissa had anything to do with that book-plate affair?”

Whereupon the others, Juniors and Sophomores, admitted that they had not wholly believed Clarissa responsible for Annabel’s discomfiture, although one of them added that there seemed little doubt that Clarissa had sanctioned the newspaper article. Yet, if Polly could not make an adequate reply to this (for not yet had she completed her detective work), she assured them that Clarissa was so popular that she had been urged to join the basket ball team, and that through her the class was to reach a pinnacle of fame in athletics.

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Indeed, during this year it seemed as if athletic rather than scholastic glory was the thing most sought for. The new Gymnasium had given an impetus to all kinds of athletics, and with the increasing size of the classes, the long-delayed class spirit was beginning to develop.

Julia was a spectator at the Athletic Reception given by the Freshmen, and she laughed and applauded all the sports from the potato races to some of those trials of skill that required great proficiency. She had sprained her ankle very slightly soon after college opened, and this prevented her usual gymnasium work.

It was natural that there should be many little coteries at Radcliffe, and that some should be more devoted than others to study, and others more devoted to the lighter side of college life. Julia, now that she and Ruth were less inseparable, found herself turning more and more to Lois, and for Lois she began to feel even more sympathy than for Pamela. Although Pamela had had to struggle, she still had been able on the whole to carry out her plans. Lois, on the other hand, had constantly been obliged to contend with an unsympathetic family. Her mother thought that on leaving the High School she ought to have been contented with a year in a training school. This would at once have fitted her for public school teaching. Money certainly was needed in the family, and Lois was not selfish. Yet when a relative, appreciative of her talent and ambition, offered her the money for the four years’ tuition at Radcliffe, she felt it to be not only a privilege, but a duty to accept. Lois in accepting, however, in the midst of her college work had constantly the feeling that she ought to consider her family more. It was indeed a difficult task to which she had set herself, to be both the dutiful daughter at home and the college student keeping her studies of first importance. It was the old story of trying to serve two masters; she was unable completely to please her family, and she lost much of the joy of college life because she could give so little time to the pleasant idling in which a girl must indulge if she wishes to be popular.

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Even to herself, Lois perhaps never said that she wished to be popular. Yet she had an inborn spirit of leadership; and if she had listened to the urgings of her friends, she would have allowed herself to be a candidate for the Idler Presidency.

“It’s perfectly useless,” she remonstrated. “I haven’t the time, I haven’t the least chance of success. Besides, a great many other girls are much better fitted for the office. Honestly, I don’t think that I have a single qualification.”

“Ah, but you’d make such an ornamental President,” said Polly teasingly, knowing that this was the least sensible argument to use, for Lois not only seemed quite unconscious of her own attractiveness, but disliked these frivolous remarks. Yet although Polly spoke thus teasingly, she was in earnest in what she said.

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“I haven’t enough energy myself to electioneer,” she had said to Julia, “but I’m going to make myself as agreeable as I can to everybody; and if you will help, and if Clarissa will help, and in fact if every one will help, why, Lois shall be the Idler President.”

“Naturally, if every one helps,” and Julia smiled; “but of course you can count on me, for I should be only too glad to see Lois loaded with honors. I consider her the very ablest girl in the class. What a credit she’ll be to us on the Commencement platform, with second-year honors, and a summa cum, and probably with a prize or two thrown in!”

Polly, if the truth were known, was perhaps more anxious to have Lois regarded as a probable candidate because she had heard that Annabel was also turning her thoughts in the direction of this office. Therefore, early and late, and without making her efforts too evident, she tried to create a sentiment in favor of Lois, so that when the election should come, it would seem the most natural thing in the world for her to be chosen.

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On the whole, in this its Junior year the class was more united than ever before. At the Junior luncheon, more than one of those who responded to the toasts called attention to this fact. Annabel was still Class President, and indeed most of the class officers remained the same. But I am not sure that Polly would have admitted that this was a real sign of class unity. Annabel was still a conspicuous figure at the Idler theatricals, and she had even written a little play herself. Some of her admirers said that it contained passages that were wittier than anything in the operetta. But the authors of the operetta, composer and librettist, were not disturbed when this was repeated to them. Julia was not ambitious to shine again as a composer, at least for the present. Her very success had made her realize her own limitations, and she decided to make no further effort in this direction until she had perfected herself in the underlying principles. Nor did Polly intend to appear before the world as a full-fledged author. So the praise of Annabel, as sung by her special admirers, did not disturb her.

A few of the girls who were especially fond of society went out more than during the first two years. Some attended the Cambridge Assemblies, and an energetic group arranged a series of Junior dances, which, sanctioned by those in authority, proved altogether delightful. Julia attended the Assemblies largely because Brenda urged her to, and Brenda and a crowd of young people from town came out to them.

Clarissa went to the Junior dances, but she was not sufficiently in society to be asked to the Assemblies. Clarissa, however, had a faculty of enjoying herself at all times, and she did not show that she felt certain slights offered her, notably that of keeping her off the team.

In the natural course of events, she should have been chosen captain, but the influence of Alma Stacey was strong, and Clarissa was not even on the team.

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But college festivities were not the only pleasures offered the girls. Not a few of the class who lived at home in Boston or Cambridge or the suburbs entertained at their own houses. An occasional tea, an evening of private theatricals, all these things relieved delightfully the monotony of study. Yet to a popular girl they offered great temptations for wasting time, and in college life, as in the outside world, it was hard to draw the line between necessary and unnecessary amusements. But when a wave of whist swept through the class, some of the more sedate began to protest.

“Oh, but it strengthens the mind, it really does,” pleaded Polly, when Julia remonstrated; “and you know I’m not dancing—or anything,” glancing down at her black gown.

“Yes, but afternoon whist parties, and two or three of them a week! Why, you will soon have no mind for anything else.”

“Oh, I’m not so sure of that, though it’s time to begin to study a little, as the mid-years are coming. But you look so sad over it, Julia, that I may swear off, like our old friend Rip.”

“I hope that it will be a different kind of swearing off from Rip’s. Otherwise—”

“Well, it shall be otherwise for the rest of the year, so far as whist is concerned, so worry no longer, fair creature,” and Polly went away laughing.

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XXI
A FORTUNATE ACCIDENT

One morning in January Lois entered Fay House with what Clarissa would have called a “long-drawn face,” and with traces of tears in her eyes. She had a letter in her hand, crumpled shapelessly.

The postman had given it to her as she was leaving her house in Newton, and she had been carrying it without realizing that she had it. Now, as she drew off her gloves, she saw the letter, and as she smoothed it out, again her eyes filled with tears.

To a certain extent the letter seemed like a death warrant, for it contained news that the relative who had been paying Lois’ tuition could do so no longer, and that not even the payment for the second half-year would be forthcoming. This to Lois meant that with the mid-years her Radcliffe work must end. Moreover, recent family troubles made it almost necessary that it should end. The required sum was not so very large, but for Lois it was absolutely unattainable. It was too late in the year for a scholarship award, and indeed the idea of holding a scholarship was distasteful to her. There was no one from whom she could borrow, no one to whom she was willing to confide her private affairs. She knew that there were schools in some of the smaller towns where she would be accepted as a teacher even without the college degree, and immediately she decided she would go to an agency to learn where there might be a vacancy.

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Among all her classmates Julia was the only one to whom she would have been at all willing to confide her trouble, and yet Julia was the very one to whom she could not go, because Julia was the one who might have helped her. To have told Julia of her difficulty would have seemed to her too much like asking a favor—an impossible thing to one of her proud spirit.

Lois carried her burden without speaking of it for several days. She meant to say nothing until the mid-years were over. She intended to keep up her courage to the end. She studied all the harder, for she meant these mid-year examinations to be the best that she had ever had. She meant to reach the highest possible mark. For although she intended to return to college when she had saved enough money, she knew that happy day might yet be some distance away. One day soon after she had received the letter that had so disturbed her, Lois remained rather late at Fay House. She had been at work in the library, for the next day the examinations would begin, and it happened that the most important was to come on that first morning. At home that evening she would finish the review of a certain very important book. She felt that she had not yet given it sufficient attention, and she realized that much depended on her understanding two or three difficult chapters. Passing through the hall where groups of merry girls were coming out from some Freshman celebration in the Auditorium, Lois, with a head throbbing from hard study, decided to walk for a mile or two before taking the car. As she walked along trying to solve a problem that touched on her examination, forgetting for the time the more personal cares that had weighed her down lately, she turned into a side street that took her a little out of her course. In the spring and early autumn she was fond of this street, because of two or three old-fashioned gardens upon whose quaint flowers she loved to gaze. The street was lonely and the houses far apart, and Lois began to walk more rapidly. In the faint light, for it was now almost dark, Lois paused for a moment to look over the fence of one of the old gardens. Near a tall tree in the corner in summer there was a bed of lilies of the valley that she had often stopped to admire. Now as she leaned absent-mindedly on the fence for a minute, she thought that she heard a groan as of some one in pain. Hastily pushing open the gate she heard the sounds growing louder as she approached the house. There were no lights in the windows, but stepping bravely up on the little piazza she entered the half-open door. She stumbled as she entered, and reaching down she touched a warm, breathing face.

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“Help me!” cried a faint voice, and then another deep groan. A faint light came from a back room, and Lois, quick-witted, hurried in there, and in a second returned with matches. When she had lit the gas-jet in the hall, she saw that the sufferer was an elderly woman whom she had often noticed in the garden, and had seen occasionally at Radcliffe functions. Lois was tall and strong, and the sufferer was slight, so without delay she lifted her to a couch in the sitting-room.

“Lois made the bandage and put it on with a professional air”

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“It’s my foot,” moaned the sufferer.

“I’ll go for a doctor at once,” said Lois, “but first I must put on a cold compress. It’s evidently a bad sprain. There seem to be no bones broken,” she concluded, finishing her examination.

Stripping up a cover from a pillow in an easy-chair, and finding her way to the running water in the kitchen, Lois made the bandage and put it on with a professional air.

Few words had passed between them, but as she left the room, “Dr. Brown,” said the sick woman.

“Yes,” responded Lois, “I was going for him.”

It was not far to the physician’s house, and when he had examined the foot he pronounced it, as Lois had, merely a bad sprain.

“My maid won’t be back until eleven o’clock,” said the sick woman. “I let her go to Woburn.”

“I can get a nurse,” responded the doctor. “You mustn’t be left alone.”

“I won’t have a nurse about me. You’ve often heard me say that,” cried Miss Ambrose petulantly.

“But you can’t be left alone,” rejoined the doctor firmly.

Miss Ambrose looked at Lois appealingly.

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“Let me stay with you!” exclaimed Lois impulsively, forgetting her examinations, forgetting the important review, forgetting everything but the fact that before her lay a suffering human being whom she might help.

“Would I be of use?” she asked, when the doctor did not immediately reply.

“Of use!” he exclaimed. “I should say so; a girl who knows just what to do with a sprained ankle.”

So it was arranged that a telegram at Miss Ambrose’s expense should be sent to Lois’ family, saying that she would stay all night, and the physician’s name, Lois knew, would assure her mother that it was a case of necessity. “Illness of a friend,” he had put in the telegram, leaving it to Lois to make explanations when she reached home.

After the doctor left, the sick woman lay silent with her eyes closed—whether half asleep or not Lois could not tell. She had refused Lois’ offer of assistance in putting her to bed, saying that she would be more comfortable on the lounge until her maid should come.

As Lois watched her lying there, her regular features outlined against the pillow, her pale face looking even paler, surrounded with a mass of sandy, gray-streaked hair, the strangeness of the situation occurred to her, as it had not at first. Then she began to realize that she ought not to play Good Samaritan at this time, for it came back to her with overpowering force that this was the eve of an examination, that she really depended on these last few hours of review. Well! there was no reason why she should not study here, though the light was rather dim.

As she turned toward the door to bring her books from a table in the hall, Miss Ambrose started.

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“Don’t leave me!” she cried.

“No, no, indeed.” Lois had quickly returned with the book under her arm.

“You are a student,” said the invalid, now wide awake. “I have often seen you pass with your books under your arm. Where is your school?”

“It’s Radcliffe.”

“Oh, how I envy you!” and Miss Ambrose sighed. “When I was your age I would have given all—”

A twinge of pain prevented her finishing the sentence. Lois laid down the book, and, lifting the coverlid, moved the foot to an easier position.

Again Miss Ambrose closed her eyes, and Lois, turning down the light, sat and watched her a little longer. It was now half-past seven and Lois felt faint. She had had nothing to eat since breakfast, except a light luncheon. Passing to the kitchen for the water for the compress, she had seen dishes piled on the table, and she judged that Miss Ambrose had had an early tea. Then Miss Ambrose opened her eyes.

“Perhaps you would like to study now; the light will not disturb me.”

“Thank you,” responded Lois. “I really need all the time I can have. I have an examination in psychology to-morrow.”

“Then pray go on without considering me. It is a great relief to me to know that you are here. But I feel so drowsy that if I fall asleep I am sure that you will excuse me.”

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In a short time Miss Ambrose seemed to be really asleep, and Lois bent over her books with great zeal.

The examination in psychology was one that would require a cool head.

“Explain the utility of cerebral hemispheres.” Lois turned from the test question to her note-book. She was able to answer it satisfactorily. “In the lectures mental life was several times described as a ‘collection of interests.’ Explain the phrase, and give the chief reasons for holding it to be a true description of at least a great part of mental life.” This, too, Lois found no difficulty in answering. But occasionally she came to a question that needed something more than either memory or her lecture notes. She exerted herself to the utmost. But alas! the more she studied, the more she realized that she had the greatest need of her text-book, and this she had left at home. It was too large a book to carry back and forward to Fay House, for she had felt that she would do best to spend the last hours in a careful study of its pages.

It was nine o’clock when Lois made this discovery, and Miss Ambrose had not awaked. Lois blamed herself for not giving her college work first place in her mind when she made her offer to stay with Miss Ambrose. But Lois, in her way, was a philosopher, and since she could not have what she needed the most, she resolved to do the best possible with what she had. She devoted herself, therefore, to her note-book, and tested her knowledge of the subject with various specimen examination papers of past years. It was brain-consuming work, and Lois was so absorbed in it that she did not hear the maid when she opened the front door with her key.

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“Sakes alive!” exclaimed the maid, amazed at this late hour to see a stranger seated at the centre table, while her mistress reclined on the lounge. Her loud tone woke Miss Ambrose, who at once began to explain the situation.

“I started upstairs, after going to the front door for my paper, and when I reached the top I remembered that I had left the door half open. Some way I slipped as I turned around, and fell the whole way. If it hadn’t been for this young lady I might have been there yet with my foot twisted under me,” and Miss Ambrose raised her hand to her eyes, greatly disturbed by the thought of what might have been. “She’s going to stay all night,” she added, after a moment’s pause. “See that the spare room’s ready.”

“Yes’m, but I wonder if the young lady mightn’t like something to eat before going to bed.”

“Bless me,” said Miss Ambrose, almost attempting to rise from her couch. “I dare say the child hasn’t had any tea. I’d had mine before she came, but I never thought to ask her.”

“I should think not,” responded Lois, “with your lame foot.”

But pressed for an answer, she admitted that she had eaten little since breakfast, and when Dr. Brown returned at eleven, he found Lois at a side table with a cup of chocolate and a plate of bread and sliced cold beef before her. With his help Miss Ambrose was carried to her room upstairs, and he assured her that with patience and the care that Maggie would give her, he knew that she would soon be herself again.

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“How soon?” asked Miss Ambrose anxiously.

“Well,” he replied cautiously, “it’s a matter of weeks rather than months, but I can hardly undertake to say precisely how long it will take.”

As Lois went to the room prepared for her the doctor gave her a word of commendation for her kindness to Miss Ambrose. “Your bandage had a professional touch,” he said.

“Thank you,” she responded, “you know I wish to study medicine.”

