Elinor’s Senior Year
Chapter XXII
Blessed A Plenty
Lydia returned to college in the middle of the Christmas vacation, after a week of conscientious endeavor to retain her city friendships and keep early hours at the same time. She believed in a species of noblesse oblige that constrained all seniors to take especial care of themselves this final year in order that Commencement guests might not find pretexts for quips and cranks over the array of worn and pallid maidens with diplomas in their hands. Accordingly she came back to rest in halls that seemed depressingly silent and deserted in spite of the half-hundred stranded residents.
The three other girls had determined to remain there in peace throughout the recess. In greeting Lydia, Elinor bestowed a confidential hint that somebody ought to sympathize with Myra over her pitiable loneliness during the late monotonous days. That young person in wrathful scorn flung back the generous condolences.
“Yes, go on, do be sorry for us poor creatures who stayed here in this little hole. It makes me furious to hear people from an ugly sooty bleak crowded roaring town talk with that maddening self-gratulation of your fellow-citizens. Have you ever seen the evergreens bowed with snow here, have you? Have you noticed the trees on a sleety morning? Have you deigned to glance at “the hills?
“Smells of soapsuds,” commented the city guest.
“The maids are cleaning house. I love that delicious damp whitewashy institution odor. The newer dormitories don’t have this genuine atmosphere. Elinor herself acknowledges that she likes it. We’ve been mending and clearing out our wardrobes every afternoon. I sort the mail. We get up when we feel ready and argue at breakfast as long as we choose. They give us whipped cream three times a day. Every evening we sew in the senior parlor while somebody reads aloud. We saved our express parcels and hung up our stockings for Christmas. Ruth has gained five pounds already. She says it is because she exercises in the forenoon. Elinor won’t try it. She wants her mornings for study.”
“Study in vacation?”
“Certainly! She is doing her special topic in ethics ahead of time. She’s afraid of growing up ignorant. Her birthday is in July, but the class has decided to celebrate it in January. Think of our president being the youngest in the class! Her mother ought to be proud.”
“Where has she disappeared now?”
“Gone to rout Ruth from her Browning. The genius has been ranting around all day with a beatific smile and a murmurous chant over her ‘cup runneth over’ just because the meaning of something or other had suddenly been revealed to her. I have a wager with Elinor that she can’t persuade her — the she is a substitute for the Latin ea, the nearer feminine individual, the her is an equivalent for illam, the more distant person — English is so distressingly inexact. That’s what I’ve read somewhere. In this critical place I have learned never to venture a profound statement unless I am prepared to back it up by a reference. Elinor declares that I barely escape being a prig. Isn’t that interesting?”
“Exceedingly so, but if you will pardon my stupidity I fail to perceive the connection of this monologue with the fact of routing out Ruth.”
“Oh, yes, where was I? Elinor vowed that she would drag Ruth to the candy-pull to-night, and I swore the deed was impossible. To be sure, however, I have heard of a woman who props her Browning in front of the moulding-board while she ponders. Everybody’s invited to the pull.”
And everybody went to the pull. In one great kitchen maidens armed with big spoons stood on either side of the long stove down the middle. Molasses bubbled in vessels large and small. Along the tables at the walls girls were shelling nuts, stoning dates, beating fine sugar and the white of egg into creamy paste. In the adjoining kitchen there were more tables and more girls.
Ruth and Elinor made date creams and cocoanut drops while Myra foraged for materials. Powdered sugar was in pressing demand because it was necessary first to capture the sugar and then take it downstairs to be rolled fine by the baker. When a burglarious sophomore leaned across the table to snatch Ruth’s dish of precious sweet stuff, Elinor rushed around one end and Myra around the other to recapture it. Dashing into the outspread arms of the sophomore’s partner Myra found herself a prisoner, a hook on her sleeve catching in the other’s lace collar and holding them in a fixedly rapturous embrace until released.
“To think that we have not even been introduced!” wailed the sophomore.
