Presently her hostess addressed her with characteristic abruptness. “I have been following with keen interest your career so far, Miss Offitt, and I hope that you will not feel offended if I suggest that you are doing justice neither to yourself nor to the college. Am I right in assuming that you will not resent criticism which is offered in the spirit of sincere kindness?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Certainly, Miss Padan, I shall appreciate whatever you may be willing to say,” replied Elinor, her voice at its sweetest “society” pitch, her lips stiffened against a sensitive tremor of dismay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Very well. I am sure that I have not been mistaken in my estimate of your force of character, and \u2014 I may add \u2014 generosity. There are not many to whom I would venture to pay the tribute of straight-forward honesty on such a point.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This drop of honey, faintly spicy at first taste, lingered with pervading fragrance throughout the pungent interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“You entered college under remarkably favorable conditions \u2014 far above the average in every respect. While you have kept a fair standard in class, you have by no means exerted your energies to do your best. What is far more serious you have assumed such a flippant tone with regard to an earnestly intellectual spirit among the girls that your influence has been ba \u2014 has not been good.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The listener flushed suddenly, and her gaze fell to the carpet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The students admire and look up to you far more than you realize. As a college granddaughter you are considered to represent the best results of this method of education. Even more distinctively than upon the ordinary student a responsibility rests upon you. This is the responsibility for proving to the world that college training produces the highest type of womanhood. This purpose assuredly is not to be attained by being untrue to your best self. A set of girls here notice that you slight your opportunities and decry your advantages. They are growing more and more ashamed of conscientious study. They treat the faculty with patronizing indifference if not antagonism. They ignore courtesies which are owing to the institution as to a hostess entertaining them. They have no standards, no ideals, no perception of values, and in sheeplike imitation of a few strong personalities they overlook the finer qualities of \u2014” she hesitated an instant, \u2014 “of these leaders, the very qualities in which consists their charm.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elinor was used to being called charming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“In work. Miss Offitt,” there was restrained anxiety in the eyes that were studying the downcast marblelike face, “your distaste for the spectacular is caricatured in discourteous neglect of recitations, crude bluffing, a lazy waste of time, contempt for those students who place their work first. This attitude is similar to that of the most puerile tag-end of the freshman class in any large university. It is an attitude which if cherished in such a limited body as this college will inevitably tend to lower the institution and to ruin it in its intrinsic value as well as in the estimation of the world.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A few minutes later in the sociology section Myra leaned across to whisper, ” Elinor, you look queer. What’s the matter?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Nothing’s the matter,” answered Elinor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Chapter XX<\/h2>\n\n\n\nElinor Takes Her Medicine<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not until weeks later did Elinor tell any one of the interview with courageous Miss Padan. To those who observed only the changes of seasons or the tumult of cataclysms, the autumn days glided on serenely. Neither floods nor fires disturbed the lovely outline of the woods and hills and valleys. Neither the plagues of tyranny nor the perils of rebellion distracted the pleasant round of college life. Myra played in the tennis tournament as usual, and as usual lost the championship through her reckless waste of energy in the preliminary games. It seemed as if she positively could not learn to stand still when the opportunity offered, instead of chasing frantically after balls that were plainly going out of bounds. Her opponent was a calm creature who never even raised her racquette unless for some useful purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lydia moved on her placid and majestic way, interrupted only by a cold that huddled her into a sunny nook of the building, and endowed her with an injured air and a plaintive note in her replies to solicitous inquiries. Ruth as editor struggled beneath bondage to the calendar, and as mail-carrier writhed under the dictatorship of the clock. Elinor presided gracefully at the formal opening of the senior parlor in November, and for the December Reception she could have filled her program several times over with the names of men guests. This year on senior corridor the four friends found themselves more popular than ever. Girls were running in and out of the study all day long. Ruth fled to the library for quiet, and Myra complained piteously over the expense of buying a new block-pad for the door every week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One evening after Lydia and Myra had departed to attend a reception given by the German department in honor of a visiting celebrity, Elinor hung an engaged<\/em> sign outside and sat down to wrestle over a list of committees for the new year. Ruth in clearing out her desk unearthed a collection of block-leaves and began to quote extracts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Listen to these notes, Elinor. It sounds as if we do nothing but eat. Here’s one : ‘Dear M.\u2014 I’m going to get Milk, Butter, Eggs (2), Oil, Bread, Sugar. Do we need anything else? If so, will you buy it, and then I’ll see you later?’<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Again: ‘I leave the things here. You see, I got chops, marshmallows, and roses. I couldn’t find any pansies, and these were the best I could do in roses.’<\/p>\n\n\n\n “That’s more aspiring, isn’t it? Most of them, however, omit thee aesthetics. Vide: ‘Come to my house to-night for products at 8:30. Everybody’s coming.’<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Vide iterum: Will you all come to see what a good cook I am? Whenever you get ready, but the sooner the better.’<\/p>\n\n\n\n “No wonder that Prexie’s final admonition included a hint about the self-indulgence of eating in our rooms and sleeping till church time on Sunday!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elinor leaned over her shoulder. “Some are funny, aren’t they? There! ‘Bring back those matches quick. You’ve stolen too much of me already. Oh, I forgot! Good night and sweet dreams.’<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Look at this one: ‘Borrowed your curtains, portieres, and rugs for the Play. Bring me your $.20 class dues this morning, else I cannot recommend you for a degree.'”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Ah!” remarked Ruth in some surprise, “here is Miss Padan’s name. I did not know that she had ever called.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then Elinor told her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Just at first,” she continued, “when once I had caught my breath again, I was so angry that I stamped. I ran out to the pines \u2014 the loneliest spot \u2014 and fairly raved. I even banged my fist against the fence \u2014 though not so very hard,” she added scrupulously, “because I was afraid it might hurt.” (Ruth smiled half mournfully at the contrast of her own lawless moods. “She had no business to pitch into me like that when I don’t know her at all intimately. The day when she left her name on the block was much later. Doubtless she wished to observe how the convalescent was thriving on the medicine.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “So you decided to swallow it?