“So I’ve heard,” replied Dr. Brown, who had a slight acquaintance with Lois’ family, “although you understand, I suppose, that it’s a long and hard road, especially for a woman.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, less cheerfully, perhaps, than her wont. Indeed, as she sat in Miss Ambrose’s quaintly furnished spare room, the professional course for which she hoped seemed farther away than ever. With one last glance at her notes before she went to bed, she heard the clock strike twelve before she fell asleep. In the morning she woke early, and was again at her work, with a sigh for the text-book which she could not see until she reached Fay House, where there was a copy in the library. It was hardly seven when Maggie knocked on the door, to say that breakfast would be ready at eight, and that Miss Ambrose would be glad to see her at any time.

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“You have been very kind indeed to stay with me, and you must promise to come to see me as soon as you can. I shall certainly be here for the next two or three weeks.” Miss Ambrose smiled faintly.

“Yes, it’s too bad.” The voice of Lois had the ring of true sympathy. “The next two or three weeks will be pretty busy for me, as all the mid-years come then, you know. But I shall drop in, in passing, for I shall be very anxious to see how you are getting along.”

“Thank you, it will please me so. There is so much that I wish to ask about the college. When I was young there were no colleges for girls, and my parents would not have let me go away from home. But I had a brother fitting for college, and by myself I studied just the same things that he did. How I envied him his chances! Ah! he didn’t half appreciate them.” Then Miss Ambrose paused, as if weighed down by sad memories. “Well, afterwards my mother tried to get permission for me to study at Harvard, or even to have examinations on subjects that I had studied at home. But it was useless. Nothing could be done about it, although we had relatives in the Faculty and many influential friends.”

“Did they approve of your wishing to go?”

“Well, not altogether. In fact, some of them thought me bold to talk about it. But—well, I’m glad that the girls of this generation have the chance that I longed for.”

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Later Lois learned from those who knew Miss Ambrose that she was really a very accomplished woman, and that she had studied many subjects under eminent professors. The brother, who had had the chance for which she had vainly longed, had not turned out well, and had had to leave college without his degree. Ill-health in later years had somewhat interfered with Miss Ambrose’s studying, and she had a wistful expression, such as one often notes on the faces of those who have missed their highest ambition.

Lois, walking down to Fay House in the fresh morning air, thought of the contrariness of Fate. Here was Miss Ambrose, who so evidently might have afforded the luxury of a Harvard course, had this been a possibility in her youth, and here was she, Lois, longing for it, yet likely to be debarred from completing her work from the mere need of a little money. But brushing these thoughts aside, as unworthy a sensible girl, Lois returned to her psychology, and mentally worked out a problem or two before she reached Fay House.

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XXII
ANNABEL AND CLARISSA

The skating this winter of Julia’s Junior year was unusually good, and during late January and early February crowds went each afternoon to Fresh Pond. Julia, Ruth, Polly, and Clarissa were particularly zealous, and they were all fine skaters. Annabel excelled them all, and none were unwilling to admit her superiority. During her residence abroad she had spent a winter at Copenhagen, and she could accomplish all kinds of wonderful feats learned there in a most graceful way.

“If she were as genuine in other things as in this, we wouldn’t criticise her so, would we, Julia?” and Polly linked her arm in Julia’s for another turn round the pond.

Annabel, indeed, distanced some of the Harvard youths who hung about her. It pleased her to show that she did not need their assistance.

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Skating was Annabel’s one outdoor accomplishment, for she was not generally fond of athletics. One afternoon a dozen or more Seniors were up at Fresh Pond. Clarissa skated almost as well as Annabel, but Polly and Julia were less expert, although they were both better skaters than Ruth. “Don’t go over by the ice-houses,” cried Polly, skimming past Julia and Clarissa. “There’s a thin place there and they are just going to rope it off. I was asked to warn everybody.”

“Oh, we know it is thin, thank you,” responded Julia.

“Yes,” added Polly, “only a goose would skate over there; any one can see it’s thin, the ice is so dark. Only a goose would skate near it—or a person who was absorbed in showing off,” and she pointed toward the dangerous spot, which Annabel was approaching.

“Didn’t you warn her?” asked Clarissa, turning to Polly. “You passed her on the way.”

“I’m afraid I didn’t. I was thinking only of you.”

“Oh, Annabel knows so much, she would have known the ice wasn’t thin, even if you had told her.”

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But even while they spoke, Clarissa had started off at full speed, and as the others turned to watch her they saw Annabel on the very edge of the dark ice. Polly knew that this was the dangerous place, and called out loudly to Julia to follow her. These things take almost as long in the telling as in the happening, and before Julia and Polly could reach the other two, Annabel had gone through the ice just as Clarissa had almost overtaken her. Without a moment’s hesitation Clarissa threw herself into the chasm, and for a moment it looked as if she would only make a bad matter worse. But Clarissa knew that they were near the shore, and that with even a few strokes she could get herself into shallow water. She had thrown off her coat as she ran, and her arms were unencumbered. Moreover, she had felt justified in making the bold plunge, because she had seen several young men approaching from the crowd of skaters at the opposite end of the pond. Dragging Annabel somewhat roughly then, she struggled on toward the bank, and to her great joy she soon found her feet touching the bottom. Ready hands were stretched out to her from the shore, where already a crowd had assembled, and indeed two youths had plunged into the water to help her support Annabel. The latter was altogether overcome by the shock. Although she had not exactly fainted, she was so benumbed as to be helpless. But for Clarissa’s quick action she might have suffered much more. Hardly were they out of the water when a student returned with a sleigh, whose driver he had stopped in passing. The two drenched girls were bundled under the robes, and taken to a house not far away. Julia and Polly drove quickly down to Cambridge for fresh clothes, and before sunset Annabel and Clarissa were back in their own rooms. Annabel, however, really suffered from her mishap. She had struck her head on the ice in falling, and in consequence a slight fever set in which at first seemed rather serious. Her friends kept her room filled with flowers, and all her classmates showed great sympathy when it was rumored that she might have to drop out of the class for the rest of the year. Clarissa had never fully realized Annabel’s unfriendliness, and so when the latter sent for her she was only too glad to go to see her. She thought that Annabel’s thanks were warmer than they need have been, for Clarissa assured her that she had really been in little danger, and that even without her help, she would not have been long in the water. Annabel in her rôle of invalid, reclining in an easy-chair, with her room filled with flowers, was indeed picturesque.

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“Some day,” she said faintly, “when I feel a little stronger I must have a long talk with you. I feel that I have done you an injustice.”

“Nonsense,” replied Clarissa, “I am sure that you have not.”

“Well,” sighed Annabel, “I will tell you sometime. It is hard now to explain.”

“Oh, I rather think that I can wait, if you can. You make me think of Pamela, whose conscience is always too active to be healthy,” rejoined Clarissa, with a smile.

“Ah!” exclaimed Annabel dramatically, “you will believe me when I tell you all, but not now. Yet believe that I shall feel forever indebted to you.”

“Yes, yes,” responded Clarissa, “if it makes you happier to put it that way. But really—” Here they were interrupted by the arrival of other callers, and Clarissa soon took her departure. She had only a vague idea of Annabel’s meaning, although she thought that she undoubtedly had some reference to the publication of Professor Z’s lecture.

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She did not permit herself to dwell long on a subject that concerned herself so entirely. Recitations were to begin again in a few days, and she was very anxious to have a meeting of the class called to consider the question of the Presidency of the Idler. It was the custom to appoint to this office the girl who had been Vice-President in the Junior year. It happened, however, that Regina Andrews, the girl now in office, had announced her intention of spending the next year in Europe instead of in the regular work of the Senior year. Polly and Clarissa, therefore, had at once begun to work up a strong sentiment in favor of Lois.

Lois, had she known of their well-meant efforts, would probably have stopped them by explaining that she herself had lost not merely the prospect of being a Senior, but even of finishing the work of her Junior year.

She had agreed to take the position in the Village High School, twenty miles away, and she was to go there February 15th. Until the opening of the recitation period at the close of the mid-years, she intended to say nothing about her changed plans.

Yet Clarissa and Polly could not help seeing that she took little interest when they told her of Regina Andrews’ resignation from the Vice-Presidency.

“We’re bound you shall have it, Lois. We think that you are the very best girl for the place.”

“There’s Julia.”

“Yes, we’d all like Julia, but she says that nothing would induce her to take it. She hates presiding, and she has made us promise not even to let her name come up. She is particularly anxious to have you,” and Polly’s tone would have been convincing to any one but a girl who had put a task upon herself in which class honors had no part. There had been times, of course, when popularity and the thought of being Idler President would have given her a great joy. But now—ah! in a day or two Polly and Clarissa would know just how matters stood.

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On Saturday Julia invited her to luncheon, and afterwards they were going to town to a concert. Ruth had gone home over Sunday, as had been her habit this year.

“I’m perfectly delighted, Lois, that you are to be the next Idler President, for Polly says that there isn’t a shadow of a doubt. She has been so determined that the office should not go to Annabel that she has turned into a regular wire-puller. Even Annabel’s illness has made little difference to her, although I think that Clarissa has a more friendly feeling toward her.”

“There!” exclaimed Lois, “I must talk seriously with Polly and Clarissa. I have told them that I could not stand, but they won’t believe me.”

“But why, Lois, why should you not take the office if it comes to you? You preside so well, and you are not timid, as I am, and—”

“Because, Julia”—Lois knew now that it was best to explain the whole matter—“because I may not be here next year.”

Then in as few words as possible, Lois told Julia that loss of money and other things made it expedient for her to take a year or more away from college.

“I cannot bear to be counted out of this class, but there is no help for it.”

Julia very wisely did not attempt to dissuade Lois from her purpose of teaching, although already a little plan had begun to form in her mind. Yet she was sympathetic, and told Lois that it was simply impossible to think of the class as ready to graduate without her.

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“Why, we’ll all have to stay out a year, just to keep up with you,” she said.

But in her own room that evening, Julia pondered long over the perversity of Fate, that hampered girls like Jane and Pamela and Lois, who loved study for its own sake, while many others were able to glide through college with no thought of the great privileges that were open to them. “The worst of it is, the girls whom one would like to help are always the proudest.” Then Julia put her mind on the subject, and decided that if she could help it Lois should not leave college.

As Lois had finished her examinations in the first two weeks, she found time for more than one brief call on Miss Ambrose. It was so easy to drop in for a half-hour in passing, and the interest of the older woman in all her affairs was so genuine, that it was a delight to tell all that she could about college life. One day she stayed to luncheon, and enjoyed the service of quaint, old-fashioned china and silver, and she stole glances of admiration as she ate, at the massive mahogany sideboard and the spindle-legged serving table and the delicate steel engravings on the wall. Then in Miss Ambrose’s sitting-room she found so much to gratify her love of antiquities. There was the cabinet, for example, with its wedgewood vases, and the mosaics collected in Europe, and the little book-shelf with its tiny volumes of the Italian poets, bound in vellum, and the half-dozen miniatures on the mantle-piece of Miss Ambrose’s parents and other relatives,—all these and many other things claimed Lois’ attention, although most interesting of all was Miss Ambrose herself. A well-cultivated mind has always a strong charm for a thoughtful girl, and Miss Ambrose had certainly more culture than belongs to the average college graduate, man or woman. She had travelled and she had studied, yet she always seemed ready to hear Lois’ views on any subject of general interest.

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“You look pale,” said Miss Ambrose abruptly on this particular day; “you look pale, and if you will pardon my saying it, a trifle worried. A young person should never show the touch of care.”

“Why, I ought not to look worried,” said Lois soberly. “I am sorry to appear so—so stupid.”

“You could never appear stupid,” rejoined Miss Ambrose, “but you are certainly paler. I hope that you are not working too hard.”

“Oh, no, work always agrees with me.”

“Then something is troubling you,” persisted Miss Ambrose firmly. “I fear that you were less successful than you would have been had you not taken care of me the night when I sprained my foot. I know that you were to have an examination the next day.”

“Oh, no,” and Lois smiled like her usual self. “Oh, no, I came out better than I expected in that. I had an ‘A.’”

“Then I am really puzzled,” said Miss Ambrose, adding, with a slight touch of severity, “I should think that you might trust me sufficiently to tell me what the trouble really is.”

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Now even a fortnight earlier, Lois would hardly have believed any one who had told her that after a brief acquaintance she could have found it possible to open her heart to one whom she had known so short a time. Yet although she confided comparatively little, Miss Ambrose, reading between the lines, saw that the young girl was making a great sacrifice in stopping her course at this stage. “Sacrifice” is not perhaps exactly the right term, for on the part of Lois it was involuntary. Until she could earn money, it was not possible for her to continue her course. Yet when Lois had told Miss Ambrose all her reasons for leaving, the older woman merely expressed the conventional words of regret. Her eyes held rather more than their usual look of absent-mindedness.

Great, therefore, was the surprise of Lois, on reaching home on that Saturday evening after she had been with Julia, to find a letter awaiting her from Miss Ambrose. From between the pages a thin blue slip fluttered to the floor.

“You must accept this,” wrote Miss Ambrose in her fine, pointed handwriting, “as a very slight tribute of my indebtedness to you. I do not refer merely to the sacrifice you made in staying with me the evening when I was hurt; but you have done me a great favor in bringing me in touch with the woman’s college. You have given me an insight into the life of a college girl. I know that you will continue to keep me informed about it, and thus I shall enjoy through another a little of what I so longed for in my youth. From this time I intend to contribute a certain amount toward the education of one or two students, and I am sure that you will oblige me by being the first to give me the privilege of doing something for the honor of good scholarship.”

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Picking up the blue slip, Lois saw that it was a check for one hundred and fifty dollars. The amount took her breath away. It meant not only the payment of her tuition for the next half-year, but it gave her a margin for other things, something even to save toward the expenses of the next year, for Lois was a good manager, and her pulses beat to fever heat as she thought of all that she could do with this money.

She found that her parents made no objection to her keeping the check, and she had no hesitation in breaking her engagement with the Village School, as she knew that another approved candidate for the position had been sadly disappointed when it was given to her.

Lois felt that she had done nothing to deserve this good fortune, and yet she was too sensible to decline what came in her way. She realized that her own greatest usefulness in the world would come from finishing her college course, and she lost no time in thanking Miss Ambrose, and in assuring her that she would do her best to deserve her confidence. Then Miss Ambrose smiled a contented smile. At last she had a direct interest in the woman’s college.

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XXIII
CLOUDS CLEARED AWAY

Julia was the first person outside her own family to whom Lois told her good fortune, and Julia, to tell the truth, was a trifle disappointed in hearing of it, for she had formed a little plan of her own, and if Miss Ambrose had not been ahead of her, she would have come forward to prevent Lois’ leaving. She told Clarissa, however, how near the class had come to losing Lois, and Clarissa, not vowed to secrecy, told others. The disclosure was entirely to the advantage of Lois, for all the class expressed itself fully as to its great loss, if its most promising student had had to leave for the mere lack of a little money. Clarissa and Polly artfully took advantage of this feeling, and talked about Lois’ accomplishments so persistently that even the least interested admitted that she was the very girl for the Idler Presidency. It was hard for Annabel to count herself altogether out of the running, but at last she submitted gracefully to what she could not help; and if she did not try to forward Clarissa’s cause, she certainly did nothing to hinder it. As she improved in health she did not open her heart to Clarissa, and she made no admission of knowing more than any one else about the publication of Professor Z’s notes. She was very friendly to the Kansas girl, and even invited her one afternoon as guest of honor to one of her famous little afternoon teas. Polly laughingly accused Clarissa of permitting herself to be bribed into friendliness. But Clarissa retorted that she had never felt unkindly toward Annabel, and that in time wrongs generally righted themselves. It was probably through Annabel’s influence that Alma Stacey bent all her energies toward getting Clarissa on the basket ball team, and succeeded.