“It’s what I call having an acquaintance thrust upon one,” rejoined Miss Dickinson with cheerful impudence, while Ruth rose in her length and recovered the sugar by means of an arm surprisingly elastic.
“Where is my buttered tin?” mourned Elinor, “see that freshman walk away with it. Myra, come quick! They’re robbing me.” She spread her hands protectingly over the treasures at the wily approach of two juniors with suspiciously ingratiating manners.
“We are a committee for sampling everybody’s wares so that we can present the best cook with a prize,” they explained, their fingers reaching this way and that through unguarded spaces.
“Oh!” said Myra. Ruth noted the accent as of slowly dawning enlightenment before a radiant idea, and smiled to herself as she waited for further developments. In three minutes she was rewarded by hearing an indignant voice at the door.
“Don’t you any one give Myra Dickinson a single piece of anything! She is pretending to take up a donation for the doctor and the nurse and the janitor and Prexie — though he’s gone to Europe.”
“Well, can’t I save it for him?” rang out the sinner’s aggrieved voice. “Girls, how can I be noble or generous if nobody will encourage me? The doctor said fudges were an abomination anyhow. They will keep you awake to-night. Donate your candy — to me and my many dear dependents, and retain your ability to sleep. ‘Tired nature’s sweet restorer’ and so forth. Be wise in time. Beware!”
“Myra,” called Lydia, “come and help pull.” Lydia solid and serene stood firmly grasping one end of a massive golden coil while Elinor swayed and struggled at the other.
“Dear aesthetic, aristocratic Elinor, can you pull molasses candy? No, madam, you cannot, because you’re not built that way.
‘You are slim, my dear comrade,’ I sez, sez I, ‘And the smudge on your cheek’s there to stay. But you can’t balance that hefty Miss Howard indeed^ Because you’re —'”
“Oh, which cheek?” cried Elinor in alarm, “I wondered why some of the girls were staring at me.’*
“Calm yourself, calm yourself, dear child. It is not your beauty but your fame that attracts. That’s what I have noted in my own case. Now Lydia’s different: people contemplate her not so much because they admire her as because they desire her to admire them; and as a first step to bringing that about they evince and impress upon her their good taste by, staring —”
“Stuff a lump of candy into her mouth rapidly! Quick, quick, Ruth! The grape-sugar has gone to her head!”
Out of the midst of the wild flurry Elinor at last emerged triumphant with a plateful of booty. “This is traveling upstairs to Miss Padan,” she paused beside Ruth, “any contributions?”
“But I understood that you hate — did not like her.”
Elinor looked confused for an instant. “I didn’t at first — you know why. Then — then she was so sweet about that mock faculty meeting, and I’ve learned that she is as sensitive for others as for herself. It was brave in her to tell me the truth last fall. She’s going abroad to study next year, and we may meet in Greece.”
“I thought it was to be Paris?”
“Oh, Athens, too! You ought to belong to the Hellenic Society. Why, archaeology is fascinating. As Myra says, I’m broadening.”
“Elinor and archæology!” murmured Ruth, “you certainly are.”
Truth to tell, archaeology and Elinor seemed even more strikingly incompatible than ever on her birthday night. All the senior tables were gay with flowers and pink-shaded candles. At every place there was some brand-new toy — a jumping-jack or rubber doll, a box of blocks, a bell, a whistle, a woolly lamb, or a linen picture book. The class entered the dining-room, walking two by two, each one wearing a white frock and a round cap, for this was a baby party in honor of their youngest member.
“I’m proud to be your happy roommate, revered president,” Myra assured her more than once. “No, thank you, I do not prefer it rare,” as Elinor lifted the last juicy slice of beef from the platter, “you fail to comprehend the fact that tastes vary. You are not yet perfect. There are still ideals toward which you may direct your faltering steps. You don’t imagine that Jack Sprat whenever he felt unusually generous insisted upon giving his wife all the precious lean meat as a token of his regard?”
“It would have been a token at all events,” argued Elinor. “Fancy your chagrin if I should offer you the fag ends as the little boy distributed his surplus plums, ‘Here, take these ; I don’t want them. They’re rotten.'”