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Haven’t you noticed?” cried Elinor half triumphant, half disappointed, “Well, it is wisest to reform by degrees so that nothing will be conspicuous. You don’t realize how furious I was at first. I intended to be worse than ever and not study a particle more. I thought that since I was to have the reputation for flippancy merely because I lift my head to smile at a girl in the choir during prayer, I might as well have the fun of it, and write letters at the Bible lecture, and ridicule the hymns while they are being sung, and cross my knees and argue about agnosticism and so forth. I was going to be simply awful!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “What altered your plans?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elinor fidgeted, tilting her head with an obstinate little pout before plunging further into confession. “I’m not noble one bit, or magnanimous like some of the girls. I hate Miss Padan for saying such things to me, but still they’re true enough. I can’t forgive her, you understand; yet I couldn’t forgive myself if I tried to be so silly as I wanted to at first. Why, Ruth Allee you know yourself that it would have been absolutely senseless, footless, unreasonable, foolish, idiotic!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Yes,” said Ruth, “it would.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here two high young voices floated in from the vicinity of the water-cooler in the corridor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Well, Jessie, if you would put yourself in my place! Suppose you had not seen a man for seven years \u2014”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Yes, that’s just it You always consider an affair from your own side and think of yourself first and \u2014”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, you mean to imply that I am selfish and regard my own pleasure exclusively. I never was told that before. In fact, quite the reverse.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Why did you make him sit out with you during my dance, then? I didn’t have a chance all the evening \u2014”<\/p>\n\n\n\n With a spiteful clink of the mugs against the metal, the dialogue trailed away in the distance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I had hoped that the girls here were above such bickering,” sighed Ruth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “They’re only freshmen. Everybody excuses and make allowances for them, but \u2014”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “\u2014 we’re seniors, and that’s the difference.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “People expect you to be reasonable after living here three years,” fretted Elinor, “that’s one of the great botherations about this place. I hate to be reasonable.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Outside in the alleyway a confused rustling of skirts and tapping of heels approached the door, and a medley of pointed remarks drifted over the transom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “An engaged sign on Friday evening.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Shocking!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “She must be plotting to work for an honor.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “She’s nothing but a dig after all.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Let’s sit on her anyhow.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then Myra’s voice called gaily, “Heigho, girls! Won’t they let you in? What? Oh, it’s that debate which you want Elinor to explain. Walk right in of course!” She flung the door open and waved onward half-a-dozen seniors who straightway surrounded Elinor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “You appointed us on this debate. Now tell us what it means. We can’t agree. Resolved: that egoism and not altruism has been the most important factor in the world’s progress. Whoever heard \u2014”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “If you mean survival of the fittest and so on, why naturally the individual strives for his own selfish good and that’s \u2014”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “But if the martyr chooses to die because sacrificing himself gives him greater pleasure than renouncing his principles, there you see that is egoism. Then I should like to inquire what altruism is.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “My character has been steadily deteriorating ever since I commenced to hunt up arguments for the affirmative. If every act can be reduced to terms of lowest self-love \u2014”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “But if the world is growing better all the time, as our economics man says, and the most advanced sign of the times is charity in human selection, kindness to animals, and so on, I object to the question.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elinor put her fingers in her ears while Lydia who had entered with the disputants took the floor and defined the issue in terms of shining clearness. Whenever Miss Howard opened her finely cut mouth in the ethics class some foggy problem was sure to be decisively settled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “What do you believe after all?” queried Myra when the visitors had withdrawn, still grumbling over their fate, “I am completely mixed up myself.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I believe exactly what I said,” answered Lydia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “What beatitude!” laughed Elinor, “now if only I dared believe what I say, or say what I believe \u2014 it doesn’t matter which \u2014”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It strikes me,” interrupted Lydia sagaciously, “that you are inclined to slander yourself. You aren’t nearly so unconscionable as you have claimed to be ever since entering college. Don’t you comprehend that the world will take you at your own valuation? It is quite as criminal to bear false witness against yourself \u2014”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ruth who had been sitting silent, her head cocked in birdlike fashion, a half-quizzical smile of comical contentment on her face, woke suddenly to the necessity for diverting the stream of eloquence. “Elinor’s all right Don’t you bother her. It isn’t time for the Sunday sermon yet. Tell us about the reception.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It was fairly interesting,” answered Myra from her place beside Elinor on the couch, “coffee and sandwiches and the dearest little old herr professor. When he said that he had never before seen so many happy, happy faces, Lydia responded, ‘That is because you are here, Professor.'” He was her radiant admirer all the rest of the evening \u2014 and only six other men to be divided among the few hundred others of us.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I’m afraid that we will become blas\u00e9 from a surfeit of receptions this year,” said Elinor, “it is horrible to get stranded in a corner with someone who won’t talk. When Myra is not near to rescue me, I almost die. I know that nobody will be interested in anything I may happen to say.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The idea!” rebuked Lydia, “such an attitude would prove the death of small talk.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Myra dribbled cheerfully on. “A friend of your mother’s was there. Used to be college chums. She asked after you. Said she expected to hear great things of your mother’s daughter. I told her you were class president. She said, ‘Nothing but a society butterfly!’ And I squelched her.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Myra!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It wasn’t much of a squelch. Just the way Elinor closes a conversation when people ask questions that are none of their business. Only when I try it, the girls think I have a stiff neck. A society butterfly indeed!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Ask her to come around on Class Day, and then she will see the ‘great things.’ Miss Offitt in the center of the stage!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Don’t talk about it!” Elinor brushed the subject out of the air. “It’s months away, and I hate to be reminded of Commencement.