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As the spring passed on, many pleasant little social events brought the Juniors in closer contact with girls in the other classes. The students of highest rank had been elected into the various clubs, according to the studies in which they excelled. No one with less than two “A’s,” or two “B’s” with two additional courses could be admitted into these exclusive little organizations, and membership in the History or English or Philosophy Club, or indeed in any of several others, was accounted a great honor.

Julia was in the History and Music Clubs, Polly was in the English Club, Lois was in half a dozen of them, and Clarissa, almost to her own surprise, was in the Philosophy Club, having made a great impression on her classmates, as well as on her professors, by her very original method of interpreting various theories of philosophy. The Juniors were admitted in season to take part in the open meetings of these clubs, to which were invited the members of the corresponding clubs at Harvard, as well as the teachers in the department and individual guests of honor from outside.

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The Juniors, however, felt closer in touch with the Seniors when they planned one or two special things in honor of the class so soon to go out.

“They treated us well when they were Sophomores, and we were nothing but Freshmen, so now we must do our best to make them feel that they really will be missed,” said Julia, as she and Polly and one or two others of the committee were planning what form the Senior party should take.

“Oh, there’s no danger of their not thinking that they will be missed,” cried Polly. “Why, I believe that Elizabeth Darcy anticipates that the decline of Radcliffe will date from the day of her graduation. But we won’t let a little prejudice stand in the way of our giving them a good send-off.”

This particular affair was called a music party, and a prize was offered by the Juniors to the Senior who should show herself most familiar with unclassical music. The prize was a pretty little old Dutch silver violin, and to the amusement of all it went to a girl who sang all the lyrics from all the operettas composed by Radcliffe girls during the past five years. She offered to play each operetta through from beginning to end, but the judges (which meant the whole Junior class) begged off and declared that she had sufficiently shown her ability, and had really earned the prize. So with much laughter the tiny violin on a crimson ribbon was slung around her neck.

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In return the Seniors gave the Juniors a party, requesting in their invitations that each girl should bring a book for the little white bookcase in the Senior room. “As you will soon be Seniors yourselves,” the invitations had said, “these books will really be for your own use, and you have always been so unselfish that you wouldn’t have thought of doing this had we not reminded you.”

The Senior rooms occupied the first floor of a pretty old-fashioned cottage on the Fay House grounds. With good rugs, well-chosen pictures, a piano, writing desk, lounge, and easy-chairs, they offered a pleasant retreat for the Senior who wished to escape the noise of the larger buildings. Once a week during the winter the Seniors were at home for an informal afternoon tea, and it was only on this set day that an undergraduate ventured within the precincts. The old-fashioned house had been bought by the Radcliffe Trustees in their efforts to acquire for a campus all the land in the immediate vicinity of Fay House, and the little house in the natural course of events would sometime be pulled down. But in the meantime it was a delightful place of retreat for the Seniors. To be sure, Elspeth Gray, who had been in New York during the spring recess, brought back glowing accounts of the Senior room at Vassar.

“These rooms look countrified compared with the Vassar room. Why, there, although they always have the same room, each Senior class refurnishes it. Even the wall hangings are changed. This year instead of paper they have put on a painted burlap, stencilled in gold, which cost nearly two hundred dollars; and the furniture and bronzes and oil paintings, although many of these things are simply lent by Seniors for the year, would make your eyes open, you simple-minded Radcliffeites.”

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“Plain living and high thinking is the rule at Cambridge,” responded Ruth, who happened to be one of the group to whom she spoke. “Come, Elspeth, don’t join the crowd that is sighing for a porter’s lodge, or a boy in buttons, or some similar luxury here at Radcliffe.”

“Dear child,” and Elspeth drew herself to her full height, “I did not say, did I, that I preferred the elegance of Vassar and Bryn Mawr, but we haven’t even any palms, such as they have at Wellesley, or—”

“Well, we have historic associations. There’s the Washington Elm, almost under our eyes, and we’re so nearly a part of Harvard that we can look back on a long and honorable past, even if we have less than twenty years of our own to count up.”

The spring would have been altogether perfect for Julia but for her estrangement from Ruth. It was hard to approach Ruth on the subject, because there had been no open break between them, and because Ruth gave her no chance to seek or make an explanation. They still had their rooms together, but Ruth always studied by herself in her own room. Occasionally on Mondays Ruth appeared, but she was oftener absent when Julia was entertaining those girls who dropped in. As Nora was only a Special, she was in Cambridge little except for recitations. Yet she had noticed the coolness between the two, who at Miss Crawdon’s school had been great friends. She could not help observing, too, that Ruth was never at Mrs. Barlow’s on Saturday and Sunday, when Julia and Brenda were so apt to have their friends about them. Ruth, to be sure, always pleaded that she must spend as much time as possible with her mother, who had been abroad in search of health during Ruth’s first two college years. She was still an invalid; and although Nora knew that Ruth naturally wished to be with her, this explanation did not wholly account for the coolness between Ruth and Julia.

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From Julia she at last drew an account of the affair of the telegram, and the injury done to Polly.

“It isn’t altogether what Ruth did, but it’s her indifference that has disturbed me so,” said Julia.

“Perhaps she didn’t do it; perhaps there’s some explanation about the telegram. Really, Julia Bourne, I did not think that you could be so unreasonable. But I’m not altogether sorry,” she continued, smiling, “that you have shown yourself just a little less perfect than we thought you. I used to think you absolutely reasonable, but now—”

“Well, if you ever had so foolish an opinion of me, I’m glad that something has happened to remove it.”

“I must tell Brenda,” added Nora, as she bade Julia good-bye. “She’ll be pleased to hear that I’ve picked a flaw in her perfect cousin. Secretly, I believe that she thinks you almost too perfect.”

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Not long after Nora had left her, the postman put into Julia’s hands an envelope, on which she recognized Angelina’s handwriting. Angelina had not been in Cambridge this winter. Indeed, the day after the operetta she had gone back to Shiloh, and in the autumn she had taken a place as mother’s helper in a household where there were several children. It was near enough to her own home to permit her to see her mother and the children twice a week, and Mrs. Rosa was now so much stronger and the young Rosas were so much older that they could manage very well without Angelina. It was better for Angelina to have the responsibility of a position where she could earn money. Already she had started a bank-book, and in every way she was much more contented than a year before. She was very fond of letter-writing, and her epistolary style was decidedly high-flown.

“My dear Miss Julia,” the present letter began. “I have a confession to make, though I know that you will say that I am always sinning and repenting. But this was not exactly sin, only the kind of carelessness that you have often reproved me for. You see I saw Miss Ruth the other day, and I asked if that telegram did Miss Polly any harm, I mean her not getting it at once. You know I went home the next day and never heard about it. But I thought that next morning you didn’t look as happy as you ought to after an enthusiastic reception of your operetta (that was what the newspapers said), and so when I asked, Miss Ruth said that it made a great deal of trouble for her. I wonder how that was when the telegram was for Miss Polly? I suppose it was something about her father, for I heard he died. I know that I ought to have given it to her as soon as it came, for she was trying a song with you, and they sent it over from her boarding-house. But Percy Colton asked me to come down and pull some molasses candy in the kitchen, and I forgot all about it until after the performance. Then Miss Ruth, when I told her, said that she would give it to Miss Polly quick, so I don’t see why it made any trouble for her. I’m very sorry, but that’s the way things happen in this world—just exactly the way they oughtn’t to.”

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The letter gave more information about Angelina’s personal affairs, but only the above passage made any impression on Julia.

“Oh, Angelina!” she sighed, “you always have had a fashion of making trouble, but luckily in this case, it’s not too late to straighten things out.”

To decide, with Julia, was to act. Overhead she could hear Ruth moving about in her room. Running up the stairs, two at a time, in a moment she was with her.

“Oh, Ruth, can you ever forgive me? How mean you must have thought me! But really, I’ve suffered more than you; even if this letter hadn’t come, I should have told you so.”

“What letter?” asked Ruth, thoroughly bewildered.

“Oh, from Angelina; it was she who kept the telegram.”

“Of course; I always knew it.”

“But I didn’t know it. There, I won’t throw blame on any one else. It has all been my fault, and not Angelina’s.”

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“‘All’s well that ends well,’” said Ruth, pinning a crimson rosette at her belt. There was a slight stiffness in her manner, but she looked at Julia with her old-time pleasant smile; and as they clasped hands, the two girls knew that they were friends again. “Naturally,” she added, “it was hard, Julia, to find you unjust—”

“But if you had only said the least little word, I should have understood, Ruth, but when you said nothing—”

“But how could I say anything? When you so evidently had your mind made up, what could I say?”

“Ah, but I must tell Polly. Won’t you come with me, Ruth?”

“Not this afternoon. I’m going to a ball game with Will; it’s only with Amherst to-day. But there’s a party of a dozen going, and not a chaperon.”

“Of course not. That’s the one delightful thing about Cambridge; we can go to ball games without any of the trammels of an ‘artificial etiquette,’ as Clarissa might say.”

Then Ruth departed for the ball game, with Will holding her parasol, and Julia standing in the doorway, waving her a good-bye after a fashion that had not been possible during the past year.

From Ruth, Julia went to Polly, and it was harder to bring up the subject of the telegram to her, for the very mention of it recalled so many sad memories.

“So, after all, Clarissa has been the most charitable of us all. Seems like we have all been carried away by suspicion, while she has always been inclined to stand up for Ruth,” said the Southern girl.

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“Well, in other things besides murder trials, it isn’t worth while to trust to circumstantial evidence. But I am the most to blame, for I ought to have known Ruth better than to suspect her of a meanness. I shall begin to wonder now if I haven’t been unfair to Annabel.”

“I doubt it, for I happen to know that she borrowed Clarissa’s history note-book a few weeks before that article appeared,” rejoined Polly.

“Well,” said Julia, “until I’ve removed the beam from my own eye, I won’t search for the mote in Annabel’s.”

“Ah!” cried Polly penitently, “as you put it, I believe that there is a beam in my eye also. But I shall lose no time in apologizing to Ruth.”

So Polly apologized, and spread the news abroad that she had been very unfair. Julia, too, was repentant, and that May and June of their Junior year was much brighter than the same months had been when they were Sophomores. Then when Lois was elected Idler President, Polly went about beaming. She declared that she had not lived in vain, and to celebrate the joyful event arranged a canoeing party at Riverside. There were twenty girls in the party, and Mrs. Colton and Professor and Mrs. Redburn went as protectors. They rowed and paddled, and listened to the band, and consumed unlimited quantities of ginger ale and sandwiches. They wound in and out on the curving river, and the lights of thousands of lanterns shone upon them from the river banks and the boat-houses, for it was a special night with the boat clubs. It was a delightful celebration and well planned, and although some of the girls were unduly daring and seemed to court collisions, when they were counted at the end of the trip they were found all to be there, to the great relief of the elders of the party. They had sung college songs until they were almost hoarse, but Clarissa had voice enough left to propose a vote of thanks to Polly, adding, “We haven’t a Float Day, nor a Lake Waban, but the Charles is free to all, and where is there a stream that is half as fascinating for canoeists?” And all the others answered, “Nowhere.”

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While it was yet uncertain whether or not Clarissa would go on the team, the Spring Meet came off in the Gymnasium, in which her name was down for several events. The Gymnasium was crowded with friends of the contestants and members of the R. A. A., and many were there as strong partisans of various girls who were to compete in the many different contests. In the horse vault and the saddle jump, some wonderful records were made. But for some reason the greatest interest centred in the running high jump, and Clarissa’s friends had prophesied that she was to make the record in this. She had a formidable rival in Mary Francis, a Senior, and an especial friend of Elizabeth Darcy’s, who had held the record for two years. The two classes and their friends watched both girls with the closest attention. Polly and Julia were perfectly sure of Clarissa, and the latter fairly hugged her when with flushed cheeks and her dark hair lying in moist little ringlets on her forehead she was declared the victor. Not only that, but with fifty-four inches she had made a record that was to put her and her class on a pinnacle. This, indeed, marked the beginning of great successes for that class, and brought out the fact that a genuine class feeling had been established. No one in the earlier years of the Annex or Radcliffe could have imagined that this feeling would become so strong. Each girl was beginning to be thought of, not as an individual, but as a member of the class, likely to reflect upon it scholastic or athletic glory. Clarissa’s success at the meet made it seem all the more likely that she would be captain of the team. Even had there been a faction against her, it would have been difficult to keep her down. But there was no such faction, for the prejudice of the year before had almost completely died away. There was hardly a girl to take exception to the cheer when it rang out:

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“Radcliffe, Radcliffe, Radcliffe,

Rah, rah, rah,

Rah, rah, rah,

Rah, rah, rah,

Miss Herter and the team!”

—a cheer that contained a prophecy.

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XXIV
SENIORS ALL

How quickly that summer before their Senior year passed away! Probably hardly a girl in the class failed to regret that they were travelling so quickly toward the end of their college course. During the summer a dozen or more had sent a vacation round-robin about from one to another. Clarissa had written a witty letter describing her experiences in drinking the waters at Manitou, whither her father had been sent in search of health. She also mentioned incidentally that she was practising ball, “for our team is to come out the very top of the heap, but don’t repeat my language,” she had concluded. Julia wrote of a very quiet summer at Rockley, as her aunt’s illness had prevented a proposed European trip. Lois had had three weeks in the White Mountains with Miss Ambrose, where Polly had joined her for a fortnight. Instead of tutoring, Pamela had felt warranted in giving her summer to research work, but she had done this without suffering in health, because she had found a delightful little village on the Maine coast where the board was almost nothing, and where she had just the inspiration she wanted in hearing the surf roll in upon the beach. Elspeth Gray wrote of an encounter that she had had with—well, it is not necessary to go into particulars—but with the graduate of a well-known college for women, who had pitied her very much because her lot had been cast at Radcliffe. “As if I hadn’t chosen this lot for myself with all the colleges of the country spread out before me. She said that we had no college spirit, and that we ought to see that there was a lack of dignity in accepting a degree that was only a kind of imitation of a Harvard degree. But it’s useless to argue with such people, although I did make her admit that Harvard offered more to men than did any other college in the country, and she was amazed to learn that we had precisely the same courses of study, the same instructors, and the same examinations as Harvard men have. Dear me! where have people been brought up to know so little?” Each girl whose name was appended to the round-robin, while expressing her anxiety to see her classmates again, added a note of sorrow that this for the majority would be the last year at Radcliffe. A few intended to return for higher degrees, but it was doubtful if all could carry out their plans.

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In the meantime they were getting all they could out of college life. Those girls who came from a distance were especially anxious to make up for lost time by going to lectures, concerts, or by visiting art galleries and historic towns, that they might feel that they had lost none of the special advantages that Cambridge and Boston offer the college student. Clarissa, who had done much sight-seeing in her Freshman year, now thought that her greatest need was for Sever Hall lectures, and she made up a little party consisting of Polly and two or three others of her classmates, who agreed to go with her two evenings a week. She enjoyed whatever lectures came on those evenings, for she said that three years at Radcliffe ought to have fitted her to understand anything. She continued to attend lectures even when her classmates, on one pretext or another, had dropped off, for she was so fortunate as to run across a special student of good standing who had given up her position in a Western High School for the sake of a year’s study at Cambridge. A little later Pamela made one of the party, as it had been her habit the past two years to attend all the lectures or readings given by the Senior professor of Greek. While some Radcliffe Seniors were to be found at all of the Sever Hall lectures, Clarissa in this last year was really the most persistent, and she was the more persistent, perhaps, because some of her friends tried to dissuade her from burning the candle at both ends. They spoke in this way because Clarissa was steadily adding to her reputation as an athlete. She was now captain of the team—a position that many of the undergraduates regarded as more enviable than that of President of the Idler. It was a great grief to Polly that she could not play basket ball, but when she presented herself for the necessary physical examination, a slight weakness of the heart and lungs was discovered, in itself not serious, although sufficient to render her an unfit candidate. In consequence to assuage her disappointment she made herself an amateur coach and spent what time she could watching the practice games. Her observation was keen, and more than one suggestion of hers was put into practical effect.