“The culture and increasing breadth of your vocabulary is appalling,” laughed Myra, “chagrin is a word straight out of the dictionary. And fancy — ah, don’t you know — fahncy — is so English —” Here she swallowed a bit of bread and the conclusion of her sentence simultaneously, as one of the professors halted in passing to congratulate Miss Offitt and wish her many happy returns of the day.
“None of them could possibly be any happier,” she responded, her eyes flitting down the vista of flowers and faces, “I’m blessed a plenty, thank you.”
; “‘tell me, senior, would you be A fair A.M. or Ph.D., At five and twenty?’
; ‘I cannot tell you, sir,’ said she, ‘Just now I say right heartily I’m blessed a plenty.'”
quoted Myra, “ahem — from the last Annual. But oh, Elinor, alas! I beg of you not to turn into a Ph.D. They very, very seldom marry ever at all — Ph.D.’s don’t. I’ll be so disappointed. You are born to be a clinging vine. Now with Ruth or Lydia, it’s another question, for they are sturdy pillars of society all by themselves.”
At sound of her name Lydia glanced toward the speaker inquiringly. Just at this point a sudden lull in the clattering of dishes and chattering of tongues permitted a voice to journey clearly from a neighboring freshman table.
“If you could have your choice, would you rather be Miss Offitt or Miss Howard?”
“But Miss Allee is a genius,” disputed another, and was interrupted by an enthusiastic “I’d choose to be Myra Dickinson, looks and all. O-o-oh!” The exclamation died away in a groan of agony; for in the dreadful stillness Myra had twisted slowly about and gratefully winked one solemn eye.
“It’s all owing to my cheerful disposition,” she meditated aloud for the benefit of her companions, “now f’rinstance, I’m not worrying over the dessert I refrain from asking the maid if possibly it may prove to be ice cream, because, you see, I grasp the pleasure of hoping as long as possible.”
“But you know it is ice cream,” objected literal Lydia, “for you ordered it yourself. The other classes are having apple-pie.”
The apple-pie was so quickly disposed of or else ignored that the seniors soon found themselves the sole occupants of the apartment. They lingered over their dainties till a call for “A speech! A speech!” with bright heads bending forward to nod urgently toward the embarrassed president coaxed her to her feet. Then came the clapping and the ever novel and exhilarating cheers: “What’s the matter with Elinor Offitt?” “She’s all right.” “Who’s all right?” “Elinor Offitt!” Myra finished off with a rousing, “‘Rah, ‘rah, ‘rah!” as the gong for Chapel began to whir and send its warning clangor through the listening groups in the corridors.
A party of strangers were waiting to watch the students troop into Chapel. “What pretty girls the seniors are,” commented one; for the baby-caps were remarkably becoming.
“That round-faced one with the big serious dark eyes seems rather young to be a senior. The hard work evidently does not steal her color and curves.”
“How gravely she is speaking to that attractive young girl beside her with her arms full of roses. Doubtless she is the one whose birthday is being celebrated. What lovely hair! Her face is almost beautiful. Ah, what an exquisite smile! It takes away my breath.”
And Myra in her silkiest, softest undertone had been murmuring, “Say, Elinor, sweetums, does it seem nice to be a popular president? Do the girls love their darling itty-bitty baby? Does her throat feel all choky and do her pinky ears bum? People are staring at her. Staring hard. They think she is charming. Yes, that’s right: cast down your lashes modestly. Hadn’t you better try suffocating yourself a trifle for the sake of producing a goodsized blush? That’s the ticket! A little redder on this hither ear, please. Now your alabaster brow! Bravo! Pinker at the roots of the ambrosial locks, if you can arrange it. Oh, thank you! No, no, that’s enough. The glory of a peony differeth from the glory of a rose.”
Elinor had answered from between her teeth, the comers of her lips barely lifting from their sensitive droop, “I warned you not to make me laugh, Myra Dickinson. If you say another word, I shall punch your head.”
Then it was that she smiled the “exquisite” smile.