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n So she too wanted this dear last year to keep on without end. Ruth stared at her wistfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Anyhow,” complained Elinor, “I shall be scared to death and disgrace the class. I wish I dared resign the office. I hate responsibility.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Come, come, now, be reasonable,” exclaimed Lydia chidingly; and Elinor groaned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n “Elinor’s been crying,” thought Ruth with a quick pang of dread over imagination of possible disasters. At the moment she was waiting at the door of the principal’s office for her chance to claim an interview. The corridor there in the center of the building was without windows; and the dozen students also in attendance probably had not noticed the traces of tears as the senior president walked rapidly past them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Something must have happened \u2014 something that had hurt beyond self-control. It was not anger; she could tell that from the shy forward bend of the flowerlike head. Anger would have thrown it upward and back in spontaneous rebound from the humiliation of the injury. Sorrow would have caused a drooping of gentle outlines, a shrinking inward upon herself, a strained fixed gravity instead of the perfunctory half-smile that swept the line of more or less familiar faces. No, this was trouble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ruth watched her step swiftly to the railing at the stairway and call to someone below. The words came hurrying while the hands ordinarily in repose gesticulated in eager emphasis. As she stood there the elevator rattled to a pause, and Myra popped out with Lydia following. Elinor turned to them on the instant, grasping Lydia’s arm with nervous vehemence. At her first sentence Myra flung out her hands in dismay, while Lydia’s level brows lifted incredulously. A minute later both new comers had disappeared down the stairs and Elinor hastened back past the benchful of girls to the door of the office. At glimpse of Ruth’s intently wondering gaze, she wavered as if to speak, but evidently changed her mind at the prospect of so many auditors; for after an apologetic nod to the observant row she entered without awaiting her turn. This was an amazing act in diffident Miss Offitt, because although such a precedence was one of their privileges the seniors rarely took advantage of it. Ruth herself had been sitting there for twenty minutes since luncheon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Elinor emerged she was accompanied by Miss Padan to whom she was talking earnestly, her voice rapid and pleading, her sensitive face upheld to the clouded eyes of the woman at her side. Ruth stared perplexed after the two figures receding down the long vista of corridor gray in the light from the snow-beaten world without. Elinor had declared that she would never forgive Miss Padan for her plain speaking, and yet there she was from all appearances beseeching forgiveness herself. What could the trouble be?<\/p>\n\n\n\n By the time Ruth reached the study she was thoroughly anxious. Recalling the division of duties in the ethics manual, she applied the same principle to this mysterious trouble: trouble might concern first Elinor herself, second others, third the world. Had there been bad news from home? The vision of a telegram brought a hidden throb of relief under the pity: was that a compensation \u2014 the<\/em> compensation \u2014 for her solitary lot? “No pain, no pleasure \u2014 is the iron rule.” She had no home to give her joy one day and wring her heart the next. That was the stoic philosophy of it all. If the trouble belonged to Elinor personally, most assuredly she was not the girl to be running around the college with her tale of woe. No, of course, those tears must have been excited by sympathy with another’s suffering. Perhaps some freshman had been condemned to exile for failing in examinations, or some junior was on the verge of expulsion, or somebody else had been deluging the senior president with hysterical grief over general unworthiness. More than once Elinor’s responsive manner had been rewarded by unwelcome confessions from mere acquaintances. Myra regarded it as a great joke. Ah, that was Myra’s step now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Flinging her snowy cloak over the couch where it left a damp spot on Lydia’s best silk pillow, she kicked off her rubbers and twitched the pin out of her tam-o’shanter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, yes!” she burst out explosively, “I am aware that such a display of primitive emotion is not refined or highly civilized, but \u2014” she subsided upon the hardest chair and fiercely folded her arms, “how would you enjoy scuttling from end to end of this institution, apologizing and explaining and soothing and excusing and begging pardon and smoothing down and \u2014 and everything?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Not a bit,” answered Ruth with agreeable briskness, for her anxiety had been modified at the first glance. She knew that like a hurricane at sea a serious trouble would have beaten flat the waves of vexation and scattered the foam of peevish speech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It’s all that old mock faculty meeting we gave last Saturday,” growled Myra, unfolding her arms in order to prop up a doleful chin, “how was I to know that the faculty themselves would be among the spectators? You remember who it was that I represented? She didn’t like it one speck \u2014 no, sirree, not one tiny speck!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “You did go a trifle too far in caricature, Myra,” responded Ruth with manful frankness, “the whole thing was an exaggerated parody.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Yes, that’s right \u2014 rub it in,” groaned the culprit, “hit a fellow when he’s down \u2014 I mean, when he has hunched his shoulders all ready for the blow. Why didn’t you stop it beforehand?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “For the good reason that I did not attend the rehearsals and therefore was not aware of its character. Elinor was on the committee.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Myra gulped. “Yes, blame Elinor \u2014 that’s the way. The faculty are all pitching into her. After luncheon one of them caught her in the hall and talked dreadfully to her. She cried when she reached the study. And it isn’t her fault anyhow, because, you see, most of the actors did not let themselves go at rehearsals. We saved the finest touches for the meeting itself in public.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Finest touches!” echoed Ruth, “Oh, Myra!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, Lydia!” wailed Myra at the arrival of this companion in affliction, “why didn’t you catch us in time last Saturday?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lydia was provoked; there was no question about it. A criss-cross frown spoiled the symmetry of her face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It passes my comprehension,” she said, “the finical distinctions in this small world! My spectacles aren’t strong enough to discriminate between the admirable and the reprehensible in college humor. That was the funniest farce I ever saw, and yet they’re having \u2014”<\/p>\n\n\n\n ” \u2014 regular fits \u2014 ah, spasms \u2014 in short, dislocation of the muscles \u2014 about it,” filled out Myra with melancholy elegance of diction, “I knew you were feeling horribly over those apologies. Elinor insisted. She said it was for the honor of the class. There she comes.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elinor dropped into the chair at her desk by the window. “Miss Padan tries not to show it but it has cut her sharply. She has spent her life for this college, hoping and planning and working. It isn’t so much the personal insult in the caricature as the effect upon the underclasses. They are inclined to borrow their tone from the seniors. She believes that we ought to be all the more careful now while Prexie is away.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Hosa semna,” quoted Ruth softly, “whatsoever things are of good report.