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She was sure not only that the Senior team would vanquish all the others at Radcliffe, but that in its outside contests it would carry all before it. “Oh, if we could only have a chance against Bryn Mawr!” she sighed. “Of course that day is coming, but if it would only come in our day! Was there ever such a captain?” she concluded, with an admiring glance at Clarissa.

“Never, I am sure,” replied Pamela. “I love to look at her. She is the very picture of health.”

“There couldn’t be a better centre, not only because she’s so tall, but because she has such judgment. How she managed it I don’t know, but she contrived to get Julia for one of her forwards and Ruth for the other. Neither intended to play this year. But there they are! They both have cool heads, and there’s little danger of their losing their wits in an exciting match.”

Pamela glanced for a moment toward Julia, who stood ready to make a goal, with the ball held lightly in her finger tips. Even while they were looking, with a little twist she threw it, and it fell into the basket.

“I count it one of my privileges in coming here,” said Pamela in her prim little way, “to have known Julia Bourne. Whatever she does, she does so well, and she always has a thought for others. She is always so encouraging.” Just at this moment Julia glanced toward her friends, and though she did not really bow to them, she smiled pleasantly.

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“There’s one lesson we can learn from basket ball,” remarked Pamela.

“Ah, Pamela,” and Polly laughed. “Sermons in stones, books in the running brooks are nothing to your lessons. But there, don’t blush at me, but tell me what you had in mind.”

“Oh, I was only thinking that it’s less what the individual player does than what the team does as a whole. A girl who thinks only of her own ability to make a wonderful throw may make a throw that will gain great applause, but she generally sends the ball into the hands of the enemy.”

“Like Elizabeth Darcy last year. Did you see that match?”

“No,” responded Pamela.

“Well, she brought down the house with two or three brilliant throws, but she really did more to hurt her team than any one on the other side. If I had been Clarissa I should have been afraid to have Annabel on the team for the same reason. She thinks of herself first, and of the general good last.”

“Human nature according to Hobbes.”

“Oh, my dear, I never think of ethics out of the class-room. There—there look!” and both girls turned to see a goal scored for Clarissa’s team—or rather for their own team, since Clarissa was the embodiment of the Senior athletic aspirations.

260

The match with Wellesley was one of the things of which they were sure, and it was likely to be exciting. Brenda teased Julia when she heard of the coming contest by saying that she was bound to be on the side of Wellesley this year, for Amy had just entered Wellesley, and Brenda was still very fond of her. Since their trip to Nova Scotia they had seen little of each other except in summer, for Amy had been very hard at work preparing for college, and society had absorbed Brenda the past two years. Amy had felt especially tender toward Brenda the past year or two, because the beginning of their acquaintance had seemed to mark the beginning of prosperity for Amy and her mother. The efforts of Mrs. Barlow and Mr. Elton had resulted in a fairly large sale of Mrs. Redmond’s paintings. Indeed, her water-color sketches had become so much the fashion that her income now permitted her to live in Salem. Thus Amy for a year or two had been able to see much more than in former years of her schoolmates out of school, and some of her little sharp corners had been entirely rounded off. The death of Cousin Joan the past winter had made it possible for Amy to enter college without any worry as to ways and means; for although the money left by Cousin Joan from most points of view would have been considered very small indeed, it was enough to carry Amy comfortably through college. It was left to her for this purpose, “in recognition,” as Cousin Joan wrote in a note that was found with the will, “of her patience with a very troublesome old woman.” Amy, wiping away a few tears, as she thought of the invalid whose life had been so narrow, protested that it was her mother and not she who should have the money as a reward for patience. But Mrs. Redmond reminded her daughter that the money was really a gift to her as well as to Amy, since she would now be saved a certain amount of financial care in planning Amy’s college career. Therefore, Amy at Wellesley, and Julia at Radcliffe, at odds only on the subject of some college championship, exchanged visits and compared notes, and each ended invariably by thinking her own college the best.

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Brenda and Amy had been a little less intimate since those first Rockley days, and in the past year the former had been away in California; at least, she had gone for a year’s absence in the March of Julia’s Junior year. She wrote to Amy as to Julia rapturous letters about the beauties of California, mingled with entertaining accounts of her sister Caroline’s children. Before Christmas Mr. and Mrs. Barlow started for California to visit their daughter and bring Brenda home. Nora went with them, by special invitation, as an attack of measles in the early autumn had prevented her resuming her special work at Radcliffe, and her eyes needed the rest.

In the absence of her relatives, therefore, Julia was naturally thrown more in the society of her Radcliffe friends than had been the case in other years. Edith was spending the year abroad, and the little group of Miss Crawdon’s girls was widely scattered. Julia spent Christmas with Ruth in Roxbury, where Pamela, Clarissa, and Polly were also invited; for Ruth, although she had not entirely changed in her general opinion of Pamela and Clarissa, had still changed somewhat in her feeling toward them. She had learned to see the good points of the candid Western girl and of the timid Vermonter.

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In justice to Ruth, it should be said that her change of view was not entirely due to the fact that the class, as a whole, had now a much greater appreciation of these two than in their first college years. She had seen her own mistake in attaching too much importance to Annabel’s judgments. This, combined with her own slight prejudice against girls a little unlike those to whom she was accustomed, had made the trouble. Ruth, too, had suffered so much from Julia’s coldness after the affair of the telegram that this misunderstanding had made her more charitable toward others. Though no explanation had yet been given of the origin of the newspaper article, she no longer believed Clarissa responsible for it. Ruth was not a snob, and the fact that Clarissa was now the popular captain of the basket ball team had had little to do in influencing her. Neither was she the more anxious to be considered Pamela’s friend because the latter was now the observed of all observers from having won the great prize open both to Harvard and Radcliffe students for a thesis on a classical subject by an honor student. The prize was newly established, and besides the honor it conferred, the money value was greater than that of any other prize offered. Pamela’s prospects had greatly brightened. Her scholarship for the year had covered her tuition, and she had done some tutoring. But the two hundred and fifty dollars which the prize would give her would free her from all worry until she could establish herself as a teacher. Very thankful was she that she had taken the summer for the special study and research needed for the thesis. The honor that she had won through the prize made a great impression on her relatives in Vermont, and her aunt wrote her a cordial letter, suggesting that after all they might let bygones be bygones, and adding that they would be very glad to have a visit from her as soon as her “school” was over. Pamela accepted the invitation, for she longed for a sight of her old home. But she wrote that it must be July before she could leave Cambridge. She had promised to stay with Miss Batson until after the Fourth of July.

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Of all the Seniors in cap and gown Lois was perhaps the happiest, for it was the first year of her college course in which she was comparatively free from care. She was freer than ever before to enjoy the lighter side of college life. Whether presiding at a business meeting or receiving at a reception, Lois was greatly admired as President of the Idler. In fact, she filled the place so well that many wondered that she had not been thought of a year or two earlier. Polly, hearing these comments, was greatly amused by them, and inwardly commended herself for having brought it about that a girl who had never been called popular should in her last year of college be near the pinnacle of popularity. Nothing succeeds like success, and although Lois in office was just as independent as Lois out of office had been, yet she now was more at liberty to mingle with her classmates. The charm of her manner was realized, therefore, by many, whereas before it had been felt only by the few with whom she came in immediate contact.

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Polly’s literary talent which had shown itself in a rather frivolous form in the operetta had so developed that her professors had encouraged her to undertake more serious work. One or two of her poems had appeared in “The Radcliffe Magazine,” and had been highly praised. But this commendation did not mean half as much to her as the fact that the “Advocate” had taken one of her short stories. After it was accepted, some time passed before it was published, and at first Polly thought that she would let no one hear of her good fortune until it was actually in print.

But at last she had to tell Clarissa, and then Clarissa begged permission to tell Julia, and in a short time all of Polly’s friends knew it. “Yet, honestly,” said Clarissa, “I don’t see why you are so set up about a little thing like that. It isn’t a bit better to have a story in the ‘Advocate’ than in—”

“I’d rather have it there,” said Polly, “than in the ‘Atlantic Monthly,’ or in any other of the large magazines.”

“Why, Polly Porson!”

“Well, you may see that I am right, because one can have a thing in the ‘Advocate’ only during a very limited time, while she has all her life to get into the others.”

“Yes, and sometimes it takes a person all her life to get in.”

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“Then it’s well to make sure of the thing near at hand, like the ‘Advocate’”, was Polly’s response. And linking her arm in Clarissa’s, she walked off with her friend.

“Clarissa,” she said, as they withdrew out of hearing of the girls with whom they had been sitting, “have you ever found out about that newspaper article, that one about Professor Z’s notes?”

“No, not exactly,” responded Clarissa. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I have always had a suspicion, and I should like to verify it, or have it all settled before we leave college.”

“But why should you care? It’s all a thing of the past, and it does not trouble me at all now.”

“I dare say not, but it’s a thing I’ve set myself to find out, and, in fact, I almost think that I know who it was.”

“My dear Polly, please do not concern yourself about it on my account. I really do not care.”

“But I care, Clarissa. So far as the class is concerned the thing has come out all right. You’ve done so much for the team that any feeling they might have had would be wiped away. But—” and here Polly looked rather inquiringly at Clarissa—“you won’t be offended if I say that there are still some professors and one or two others in authority who have a prejudice who think that you did this,—even Professor Z himself,—and that is why I want to clear the thing up. I must tell you who I think it was, Clarissa. I firmly believe that it was Annabel.”

Still Clarissa was silent.

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Polly looked at her suspiciously. “Upon my word, I believe that you know who it was. Why won’t you tell?”

Clarissa laughed one of her deep, hearty laughs. “You really are the most inquisitive little person. Surely I have a right to some secrets.”

“Then you admit that you know?”

“I have my own suspicions.”

“Then it was Annabel. You won’t say that it was she, because she is indebted to you. You have a kind of a manly sense of honor. I don’t know what else to call it.”

“Well, then, since you are so persistent, and since you might make trouble for Annabel, as well as for me, by telling others of your suspicions—”

“Then it was Annabel!”

“Not exactly, my dear. Do you remember that rehearsal performance of the Idler when Annabel sang so long before the curtain went up?”

“Oh, yes, ages ago, when we were Sophomores.”

“Yes, well probably you remember the flowers that fell with an awful thud on the stage.”

“I was not there myself, but I heard about them.”

“Of course you know that they were thrown by Loring Bradshaw who attended the play dressed as a girl?”

“Yes, I have heard it.”

“Well, the affair made much trouble for him. He was a Senior, and this was the last of several escapades that brought him into disfavor with the college authorities. He was suspended, lost his degree, and although he came back and took it the next year, he has felt rather bitter toward me ever since.”

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“Toward you! I did not know he was a friend of yours!”

“Neither a friend nor an enemy. But it is true that he became my enemy because he heard that I had spread the report of his masquerade.”

“It was not you at all, Clarissa; it was I who first told who he was. I remember that distinctly.”

“Yes, but it was I who had the most to say about that Mr. Radcliffe affair of Somers Brown. Annabel always believed that I had something to do with that practical joke. She still believes, doubtless, that it was purposely played on her. Naturally, she feels annoyed. But I fear that her suspicions have carried her too far. However that may be, I know that my note-book was in her possession not so very long after this, and then—”

“And then followed that newspaper article! And you believe that she had nothing to do with publishing it?”

“I believe that she had less than you think.”

“Then you are more charitable than I could be.”

Beyond this Clarissa would say no more on the subject.

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XXV
A STRANGE MEETING

One afternoon soon after the mid-years, Julia was at work in the stack of Gore Hall, the Harvard Library. For the past two years she had been delving deep into American History, and in a certain research course she felt more interest than in almost any other of her studies. She hoped before graduating to have accumulated notes enough for the basis of a monograph. Several such monographs had been published, under the auspices of Radcliffe, on other subjects besides history, and they had been praised for their originality. Julia’s chosen subject dealt with the early history of the country, and at present she was studying the formation of the government. A special card gave her access to the great collection of books in the Harvard Library stack. Her professor suggested the books to be considered each week, and she submitted her notes to him and reported what she had read.

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On this particular day, surrounded by the many volumes of “Eaton’s Debates,” she was absorbed in tracing some difficult point. The long windows of the wing where she sat let in so much light that she did not realize that it was growing late. Accordingly as she pushed her way through the doors into the Main Library she was surprised to find it deserted of students and attendants. The silence and gloom were disturbing. There was no doubt but that she was locked in alone in the great building. What the possibilities were for her getting out before morning she did not know. The accessible windows were all too high from the ground to permit her to jump out, even if she had any way of opening them. Figures were passing through the Yard, but she disliked to make a disturbance by knocking on the glass. If some student should come to her rescue, he might thoughtlessly mention her plight, and then what joy for the “Lampoon” and the daily paper, and any other publication that enjoyed a chance to laugh at Radcliffe girls! Julia stood there, looking from the window rather disconsolately. She did not doubt but that before night should set in a watchman or a janitor or some one else would appear on the scene to free her.

But a few hours in the building would be very tiresome, especially as she had no light, and therefore could not pass the time reading. An hour, perhaps, went by, and still Julia saw no way of getting out of the building. She wondered what Ruth would think when she failed to appear for dinner. She moved restlessly around the delivery room, staying as long as possible near the windows. She hoped that some woman might pass this corner of the Yard, who would pay attention to her, if she tapped on the window. But all who approached passed so far from the Library building that she saw little chance of carrying out her plan. Had she been there hours or weeks? The unemotional Julia was actually shedding a tear or two, though she felt ashamed of herself for her weakness. How it would have amused Polly to see her usually calm friend as disturbed as any one else would have been by her misadventure. After another period of hopeless standing by the window, Julia’s heart gave a sudden bound. A strangely familiar figure was coming near. But no! It could not be! Yet it was strange that any one else should walk with that long, quick step, with head bent after a fashion that she had not seen in any one for three years.

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This person, to be sure, wore a soft hat, and he looked a little heavier than Philip, but no one else could walk in that way, and Philip had always been devoted to those short sack coats. Yet Philip was two thousand miles away, and Julia began to think that her little period of imprisonment was wearing on her brain. How she ventured to do it she often wondered afterwards. But jumping up on the window sill she unfastened the window, and then jumping down she managed to lift it an inch or two. The slight noise attracted the attention of the young man she had observed, who was now standing directly beneath the window.

“Locked in!” she called to him. “Could you find some one to let me out?”

“Why, yes,” he replied, “at least I’ll try; but couldn’t you—” here he seemed to measure the distance with his eye—“but couldn’t you jump out?”

The sound of the stranger’s voice reassured Julia; he was certainly Philip, but he had not recognized her. He probably thought her one of the Library assistants. But although the distance was not too great for safety it seemed to Julia unwise to jump. She did not like the idea of attracting attention; there were likely to be passers-by at any minute.

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“Come,” said the young man, “this would really be the best way. One foot on my shoulder, I’ll give you the word when no one is passing, and you must be quick, too.”

Had Julia not known the identity of her rescuer she probably would not have accepted his offer. But the prospect of noting his amazement was too good to refuse.

“You’ll do it?” he asked a little impatiently.

“Yes.”

She said no more, for she was not yet ready to have him recognize her. Besides, in the dim light she might have made a mistake. Watching his chance until there was absolutely no one in sight of the building, the young man at last gave the word.

Julia’s gymnasium practice was of great service to her now. Opening the window wider, she sat for a minute on the sill. Then as she put her foot on Philip’s shoulder, by an adroit movement she maintained her balance while he knelt low enough to permit her to jump to the ground.

In a second she was on her feet, and no one but Philip had perceived her strange exit from the building.