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “That’s our class motto,” Myra sat up straight in the enlivenment of having an intellectual idea, “I thought that semna<\/em> meant noble<\/em>. And noble<\/em> refers to character rather than reputation, I am positive. The other day I saw an advertisement by a young man in search of a position. He said, ‘Reputation good, character better.’ That’s how it is with our class.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Reputation, however, is the result of character,” argued Lydia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elinor was not to be distracted from the difficulty. “Miss Padan says that such an exhibition as that mock trial is on a par with newspaper jokes about college girls sliding down the banisters and chewing gum.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, but Prexie won’t let us even accept full page advertisements of gum for the Magazine or the Annual,” protested Myra, “isn’t it provoking! We suffer for what is no fault of our own. He says we must be cautious to afford no pretence for insinuation. Ah, well! Isn’t it interesting! The papers make fun of us and we make fun of the faculty. The difference is that our ridicule is founded on fact. Miss Padan for example, actually does twirl her thumbs and toss back her hair while she lectures. The others do quibble and blush \u2014 some of them \u2014 and lisp \u2014”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Myra Dickinson, you ought to have more sense than to speak so much like a narrow-minded gossip!” exclaimed Elinor at the limit of her temper. “You know that the entire affair was a cheap farce and showed disgraceful lack of taste. It was vulgar and insolent and unkind and ungrateful to those men and women who are giving their best years for our benefit. I’m too ashamed to look one of them in the face.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Whew!” Myra swallowed hard. “So Miss Padan blamed you again, did she? because you are senior president and a granddaughter.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “No, she didn’t,” snapped Elinor, “I blame myself.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Myra shrugged her shoulders. “Come along, Lydia, are you ready to start for gym? What will it matter a hundred years from now? That’s what the doctor told us to ask ourselves when things worry us. A person who never makes mistakes has no need of college \u2014 and that’s true.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over in the gymnasium Myra hurried methodically through her prescribed exercises till she reached the rowing-machine. She always lingered at this for more than the requisite flexions; because she enjoyed sitting there while she watched the score of blue-suited girls variously busy at the poles and ropes, the rings and bars. She was especially fascinated by any attempt to climb down the rope from the platform aloft, for the reason that in her first trial she had begun the descent before receiving instructions as to the manner of holding on. She had supposed that it would be fun to cup her hands about the rough cable and slide to the floor. Alas! she had been unable to use those same hands for a week afterward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To-day when Lydia approached with businesslike gait and took possession of the opposite seat, Myra rested for a moment to unburden her mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Elinor’s spunky, isn’t she? I didn’t suspect that she had it in her.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Um-m,” answered Lydia, conscientiously swaying backward and forward, her breathing timed with scientific precision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “She really cares; that’s why,” continued the analytical philosopher, “at first she didn’t care for anything here. Then she began to like us \u2014 the girls, you know \u2014 me (I am her earliest friend and so I say me first), next you, and then Ruth. Now she is angry and mortified about the class because everybody is criticizing our parody. She cares, you understand?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I try to,” replied Lydia modestly from between energetic strokes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ” She’s broadening; that’s what she needed. First she liked her own kind of people, next those she could comprehend \u2014 easy characters such as you and I are.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Um-m” grunted Lydia again with Indian immobility of countenance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Ruth’s different \u2014 queer and so forth. It took longer to learn to sympathize with her. Then the class \u2014 of course that means all sorts of girls. At last she’ll discover that she cares for the whole college and cares a lot, too. She’s made that way. I do actually suspect that she rather admires the faculty already. Presently she will broaden to take in the world, American charities, small talk, society, and so forth. Some day, I shouldn’t be surprised, she’ll sympathize with her own mother \u2014 when she marries and has a little daughter of her own to send to college. She’ll be a great-granddaughter \u2014 the dearest little thing with curls and a smile like Elinor’s. She will bring her to this college herself, and the professors will look at them both and \u2014 “<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Well, I must say!” ejaculated Lydia, letting the machine handles click sharply into place as she rose from her seat, “you surely have a nimble imagination. Elinor, no doubt, would be delighted.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n 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<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “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?<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Smells of soapsuds,” commented the city guest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “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.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Study in vacation?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “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.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Where has she disappeared now?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “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 \u2014 the she<\/em> is a substitute for the Latin ea,<\/em> the nearer feminine individual, the her<\/em> is an equivalent for illam,<\/em> the more distant person \u2014 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?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “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.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “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.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “To think that we have not even been introduced!” wailed the sophomore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “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 \u2014 though he’s gone to Europe.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “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 \u2014 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!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Dear aesthetic, aristocratic Elinor, can you pull molasses candy? No, madam, you cannot, because you’re not built that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ‘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 \u2014'”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, which cheek?” cried Elinor in alarm, “I wondered why some of the girls were staring at me.’*<\/p>\n\n\n\n “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 \u2014”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Stuff a lump of candy into her mouth rapidly! Quick, quick, Ruth! The grape-sugar has gone to her head!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “But I understood that you hate \u2014 did not like her.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elinor looked confused for an instant. “I didn’t at first \u2014 you know why. Then \u2014 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.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I thought it was to be Paris?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, Athens, too! You ought to belong to the Hellenic Society. Why, archaeology is fascinating. As Myra says, I’m broadening.