Her hat had fallen off, receiving the full force of the jar of reaching the ground; and Philip, turning to speak to her, was amazed to find that it was Julia whom he had assisted. He gave ready answers to her questions, wondering that she did not know of his intended return.

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“I haven’t heard from Edith lately,” said Julia, “and we have all been so busy with the mid-years that we might have failed to hear an even greater piece of news than your coming, although this really is very important,” she hastened to add, lest Philip should think her altogether ungracious. “It’s nearly three years since you went away,” she continued after a moment’s silence.

“Is it? But tell me, Julia, how did you manage to shut yourself up in the Library? Is it the fashion for Radcliffe girls to do that kind of thing now? In my day you used to be more conventional. But we must hurry to a car, you are hungry.”

“Oh, indeed I am not,” returned Julia. “Please let us walk—that is, if you have time. They must have finished dinner at Mrs. Colton’s half an hour ago, and I’d so much rather know what you have been doing these three years. I have only heard general rumors from Edith and the others.”

So Philip, nothing loath, gave her a glowing account of life on the ranch, of the various people he had met and the things he had learned. “It was harder sometimes than studying,” he said, “the life out there. But it did me good, and now I’m going to work in a different way. I’ve promised my father to work for my degree. What a fool I was to cut those examinations! I’ll have a good half-year’s work to make them up. But I may have time for a little law, too; I’ve promised my father to try for the bar. Even if I do not practise, it will be a good foundation for business. The old gentleman rather wants me to look after things and relieve him.”

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Mr. Blair had never been considered an overworked man, and Julia smiled at the thought of Philip’s relieving him. But Philip to-day was evidently very different from the Philip of three years before. He no longer spoke in a drawl and the note of personal vanity was lacking. When they reached Mrs. Colton’s, Philip went indoors with Julia, and Ruth was louder than Julia had been in her expressions of surprise at his return to Cambridge. He told the story of the rescue in a fashion that was amusing, if embarrassing to Julia. Looking at him as he sat by the droplight in Mrs. Colton’s library, she could see that he had grown stouter and browner, and that no one could now accuse him of looking too effeminate.

Ruth and Mrs. Colton congratulated Julia on getting safely out of the building.

“Of course it wasn’t as bad as if you had been in the Agassiz or Peabody Museums, with stuffed animals and bottled fishes or old Indian relics to keep you company.”

“Yes, I’m thankful enough,” responded Julia; “also that I was rescued without being arrested as an escaped burglar.”

“That reminds me,” said Philip, starting up, “that I must return and see that that window is fastened. I must hunt up a janitor or something of the kind.”

So almost before they realized it, Philip went off, promising to call on them soon.

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Then Ruth and Mrs. Colton insisted on Julia’s having the dinner that they had saved for her; and Julia, thinking over the happenings of the past two hours, realized that Philip had neither referred to that last Class Day interview, nor had he thanked her for her advice nor apologized for his long silence, and yet she was sure that she and Philip were better friends than they had ever been before.

“Julia,” said Ruth the next morning, as the two sat in the conversation room, preparing and looking over some of the notes of their Shakespeare lesson. “Julia, I do not wonder that Philip and his friends used to laugh at us just a little when we were Freshmen, if we were at all like those two meandering through the hall.”

“But, my dear, we never walked with our arms about each other’s waists, nor scampered through the halls, nor—”

“Nor wore pigtails,” continued Ruth, gazing again at the Freshmen. “One of those girls, by the way, Minnie Crosfut, has been confiding some of her woes and sorrows to me. She thinks that the upper class girls are not sufficiently devoted to prayers. She thinks that attendance should be compulsory, and that it isn’t fair for Freshmen to have more than Seniors.”

“What an idea! Freshmen are no more obliged to go than Seniors. We all know that at ten minutes of nine every morning there will be prayers in the Auditorium, and as ministers of three different denominations officiate in turn, most girls can suit their special theological tastes, but no one has to go. There are apt to be more Freshmen there, but I’m afraid that the whole thing turns largely on the question of convenience. Girls who have a nine o’clock recitation are apt to come down here early enough for prayers. Freshmen from a distance have usually promised their families before leaving home.”

“‘Julia,’ said Ruth the next morning, as the two sat in the conversation room”

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“And Pamela?”

“Oh, Pamela comes because she is a minister’s daughter, and because her conscience is always active. But most of us, I am sure, attend prayers two or three times a week. Tell your Freshman that she should be more observing. And now, to work; I am half sorry that we took this Shakespeare course.”

“Julia! You to express such a sentiment! I am astonished. Why, it seems to me the finest course we have had this year; at least it has meant more to me. Every word now in every play that I read seems to have such depth. I am always looking for the hidden sense. Yet I do wish that sometimes the meaning were a little plainer. What do you make of this, ‘Oh, such a deed as from the body of contraction plucks the very soul’? What is contraction?”

“Why, he gave us the note, ‘Power of making a contract.’”

“Yes, I should have written it on the margin, but my book is so covered with notes that sometimes I trust to memory. I am anxious to finish this this morning, so as to be free to enjoy the party this evening, for this afternoon I am obliged to go to town.”

“Oh, yes, the party, the Sophomores’ farewell to us. I wonder what they have planned? I hear that it is to be something very original. There’s Polly with her camera; perhaps she knows.”

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But Polly, although she had more than a mere idea of what the Sophomore party would be, declared she was pledged to secrecy, and she invited Julia and Ruth to go upstairs with her while she took a picture of the “Fair Harvard” room.

This was a recitation room on the second floor, and Polly had been waiting a time when it should have no classes, and when the light should be favorable for a photograph. She meant to have a photograph of every nook and corner of the old building for the album that she was making. The “Fair Harvard” room deserved its name, for the author of the famous college song had married a member of the Fay family, and in a room of the old house he had written the well-known stanzas. His portrait and an autograph of the poem, now hanging between the windows, gave the room more interest than belonged to any other in the whole building.

“You will give me a print?” begged Ruth when she had finished.

“No, indeed, not one.”

“Why, Polly Porson, are you growing mean?”

“No, generous!”

“It doesn’t look like it. I have been expecting a whole set of your photographs. Why do you refuse?”

“Come downstairs and I’ll show you.”

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Julia and Ruth followed Polly to the bulletin board in the anteroom, whereon were displayed the cards of girls who were ready to do various things by which they could earn a little money. There was a notice from one girl that she was prepared to paint the Radcliffe seal in water colors, and from another that she would execute the Harvard or the Radcliffe seals in burnt wood. Other girls advertised that they were anxious to do mending or typewriting. One girl offered to frame photographs in passe-partout, and others to make hand-painted picture frames.

“There!” cried Polly, pointing to an excellent photograph of the Fay House library, with a card stating that complete sets of Radcliffe views could be obtained from the girl who had made this print.

“If I should give my photographs away, I should be taking money out of her pocket. You and Julia and almost every girl in the class can easily afford to buy Madge Burlap’s photographs, and I happen to know that she needs the money. She’s one of the girls of whom the college is bound to be proud. Since she’s willing to earn, she must be encouraged in her efforts. That’s why you can’t have my photographs—for love or money.”

“I accept your apology, Polly, and now good-bye until this evening.” Seizing Julia by the arm, Ruth hurried her off to the Shakespeare class.

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When evening came, the Seniors were welcomed by the Sophomores at the house of one of their members, whose house in Cambridge was large and attractive. Across one side of the long drawing-room was a table covered with a crimson cloth. When the Sophomores and their guests had all assembled, a double quartette from the former class sang an amusing song of greeting, and then at a given signal the cloth was lifted, and one by one the Seniors were invited to come forward and gaze upon the photographs that had been hidden under the cloth. Each Senior had a book given her in which to record her guess as to the identity of the girls whose photographs were here displayed.

“They’re all Seniors,” said Madge Burlap, “although you mightn’t think it, Seniors at the age of ten or under; and if you don’t recognize yourselves at that age, why we shall think that you are less clever than you profess to be.”

The Sophomores had been at work all winter, collecting the pictures that they now displayed. They had tried to get them, so far as they could, from friends of the Senior rather than from the girl herself, as they wished the class as a whole to be surprised by the collection. Besides photographs, there were a few miniatures and daguerreotypes, while of Pamela and one or two other girls there were only tintypes to show.

“You are not asked,” said the President of the class, “to say whether the homeliest child has grown into the prettiest Senior, or the reverse; we shall give the prize for plain, unvarnished guesses.”

When the books were all in, it was found that Pamela had come the nearest to guessing the whole number, although even she had made two mistakes. The prize was an order on the class photographer for a dozen photographs, and everything considered, perhaps no one could have appreciated this more than the Vermont girl.

As the spring wore on, the entertainments offered the Seniors came, as Polly said, “fast and furious.”

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Grateful though the class was for all the attentions lavished on them, they enjoyed these various parties much less than the entertainments given them in their Freshman year. Then four years of college life lay before them. Now it was nearly all behind; and though they appreciated the dignity of being Seniors, wearing the cap and gown, still not a few of them would have given much to be at the beginning rather than at the end.

Polly was one exception to this sentimentality, which toward the spring recess seemed to take possession of her class.

“Four years more of examinations, a whole year of English A, a year of daily themes, unexpected hour examinations in History I, at least two years of superior smiles from girls who know more than we do,—no, thank you! I am very glad to let the dead past bury its dead. But if any of you really long for four years more, I should advise you to return for a season of post-graduate work. Any one who distinguishes herself sufficiently may be the sword to open the Harvard oyster from which to extract the Ph.D.”

“Yes, if we could be Freshmen with Seniors’ experience life would indeed be ideal, although as it is, it is real and terribly earnest, and I wonder that we can take time even in the recess for Julia’s house party.”

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XXVI
THE HOUSE PARTY

When Mrs. Barlow offered Julia the house at Rockley for a party during the Easter recess, the offer was promptly accepted. “I have ordered the house put in readiness for our return,” wrote Mrs. Barlow from California, “although we shall not reach Boston until the first of May. I am sure that you must have worked very hard this winter, and that the breath of sea air will be just what you need before hot weather sets in. There is room for a dozen girls, and everything will be arranged for your comfort. You must not hesitate to ask for whatever you wish.”

In making the list of the girls to be invited, Julia and Ruth were long in consultation. Clarissa and Pamela, Lois and Polly, were certainties, and there were three or four others about whom there was no doubt.

“There’s Annabel, too,” said Julia. “We must ask her.”

Ruth looked closely at her friend. “But do you care to have her? Are you not asking her chiefly on my account?”

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“I thought you might like her, even though you and she are less intimate than you once were. But she is Class President, and she is much more genuine than she was a year or two ago.”

“She tries to seem more genuine,” responded Ruth. “But Annabel can never be absolutely sincere. We must take her as we find her.”

“Oh, we all understand her now,” replied Julia, “and as she certainly is entertaining, it seems to me worth while to invite her.”

Annabel, therefore, was one of the group that sat on the broad piazzas at Rockley or wandered on the beach in the warm April sun. Although it was vacation, each girl had set herself some task to be done before returning to college. Therefore, for three hours in the morning all were allowed to bury themselves in their books. Dante, Schiller, Greek and Latin Classics, Von Holst, Fichte, Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, Seignobos, and other awe-inspiring books were strewn over the library table, although any girl who touched her books except in the mornings was at once forcibly reprimanded by her classmates. An exception was made in the case of Polly and Clarissa, who both were studying practical Astronomy. So ardent were they in their search for variable stars that the other girls decided that it would be cruelty to force them to give up the opportunities afforded by Rockley. Therefore they spent nearly every evening on a little balcony, muffled in shawls. The wide, unbroken stretch of sky gave them the best of views, and, armed with opera-glasses, they carried on their search with great perseverance. Clarissa, indeed, announced that she had found almost enough material for a thesis, and that star-gazing could be a very profitable performance, “when carried on by a prudent person like myself,” she added sotto voce.

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For exercise, wheeling was the favorite diversion of the twelve, and some to whom this part of the country was new were enthusiastic over the pilgrimages to Salem, Marblehead, and other historic places. At Salem, where Amy also was spending her vacation, they had a glimpse of Mrs. Redmond and her studio. Polly, who had money for whatever she wished, bought a pretty little water-color sketch of the beach at Rockley, and Annabel talked about having her miniature done. Fritz Tomkins, Amy’s great friend, came down to call while the Seniors were there. He expressed himself as perfectly delighted to meet a group of Radcliffe girls, explaining that although he had been a whole year at Harvard, they were the first students from the woman’s college whom he had met.

“You ought to have called on Ruth and me,” said Julia, with a mischievous attempt at patronizing Fritz, “and we would have introduced you to some one of your own age. We know several girls in the Freshman class.”

“Thanks,” said Fritz, “but you know that at Harvard we hardly realize that there is such an institution as Radcliffe. It makes so little—”

“Yes, it makes very little disturbance in Cambridge, and we would hardly realize the existence of Harvard had we not the advantage of knowing its Faculty pretty well,” retorted Ruth.

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“I understand that you could hardly get on without them,” and thus the good-natured bantering between the two went on for some time longer, and in the end it was hard to tell with whom the advantage lay.

One evening at Rockley Julia announced that she had arranged for a “confession conference.” She would give no satisfaction as to her meaning until the whole dozen had assembled in the library before the open fire.

Then, producing a red-bound book, she declared that its pages were blank, except that one page in every five had in turn the names of each of the girls present.

“I am going,” she said, “to ask each girl to tell me what Radcliffe has meant to her, and then I am going to beg her to tell what her real ambition was in coming to college, or better, what she intends to be when she leaves. Let us take an hour to collect our thoughts and write; then another hour to read and discuss what has been written. Later, with your permission, these confessions will be handed to the Confession Recorder (and she laid her hand on Polly’s shoulder) to be copied into this book. I wish that the whole class would do something of the same kind. But at the end of ten years, how interesting it will be to see how near we twelve have come to our ideals.”

“Or how far we have fallen below them,” murmured a voice that sounded like that of Annabel.

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Thus, with pencils and writing pads, the twelve set to work, for Julia’s proposal had the charm of novelty, and met no opposition. But when the time came for reading what had been written, the majority of the girls told what they hoped or planned, without confining themselves strictly to their notes.

Polly said that she had chosen to come to college because she was fond of study, and because it had been her father’s pleasure to tutor her in the classics. Out of a family of five girls, she had thought that one ought to have as good an education as a boy. “Besides,” she added, “it seemed rather a good joke to shock all our friends and relations, who thought it a terrible thing for a girl to go to college. Most people in the South still think so, although I have converted a few. Papa was a Harvard man,” she added in an undertone, “and that’s why I came to Radcliffe, and that’s all I have to say.”

“But what have you learned?” asked Clarissa. “That’s part of the game.”

“Oh, everything,” responded Polly, “but chiefly that I am not the very brightest girl in the world, as some of my friends and admirers used to try to make me believe, when I lived down South.”

“And your ideal?” asked Julia.

“Oh, I’m going to write the great novel of North and South. The subject is a large one, still I think that I can conquer it, but it will be years yet,” and Polly sighed heavily—for Polly.

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We know how Clarissa and Pamela happened to come to Radcliffe. Clarissa now confessed that she had learned at Cambridge that it was a good thing to live in a conventional place for a time and get the sharp edges rubbed off. She added that at school she had always been considered the smartest girl, but Radcliffe, she had found, was made up of the smartest girls from a good many schools, and the majority seemed to be able to hold their own quite as well as she. “What’s the matter with basket ball?” cried two voices in unison from the other side of the room, and Clarissa hastened to declare her ideal. This was, she said, to stay quietly at home with her parents for the next two or three years. “They think that I’ve been away too long, but if I really wish a profession at the end of that time, they will not interfere with my studying.”

Pamela, after a moment’s hesitation, said that she had found Radcliffe a most encouraging place, and that instead of subduing a girl, as Clarissa implied, she thought that it tended to make her less timid.

“Which shows,” interposed Polly, “that Radcliffe is very like the chameleon inspected by several persons, each of whom gave a different account of the little creature.”

Pamela added that she was going to try for a European Fellowship, and, if possible, spend a year or more at the American School at Athens.

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Lois confessed that the pure love of study had drawn her to college, and Radcliffe had been her choice, because while attending it she could also live at home. “Although,” she added, “I believe that there is no better college. Yet I so love study that even without Radcliffe I should have studied by myself. But college has been wonderfully broadening for me, especially during the past year, when I have had so many delightful friends. As to my ideal,” she concluded, “I am ashamed to say that my purpose has changed somewhat. I may not study medicine—at least not at present. I am going to teach for two years, and at the end of that time I shall try to go abroad for special research in Philosophy. There are certain theories that I can work out by myself while teaching and—after that—”

“Lois,” cried Esther Haines, one of the group, “mark my words, in two years you will be marching to the altar to the tune of ‘The Wedding March.’”

“Nonsense,” cried Lois, “I am the last one to—” But the others, noticing that Lois was evidently embarrassed, could not resist the temptation of teasing her.

In time it was Annabel’s turn, and she announced that she had happened to come to Radcliffe merely because when on shipboard on her return from Europe she had met a Harvard man who had told her that this was the coming college for women, and that it was the thing for every clever girl to be educated there. “‘Clever,’” murmured Polly, “there’s nothing bashful about Annabel.” The latter added that she wasn’t sure that she had learned as much as she had expected, but for the present she should rest content, as she meant to devote the next two or three years to society, as her father had taken a house in Washington. But just as some of those present were thinking that Annabel was as vain as ever her tone changed a little, and she said in a somewhat more humble voice, “To be perfectly honest, I really have learned some things at Radcliffe, and later in the evening, if you will let me, I wish to make a little confession of my own.”

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As if with one impulse Clarissa and Polly looked at each other significantly. Her meaning to the others was not so clear. Even Julia, failing to understand, hesitatingly gave her impressions of Radcliffe and her aims.

“You needn’t tell us your aims in life,” cried Clarissa; “to do so would be tautological, as you have been telling us constantly, ever since you came to college.”

“Why, Clarissa!” and Lois looked almost angry. “You would have us believe that Julia is the most egotistic girl in the class.”

“I am not unfair,” retorted Clarissa, “for you must agree that Julia is likely to have, after leaving college, much the same aim that she has had during her college days,—that of making every one about her as happy as possible.”

Applause followed Clarissa’s explanation, and Julia withdrew from the room in confusion to order more logs for the fire.

Ruth had confessed that she had been led to college from her curiosity as to how she should feel as “the new woman” of whom all the newspapers were speaking. From their columns she judged that a college education was a very necessary part of this new woman’s equipment, and as she was fond of study she had persuaded her mother to let her take the Radcliffe course.

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“Everything considered, you ought to have had a course in Domestic Economy,” said Polly with mischievous intent.

“Especially since your aims after college are so very evident to us all,” added Clarissa.

“Oh, I dare say that she’ll make just as good a housekeeper. A college-trained mind is really a very good possession for a minister’s wife.”

“Oh, Polly, Polly, you are incorrigible!” exclaimed Julia, returning at this moment, and handing Ruth a fire screen to shield her from the gaze of the others. Yet after all it was generally known that Ruth’s engagement would be announced on Class Day, and she and Will Hardon were situated so fortunately that the wedding, Julia knew, might take place within the year.

It is worth noting that almost all the party gave love of study as their chief reason for choosing college. They had turned their faces from the pleasantly idle life of the average American girl, and from seventeen to twenty-one had been hard workers. Every one of them had sacrificed something in order to achieve her end, and almost all of them intended that their education should benefit others. Although the majority of Julia’s guests—like the majority of the class—meant to be teachers, several were looking forward to other useful work. Even Annabel, in her secret soul, had an idea that she was to reduce the frothiness of the social set into which she should be thrown in Washington. Esther Haines was one of the few who proposed a definite career of altruism. She was to spend her first year after graduating in the College Settlement in the east side of New York. She said that after her year’s experience she would know whether or not it was wise to become the agent of some charitable organization. She had an idea that she might prefer the foreign field. Esther was one of the class whom Julia had come to know best in her Senior year. The latter often regretted that her acquaintance with Esther had come so late in her course, for Esther was not a pale, dyspeptic altruist, but one of the cheerful, rosy-cheeked kind, and it was easy to see that her mission to the poor would be one of joy and hopefulness.

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Of the whole group Madge Burlap was the one, perhaps, who had had the hardest time in planning her course, for early in her Sophomore year her father had died, and at first it had seemed as if she must leave college. Instead of wealth, she now had nothing but a few hundred dollars in the bank and many books, pictures, and personal belongings. These things she gradually sold—so gradually that she did not draw on herself the pity of her classmates. It had been hard to part with that morocco-bound edition of Stevenson, at a time when her English instructor was urging them all to an intimacy with the great Scotchman. But after all, with the money in her pocket and the books on Julia’s shelves, she was not so very badly off; for in negotiating for the sale of the Stevenson, her pleasant acquaintance with Julia had deepened into friendship. It had been harder to part with her Ruskin, for this set had been divided, Polly taking “The Stones of Venice,” Annabel “The Seven Lamps of Architecture,” and one or two others taking the rest. Madge was a good business woman, and she disposed of all her superfluous belongings except her camera. Yet that could not be counted a superfluity, since she made it pay for itself many times over, and her artistic views of Cambridge and the surrounding country were beginning to be in demand at one or two well-known stationers.

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“We know that you are a business woman and a photographer, and since you won’t tell us your exact aim, I prophesy that you will make a fortune, Madge, in artistic photography,” said Polly.

“Well, why not?” responded Madge, thinking of the three young brothers whom she was helping educate. “A fortune in our family would be both useful and ornamental.”

At last each girl of Julia’s party had read her confession, and the others had given their approval. Each in turn had promised Julia to record what she had written or said in the crimson-covered blank-book, as a beginning of the archives to which the exercises of Class Day and Commencement were bound to add so much. It was then that Annabel’s clear voice was again heard.

“You must not forget my confession, although it is not for the red book.”

“Oh, then, let’s hear it,” cried Madge Burlap, and the others echoed her wish. It happened that the group was now sitting in a semicircle around the fire. Annabel was in the centre, and as she spoke the others turned instinctively toward her. It suited her to be the centre of interest, and she began very dramatically:

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“Of course every one here remembers the afternoon when I recited so many things before the curtain went up, that afternoon two years ago when we had to wait so long for the Idler play to begin.”

Annabel knew, naturally, that every one present did remember that day, and she continued: “You may recall, too, that there was much discussion afterwards about a strange girl who attended the performance—who—who threw me a very large bouquet. Well, perhaps some of you may also have heard that the girl was Loring Bradshaw in disguise, who took that way of seeing a Radcliffe play. I recognized him, of course, but for certain reasons he did not wish any one else to know that he had done this. He was a little under a cloud in college, and he thought that this wouldn’t do him any good with the Faculty. Well, the affair did get out, and he always thought that this was the last straw that led to his suspension. He knew that I had not told, and he was sure that no man in college would have done so. Then, I happened to mention that you, Miss Herter, had spoken of it at Radcliffe, and he looked on you as the cause of his troubles with Harvard. So it happened one day that he walked home with me as I was carrying your note-book in History 100 that I had borrowed. Your name was in large letters on the cover, and he insisted on carrying the book away. I could not prevent him, for he simply took it from me. I wrote him a severe letter that night, and the book came back to me promptly the next day. He said that it had served his purpose, but I had no idea of his meaning until that newspaper article appeared. I did not care to tell people that Loring was undoubtedly responsible, and besides, just then, Miss Herter, I was perfectly willing to have it appear that you were to blame. They were certainly your notes, and I had no way of proving that Loring had concocted the article.”

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There was silence when Annabel finished. Before any one else could speak, she continued: “I wish to say now that I am very sorry that I let so many hold a wrong opinion, for of course I knew that they held it. But I was annoyed about this, although I know now that Polly and Clarissa had nothing to do with the Mr. Radcliffe affair as I thought at first.”

“Thank you!” cried Polly.

“Well, I’ve realized for some time that I do not deserve to be Class President. In fact, even before Clarissa rescued me I had begun to see that I was a mean and jealous kind of a person.”

“There! there!” exclaimed Polly, rising to her feet, “we won’t allow too much humility in the President of the class. We’ve all made some mistakes of judgment, and I myself have been about the worst of all.”

“Ah!” continued Annabel, “you are too good, but I have learned more than any one else in finding out that girls can be generous to one another.”

“There!” cried Clarissa, taking her place beside Polly. “In the language of the poet, ‘Enough said.’”

Clarissa disliked scenes.

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XXVII
NEARING CLASS DAY

As Class Day approached, the class began to feel that the end was indeed near at hand. Thoughtful girls like Julia and Lois found a special significance in everything that they did; “for the last time” meant a great deal to them, and even the unsentimental Clarissa quoted Tennyson with an approach to correctness:

“Tears, idle tears, I know not why ye fall,—

Tears from the depth of some divine despair.”

During May the class had had many attentions paid it by the other undergraduates, as well as by different professors and their wives,—“a continuous performance,” as Polly phrased it, of farewells; and that girl would indeed have been stony-hearted who had not felt that all these things had made her parting with Cambridge a little harder. There had come a lull in these festivities during the examination season of early June, for in comparison with all other examination periods this one had an enormous importance for many Seniors. Even girls who had done well throughout their course showed an unnecessary nervousness, and were sincere in fearing that in some unexpected way they might lower their records. Few of them, perhaps, expected to fail, but those girls who had set their hearts on a degree summa cum, magna cum, or even simply cum laude, felt that much depended on the marks of these final examinations.

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But when the examinations were at an end, worry, too, departed, and few indeed were the Seniors who did not enter whole-heartedly into the pleasures of these last days.

The work of the various class committees had been completed some weeks before, and to the credit of the class all had worked together harmoniously. Even in the election of the committees most little rivalries and jealousies had disappeared, and if in all instances precisely the right girl was not in the right place, no one criticised or found fault. As Class President Annabel was Chairman of the General Committee, Ruth of the Invitation Committee, Julia was Chairman of the Committee on Class Exercises, Clarissa was chief of the Photograph Committee, and Pamela, in spite of her protestations, had a place on the Baccalaureate Committee.

So energetic had Clarissa been as Chairman of her committee and so conscientious in securing the best photographs that some of her classmates made really pathetic complaints.

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“Sometimes, when I think that I am going to have an hour of leisure, an hour when I may sink in the depths of my easy-chair and refresh myself with Meredith,—George, not Owen,—there comes a gentle tapping at the door, and I rise to receive a note reminding me that I am part of a group that is to be photographed under the broiling noon sun, and that I am especially requested to wear a pleasanter expression than usual. I belong to so many groups,” concluded Polly sadly, “that my Senior May has been one long noonday glare of sittings before the camera. When there was nothing else happening, some amateur was taking a snap-shot, to add me to her album of Radcliffe views. I cannot tell you how many times I have been caught in unconscious attitudes, crossing the tennis court, or leaning against a tree, or seated on the steps. I always try to look my best at such times, because—”

“You spoke of unconscious attitudes,” commented a listening Junior.

“Hush, child! When you are a Senior you will understand things better,” replied the irrepressible Polly; “and to prevent further criticism, I will give you a specimen of my most unconscious smile,” and the younger girl accepted Polly’s latest photograph—a full length in cap and gown.

“My time for teasing you, Polly, will come to-morrow,” said the Junior, “for you may be my vis-à-vis in a canoe, and if you are not careful I may tip you—just a little way—into the river.”

But Polly refused to be frightened by this mild threat, and when the canoe set out it was Polly who held the paddle. This excursion on the river was the form into which the Juniors offered their hospitality to the departing class, and a merry time they had with a picnic supper spread in a grove on the river bank.

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The Sophomores invited the Seniors to a dramatic performance in the open air, after which—for almost the last time as undergraduates—the guests were treated to the familiar fudge and college ice. If the fudge was over-sweet and the ice over-watery, nobody criticised the feast. Indeed, the affair was considered remarkably successful, since the Sophomores were thought to have been extremely clever in having discovered that the Radcliffe grounds were large enough for such festivity. All the audience, to be sure, except the Seniors, had sat pretty closely together on rugs and shawls spread on the grass. But the Seniors in their camp chairs were not crowded; and though the setting of the mimic stage was rather Shakespearian in its simplicity, it sufficed for the little play. For the whole action was supposed to take place on the links where two golfers engaged in some sentimental sparring, and a caddie and a country maid furnished the burlesque element.

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Of all the events of that last month none was more enjoyable than the reception given by the Athletic Association to the Senior basket ball team, as a special acknowledgment of its prowess in gaining the championship. For Clarissa and her nine had not only vanquished the younger classes, but had won certain victories over outside colleges that had almost turned the heads of the athletically inclined. Indeed, some of those girls who seldom set foot in the Gymnasium except when obliged to exercise went to this reception to honor the team. For it was the proud boast of the athletes that no girl on the team would have a degree graded lower than cum laude, and thus the outside world would see that mental and physical exercise could go on at the same time. As for Clarissa—well, every one knew that she showed marked ability in everything that she undertook, and no one, not even Annabel, grudged her her honors. To her undoubtedly belonged the chief credit for the glory that came to the class in bearing away the banner of championship. This was more than a compensation for their losses in the tennis tournament.

“Few classes,” said Polly proudly, “will go out in a greater blaze of glory. With Clarissa getting us the championship, and Pamela winning that two hundred and fifty dollar thesis prize, all eyes will be turned upon us.”

“They always are turned on the graduating class,” responded Julia, to whom she spoke. “But it’s delightful, is it not, that these special honors have come through girls to whom some of us were not inclined to pay much attention in our Freshman year.”

“‘Some of us’ is good,” rejoined Polly, “when we remember that you always had unlimited confidence in the two heroines.”

“I always liked them,” said Julia quietly, “as I saw that others must when they knew them better.”

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To picture the scene in the Gymnasium demands the painter’s brush rather than the pen, for it was no formal reception such as any group of girls could give in any house. Far from it! Though the day was fairly warm, the star athletes did their best for the entertainment of their guests. They performed feats that made the blood of some of the uninitiated run cold. They went up and down ladders, and climbed ropes, and swung on rings, and leaped over bars, and showed enormous agility, if they undertook no difficult tests of strength.

Those girls who were not in the R. A. A. stood about in their light muslin gowns, and clapped and cheered a steady approval; and the others in their picturesque gymnasium suits clapped and cheered even more loudly. They did not shriek, not they, when Clarissa at the apex of a pyramidal arrangement of ladders seemed about to fall. They knew that she was safe, and Clarissa was soon ready for her triumphant descent.

But some of the girls in light gowns did exclaim at the critical moment in tones loud enough to have frightened a timid gymnast, and some thought it a pity that Clarissa should have to work so hard when she was really the guest of honor, and some thought that she was making a needless display of her prowess. Yet as Clarissa poised herself at the top of the ladder before starting down, a mighty cheer went up from the whole throng, and Clarissa, with beaming eyes and flushed cheeks, waved them her appreciation of their appreciation before beginning the descent.

After the banner had been duly presented, after the team had made its acknowledgment, after every one who could make a speech had said the proper thing, the R. A. A. returned to everyday costume, and the three or four hundred girls wandered about the grounds until summoned to college ice in the Auditorium.

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For Julia the spring had an added charm from the fact that Philip took so much interest in everything. Though working for his degree, he was constantly planning little parties of eight or a dozen to see this or that baseball game or the spring athletic meets. Whoever the others might be, Julia was always of the party.