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Elinor and arch\u00e6ology!” murmured Ruth, “you certainly are.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 \u2014 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “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?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “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.'”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The culture and increasing breadth of your vocabulary is appalling,” laughed Myra, “chagrin<\/em> is a word straight out of the dictionary. And fancy<\/em> \u2014 ah, don’t you know \u2014 fahncy<\/em> \u2014 is so English \u2014” 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “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.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “‘tell me, senior, would you be A fair A.M. or Ph.D., At five and twenty?’<\/p>\n\n\n\n ‘I cannot tell you, sir,’ said she, ‘Just now I say right heartily I’m blessed a plenty.'”<\/p>\n\n\n\n quoted Myra, “ahem \u2014 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 \u2014 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.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “If you could have your choice, would you rather be Miss Offitt or Miss Howard?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “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.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “But you know it is ice cream,” objected literal Lydia, “for you ordered it yourself. The other classes are having apple-pie.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “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.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “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.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then it was that she smiled the “exquisite” smile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The winter whirled busily past. Myra declared that the sun was lucky in being able to attend to its own setting without assistance, for even Ruth had no time to watch it. At the delightful evening recitation of which Myra was appointed time-keeper, as there was no regular gong at that hour, her neighbors beckoned and nudged for five minutes before the end. This impatience was caused not by lack of enjoyment in the work, but by the consciousness of other tasks pressing for attention. When at last Myra scrupulous to the minute snapped the lid of her watch as a signal, the instructor taught the fidgety seniors a lesson in scholarly concentration by noticing or ignoring the click, according to the length of the sentence under consideration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Friday and Saturday evenings were usually occupied by concerts, lectures, or plays, committees, clubs, or receptions. As Elinor had anticipated, Myra became so blas\u00e9 that she declined to exert herself for refreshment short of striped ice cream. Lydia was continually going somewhere or coming from something. On the night of the Colonial Ball while slowly descending the staircase with the throng of guests, she heard clapping from the crowd that lingered below. When she perceived that the cheering was in acknowledgment of her acting in the last Hall Play, the surprise on her face softened to half-shy pleasure with a little conscious quiver of the lips and a flush that moved Elinor to joy. Elinor herself that evening had suffered the penalty of popularity; for every jolly old lady on the entertainment committee had insisted upon providing the senior president with an apple and a piece of pumpkin pie. She found comfort in the preception that Lydia too was capable of blushing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More than once Ruth pleaded for “a nice domestic evening all by ourselves “behind the shelter of an engaged<\/em> sign. Finally a March Monday provided favoring circumstances; and the four settled down to study in quiet. Myra began to dribble out reminiscences while she sharpened pencils.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It’s about time for the honors to be announced. The faculty had a meeting this afternoon. The rumor is that our class contains many steady workers, but few brilliant ones. In our freshman year I did not even notice the honors till Lydia told us. When I was a sophomore I hung half-way down senior corridor and saw them crowding around the messenger in the parlor. She had thirteen small white notes. As each one was presented, the girls clustered around the chosen one while she read it. They shrieked and laughed and kissed her. All over the building that night \u2014 here an honor girl and there an honor girl \u2014 each with a glowing face and two arms about her neck. When I was a junior I stood at the very door behind the porti\u00e8re \u2014”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Myra, you didn’t!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Nobody looked at me \u2014 that is, not very hard,” she said soothingly, “it wasn’t cheeky. I do believe that Elinor is more afraid of being cheeky than of being wrong. I wanted to see how they did it, so that this time I might be prepared to stand within.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Are you also practising your bow of acceptance?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I wish I could. Wouldn’t it be a lark? But, no, alas, I am neither brilliant nor sparkling, though you may refuse to believe it I am merely radiant \u2014 a typical American. It’s living four years with a granddaughter, a genius, an influence in the community \u2014 the atmosphere, the aroma of culture \u2014”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here the springing step of the messenger girl \u2014 not to be mistaken \u2014 sounded nearer and nearer in elastic approach. Ruth glanced up almost apprehensively; Lydia deliberately laid down her book; Myra hugged herself; and Elinor went to the door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “For Miss Allee,” and the girl had gone lightly, trippingly, a smile on her lips. Nobody was disappointed and nobody was surprised, not even Ruth herself, for she knew that she had continued to be worth a full scholarship year after year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the flurry of congratulation Elinor proposed that they hunt up the other honor girls at once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Even if as a class we do not approve of the honor system,” conceded Lydia, “and although we did ask that the announcements should be sent unobtrusively to the separate rooms, still it is not altogether unpleasant to know that our list is longer than any previous one.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Last spring,” bubbled Myra from her well of observation, “I heard a professor congratulate one of them and she replied with a wail of regret over the few names. I forget the professor’s exact rejoinder, though I am sure it was a rebuke because it struck me that way. I remember impressions rather than details. The value of the summary, you know, at the end of our special topics is the impression it leaves. They appear to condemn all sorts of comparisons in this place. We cannot compare even our marks in examinations. ‘Cause why? Nobody ever tells us what they are \u2014 except of course when we find flunk notes in the mail, and then we simply know what they aren’t. It’s a funny place.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It’s a pretty good place,” laughed Elinor contentedly, her hand caressing Ruth’s skirt, “I do hope the flowers will be in blossom for Founder’s Day. My brother is coming to the Reception.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Myra also had a guest for the great day \u2014 a strutting little cadet from the military school in town. Lydia’s Apollo-like cousin condescended to show the light of his countenance upon the girl-haunted institution. Even erratic Ruth had a “man,” one of Miss Ewers’ fellow instructors from the western university. There was flutter of ribbons and laces beside severe broadcloth. There were lights and flowers and an orchestra of pallid musicians behind a screen of palms borrowed from the little greenhouse. There was dancing in the great dining-room and promenading through the decorated corridors. There were professors who held forth entertainingly \u2014 seldom in learned vein \u2014 over the supper tables. There were nervous youths who felt it incumbent upon themselves to deluge one partner after another with agonizing repart\u00e9e which testified to intimate acquaintance with Greek and higher mathematics. There were nods and smiles and compliments and hurrying to and fro in search of lost partners. There was many a profound dialogue based upon the gracious query: “Is this your first visit to the college?” or, “How did you like the lecture? Ah, perhaps I should not ask embarrassing questions. He has the reputation of being the wittiest novelist in Boston. A pity he did not scintillate more visibly!” Or still again: “Do you see that girl in pale pink in the Glee Club? Ann Estes \u2014 awfully dear!” When it was all over, one senior hastened to write upon a friend’s block-pad, “Oh, happy Founder’s Day!” and the next morning she displayed a new ring adorning her third finger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our four girls were heart-whole yet after the last good-bye had floated out into the starry night. Wearily they climbed to their study and dropped upon convenient seats to talk it over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I’ve had the time of my life,” sighed Myra, but Elinor let it pass unchallenged for she had lost count of those happiest occasions. “I’ve chattered till I’m hoarse, and I am invited to four teas tomorrow.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “One o’clock,” announced Lydia, “and not asleep yet. I am engaged to show the grounds to three different guests in the morning. The banjo-club plays at eleven; chocolate is to be served in the senior parlor at noon; there is a tallyho ride later ending with a dinner in town. Good-night, everybody.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oimoi, eheu! I wish I had not touched that seventh glass of frappe. What does make me feel so wide awake? Elinor, you dear, I heard someone say, ‘How beautiful Miss Offitt looks with that silver band in her hair!’ Your brother is sweet.<\/em> He was telling me about the Paris plans.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Yes,” nodded Elinor, “he’s good too. I’m the black sheep of the family. He is carrying out father’s ambition for him, but mother’s ambition for me \u2014” she hesitated, “if only I had sisters to help me! One like Ruth could gratify mother’s intellectual ambition; one like Myra could shine in society; one like Lydia could take an interest in public spirited enterprises.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Miss Offitt is fishing for more praise,” murmured Myra, “it’s your turn to say it, Ruth.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Would you rather be called beautiful or wise or good?” asked Ruth obligingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “All of them,” replied Myra with blissful greediness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Do you know what I would choose out of all the qualities?” said Elinor as she rose and bent absently to gather her filmy skirts in one slender hand, “I’d choose womanliness.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ruth and Myra looked at her and then glanced at each other with a tender little half-smile of mutual comprehension. Myra heaved a mighty sigh. “If that isn’t just like the wastefulness of some persons!” she muttered, “doubtless if a fairy bestowed a wish upon Ruth she would squander it by choosing to be a genius. I also would venture to hitch my wagon to the star of my present ideal condition \u2014 health, wealth, beauty, and brains \u2014 the essentials of happiness. Oh, oh, oh! What a high and glorious consolation is self-complacency!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Mad \u2014 mad \u2014 mad as a March hare!” commented Elinor and glided hastily into her own room before they spied her deepening color.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The following day was exhausting to every young hostess. Elinor especially was over-tired when evening came. At nine o’clock, after the final lingering guest had torn himself away, she entered the study to find Myra rejoicing in preparations for a sustaining cup of tea to which half-a-dozen seniors had been invited that previous minute. Too listless to face the ordeal of smiling a welcome, Elinor escaped in search of restful solitude for the remaining half-hour before peace should begin to settle over the corridors. At the door of the Chapel gallery the muffled notes of the organ attracted her within to sink upon a seat in the tranquillizing darkness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n About a quarter of an hour later, Myra lifted her head from adjusting the flame under the glistening tea-kettle. “She’s coming at last. That’s her step. She’s angry about something. Just listen!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The door swung impetuously open.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, good evening!” Elinor’s cheeks were blazing. On the threshold she halted with her head thrown back, her fingers twisting and untwisting before her. “Girls, I was sitting in the Chapel \u2014 in the dark. Two persons came in \u2014 juniors \u2014 I recognized their voices. The organ was playing. They saw me. They didn’t care. They talked \u2014 talked against the college \u2014 my mother’s college. They said it is narrow and provincial and namby-pamby. They said the lake is nothing but a pond. Our beautiful little lake! They said the new hall looks like a flimsy checkerboard and we are too subservient to insist upon our rights and organize Greek letter societies up to date and independent of the faculty.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “That’s one of the advantages \u2014” broke in Myra. Elinor did not notice her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “They said that we never have grapefruit for breakfast and there aren’t any carpets in the corridors. Carpets! Do you hear? They said the girls are feminine. Listen! They said feminine with a sneer as if \u2014 as if it were contemptible not to be masculine. They did! They did! You can laugh.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Girls like that \u2014 here!” Nobody was laughing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Juniors who have lived here three years! They said the atmosphere is stifling, smothering, deadening. One of them is planning to leave next week and study in New York. The other is here on a scholarship, with all her expenses paid, or else she would go too. On a scholarship! She eats the college bread and \u2014 and backbites. She said that she came here because she had no money to go somewhere else, \u2014 anywhere else. She said that if she had been at liberty to do so, she would certainly have chosen the best. She said, ‘Oh, this college!’ \u2014 just that way, and then \u2014 and then \u2014 she snapped her fingers.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elinor’s eyes shone hard and bright as they swept the circle. “They saw me. They knew I could not help hearing. They knew this is my mother’s college \u2014 and mine. And yet they dared \u2014 on Founder’s Day itself they dared \u2014 they dared \u2014” She caught her breath in a long quivering sob.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Myra’s arms were around her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It’s lucky for them that I wasn’t there,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The last of the senior examinations vanished cloudlessly under the sky of blossoming May and left not a wrack behind. “Not even a flunk-note,” sighed Myra in relief when her mail continued agreeably innocent of unstamped envelopes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The fortnight’s vacation preceding Commencement opened with an afternoon spent on the beautiful river. It was a quiet ride \u2014 that last one all together, with the rocky shores slipping past them, the water lapping against the sides of the boat. Myra flitted to and fro like a witch, leaving ripples of laughter in hen wake. Ruth roamed from bow to stem, leaning over the rail to stare at the waves that raced below, or climbing to the upper deck to watch the hills. At times they skirted so near the cliffs that she spied the red columbine flaunting its bells. She knew where at home in the mountains the lovelier purple columbine fluttered its butterfly wings beside the brooks. That was one comfort: there would always be flowers even when the class had scattered from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Then Ruth drifted across to the corner where Lydia was holding court under the awning, and sat rather dose to her for a few minutes, her hands lying idle in her lap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elinor moved watchfully here and there, chatting to a doleful one or smiling with the merry. Why couldn’t the girls all be more thoughtful about saving the occasion from dismal failure, she wondered. There was that peculiar person who had written the Founder’s Day poem \u2014 a splendid poem, too \u2014 but why in the world did she persist in turning her back and propping her cheeks on her fist in that misanthropic fashion? The poet when gently asked if she were not feeling well, replied in gruff tones that she was getting an impression of the scenery. And Elinor refrained from noting any possible mistiness of her lashes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course there was singing of songs specially composed for the day. In the dusk of their return to the college they sang all the way up the avenue, though in a somewhat spasmodic manner. After half-an-hour’s rest and sundry renovating touches of toilets, away they trooped to the gym for the annual Senior Howl. Here during the progress of the supper at long tables strewn with maidenhair ferns, the sophomores serenaded them from beneath the windows. It sounded very sweet, but Myra for one was glad when the voices ceased, for at the last verse Elinor had looked as if on the verge of tears. That would have been perfectly horrible under all those bright lights with everybody watching her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The senior vacation slid past with incredible rapidity. One beautiful day after another \u2014 forenoon and afternoon and night. A few of the students rented a sewing-machine and made their own Class Day gowns. Lydia carried Ruth to the city with her for an interview with their family dressmaker concerning a certain white organdie for Commencement, as Miss Allee was to read an essay at that dread time. Myra’s express parcel from home contained a transparent white frock to be worn over a white slip on Commencement and over rose-color on Class Day. Elinor was to be daintier than ever in the fine real lace which her mother brought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Elinor isn’t one bit like her mother, is she?” confided Myra to Ruth during an interval in her duties at the candy booth on the Saturday of the senior auction. Desks and chairs and lamps and rugs, which were to be left behind by the graduates, had been put on sale in the lecture room that morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ruth had wound her way through the crush of purchasers and “genuine bargains” to notify Elinor that the elocution teacher was waiting for her in the Chapel. Myra’s remark caught her in a moment of wistfulness after the mother and daughter had turned away in response to the message \u2014 one shyly eager in her lissom girlishness, the other with a remote though pleasant air and something of severity in her longer, straighter lines of feature and drapery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ruth followed them with her eyes. “Yes,” she said slowly, “they are different: one is womanly and the other is scholarly.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, but, Ruth, oh, dear me! What’s the use of college if you can’t be womanly as well as scholarly?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “You can be both at once more or less, but \u2014”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “But not equally?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I’m afraid not. In a harmony there is always one color that catches the eye, one strain that holds the ear. It is the same with a harmonious character.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The word sent Myra’s wits cantering forward. “That reminds me: I am to wear pink, you know. Oh, won’t it be terrible if the girl who happens to match my height and so walks with me should be someone in yellow?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alas, poor Myra! Although she escaped this particular calamity another more frightful still fell upon her when Class Day arrived. Not until an hour after the ceremonies, when the guests and the girls were strolling in softly tinted groups over the green lawn in the fragrant twilight, did someone exclaim over the omission in her toilet. She had forgotten to put on the rose-colored under-bodice to match the underskirt. There she had been marching so proudly over the winding canvas path in the brilliant sunshine with cameras snapping to right and to left of her in a dress that was tinged only half-way with pink!<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a comfort to reflect that the catastrophe would have been far worse if any of the other three had disgraced herself so agonizingly. Tall Ruth would have displayed longer stretches of the contrasting halves. Lydia was conspicuous as marshal, walking alone stately and slow between the class and the six sophomores who bore the massive white-and-gold cable of the daisy-chain. For Elinor the affliction would have been worst of all because she as president sat almost in the center of the platform upon which the seniors were arrayed before the fluttering sea of fans and faces in the out-door amphitheatre.<\/p>\n\n\n Elinor in misty white, with the class flowers swaying over one arm, rose to welcome the audience, and then again to introduce each speaker on the program. Mrs. Offitt sat in the front row of spectators. Ruth’s eyes seeking to trace some resemblance in the thought-worn features rested there one long wonderful moment. There was no one in the world to gaze at her like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the evening Japanese lanterns swung in festoons along the avenue, and the Glee Club sang out in the June darkness. Within doors an orchestra played while the kaleidoscope throng assembled and reassembled, shifting and circling through the parlors, scattering up and down the corridors to gather here and there in the pretty senior studies. There were mothers and aunts and sisters; there were fathers and uncles and brothers and cousins. Some of the honored parents were too proud and happy to talk; others were too proud and happy to keep still. Everywhere were seniors on hospitable duties bent and too busy to waste a grieving thought upon goodbyes. Numerous sophomores loitered on the stairs and pondered sadly over how much they would miss all these seniors the next year. Then after ambuscading the maids who were carrying trays of striped ice cream they conscientiously ate all they could and wandered away to their own rooms with speculative stares at certain closed doors behind which various classes were holding reunions. They felt very sorry for poor old alumnae.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next day brought Commencement with its pomp of black-robed trustees and faculty upon the platform and white-gowned girls in the pews. Ruth looked unique \u2014 almost distinguished \u2014 in her willowy height. Afterward the girls told her how much they had enjoyed her essay. Some even said that they wished it had been longer \u2014 which was a veritable compliment on such an unexuberant occasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The audience was invited to remain for a collation in the dining-room later. Myra declared that a “collation” tasted to her considerably like salad, ice cream, olives and so forth. She refused to resign her precious diploma even while she cut the cold tongue into bits. She explained quite frankly and truthfully that her sheepskin represented a greater amount of manual labor than the others because she had written out several examinations more than once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the afternoon there was a packing of trunks and a flying hither and thither on last errands. In the evening came the Class Supper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From the sweet June dusk outside belated sophomores wandering arm in arm sent inquisitive glances through an unshuttered window into the brightly lighted lower room where a table had been spread along three sides of a rectangle. They saw the seniors eating, though not very hungrily. Now and then one rose to respond to a toast and sat down amid clapping and laughter. Four girls in turn read from slips of paper \u2014 doubtless the class prophecy, for the attention of the listeners appeared to be concentrated upon one conscious face after another till each had acknowledged her fate with an embarrassed smile. After that the secretary called the roll, and every name was answered by yes or no \u2014 almost invariably no, it must be confessed, for the question was, Are you engaged? At several of the replies the unconscionable sophomores could actually hear the incredulous hooting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By this time the feasting was over, and the revelers, quickly grave after the jesting merriment, leaned back in their chairs. Here and there one absently fingered the fern frond that lay nearest on the white cloth. Presently the assemblage seemed to have resolved itself into a regular class meeting, for Miss Offitt, even yet with an effect of shyness in the lines of her half-unconscious bending toward her listeners, called them to order and spoke earnestly for a few minutes. Then Miss Howard rose and discoursed at such length that the sophomores outside grew impatient of seeing her stately shoulders still marking the same height against the wall every time they passed the window.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When at last she resumed her seat, a brief discussion ended in a scene somewhat peculiar. Now here, now there, along the table, one girl after another stood up and uttered a sentence or so before sitting down hastily as if deprecating notice. Miss Howard glanced at each speaker and wrote a line on a paper in her hand. In the course of ten minutes or more of spontaneous volunteers, the pauses became longer and the faces more reflective. Two or three of those who had already taken part appeared to add a word to their previous statements. At every speech the others clapped their hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the meeting had been adjourned, the doors swung open and the new alumnae scattered magically in fear of long good-byes. Through the corridors desolate with trunks and packing-boxes Myra fled in pursuit of her three friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “A dreadful person commenced to wish me a happy life instead of a pleasant summer! I ran \u2014” she fell into step between Ruth and Elinor with Lydia close in front. “Isn’t it a splendidest plan to found a scholarship as our class gift to the college! I wish that I had promised another hundred from my uncle. He’ll do anything I say, particularly if he is obliged to. My fifty is only part of my graduation present, and I’m afraid I won’t miss it \u2014 that is, not enough really to do me good.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Didn’t the girls take it up in the loveliest way!” Elinor’s eyes were aglow. “When we talked it over in the afternoon with mother, she was doubtful whether we could succeed. It will be hard work to raise the full ten thousand before our fifth anniversary.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Fancy! Imagine! Elinor Offitt, the rebellious granddaughter, sponsor for keeping an extra poor miserable captive chained to her books for four years at a time! I’m surprised! I’m amazed! I’m \u2014 I’m jiggered!” and she hugged with both arms impartially till Ruth gasped for breath and Elinor writhed free, her face rather unwarrantably flushed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It was generous of those girls to pledge the first money they will earn after they are out of debt,” she hurried the words, “it makes me feel worthless.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I am glad that there was no hysteria,” said Lydia, “and yet they were enthusiastic enough. I believe that nobody was tempted to give emotional promises. She fluttered the paper slip between her fingers. “The fund will start at near two thousand dollars.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Wh-what?” exclaimed Myra in astonishment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n while Ruth cried, ” Two thousand! But I thought I kept track of the sums, and they amounted to just about half of that.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lydia bit her lip, but in the half-light of the alleyway no one observed this unusual demonstration. “One of the girls,” she hastened to explain, “preferred to make an anonymous donation in addition to her nominal gift. I should not have mentioned it just yet. By the way,” she continued quickly, “enough of us for a sort of reunion are planning to come up to the first Hall Play in the fall. We shall get up some kind of a report about the fund at that time. The Washington members intend to earn a few hundred with an entertainment this summer and the southern \u2014”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I’m coming,” interrupted Myra, “even if I have to walk. Ruth will be here because she isn’t going west till later. Elinor’s the only one of our crowd who won’t be present. Ho, Elinor! Dear kind sweet noble Elinor, why not surrender that year in Paris? Oh, yes, and Athens, of course. Renounce such vanities. Let your brother go abroad alone and bear all those long-anticipated troubles by himself. Why not stay at home a while and then come back with us in the autumn to this little monotonous hole?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Perhaps I will,” said Elinor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “My sakes!” ejaculated Miss Dickinson, looking around for a place to sit down suddenly, “Good land!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lydia’s hand dropped from the gas-jet “Why, Elinor!” she protested in an oddly startled way, “oh, but, Elinor, that can’t be the reason. Surely you could spare it \u2014?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Under the flare of light the gray eyes were lowered swiftly to hide a peculiar glint in their depths. But Ruth must have spied it, for she was smiling to herself. And Myra, catching a glimpse, was on her feet in a twinkling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, I see, I see! You’re the anonymous girl! It’s your Paris money, and now you can’t go. You’ve given it up for the sake of sending another girl to college. You \u2014 you \u2014 you \u2014 ” her voice choked and she flung her arms around Elinor’s neck, “you blessed idiot!”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chapter XIX Setting an Example It was very quiet in the senior alcove of the library. Lydia cool and serene in immaculate white duck sat back in her chair, her Hegel held well up at the proper distance and angle. Ruth was studying with her elbows on the long table of polished oak, her hands…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chapter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/victoriana\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/victoriana\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/victoriana\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/victoriana\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/victoriana\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=723"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/victoriana\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":817,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/victoriana\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723\/revisions\/817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/victoriana\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/victoriana\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/victoriana\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Chapter XXI<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Woes of Eminence<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Chapter XXII<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Blessed A Plenty<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Chapter XXIII<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
A Pretty Good Place<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Chapter XXIV<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Benefits Remembered<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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