“I have not known so much of Harvard doings in all my four years,” she said one day as they set out for a Princeton game, “and I feel foolishly frivolous in my old age.” There was no sign of old age in the bright-eyed girl who waved the Harvard flag, even up to the moment of Princeton’s victory. The general excitement, and the fact that it was a Princeton game, reminded Julia of that other Princeton game more than five years before when Harvard was victorious at football, and when Philip had shown himself just a little bored by having to escort a “parcel of girls.”

Thus with some pleasant diversions lightening the unescapable hard work of the examination period, the spring passed away, and the Monday before Class Day found the whole class ready to enjoy the happenings of the week. To Julia early that Monday morning came a note from Philip saying that his degree was assured, and that he had nothing to trouble him now except the fear that she might not get hers. Julia smiled as she read the friendly little note, and thought how greatly Philip had changed from the Philip of old.

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The first event of the day was a luncheon given by the former Secretary of the Annex and Regent of Radcliffe and his wife, at their Cambridge house. To them more than to any others was due the credit of planning the collegiate work for women that had finally resulted in establishing Radcliffe College. The Secretary was always ready to answer the many questions asked by the eager girls about the small beginnings of the college, and to the more thoughtful it was a wonderfully interesting story.

After the luncheon Annabel was called upon for a speech, and she was followed by half a dozen others, each of whom were ready-witted in responding to the impromptu toasts.

From the luncheon they went on to a reception at Craigie House. The poet’s daughter had also been one of the founders of the college, and the girls or classes honored with an invitation to Craigie House were always envied by the others.

Clarissa and Pamela, on this afternoon of the class reception, in a spirit of veneration, went almost on tiptoe into the study, now looking just as Longfellow left it almost twenty years ago. There near a window overlooking the Charles they saw the high writing desk at which he wrote standing, with some of his quill pens lying on it. They noted the great orange tree in the other window that had grown from a seed planted by Longfellow. The portraits of Hawthorne and Emerson, and the little water-color sketch of the village blacksmith’s shop, all came in for their share of attention. But perhaps most interesting of all was the portrait of the poet himself, in his fur-trimmed coat, painted by his son, on an easel near the fireplace. The class wandered from the quaintly furnished room known as Martha Washington’s parlor to the large drawing-room back of the study, with its many art treasures gathered in Europe. They strolled over the broad lawn, and each girl felt that this reception at the Longfellow House was something that no other event of Commencement week could surpass.

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Their own Class Day was the Wednesday before that of Harvard, and in the intervening day or two the class had little time to spare. The invitations had been out since the end of May, and all the preparations had been carefully made.

The literary exercises took place in the forenoon, with only the class as audience. “Thankful enough we ought to be,” said Ruth, “that cut and dried speeches in a hall have not yet been adopted by Radcliffe. It would be so hard to have to explain our jokes even to our sympathetic friends and relatives, and there would always be some present who would think undignified any alleged witticisms that we might offer.”

Sure, therefore, of a friendly audience, Annabel gave the Class History, and Polly the Class Prophecy. Ruth had written the words of a Class Song for which Julia had composed the music. There was a Class Poem by Estelle Ambler, a girl whose verses had lately appeared in several of the magazines, and it was rumored that Clarissa was to make an original contribution to the programme which no one was to know about until the last moment.

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Annabel’s History was even cleverer than her classmates had expected. She reviewed brightly the various events of the undergraduate years, scholastic and athletic, with the usual gentle gibes at History I and English 22, and the trials offered by Junior forensics and daily themes; and she made all laugh by the originality of her class statistics.

“We are 1,378 years old,” she read from her manuscript, “2,942 feet high, and we weigh a little less than four tons. During our four college years we have studied 26,134,720 minutes, and at Mrs. Agassiz’ Wednesday afternoons we have drunk in all about 7,000 cups of tea. During our four years we have used about 260 pints or 32.5 gallons of ink, and 5,636,250 pages of theme paper, which would cover about 5,000,000 square inches. The actual time spent in writing examinations has been just 96 days, of 24 hours each. For this work 5,240 blue-books have been necessary, and 320 quarts of Mrs. Hogan’s beef tea. In listening to lectures we have spent 30,000 hours, or 1,800,000 minutes. The Secretary knows that we have been eager searchers for knowledge, for at the lowest estimate we have asked her 2,470 questions, to which she has returned 2,470 patient and obliging answers. Now that we are about to depart to the four corners of the earth, we shall never forget old Radcliffe, nor the blue-books, even though we forget what filled them. We shall always remember the honored President and the Dean and the Secretary, and all who have smoothed our path here for us, and we shall never forget that we shall always belong to the Class of 189— of Radcliffe College.”

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A Class Poem can never be very original, but Estelle Ambler offered one that was extremely smooth and pleasing, and to the point. Polly followed it with a Prophecy, in which she imagined all kinds of things likely to happen to the rest of the class. “Prophecies contrary to fact,” many of them might have been called, for Polly foretold the early marriage of several of those girls who were the least devoted to society and the most devoted to study, while for Annabel and Ruth and Clarissa she prophesied many long years of toil as teachers or professors in school or college. Business careers were foretold for the unpractical, and those girls gifted with a sense of humor had a chance, in Polly’s gentle satire, to see themselves as others had seen them; and they all smiled at her concluding words, which she said embodied the sentiments of most of those inclined to give advice to college girls that the main advantage of a college education for a woman is that it fits her, or ought to fit her, “to take up the duties and responsibilities of a household, that by bringing her accurately trained mind to bear upon the practical details of life, and exercising the acquired acumen of her mind, she can make homes happier than they ever were before, and—” The final words were lost in the applause that greeted this familiar commonplace; and Polly, acknowledging a wreath of roses laid at her feet, bowed gracefully as she descended from the Auditorium stage.

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There was a hum of expectation as Clarissa followed Polly on the stage, carrying a large, stiff-looking roll. Unfolding it, she announced that she had been made Class Attorney, and that to her had been intrusted the making of the Class Will, which she would now read.

The things that she bequeathed were chiefly the common property of the class, such as “the superior smile when some underclass girl asks a question that cannot be answered;” to the incoming Freshman class the “privilege of profiting by the advice which their Senior advisers will give upon every occasion;” and last, though not least, in the minds of some, “the privilege of collecting on the slightest provocation sums of money, great or small, in exchange for tickets to entertainments, or without such consideration, to support divers good causes in Boston and Cambridge, especially those connected with settlement and college work; and the less ready money any girl is supposed to have, the more urgent shall be the appeals.”

To the Sophomores among other things were given the right of assuming “the nonchalant title of Junior,” and “the faculty and right of saying to Seniors who are loath to depart this college life, ‘Oh, well, we have a whole year more,’ in a way that makes a year sound an eternity.”

The Senior rights in various college officials and in certain college properties were likewise bequeathed, and the mock solemnity of the whole thing brought the programme to a close with a chorus of laughter. Then after the class had sung Julia’s Class Song, there was an informal half-hour of choruses and solos, and then a great hurrying homeward, that each girl might have an hour of rest before the grand climax of the day.

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For some of the class, however, there could be no rest, as many, besides those on the committees, were anxious to do their part in helping. But beautiful though the decorations of Fay House were, they paled into insignificance before the outdoor glories, for clever brains and skilful hands had made the most of the opportunities afforded by the limited area of the grounds. There were lines of lanterns between the trees, and a wonderful pagoda that seemed to be constructed of lanterns; there were tables on the lawns, laden with refreshments, and each Senior shook hands with dozens of persons and answered scores of questions, and had little opportunity to talk with the person she most wished to talk with, and walked ten miles more or less showing each of her special guests the points of interest in and around the college buildings. Each Senior, too, looked her very best in her simple white gown, and the crowds of Harvard students who were in attendance testified that socially at least Radcliffe was in no way unpopular with the older college. So weary were the Seniors as the evening advanced that they had little strength left to dance in the new Gymnasium. But the undergraduates and their other guests made up for their own lack in this respect.

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Pamela had invited Miss Batson and all the young ladies who boarded with her, and probably no guests enjoyed the day more than they. Besides her own family and some of her younger Newton friends, Lois invited Miss Ambrose, and those who were in the secret of Miss Ambrose’s aspirations could see that through her interest in Lois her own youth had been renewed. There was a rumor that she and Lois were to go to Europe that summer, and whether that was true or not, any one seeing them together could perceive that the feeling between them was stronger than that of mere friendliness. Clarissa’s father and mother had come on from Kansas, and several of her friends and relatives from the West. Annabel’s father, a New York politician, was so pleased that his daughter had retained the Presidency of the class that he was anxious to do all kinds of pleasant things for her constituents, and had finally arranged a mammoth pop concert party for Saturday evening. Julia, like the other Boston girls, had many guests, but the Bostonians were better able to entertain themselves than those who came from a distance.

Julia, for example, felt little responsibility for her uncle and aunt. They had many friends on the grounds, as had Nora and Edith and the rest of their party. She caught glimpses of Brenda constantly flitting about in her firefly fashion, with Arthur Weston in attendance. It was an open secret that Brenda’s engagement to Arthur was to come out before Commencement, and those who knew them the best had already offered the young people their congratulations. Many of the class, too, knew that Ruth and Will Hardon were also on the verge of having their engagement announced, and an observer might have thought that there was something more than good comradeship in the devotion with which Philip followed Julia from place to place. Julia had used not only the invitations to which she was entitled as a member of the class, but she had been able to secure many in addition from girls who did not need all their own allotment. She was able, therefore, to invite not only her former classmates at Miss Crawdon’s, but the teachers, too. Miss South was there in the light mourning that she wore for Madame Dulaunay. Those who knew her were wondering what she would do with the great house that her grandmother had left her, which it would be hard to keep up on a comparatively small income.

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Of all those whom Julia had known best at Miss Crawdon’s school, Belle alone was missing. By this it need not be understood that any one really missed her, for Belle, since she had been sent to New York to boarding-school, had really dropped out of the little set in which she had once been a leading member. In vacations some of her new friends visited her or she visited them, and she laughed at the ways of her Boston contemporaries as “far behind the time.” She and Brenda always kept up a correspondence, and her letters, though wholly about herself, were always entertaining. She had already left Boston to stay with friends at Mount Desert.

“But why Radcliffe College?” asked one of Polly’s guests, her cousin from New York.

“Yes, where did you get that name?” asked another cousin, walking with her.

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“Why, from Lady Anne Moulson, of course,” responded Polly, not at all unwilling to tell the story. “From Lady Anne Moulson, who was once Anne Radcliffe, and who founded the first scholarship at Harvard. The fact was unearthed just as the poor little nameless Annex was ready to appear out as a regular institution, and so she was christened Radcliffe College. Some did not care for the name, and would have preferred Longfellow College or something else local, but on the whole it seemed the best that could have been chosen.”

“I trust that Lady Moulson deserved the posthumous fame that has come to her, for certainly your college will give her name undying glory,” said one of the cousins gallantly in true Southern fashion, though he modified his praise slightly lest Polly should think that he wholly approved of a college education for girls.

To show herself impartial, Julia carried Tom Hearst’s flowers as well as Philip’s on Class Day. But it was Philip with whom she walked about the grounds after her duties as hostess were over, and Philip with whom she promised to go to Memorial Hall on the evening of Harvard Class Day, and Philip who was to be her escort at the Yale game the succeeding Saturday. Yet though they had many little conversations, and although what they said was largely personal, it must be admitted that there was not a word of sentiment in it all,—of sentiment, at least, as it is understood in its more romantic sense. They did talk, however, a great deal about their plans for the immediate future. Philip had decided to regard his father’s wishes, by taking his two years in the Law School, hoping that his previous reading and some special effort would take him through in less than three years. Julia confided to him certain ideas that she and Miss South hoped to carry out in the form of a training school for girls of the Angelina type. Philip’s face clouded when she told him that she should sail for Europe in July, with her uncle and aunt and Brenda and Miss South.

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“But you’ll be back in the autumn?” urged Philip.

“Oh, possibly.”

“But I’m depending on you for advice and that kind of thing.”

“Edith is a better adviser than I.”

“Ah, but Edith isn’t a college graduate.”

“Nor am I yet,” and Julia would give Philip no further satisfaction. Instead she wandered off, with a hasty good-bye to Philip, explaining only that as one of the hostesses of the day, she must look after her other guests.

Philip, following her, soon found himself in a group of which the central figure was Pamela. The two had not met since the spring following the sugar episode, and altogether had seen each other but two or three times. Yet now the recognition was mutual, and both had instantly the same thought, that each had greatly improved during the intervening three years. He lingered to talk to Pamela, and he had no chance to talk to Julia until later in the evening.

310

Although Philip felt dissatisfied, Julia had really given him more time than most Seniors had given to any one person on that busy, busy Class Day. Yet he kept his eye on her, and whenever he could induce her to leave her other guests, he would get her to walk with him over the building or through the grounds, on the pretext that there were many things that he wished to have explained about Radcliffe ways. Together Julia and Philip watched the gay throng of dancers in the Auditorium, and in an interval when the latter laughed at the crowded condition of the floor, Julia repeated the rumor that the next Senior class would dance in the great Gymnasium, as those in authority had already given their consent to this plan.

“That will be the proper thing, because—”

“Hush!” cried Julia, “the Glee Club is going to sing;” and as she spoke, to the air of “Fair Harvard” floated the words:

“Now a song for our Radcliffe, so young and so fair,

With the light of the dawn in her eyes,

With the garlands of May in her beautiful hair,

Blest child of the true and the wise.”

As the song finished, Mrs. Barlow approached Julia, to remind her that the hour was late, and that the two carriages were already waiting,—one to take the Barlow party back to Boston, and one to convey Julia and Ruth to Mrs. Colton’s.

As Julia and Ruth drove homeward, the former gave a sigh of relief.

“Aren’t you glad it’s over?” asked Ruth.

“Partly glad and partly sorry,” responded her friend. “It has been tiring, of course, but then so pleasant.”

“Yes, and to-morrow when we are rested, we shall be sorry that Class Day is past.”

“I am sorry now,” returned Julia, “for it marks the beginning of the end.”

311

XXVIII
COMMENCEMENT—AND THE END

As Julia sat in church on Baccalaureate Sunday she felt sadder than on any occasion since the class had begun to take its farewell of Cambridge and of college life, for now they were together for the last time before Commencement as the Senior class in cap and gown.

The last day was near at hand, and after that final assembling in Sanders Theatre, it was unlikely that these threescore girls would ever be all together again in the same place. Impressive though the sermon was, more than once Julia had to recall her thoughts from wandering in a review of the past four years. Had she herself made the best use of her time? Was there not some girl among the Seniors to whom she might have been more helpful than she had been—in ways intangible if not material? Had she herself drawn all the inspiration she might have drawn from her classmates? She had learned much from her intimates, but had she been sufficiently appreciative of some of the others or responsive to them? Thoughts like these so mingled themselves with her impressions of the sermon that she left the church in a state of abstraction.

312

Questions such as Julia had asked herself can never receive a definite answer. The wisest of us makes many mistakes, and the most foolish would be plunged in constant despair if she had to call herself to account at every step. To do her best is the most that can be asked of any girl, and if only she tries to learn from her errors, whatever her past faults, she can turn hopefully to the future.

Julia, fortunately, had comparatively little occasion for self-reproach; for if she had made the very most of her opportunities at Radcliffe—if she had left nothing undone that should have been done—she would have been the only one of her kind. Thoughts like these of Julia’s presented themselves to nearly every girl in the class—from Pamela the over-conscientious to careless Polly. Even the self-sufficient Annabel talked in a less self-satisfied manner, as she walked homeward from church accompanied by two or three of her best friends.

The three days intervening between Class Day and Baccalaureate Sunday had been very full. Friday had been Harvard Class Day, and there wasn’t a girl in the class who did not know at least one Harvard Senior. It was the first Class Day for Julia since the year of Philip’s failure, and the things that she did seemed a repetition of the happenings of that other year. There was but one marked change: the Tree exercises had been given up, and a less strenuous performance went on around the John Harvard statue on the delta. Confetti took the place of flowers, and the whole affair was carried on in the most gentlemanly way. Yet Julia, like many others, thought with regret of the old struggle around the Tree—regret that it was to be no more. Philip, although he realized better than any one else that this was not his real Class Day, yet managed to get a great deal of fun out of it. Tom Hearst and some of his former classmates, now about to be graduated from the Law School, gave a small tea in the early evening, and it proved a reunion of the group of young people who had been together so much at Rockley and in Boston. Brenda’s engagement had come out that very day, and she and Arthur Weston received the congratulations showered on them in a fashion that amused every one. They were surprised that their friends were not surprised.

313

“I am sure that I have always complained of the way Arthur teased me,” pouted Brenda, “and I never really made up my mind until—”

“When?” shouted Tom Hearst, noting with delight that Brenda was embarrassed. But Brenda refused to answer.

Ruth and Will Hardon had an equally large share of congratulations, and they would have been astonished had their friends not taken their engagement as a matter of course.

On Saturday the same group of young people went to the Yale-Harvard game on Soldier’s Field, and after they had returned home from Annabel’s concert party, Ruth and Julia were tired enough.

Kaleidoscopic visions of the past week’s festivities mingled with Julia’s more serious thoughts that Baccalaureate Sunday, as she scratched off the dates on her calendar that showed only two days remaining of college life.

314

But at last the eventful Tuesday had come—the Commencement that was to end the undergraduate days of the class. They had breakfasted that morning with the Dean, and had met many of their instructors at the informal reception that followed. Commencement was at half-past four o’clock, and promptly at that hour, while the orchestra in the gallery was playing, a long procession filed into Sanders Theatre. The amphitheatre was already filled with guests who had been ushered to their seats by Harvard Seniors. At the head of the procession walked the President of Harvard, and on his arm leaned the President of Radcliffe—stately and benign. Close behind were the Dean, the Secretary, the members of the Governing Board of Radcliffe and the Overseers of Harvard, with whose approval the degrees were granted.

All these took their seats on the platform, and at the left sat the Radcliffe Glee Club. The Seniors in cap and gown at the end of the procession marched to places on the floor of the theatre directly under the stage. It was hard for them to maintain their dignity without turning around, when they knew that in the balconies were so many of those with whom they would have liked to exchange a glance and a nod.

315

After the prayer, and the singing of “Integer Vitæ” by the Glee Club, the President of Radcliffe congratulated the class on their four years’ work, and on the special honors that had come to some of them. She told of the improving prospects of the college, and mentioned several gifts that had been made during the year. The most important news was the statement that one generous donor had given the whole sum needed to build a handsome dormitory,—the first Radcliffe dormitory,—and at this news there was loud applause.

The address that followed by the President of Harvard—a dignified and scholarly address—showed deep sympathy with the aims of college girls, many of whom had gained their degrees at the cost of certain things that most young girls might think more attractive. He called attention to the fact that the experiment of the higher education of women had lasted now for two generations, with satisfactory results. He added that the degrees about to be granted had been properly won, for they represent as hard a training as the more vigorous young men receive, and he concluded with a hope that some at least of the women graduates might show themselves possessed of the creative faculty, and add something to the world’s stock of knowledge.

“Aren’t the Seniors to take any part? Isn’t there a valedictory or something of that kind?” asked Edith of her neighbor Nora, as a little pause followed the President’s address.

“Oh, no, that isn’t the way. I suppose it’s the only college in the country where the class has no preparation for Commencement.”

316

“It’s much the best way,” said Mr. Blair, overhearing what the girls said. “A great deal of needless effort is wasted on useless speeches for Commencement. It’s as fatiguing to the audience as to the Seniors themselves. This way, it seems to me, is much best. It is so simple and dignified.”

“Yes, but some people are disappointed at not seeing the class celebrities,” responded Edith. “Of course we know something about Clarissa and Lois and Pamela and the others who have distinguished themselves.”

“Not to mention Julia,” interposed Nora.

“Yes, naturally; well, we know all these girls by sight, but there must be many here who have never seen them, and who would be very glad to know who’s who.”

“Well, they are all there; and if we listen, we may be able to fit the right name to the right girl.”

Of all in that great audience, perhaps no one was more disappointed than Angelina at the simplicity of the programme. Julia had had a card of invitation sent her, and she had come in a wonderful yellow hat covered with large pink flowers, and a gown of the brightest pink gingham. She had fully expected that Julia would be the centre of interest, and she was really grieved that one who had been so kind to her had not been given an opportunity at least to sing or play something from the operetta. Besides, she had a personal disappointment in the fact that she could not present to Julia the immense bouquet that she had brought with her from Shiloh. She had had the whole scene planned. In the midst of a burst of applause she would advance toward the stage, and, with a curtsy that she had been practising, fling the bouquet at Julia’s feet, at the close of her performance, whatever it was. But now Julia was no more conspicuous than the others of the class. She had neither sung nor made an oration, and Angelina herself had had no opportunity for a dramatic appearance before the audience. Her curtsy had been practised in vain; and Angelina, as she grasped the flowers, looked decidedly woe-begone.

317

But at last the Seniors were passing in single file toward the platform to receive their degrees, and each girl as her name was called received the crimson-tied parchment from the hands of the President. Before the Seniors several Alumnæ received their M.A. But the receiving of the degrees in the presence of that great audience was not unalloyed bliss. Even Lois and Pamela with summa cum, and Clarissa and Julia and others with their magnas, and Polly and Ruth with cum laude, felt a thrill of sadness as they passed down the steps in front of the dignified statue of Josiah Quincy.

Their undergraduate days were over!

That evening as Alumnæ they were cordially welcomed to an Alumnæ dinner by the older graduates, and if they felt uncomfortably warm wearing their long black gowns over their white dresses, there were compensations; for there was a satisfaction when Clarissa responded to one of the toasts to hear her speech called the wittiest ever made by a graduate, for Clarissa belonged to the whole class. Then, too, some of Polly’s songs were so enthusiastically received that it was a delight to remember that two others of the class, Julia the composer of the music and Ruth who had written the words, shared the credit with the gay singer.

318

At dusk the gay crowd wandered out on the lawn, where the Glee Club sang, and old friends gathered in little groups to talk over the happenings of the past year.

“In a year we shall be old graduates,” said Ruth with a sigh; “already I begin to feel the change. It seems as if everything has been, as if—”

“Nonsense,” interposed Julia, “everything is to be. Our undergraduate days are past, and yet I doubt that any of us would really care to live them over again. We can be thankful for what we have learned here, but after all, the sooner we can take our places in the world, the better. College life at the best is selfish—”

“There—there, Julia, don’t preach! Look at Fay House. It is almost picturesque.”

As they stood at the gate, the two girls turned and gazed at the old building, whose outlines in the dusk showed dimly through the screen of elms. Lights shone from some of its upper windows, and it looked like a stately palace.

This was undoubtedly the thought in Julia’s mind as she cried, turning away, “Good-bye, Palace of Learning,” while Ruth added, “Good-bye, great Class of 189—.”

Truly, it had been a great class, but its undergraduate days were over.

319

321

HELEN LEAH REED’S
“BRENDA” BOOKS

BRENDA, HER SCHOOL AND HER CLUB

By Helen Leah Reed. Illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith. 12mo. Decorated cloth. $1.50

This book, the first volume of a very popular and successful series of books for girls, has received high praise. The New York Tribune says it “has a tone of healthy common sense which is not always found in girls’ story books.”

The Boston Herald says: “Miss Reed’s girls have all the impulses and likes of real girls as their characters are developing, and her record of their thoughts and actions reads like a chapter snatched from the page of life. It is bright, genial, merry, wholesome, and full of good characterizations.”

BRENDA’S SUMMER AT ROCKLEY

By Helen Leah Reed. Illustrated by Jessie Willcox Smith. l2mo. Decorated cloth. $1.20 net

A charming picture of vacation life along the famous North Shore of Massachusetts.

The Outlook says: “The author is one of the best equipped of our writers for girls of larger growth. Her stories are strong, intelligent, and wholesome.”

“A clean, wholesome narrative, with a bright sparkle to its lines and sound moral for its girl readers,” says the Pittsburg Chronicle-Telegraph.

BRENDA’S COUSIN AT RADCLIFFE

By Helen Leah Reed. Illustrated by Alice Barber Stephens. 12mo. Decorated cloth. $1.20 net

The third and concluding “Brenda” book, in which student life at Radcliffe is described. A remarkably real and fascinating story of a college girl’s career, excelling in interest Miss Reed’s first “Brenda” book, of which the Congregationalist said: “Equal to the best of the recent books of school life about boys. Lively and amusing, revealing a shrewd understanding of girl nature.”

322

ANNA CHAPIN RAY’S
“TEDDY” STORIES

TEDDY: HER BOOK
A Story of Sweet Sixteen

Illustrated by Vesper L. George. 12mo. $1.50

The girls of sweet sixteen owe Anna Chapin Ray a debt of gratitude. No other writer, of recent years at least, has given such complete expression to the comprehensiveness of the complex character of the modern girl of that age. The story is charmingly told and thoroughly wholesome.—Denver Times.

PHEBE: HER PROFESSION
A Sequel to “Teddy: Her Book”

Illustrated by Frank T. Merrill. 12mo. $1.50

Miss Ray’s work draws instant comparison with the best of Miss Alcott’s: first, because she has the same genuine sympathy with boy and girl life; secondly, because she creates real characters, individual and natural, like the young people one knows, actually working out the same kind of problems; and, finally, because her style of writing is equally unaffected and straightforward. She builds upon clearly thought-out convictions, and the influence of the book will be wholly for good, tending toward a sane, wholesome view of life generally. There is a deal of fun in it too.—Christian Register, Boston.

TEDDY: HER DAUGHTER
A Sequel to “Teddy: Her Book,” and “Phebe: Her Profession”

Illustrated by J. B. Graff. 12mo. $1.20 net

Introduces a new generation of girls and boys, all well bred and gifted with good manners, takes them through much fun and such adventures as one may find on a small sandy island, and gives the girl a page or two of saving common sense about her duties to boys and her obligation to be true and womanly.—New York Times Saturday Review.

NATHALIE’S CHUM

Illustrated by Ellen Bernard Thompson. 12mo. $1.20 net

A new volume by the author of “Teddy: Her Book,” is pronounced by those who have read it the most delightful she has yet written. “Teddy,” “Babe,” “Dr. McAlister,” and several other favorite characters in the previous books reappear, together with an orphan family of New York.

323

Myra Sawyer Hamlin’s Stories

NAN AT CAMP CHICOPEE; or, Nan’s Summer with the Boys

Illustrated by Jessie McDermott. 16mo. $1.25.

The story is one of free, outdoor life, characterized by a deal of fine descriptive writing and many bits of local color that invest the whole book with an atmosphere which is actually fragrant.—Bangor Commercial.

NAN IN THE CITY; or, Nan’s Winter with the Girls

Illustrated by L. J. Bridgman. 16mo. $1.25.

A bright story in which children and animals play an equal part.—The Outlook.

She is a womanly girl, and we have met her like outside of story-books. A wonderfully healthy, thoroughly womanly maiden, standing at the point in life where childhood and womanhood meet, one follows with interest the account of her first winter at school in a great city, where she made new friends and found some old ones.—Chicago Advance.

NAN’S CHICOPEE CHILDREN

Illustrated by L. J. Bridgman. 16mo. $1.25.

Myra Sawyer Hamlin’s stories are full of outdoor life, redolent of the woods, the fields, and the mountain lakes, and her characters are very natural young folk.—Cambridge Tribune.

Full of happiness and helpfulness, with experiences in doors and out that will interest all young people.—Evening Standard, New Bedford.

CATHARINE’S PROXY. A Story of Schoolgirl Life

Illustrated by Florence E. Plaisted. 12mo. $1.20 net.

An entertaining story of a very modern young American girl of wealth who fails to appreciate the advantages of an expensive education, and at the suggestion of her father gives her educational advantage to another girl, who for a year becomes her proxy.

The girl characters are from fifteen to seventeen years of age, the boys are preparing for college, and all are instilled with the spirit of modern life in our best schools.

324

New Illustrated Editions of
Miss Alcott’s Famous Stories

LITTLE MEN: Life at Plumfield with Jo’s Boys

By Louisa M. Alcott. With fifteen full-page illustrations by Reginald B. Birch. Crown 8vo. Decorated cloth. $2.00.

Nothing of its kind could be better than Miss Alcott’s “Little Men,” unless, possibly, her “Little Women.” ... It is the story of boys at school, and how they lived there. The boys will like it, for it will tell them of their own kind. The mothers will like it, for it is full of suggestions on the high art of governing. And everybody should read it, for it is cheery and like cordial from beginning to end.—Congregationalist.

“Little Men” has never been given to an admiring public in any form so charming as this one. All that was needed to make the tale quite irresistible was such illustrations as are here supplied, fifteen full-page ones instinct with life and movement and charm.—Boston Budget.

LITTLE WOMEN: or Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy

By Louisa M. Alcott. With 15 full-page illustrations by Alice Barber Stephens. Crown 8vo. Decorated cloth. $2.00.

No book for the young is better known than Miss Alcott’s famous “Little Women.” It continues to have a wider reading and circulation than any other book of its class. Thousands of new readers will be delighted with this favorite book, in its new form, with Mrs. Stephens’s charming pictures.

AN OLD-FASHIONED GIRL

By Louisa M. Alcott. With 12 full-page pictures by Jessie Willcox Smith. Crown 8vo. Decorated cloth. $2.00.

The third volume of “The Little Women Series.” Miss Alcott in this book described “the good old fashions which make women truly beautiful and honored, and render home what it should be,—a happy place where parents and children, brothers and sisters, learn to love and know and help one another.”

In Preparation

NEW ILLUSTRATED EDITIONS OF MISS ALCOTT’S OTHER BOOKS

JO’S BOYS, and How They Turned Out. A Sequel to “Little Men”

EIGHT COUSINS; or, The Aunt-Hill

ROSE IN BLOOM. A Sequel to “Eight Cousins”

UNDER THE LILACS

JACK AND JILL. A Village Story

LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY
Publishers, 254 WASHINGTON ST., BOSTON, MASS.
GROSSET & DUNLAP, - NEW YORK

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Table of Contents

- Brenda’s Cousin at Radcliffe A Story for Girls

- CONTENTS

- ILLUSTRATIONS From Drawings by Alice Barber Stephens

- I NEW ACQUAINTANCES
- II THE FRESHMAN RECEPTION
- III THE FIRST “IDLER”
- IV PAMELA’S PERSEVERANCE
- V COLLEGE CALLERS
- VI SETTING TO WORK
- VII ALL KINDS OF GIRLS
- VIII THE MID-YEARS
- IX TWO CATASTROPHES
- X DISCUSSIONS AND DISCUSSIONS
- XI EFFORTS TO HELP
- XII HARVARD CLASS DAY
- XIII VARIOUS AMBITIONS
- XIV IN DISGUISE
- XV ANGELINA
- XVI WHO WROTE IT?
- XVII A PRIVATE DETECTIVE
- XVIII WORK AND PLAY
- XIX THE OPERETTA
- XX JUNIORS
- XXI A FORTUNATE ACCIDENT
- XXII ANNABEL AND CLARISSA
- XXIII CLOUDS CLEARED AWAY
- XXIV SENIORS ALL
- XXV A STRANGE MEETING
- XXVI THE HOUSE PARTY
- XXVII NEARING CLASS DAY
- XXVIII COMMENCEMENT—AND THE END
- HELEN LEAH REED’S “BRENDA” BOOKS
- ANNA CHAPIN RAY’S “TEDDY” STORIES
- Myra Sawyer Hamlin’s Stories

- New Illustrated Editions of Miss Alcott’s Famous Stories

- In Preparation

- Transcriber’s Notes

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE