Elinor sobered on the instant which was exactly what the speaker had intended, for she considered hysterical mirth unwholesome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I beg your pardon,” responded the granddaughter with her haughtiest air, though her hands were clenched to keep from trembling. She was never haughty to others except when she felt intensely embarrassed. That was the instinctive weapon of her diffidence. On this occasion it seemed to answer its purpose, for the person opposite settled back in her seat and directed her attention to a neighbor. Elinor, who could see unexpectedly well out of the corner of her eye, acknowledged to herself that this patronizing individual was remarkably handsome. Her eyes were dark and velvety and annoyingly frank, as Elinor had already noticed. Her nose was as perfect as a statue’s, with no sign of a freckle. Her mouth was clean-cut, resolute, and perhaps a hint self-satisfied. She carried her fine head above her broad shoulders with an effect of gracious erectness. Elinor was certain that she must be a senior at the very least.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When the car had whizzed past a long hedge and swept around a curve to stop before the heavy arch of the Lodge gates, the passengers thronged out in a flutter of excitement. Even the talkative old students gripped their umbrellas unnecessarily tight, and some of them swallowed once or twice for no reason whatever. Nobody loitered. While Elinor was hurrying on after the others down the evergreen-lined avenue that led to the main building, she was aware of someone skipping beside her and trying to squeeze her free hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I like you,” said the little freshman, “because you can laugh. Let’s be special friends. My name is Myra Dickinson. What’s yours? “<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Elinor Offitt,” answered that young lady drawing away her hand with a cool sweet air of aloofness, “it has been pleasant to meet you, Miss Dickinson.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Miss Dickinson opened her eyes and her mouth, too, for one astonished moment. Then Elinor, glancing sideways, caught a glimpse of a burning cheek half averted. Her first impulse was to soothe the wounded pride of this over-friendly child, for she could not bear to hurt anybody. Second thoughts justified her attitude with the insistent memory of her mother’s warning not to make acquaintances hurriedly. Among eight hundred girls from all over the country she must be fastidious in choosing, because the best college friendships endure through life. Of course she would try to be courteous, but she would not encourage intimacy till she knew more about this freshman. Doubtless it might have been wiser if she had not spoken to her on the train. In that case, at least, she would not have disgraced herself by laughing so unreasonably in the street car.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I will show you the way,” said Elinor ; and Myra followed silently into the vestibule where girls were passing in and out, with a little run here and a little shriek there, now and then kissing and falling on each other’s neck in greeting. After registering at the dean’s office, they were directed to the elevator and carried to the third floor, where they took their places in the line of students waiting at the door of the lady principal’s office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here Elinor managed to lose her companion as if by accident. A professor, whom she had met while visiting the college with her mother the previous year, chanced to be passing in the corridor. Through taking advantage of the excuse furnished by rising to speak, Elinor changed her position on the row of benches. In this manner it happened that Myra had gone to her allotted room before Elinor emerged from her later interview with the principal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elinor’s escort was an important small sophomore with a perky black bow adding inches to her chubby height. On the way up the flight of stairs to the fourth floor, she chatted kindly about various features of the college life. The freshman in her charge did not betray by a moment’s inattention that this was stale news to her, for she had been reared in an atmosphere of college reminiscence. Mrs. Offitt, exceptional in her generation because of her education, had always cherished the distinction jealously. Her daughter’s distaste for the same privilege was due partly to a reaction against this trace of intellectual arrogance. Elinor felt oddly humiliated when people commented admiringly upon her unusual advantages in heredity, training, and opportunities. Such praise seemed somehow to expose her defenceless before criticism; for to whom much is given, from her much shall be expected. And this rebellious young granddaughter was incurably diffident<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elinor had been told that she was to share with three other freshmen a firewall suite, which consisted of a study with four bedrooms adjoining it. The sophomore hastened on, her topknot flapping, and swung open the door. There sat Myra perched on the edge of a wooden rocker, her bag and umbrella still clutched in both warm hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Oh, Elinor Offitt!” she exclaimed, springing up in delight before a painful memory sent her backing awkwardly into her seat again, “won’t it be f-fu-fun! I mean, it will be pleasant to room here, Miss Offitt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elinor’s thoughts flew to and fro between her mother’s warning and the situation confronting her. It would undoubtedly be difficult to hold herself in frosty isolation from her roommates. If they should turn out to be congenial, that would be so much gained; if they should prove otherwise, they would inevitably drift apart. In such a community it was safe to trust to the natural attraction of like to like in character and breeding. Elinor had keen intuitions, and almost unconsciously she recognized that in spite of the difference in temperament Myra belonged to her kind, so to speak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I’m very glad indeed, Myra,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Myra’s face dimpled joyfully over the sudden splintering of egg-shell formality. She jumped up, tossing her possessions hither and thither.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Let’s look at the bedrooms. Somebody else is here before us,” and she pointed to a shabby valise and a gloria silk umbrella standing modestly in a dim comer behind one of the straight chairs. The sophomore had vanished on duty bent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Yes, I suppose there’ll have to be four of us,” answered Elinor with a pang of regret at the memory of her exquisite nest at home. Even with unconflicting tastes and a limitless choice of rugs, pictures, curtains, arid books, this bare study could never be made faultlessly dainty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Myra, however, appeared radiantly untouched by despondency over the inartistic prospect. She was calling enthusiastically from the interior of the smallest darkest bedroom : “Elinor, this is the dearest little room! It has a window opening upon the corridor, and you can watch everybody that goes by. If you’re thirsty or want to go anywhere, you can climb out without walking around through the study. Isn’t that convenient!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elinor caught sight of a limp jacket hanging under a cheap sailor hat in the wardrobe. ” The first girl has chosen this room,” she said, “and really it is the worst of the four, because the other inside bedroom is larger and the two outside ones have windows to let in light and air. I wonder what kind of a girl she is.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Funny girl, I think,” chirped Myra, “to take a back seat like that.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elinor hesitated. “I don’t know. I fancy it would be easier to choose the worst than the best, don’t you think so? Not because you believe you ought to,” she added hurriedly in dread that she might seem to be posing as a model, “but because it would feel uncomfortable to take the best of your own accord.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Um-m, yes, I dare say,” assented Myra as she slowly twirled about on her heels before toppling against the narrow bed, “still, maybe, I could bear it for a spell. Anyhow if you intend to arrange affairs on that plan, I wish I hadn’t come so soon. The last girl of all will have the best chance. I was the second, and therefore I nobly pre-empt the other inside cubby-hole.” She set her bag over the threshold, and seized Elinor’s suit case to deposit in the smaller outside room. “Now we’re ready for number four. I wonder if she’ll object.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“She’s coming now,” whispered Elinor, bending forward in a listening attitude as steps turned from the corridor into the firewall alleyway. The small sophomore ushered the fourth freshman into the study. “Miss Lydia Howard, this is Miss Offitt and this is Miss Dickinson.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was the person who had sat opposite in the car.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Ah, the two little girls who laughed! So we are to live here together. How delightful!” The plain room seemed to have become all at once a mere frame for her stately presence. After a comprehensive survey of the simple furniture she leisurely placed her luggage on the coverless center table. “And where, may I ask, is the other one?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I don’t know,” replied Myra in a tone amazingly subdued, while with surreptitious pats and pulls she twitched her necktie straight and smoothed her skirt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elinor stiffened in resentment of the condescending air ; for she was not accustomed to being patronized, and after all this person was only a freshman like the rest of them. Assuming her “society manner,” \u2014 formally sweet and polite with an effort as if drawing a deep breath in anticipation of exertion \u2014 she inquired: “Would you not care to look at the bedrooms, Miss Howard?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Indeed I should,” replied the cheerful voice which was too rich and full to be distinctively girlish, though its owner was little past eighteen. “May I suggest, girls, that my name is Lydia? Since we are likely to be thrown rather closely together, don’t you know, what is the use of being too conventional at first? The ideal of college life is freedom from conventionality.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Yes, Miss Howard \u2014 I mean, Lydia,” assented Myra obediently, while Elinor in silence scanned the tailormade costume of this latest arrival. Her clothes were conventionally correct in every detail from the eagle’s feather in her severe hat to the heavy-soled common-sense shoes. Even her shapely hands in perfectly fitting gloves were large enough to harmonize properly with her well developed height and breadth. There was absolutely nothing erratic about her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a few minutes Lydia reappeared after her tour of inspection, this time with a faint frown shadowing her serene low brow. “See here, girls, this won’t do at all. It is not fair of you to leave the lightest and airiest room for me. That is taking advantage of a stranger.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elinor glanced up quickly from the magazine which Myra had unpacked from her heterogeneous possessions. This imposing person with her superior attitude might not prove wholly antipathetic after all. Evidently they both felt the same reluctance to grasp for the best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Don’t you think,” began Elinor hesitatingly, “that we ought to \u2014 I mean that it might be better to wait till the other girl comes before deciding finally?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Certainly I do,” responded Lydia as she seated herself to consider the possibilities of the furnishings in the study, “probably we could divide the year into four parts and then change rooms every quarter. That would be the fairest way.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her frankly observant glance noted the imitation leather of the forlorn valise behind a chair. Apparently its owner was not over-supplied with money. However it was the girl that mattered, not the money; that was the great attraction about life in this democratic community. One reason for Lydia’s coming to college was to escape for a while from the mercenary standards of the social circle at home. To judge from their belongings, these two other roommates were daintily above want. Lydia’s tranquil gaze rested for a meditative moment upon the saucy face of the girl who was flitting from door to window, a silver-backed brush in her hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“See the beautiful lawn, will you? And the dear little greenhouse! And buildings peeking through the trees, and curving walks everywhere with bare headed girls hurrying over them! Just kindly look at all the girls, will you? Aren’t they simply lovely! Oh, oh, oh! I know that we are going to be too happy for anything!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“That one,” commented Lydia to herself, “is a rattlepate.” She turned toward Elinor who was bending over the magazine at the table. Her waving hair drawn loosely back into a long braid showed the graceful contour of her head. Lydia, who had once joined a class in art, reflected that this was essentially a feminine head without any abnormal breadth or strong-minded bumps to mar its symmetry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Conscious of the intent scrutiny, Elinor stirred uneasily and lifting her lashes smiled ever so faintly. The smile was like a glint of sunshine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“And she,” said Lydia to herself again, with an extraordinary throb of enthusiasm, “is a dear.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Oh!” exclaimed Myra, who was the only one facing the door at the minute, ” ah, um-m-m, how do you do? Do you live here, too?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the threshold stood a tall, shabbily dressed girl with her arms full of flowers \u2014 wild asters and dusty goldenrod and ancient ragged daisies. She had an odd brown face with pixie features that seemed to change their modeling under the wind and flame of feeling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“And that one,” said Lydia to herself yet once more as she advanced in gracious greeting, “very likely may be a genius.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Chapter II<\/h2>\n\n\n\nRed Ink<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One October morning, a few weeks after college had opened, when the genius sauntered down the long dining-room and dropped indolently into her seat, fifteen minutes late as usual, she found the others in the midst of a livelier discussion than was customary at such an anxious meal as a freshman breakfast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“What’s the joke?” she inquired, scanning the table gloomily for any sign of her favorite crescent rolls. “Did Myra get here first and devour everything?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“No, she didn’t,” chuckled that young lady, “we are merely analyzing a pathetic incident. You see, it takes so long to lace my boots that one morning I fix the right and the next morning the left, before breakfast. I hate to be partial. To-day I didn’t have time for either. Of course one foot had to go and step on the other’s lacing, and I tripped and bumped into a professor, and she said, `Why, good<\/em> morning!'” Myra choked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The genius lifted solemn eyes that shone with green lights like sea-water in the sunshine. “I see,” she commented sadly, “and now will someone kindly tell me who annexed my little pitcher of cream for her wheat?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “No, you don’t see, because I haven’t reached the point yet. When the professor looked around, Lydia was there and I wasn’t. She said good morning to Lydia. She thought it was she who had bumped into her. Oho, ho, ho!” giggled Myra with her fists doubled under her chin in one of her bewitching small-child attitudes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It was decidedly a freshmanlike performance,” declared Lydia, who sat at the head of the table assigned to their group of ten students. Even if she had not been the leader in selecting and inviting the six other freshmen to join the four roommates, nobody would have thought of disputing her right to that position of duty and privilege. The chief duty was to distribute portions from the main dish before her. The chief privilege was to bow in acknowledgment of a formal “Excuse me,” when any one wished to leave the table before the head gave the signal by rising from her seat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “She did not bump into the professor intentionally,” protested Elinor, half in indignation at the criticism, half in perversity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “She vanished intentionally” argued Lydia, who was unaccustomed to acting as scapegoat for anybody, “I was certainly annoyed. That small piece of impudence behaves as if life were a serial joke. I fail to comprehend why she came to college.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I came for fun,” announced Myra, unabashed, because she had already learned that Miss Howard’s bark was considerably worse than her bite; and anyhow there was a twinkle behind that make-believe frown. “I really did, and I’m not ashamed to say so. All the boys I know have gone to college, and some of the girls. And I don’t intend to be left out of anything.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “You won’t be,” said the genius dryly, as she fished from her cocoa a stray bit of crust that had been sent leaping by Myra’s emphatic thump on her plate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Myra cocked her head on one side. “Why did you come, Ruth, if you don’t mind telling? You hate mathematics so awfully and you’re always late to everything. You’re different from all the other girls. Elinor says \u2014 “<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Ruth came to work,” broke in Elinor hastily to prevent indiscreet quotations from her confidential speeches. Her first glimpse of Ruth’s vivid face, strange intense eyes, and cheap clothes had offended her taste. She had decided at once that she did not like this girl and never would. To have such a queer, disagreeable roommate thrust upon her was the crowning misfortune of that dreadful day. Though she had tried not to show her antagonism, still she distinctly recalled having said things to Myra.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I should hope that we all came to work,” spoke up Lydia with a rebuking air, “that is taken for granted. Work is the theme of our college course; still different girls have different points of view. There are various tints and shadings \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, I remember that!” exclaimed Myra; ” Miss Ewers said it in the English class. Crackie! how I labored over that essay. It was seventeen minutes past midnight before I had filled the last line of the second sheet. The papers will be handed back to us to-day. The sophomores say that she tacks the essays on the wall and flings her bottle of red ink at each one. Along the margin she marks, `Punc., punc., punc.’ Short for punctuation, you understand.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Isn’t she wonderful!” Ruth’s irregular features borrowed a glow of momentary beauty fromn her enthusiasm. “I never dreamed that there were such teachers living. She illuminates, transfigures. Even rhetoric \u2014 when she talks I feel as if I could swing the world on my shoulders. It is inspiration.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Hm,” Lydia regarded her studiously, “that’s because you are most interested in literature and writing. Now what I find most fascinating is hygiene. The plan of house sanitation which we had last week is exquisite. I intend to do it in colored chalks and send it to father for our summer cottage at the shore. I think, Ruth, that you ought to pay more attention to the disciplinary studies for the sake of your all-round development. Yery few geniuses nowadays are self-made.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Ruth’s blushing,” bubbled Myra heartlessly. “She didn’t know we call her a genius. Everybody says so. Just wait till your essay is given back today. Maybe not a speck of red ink except for the excellent underlined a few dozen times. Oh, we know you can write. Elinor says that queer \u2014 “<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Myra, quick! I’ve spilled my milk.” Elinor mopped it with such zeal that Myra forgot to complete her sentence. Lydia pushed back her chair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “By the way, Elinor,” she said, “why did you come to college? “<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Because my mother wanted me to,” was the prompt reply. “It isn’t my fault that I’m here. I myself wished to travel and study abroad.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The reason I determined to come,” proclaimed Miss Howard with an accent on the pronoun, “in addition to the work motive, of course, was for the sake of the atmosphere. Nowhere else can you secure such an unconventional and democratic spirit. Nowhere else can you obtain the broad and thorough training so essential to one who hopes to take an effective part in supporting the social fabric and acting as an influence in the community.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Yes, ma’am,” whispered Myra meekly, “I wish I could express myself so well as you do. I want to be an influence in the community, too.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here Elinor glanced up quickly, caught Myra’s eye, raised her glass to her lips, choked suddenly, and clutched for her handkerchief. Then rising without a word she fled down the long apartment, hurried across the corridor to the empty reception rooms, and dropped upon a sofa. A minute later somebody bounced down beside her and a head sank limply on her shoulder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Aren’t we silly?” gasped Elinor in the first calm pause. “Do you think it hurt her feelings? “<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, my, no! She believes that we are hopelessly foolish anyhow. And I guess we are,” answered Myra, sitting up with a long-drawn groan: “The girls stared \u2014 hundreds of them \u2014 and just as I passed the faculty table as fast as I could trot, I \u2014 I \u2014 I \u2014 sn-snorted right out loud.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elinor collapsed again in a weak heap. “M-MMyra! with your face screwed up as it is now?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Worse!” The mourner yielded to a smothered giggle- “Disgraced for life!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elinor gathered herself together. “Madam, permit me to mention first hour `math,’ and our beds not made yet. Eheu, such an abnormal life! Nothing but books, books, books!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “And girls,” added Myra, “nice books, nicer girls ; I’m blessed aplenty, thank you. It’s in recitation when I’m there and the book isn’t near that I suffer.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elinor chanted :<\/p>\n\n\n\n “A visitor to college viewed<\/p>\n\n\n\n Life’s cool and calm design; He saw girls bending over books \u2014 Careers before them shine \u2014 ‘If woman were mere intellect’ he said, It would be fine.’<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Eight hundred girls with one accord Looked up, removed their specs. Then raised their hands in horror at The menace to their sex. ‘If woman were mere intellect,’ they cried, How could we ex?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Myra clapped her hands. “Ruth wrote that. Isn’t she bright! And that’s so awfully deep, too. Even if we were mere intellect we could have mental gymnastics \u2014 mathematics and so on. But she means more than that \u2014 she refers to the eternal conflict between the claims of head and heart. She means shall a woman sacrifice the perfection of personality to the perpetuation of the race.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “My \u2014 stars!” Elinor seized Myra’s elbow and shook her so that she lost a step in her skipping progress down the corridor. “Does that crazy girl talk like that to you, you infant? Think of her stirring up your woolly little brain so outrageously! She’s the queerest person with the least common sense I ever saw.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “No,” said Myra, ” she doesn’t discuss the subject with me, though if she did I should certainly feel flattered. But I heard Lydia arguing about her essay. Have you noticed how fond Lydia is of long words. She calls them Latin derivatives. Oh, Elinor!” the rattlepate smitten by sudden realization of the flight of time burst into the firewall study and flew over to her desk, “I haven’t finished my translation yet, and Latin comes right after `math.'”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Myra managed to slip through the hour of mathematics without being called upon to recite. She was so elated by this piece of good fortune that she neglected to make herself as inconspicuous as was desirable during the next recitation. When this ordeal was over, she hurried upstairs and found that Elinor had arrived from Greek a few minutes earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, Elinor!” she wailed, casting herself upon the couch, “I’ve had the most terrible time! You know I had translated only half the lesson, and so naturally I wasn’t very anxious to recite. Whenever the instructor glanced in my direction, I coughed or took out my handkerchief or grasped my forehead at the temples or something like that. But she couldn’t act on a hint. She actually called on me to read. I started out awfully fast and decisively in order to show her that I was not afraid to reach the foot of the page.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “But you were afraid,” complained Elinor in a contrary mood. “You were trying to deceive her.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, well, the girls call it bluffing. Anyhow it didn’t work. When I stopped, instead of saying, “Did you describe the circumstances which rendered it inconvenient?” inquired Elinor; “did you mention a wafiBe-supper or something akin?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “No, she didn’t ask me to \u2014 to \u2014 to expatiate. She looked at me in a funny way and said, `In your case, Miss Dickinson, I prefer to receive a report from you before class every day concerning the exact extent of your researches.’ She meant that I must tell her how far I have translated. The girls declare that they all enjoy my recitations. They say I manage to get the most original translations!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Indeed you do!” laughed Elinor; “you seem to regard a Latin sentence as if it were a collection of anagrams. The girls envy you your superb indifference to gender, number, and case. It’s a great talent. I wish I had your ability.” She drummed impatiently on the lid of her desk. “I flunked in Greek and the professor said, `With your equipment, Miss Offitt, we have anticipated much from you.’ I don’t care. I have my own life to live, and I’m not fond of study and I shan’t work any harder over books than I have to, so there!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Dear Elinor!” cried Myra with a swoop of joy, “I knew you weren’t meant to be a grind or a dig. Leave that to the slow-pokes who come here simply to work. You and I will take all the fun we can get. Let’s give Ruth a lot, too, because she’s never had very much and she’s older than we are. She admires you heaps.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I wish she wouldn’t,” Elinor shrugged her shoulders petulantly as if throwing off a weight.” It’s horrid. I want to be like everybody else and not be fussed over. These teachers here talk about my splendid preparation and exceptional advantages till I feel exactly like that old Pharisee who went up to the Temple to pray and offer thanks because he was not as other men are.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Myra looked guilty. “I have always liked that old Pharisee,” she confessed, “because he was honest and told the truth. Nearly everybody is thankful because he is not like somebody in some respect. Lydia’s glad because she is not so thin as Ruth, for in that case of course she would need to have her clothes made over. Ruth is glad because she is not so lazy as you are. Here, help, help! I’m sorry. Stop pinching this instant. You are glad because you are not so easily satisfied as I am.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Hm-m, yes, my noble discontent! I decline to share it with anybody. Others may grumble \u2014 “<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, they do, even if they aren’t granddaughters. They say that college is not so much fun as they had expected. Just count it up yourself: three recitations a day with two hours study for each \u2014 ostensibly, you know ; add time for meals and exercise and sleep, and pray, how many hours are left for fun?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Give it up,” said Elinor obligingly, appalled at the result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Well, as I was saying, I am glad because I am not so \u2014 ahem \u2014 regal as Lydia, for if I were I should never dare to hippity-hop like this in sight of such a critical person as you are. Ouch! I’ve bumped into Ruth’s portfolio and scattered her precious papers every which way. Help me pick them up quick I I’ve got to do all my English this period. Oh, look! Here is your name \u2014 a poem ‘To Elinor.’ It’s a rondel : Sincerely lift that sweet girl face \u2014 ‘”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Let me see!” Elinor stretched out her hand and as quickly drew it back. “No, it isn’t nice to read it. Fold it up again, Myra. She hasn’t any right to think of me like that.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Why, Elinor Offitt! Her thoughts are her own, I guess ; and she’s a genius and she didn’t show this poem to you, anyway. It’s awfully mean to be so finical. Ruth is just as sensitive as you are.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elinor lifted her chin rebelliously. She had perhaps more than her share of the natural perversity that inclines one to choose the opposite side in an argument. This tendency had helped to emphasize her critical attitude toward college in contrast with her mother’s enthusiastic loyalty. “Mere thoughts can intrude upon another’s personality,” she began; “I don’t like her, and she \u2014 “<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Girls,” Lydia came sweeping down the alleyway which led to the study, “we’ve enjoyed the most fascinating lesson in English! Miss Ewers advised us to buy notebooks for jotting down our ideas as they occur. She says that in future years we shall find such a record of mental development exceedingly entertaining. I have purchased a new fountain pen also.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I want to develop, too,” said Myra; ” let’s buy notebooks ourselves.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Indeed I shan’t,” spoke up the granddaughter defiantly, ” I’ve been developed from the kindergarten up, and I’m tired of it. I never have any ideas to write down anyhow, and I don’t care to think about myself so much as all that. Ruth is the kind of a girl that keeps diaries. There is always something queer about persons who are crazy to write. Where is she?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Somewhere in the corridor. Our essays were handed back to us, you know, and hers seemed to have quantity of red ink on it. Mine has hardly a mark except suggestions for punctuation.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Hurry, Myra. It’s our turn this hour. That last bell will ring in two minutes. We’ll have to run for it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n An hour later, when the two freshmen fluttered into the room, Myra still chuckling over the array of sarcastic question-marks on the margin of her essay, Lydia greeted them with upraised hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Hush!” she said in a generous whisper, “Ruth’s lying down. She says that she does not want any luncheon, though I warned her that it is utterly foolish to skip a meal for no reason whatever except an unimportant little word in red ink on her essay.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “What word?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Nothing but rewrite<\/em> scrawled across the top of the first page. She came in stumbling, with her eyes wide open, looking as if she had gone blind. I told her that wisdom consists in the right perception of values, and literature is not all of life. She didn’t seem to hear me. Such lack of common sense!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, dear!” exclaimed Myra, her lip quivering in swift sympathy. Before she had taken three steps toward Ruth’s porti\u00e8re, she was stopped by Lydia’s hasty call. “No, no, Myra, she asked me to see that she was not disturbed, and I promised.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Myra hesitated, then turned back slowly and went to luncheon with the other two. However she managed to leave the table early and run back to the study in plenty of time to carry out her impulse for comforting this friend in distress. Ten minutes later she almost toppled Elinor over in her rush down the stairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Elinor, don’t hold me. I’ll be back in a jiffy. I’ve got to catch Miss Ewers before she hides behind an engaged sign. Is she in the dining-room yet?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ruth’s horribly discouraged. She says there isn’t any use in her staying at college if her writing is so hopelessly bad as that She worked like a dog \u2014 only dogs don’t work, do they? She did her very best on that essay and then to be ordered to rewrite it I She’s desperate. Why, even I don’t have to do mine over, you know. She says it isn’t worth while for her to try any longer. That’s all she wanted of college: to learn to write. She says she will go back to teaching at once. She was lying face downward on the bed, with the essay crumpled up in her hand. I’m going to ask Miss Ewers about it. Oh, dear! and we all thought Ruth was a genius!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elinor drew a long breath and walked on, the quick flash of relief in her eyes brightening steadily. So Ruth would go away and leave her in peace, and she could invite some congenial girl to take the vacant room ; and then perhaps college wouldn’t be so unbearable in spite of everything else. Of course she would never be unkind or impolite to anybody; but no one, not even a saint, could truthfully say that it was pleasant to live with a person who was so irritatingly queer and erratic as Ruth. Why, just the way she ate sugar on her potatoes was enough to make an angel nervous. Her whimsical drawl and her indolent movements and her embarrassing fashion of staring intently at a person and her wild moods of gayety or depression and her unconventional remarks! And she was always forgetting to return what she borrowed and she never kept her engagements and her things were so cheap and shabby that they were actually painful. Ugliness that was merely a blot to less sensitive vision was exquisite discomfort to highly-strung Elinor. Every impression from the rarest joy to an impatient glance or the prick of a pin bit far more keenly into her consciousness than into that of a normally thick-skinned person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As she entered the study this afternoon she looked around with a curious little smile of exultant dismissal upon the ramshackle second-hand desk which Ruth had bought and installed between Lydia’s carved mahogany and her own bird’s eye maple. Those atrocious paper flowers which draped a vividly colored chromo would be out of sight to-morrow; and Elinor would be at liberty to lift her lashes without risk of a shudder. That row of worn books with their torn backs and dingy lettering would no longer be shrieking daily for a friendly twitch of the curtain to cover their hideousness. Ruth’s misshapen shoes and cottony skirt and faded waists, though neat enough, to be sure, were not pleasing objects to have continually within range of a fastidious eye. That odd brown face, too, that was always changing and yet always the same in the intentness of its observation wherever Elinor might happen to be \u2014 that was the most exasperating discomfort of all to a diffident and self-conscious young person like charming Miss Offitt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But to-morrow she would be free from this burden of annoyance. Ruth would be gone and the rest of them could be comparatively happy together. Ruth would be gone, gone, gone! Ruth would be gone! Never to bother her again, never again! Oh, wouldn’t it be bliss, bliss, bliss, perfect bliss! Elinor’s heart \u2014 or possibly it was only some hard green, unripe little organ in the place where her heart should have been \u2014 was singing a rollicking song as her fingers scribbled busily at the required mid-week letter home. All her life her mother had been requiring things of her. In ungrateful weary moods she had been aware that she envied Topsy who simply grew. To-day the letter was a pleasure as well as a duty, for she had delightful news to tell : she was going to be happier to-morrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Ruth, Ruth, Ruth!” Myra blew into the study like a joyous tornado, and seizing Elinor waltzed her into the darkened bedroom where Ruth still lay motionless with her arms flung across the pillow in which her face was buried. “Ruth, Ruth, Ruth! Get up, quick! Write your essay over rapidly. Miss Ewers says it is far and away above the average. It has more promise than any other handed in. She criticized it as if it were the work of a mature hand. It’s different from the others. She doesn’t waste her red ink on the hopeless ones. She marks the spelling and punctuation in them, but yours is worth severe examination. She wanted you to rewrite it for your own sake. She says it has remarkable promise. Do you hear? It has promise and maybe you can do something some day. That’s exactly what she said, and it means heaps from her, because she can write herself. She has published books, and she knows. She wants to interview you the sixth hour this afternoon. She says she sees where she can help you. Oh, Elinor, aren’t you glad, glad, glad I Now Ruth won’t go home.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elinor closed her eyes for an instant of sharp disappointment. Then she drew a deep breath. ” It’s perfectly lovely, Ruth,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Ow!” squealed Myra, wriggling free from her embrace, “those were my fingers you gripped that time.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n With all her advantages in the line of familiarity with every volume of college stories available in library or book shop, Myra certainly would not have been caught by the sophomore joke against the freshmen that Hallowe’en, if it had not been for the lamb. The lamb was intended to be the junior joke upon the seniors. Myra, unfortunately for her future peace of mind, was unaware of this important fact When in woolly red robe and worsted slippers she had shuffled into the bathroom unusually early that morning, she had almost dropped her biggest best sponge at the sound of a shrill ba-ba-a-a suddenly stifled to a gurgle and mingled with the tap of hurried movements and anxious whispers of “Quick! the whipped cream, Mary! Now that other spoon \u2014 he’s swallowing this one! Oh, dear! the rising bell will ring in two minutes.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course the door was latched on the other side, and though Myra, with joyous zeal of scientific curiosity, rattled the knob and made audible remarks about selfish girls who didn’t know that everybody in novels always took cold plunges before breakfast nowadays, she failed to provoke any response beyond another smothered bleat. Thereupon, urged to precipitancy by the approach of other students with other sponges, she took possession of the second tub behind the adjacent partition. She was so much interested in listening for more whispers that she neglected to stand shuddering on the brink for as many minutes as she could spare. Consequently she was in and out and ready to depart in time to overtake Elinor bearing a pitcher of hot water back to her room. Myra told her about the mysterious lamb and warned her to be on her guard all day and tell the other freshmen to be exceedingly wary, for undoubtedly this innocent little animal was destined to be foisted upon the class as the embodiment of the Hallowe’en joke. Myra was sure of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She was so sure of it that she omitted precautions in other directions. She reached for her mail with her customary voraciousness, although she had heard that jokes sometimes arrived in the shape of letters. She recklessly marched up to examine the bulletin board as often as she chanced to be in the neighborhood; and that, too, in spite of the rumor that moat grievous jibes had occasionally appeared there in previous years and brought blushes to unsophisticated freshman cheeks. She dared to accept a sophomore’s invitation to go for a bicycle ride into town. This was her undoing. For during her absence word flew from mouth to mouth that something was going to happen at dinner. In a hastily summoned class meeting the freshmen were exhorted to avoid the dining-room that night even at the risk of utter starvation ; for thus the dread joke would be likely to rebound upon the wily sophomore heads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Myra rushing in rosy and bright-eyed from the frosty dusk just as the dinner gong was whirring through the corridors, knew nothing of the terrible danger before her confiding young feet. Elinor darted to intercept her half a minute too late.<\/p>\n\n\n Gaily she flitted down the long room and took her place behind her chair with only a passing wonder that she was the first one at the table. Something was lying beside her plate \u2014 an attractive roll of white paper tied with a green ribbon. Impulsively she picked it up^ loosened the knot, spread out the sheet, and \u2014 oh, misery of miseries! There in staring script she read, “The degree of A. B. or Artless Baby is hereby conferred \u2014 “<\/p>\n\n\n\n Myra glanced up with guilty swiftness. Every upperclass girl in sight was smiling at her, and there was not another freshman in the room. An untouched diploma lay at each vacant seat It was the Hallowe’en joke. The victim, as she told Elinor afterward, felt exactly as if she had put on new winter flannels. However she was not the girl to turn coward before such agony. With the courage of a truly heroic freshman she gathered her pride to the rescue and laughed right merrily. She laughed to herself and twinkled amusement toward attentive spectators till half her aoup had been choked down. Then a large-souled junior in the vicinity was inspired by indignant pity to invade her solitary state and invite her to suffer through the remainder of the meal at a table barren of a single exulting sophomore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That evening at the sheet-and-pillowcase party in the gymnasium the lamb, clothed in a flannel jacket and lace hood, was presented by the juniors to the reluctant seniors. The hazel eyes of one particular little sheeted ghost, who was balancing herself on the horizontal bar while she munched her third slice of pumpkin pie, stared mournfully at the woolly cause of her immediate woe. She could never be happy again. She could never, never outlive the humiliation of having pranced on unsuspiciously to her fate, like the greenest of the green. The other freshmen had kept in hiding till the desperate sophomores at last had tied the diplomas to the two hundred respective doorknobs. Then the crafty ones emerging cautiously had seized their prizes and hastened with rejoicing to paste them in their memorabilia scrapbooks. They had outwitted the enemy in the first great encounter of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But poor Myra! Though there was no actual tear-stain on her imitation sheepskin when finally it reposed upon its proper page, yet the green ribbon looked creased and rumpled as if handled by vengeful fingers. She felt that she could never forgive the sophomores for that hour of martyrdom at the table. Possibly she discovered that night how uneasy sleeps the brain that plotteth vengeance ; or perhaps the pumpkin pie had some share in the restlessness. At any rate the following morning found Myra gloomily gazing from the study window at an unnaturally early time. In the misty morning dusk she beheld two girls with the lamb in their arms come out of the front door and enter a buggy which was waiting under the porte-coch\u00e8re. As they touched the horse to a gallop two other girls on bicycles dashed from a side entrance and started in pursuit. Myra was considerably comforted by the sight of the race down the avenue. She inferred that the two in the buggy were seniors intent upon disposing of their troublesome joke, while the two on wheels were juniors on guard to find out what was to be done with their gift. The crushed little freshman at the upper window laid up this incident in her memory until the next autumn, when the lamb again appeared upon the scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile she had trouble enough of her own. She became the author of the brilliant idea that the freshmen should wear green caps and gowns to the Sophomore Party in November. The class delightedly adopted her plan, levied a tax of fifteen cents apiece, bought bolts of cheesecloth, and sacrificed one long beautiful precious Saturday afternoon to the making of the garments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When at last they were finished, even while the ghosts of Monday’s unstudied lessons began to loom threateningly out of the dusk and lay viselike fingers upon the evening hours, Lydia, as the president of the class, undertook to consult a senior in dead secrecy. Ah, the horror of her return from this interview! The prickly torment of the meeting that followed! Could Myra ever forget it? For the senior with a carefully repressed smile had given warning that the scheme was perfectly dreadful. It was contrary to all etiquette and precedent. It would cast a black and lengthening shadow over their entire career as a class. Everybody would be laughing at them, because \u2014 here she had hesitated in kindly endeavor to soften the pitiless blow \u2014 it was really the freshest thing she had ever heard of in her whole life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, you can laugh!” fumed Miss Dickinson on the night of the party, as she tucked her green gown farther into her wardrobe comer and shook out her white silk with a zeal that was only three-quarters tender. “It wasn’t your idea, Elinor. You’re still young and happy. Nobody passes you with a sickly grin forty times a day. You have no need to go creeping through the corridors in terror of some kind friend popping out with, ‘Do you feel as fresh and blooming as ever?’ Actually I don’t dare to ask a soul what she intends to wear this evening.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Girls!” Lydia came sweeping in with a large express parcel in her arms. “Here is my new gown just in time. Wasn’t it the most fortunate thing that we discovered our error before it was too late? I can never be sufficiently thankful that I thought of consulting that senior. Fancy our class attending the most formal social function of the year in green caps and gowns! What an escape!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Yes, that’s right kick a fellow when he’s down. Rub it in,” muttered Myra rebelliously, “do a little massage while you are about it. I’m tough enough to stand all the blame and remorse you can spare. It was my idea, and it was appropriate and symbolical and delicately complimentary to the sophomore taste in colors, but, as you have mentioned so tactfully, what a horrible escape! What a \u2014 oh, oh, crackie! \u2014 what a \u2014 a \u2014 an escape!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lydia surveyed her rebukingly. “It would have been an indelible blot in our class history, Myra. You fail to appreciate the seriousness of such a mistake. Our only hope lies in keeping the affair a profound secret. The girls have all been warned to hide every fragment of the stuff. If the sophomores heard of it, we could never live down the memory.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh,” moaned Myra, and then added slowly, ” Oh \u2014 crackie! How many sophomores are there? Two hundred freshmen have been just about as many as I could manage. I guess I’ll go home.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Please, don’t leave us until you have helped hook me up at least this once more,” called Elinor from her doorway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Let me.” Ruth appeared looking taller and thinner than ever in her best gown of figured dimity which was limp from many washings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, thank you! You’re a dear to come to the rescue,” said Elinor with her most charming smile to conceal her first little quiver of repulsion at the prospect of being touched by somebody whom she disliked, “what a pretty frock that is of yours! I love little rosebuds sprinkled over a white ground.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ruth glanced down at her own faded skirt. “You know it is not pretty, Elinor,” she said quietly, “you needn’t be afraid of hurting my feelings. It is so wonderful just to be here at college \u2014 every morning I wake up and try to realize it \u2014 that somehow clothes do not matter. But, “she looked up with the glint of the whimsical dimple at the comer of her mouth, ” I enjoy the sight of other girls’ clothes \u2014 yours, for instance, and Myra’s. Ah, Lydia is ready.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The freshman president stood in the center of the study with Myra revolving around her. “Behold! She has twisted her hair high. Isn’t it stunning! Those violets are absolutely right. You seem more like a statue than ever \u2014 only dressed up, of course. See those splendid marble shoulders! Dear Lydia, you do have the most beautiful arms, like the Venus of Milo.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Ho! the Venus of Milo!” jeered Elinor, her cheeks still flushed over Ruth’s frankness, “that’s the kind of artistic knowledge possessed by Miss Dickinson. The Venus of Milo ain’t got any arms to speak of. Next thing you’ll flatter me by saying that my head resembles that belonging to the Victory of Samothrace.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Myra made a dive toward a pillow on the couch, but stopped midway. “Ah, well, I’m too busy tonight to bother about repart\u00e9e, and this might knock your hair down. Elinor, you do look unutterably sweet. I want to kiss the back of your neck. Ruth, did you ever see anyone lovelier?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “‘No, I never did,” replied Ruth with such grave sincerity that the quick blood deepened Elinor’s roses afresh, bringing with it a throb of unreasoning resentment. She did not want anybody except her own friends to admire her like that; it seemed to lay upon her the burden of responding in some way or other. In the novel freedom of her college life Elinor was finding it easy to revolt against the rules and duties which had oppressed her childhood. She intended not to accept a single new obligation of any kind, let alone the troublesome claim implied in Ruth’s attitude. That girl must be taught her proper place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Perhaps your opportunities,” she began in a sweetly stinging tone and was going on to say, ” have been extremely limited,” when she was interrupted by the arrival of their sophomore escorts. For the moment Ruth was saved the cruelty of being notified openly of the unfordable distance between the fastidious rearing of this cultivated flower and her own weedlike growth amid the ungracious surroundings of poverty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So Cinderella went happily to the ball. This was for the freshmen the first elaborate social event of the year. Intercourse so far had been of the easiest neighborliness in visiting one another for the sake of talking or eating or borrowing anything from a match to an unabridged lexicon. Acquaintances were readily made where all lived in close contact, passing in the halls a dozen times a day, sitting side by side in the classroom or at the table, playing on the same campus, riding to town in the same car.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before eight o’clock the stretch of curving walk from the main building to the gymnasium was thronged with flitting light-gowned figures, filmy scarfs over their bare throats. Throwing aside their wraps in the lower rooms, the girls pressed on up the broad staircase to the large hall above. This hall, which had a stage at one end to be used by the dramatic society for its more important performances, was decorated to-night with Japanese lanterns and palms. Along the walls were divans heaped with pillows. Easy chairs waited invitingly in nooks, and rugs furnished cosy corners for unconventional resting, while the center of the floor was left clear for dancing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During an intermission between dances Myra spied Elinor alone for the minute, and dodged impetuously through the shifting crowd to pounce upon her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, did you see me?” she exclaimed exultingly, all a sparkle and a flutter from her curls to her slippers, “did you see me sitting beside her on that divan? The most popular teacher in college, and the sophomores kept coming up to introduce their friends! They envied me, I can tell you. Ruth sat on the other side and talked about the difference between a novel and a short story. She cares a lot for Miss Ewers. While we ate the ice cream the rug at our feet was covered with girls. She danced with the loveliest partners, and Prexie actually spoke to me and said he remembered my face. Oh, me!” a sigh of ecstatic bliss, “I’m having the time of my life, and some of the girls say that this is the sweetest dress.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Hm-m,” commented Elinor with the disputatious frankness that she saved for her best friends, “you’ve had the time of your life on seven distinct occasions already this year, and it is only November.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, fiddle! You’re cross to-night. How do you expect me to see into the future? Look, isn’t it beautiful \u2014 light, color, music, a kaleidoscope \u2014 “<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Sounds familiar,” muttered the critic perversely, “society column of the Sunday paper most likely. Now, if you’ll only mention a few extras like dainty refreshments, undefinable charm, the rosebud garden of girls,<\/em> and so forth.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Well, I won’t. You’re blas\u00e9 enough to be a senior. I’m glad I’m not a granddaughter. Oh, there comes Miss Ewers. Doesn’t she look like an inquisitive robin with that bright little face of hers and the red vest? She cocks her head to listen to tall Ruth. Ah!” Myra drew a deep breath, “Elinor, just notice Ruth’s eyes, will you? I didn’t know that she could care so much for anybody.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “You mustn’t stare. Quick, turn toward me! It \u2014 it isn’t nice to watch people when they don’t know you’re looking. Pretend to be talking about something \u2014 anything \u2014 Trig Ceremonies, for instance.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “But I don’t know anything about Trig Ceremonies,” protested Myra with unexpected meekness, for she felt the justice of the rebuke; “what are they?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “My escort told me while we were waiting in line to be introduced to Lydia and the other president. Every year as soon as the sophomores finish the required mathematics they give an original play. It is a local satire and makes fun of everybody, especially the freshmen who are their successors to the miseries of trigonometry. It is written by a secret committee \u2014 why, not even the sophomores know who is on it except, of course, those who happen to be appointed themselves. She says that they keep their ears open up to the last minute, and gather in every least scrap of an incident that can be turned into a joke against the freshmen. The success of the play depends upon its being a complete surprise.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Joke against the freshmen!” echoed Myra; “oh, crackie!” She fairly staggered into a convenient chair. “What if they find out about the green caps and gowns?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “They won’t,” Elinor spoke soothingly, though in her heart she believed nothing more probable than such a catastrophe, particularly as many of the freshmen had sophomore roommates, “our girls are surely too loyal to thrust another weapon of ridicule within reach of the enemy.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, yes, yes, of course they are, and if they aren’t, why, the class will never, never, never forgive treachery like that. But just suppose someone lets it slip out unawares \u2014 it is awfully easy to talk anyhow \u2014 and all these hundreds and hundreds of girls mixed in together. The sophomores will worm the secret out of somebody or spy around for themselves. If they see a smitch of green cheesecloth peeking out of a bureau drawer or anything! Now that I think of it there was something peculiar in the way sophomores looked at me this evening. Miss Ewers, too, \u2014 she acted as if she were ready to smile the minute my back was turned.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Myra Dickinson, you ought to be ashamed of yourself! That joke is ruining your character.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Is it? What fu \u2014, I mean, how interesting!” She paused for one moment to contemplate this new and harrowing idea. “Ruth said that there is nothing vital about green gowns. Still, taken in connection with my lacerated feelings \u2014 that’s different again, don’t you think? Green gowns may change my entire long life. Oh, Elinor, I can’t sleep tonight till I know that ours are safe deep down in our trunks in the catacombs. Won’t you go with me to hide them there after the party?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Wait till to-morrow. Think of those great empty rooms all dark and cold and horrid. You can’t find your trunk, anyhow. One more night won’t matter.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “But I want to get it off my mind. Somebody might spy upon us if we go to-morrow. My escort said she was going down herself to hunt up old notes for tutoring. Do come now. Think how fascinating to prowl around in the bowels of the earth at dead of night! Oh, I wouldn’t give it up for any consideration.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elinor reluctantly agreed, chiefly because she was too tired to argue. When, with their bundles hidden under capes and shawls, they sped down the prisonlike stairs to the whitewashed caverns below the main building, they found the biggest room dimly lighted by a solitary gasjet far away at the entrance to another inner room. The pale glow flickered over desolate ranks of forsaken trunks, row behind row. Here and there a bit of metal glittered beyond the miniature chasms yawning downward to the dark floor in the spaces between.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Where in the world!” Myra propped herself disconsolately against the nearest wall, “How can we possibly find anything in this wilderness? I didn’t know there were so many in the whole country. Ow!” She sprang away from her support, rubbing her shoulder. ” That plaster is the chilliest dungeon species and strikes clear through this silk. I’m going to put on my green gown to keep warm \u2014 that’s getting some good out of it, anyhow. I wonder who lighted that gas over there. This expedition is likely to spend the rest of the night in this delightful spot. Isn’t it weird?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Don’t use that poor overworked word. Every girl here runs it into the ground. What do you mean by weird?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Same as everybody else,” answered Myra as she pranced from trunk to trunk, the tassel of her mortar-board cap flapping over one eye, “we can’t all be like Ruth and treat words as if they were alive. She simply loves words, haven’t you noticed? If she were here now, she would make up a poem immediately. She loves thrills and sunsets and books and people and \u2014 “<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I hate gush,” interrupted Elinor, with a frown at the recollection of Ruth’s unconventional ecstasy over any beauty from foliage to philosophy, “She behaves as if she were the first person on earth who ever had thoughts and feelings. Listen! I thought I heard a movement”<\/p>\n\n\n\n ” \u2014 and asparagus. She told me so, when I said that you loved it too and that’s about the only thing you are ever greedy about, though I haven’t seen you eat it yet. You’re so awfully afraid of showing that you care for anything. That’s the difference between you and Ruth. You’re both artistic temperaments, only hers is developed and yours is thwarted. Environment is three-fourths of life \u2014 same as conduct Matthew Arnold said that \u2014 ahem \u2014 I’ve been reading up for Monday’s English. Isn’t that funny?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Exceedingly. Where did your lively imagination rake in that nonsense about Ruth and me? I shall never forgive you if you say we are alike. There never were two mortals more absolutely at opposite poles. We don’t even speak the same language. She lives in a different world. Come, hurry to find that trunk. I’m cold.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “You didn’t know I was intellectual, did you?” cried Myra, pirouetting and bowing, her robe fluttering in soft billows under her manipulations. “This is an intellectual dance. I should certainly have gone on the stage. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Wouldn’t I have made a hit if I had really dared to wear it to the ball! Horrid old sophomores! Where, ah, where has my little trunk gone? Where, oh, where can it be? With its ends cut short and its sides left long \u2014 “<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Maybe it is in the little room over there by the gasjet,” broke in Elinor, who was beginning to shiver, “do hurry. I don’t see anything of it in this half of the wilderness. You’re wasting time, dear little A. B. Some sophomore may catch you if you don’t watch out.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “A. B. signifying Artless Baby,” wailed Myra, “that is what did it all \u2014 blighted my fair young life. Oh, oh, oh! If the sophomores were only near enough now to feel the clutch of my vengeful fingers!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was a rustle in the room beyond, followed by the sound of a stifled giggle. Three sophomores came strolling through the door. They walked leisurely down the broad aisle between the rows or trunks, and passed from sight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Myra tottered into Elinor’s arms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Through the open transom floated the trill of a birdlike voice preluding a wonderful song, shrill and sweet, to an accompaniment of energetic tripping to and fro, rustling of starched garments, and sundry creaking of window sashes and shades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ruth approaching in the corridor smiled whimsically to herself at the sound of fluttering pages. She could imagine a book springing perversely shut as Elinor’s fingers went traveling toward her ears. It was Elinor’s voice with a peevish note in it that complained : “Do please hush! You’ve driven Ruth to the library and Lydia to shredded wheat biscuit already. I’ve simply got to finish this reviewing before to-morrow. I don’t dare to fail in this examination. You’d better do a little studying yourself. What did that strong-minded tutor of yours say last time?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “‘They told her not to worry,'” rang out perseveringly, “‘Nor sit up late to cram.’ That’s only poetry, you understand. She really told me that I should have begun my worrying long before Thanksgiving. That’s prose. She asked eight weeks ago if I wished to pass the midyears. When I acknowledged my willingness, she said I couldn’t possibly do it unless I studied hard all the rest of the time, gave up my two trips to New York, my visit to West Point, and my three guests for the December reception. I reflected \u2014 “<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, yes, you reflected, and then assured her that you would omit one trip to the city, invite only one guest to the reception, and follow her advice in all other respects except that you could not under any consideration surrender the visit to West Point. You wondered why that strong-minded junior laughed.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “She has no sympathy whatever, that person. Fancy her suggesting that I should study during the Holidays, when I went to a dance every night except Sunday. All my friends were home from college, and we had larks, I can tell you. Heigho, Ruthie! How’s literature to-day?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Thriving, thank you. The editor-in-chief of the Monthly has accepted my valentine verses for the February number. She has explained how I can qualify in order to be eligible for election on the editorial board next year. If I have a certain minimum number of lines printed before the date of the annual meeting, I shall stand a fair chance.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “A fair chance I Don’t talk to me I You \u2014 a fair chance! You know very well it will be a regular walk-over. What is the valentine?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It’s a rondel, ‘Sincerely lift that sweet girl face \u2014 ‘”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “What? Why, the one dedicated to \u2014 ” Here she caught a warning gesture from Elinor and swallowed back the name from the tip of her tongue. “Of course, it \u2014 it isn’t addressed to any real person, is it? That might be embarrassing in print.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The title is ‘To Charis.’ That is the Greek word for charm, you know. The editor is afraid the publisher has no Greek type. It looks different in English \u2014 charis \u2014 charm, loveliness, grace.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elinor took care not to catch Myra’s mischievous eye. “It’s perfectly splendid for you to have a chance to be editor, Ruth. It’s a big honor and you deserve it. Myra and I will come clamoring for recognition at your door some day.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ruth’s strange light eyes dwelt wonderingly upon her. ” You’re different from anybody else I ever met, Elinor, You’re always saying things you don’t mean, and yet somehow it seems all right. It’s mighty sweet of you anyway. As for the editorship, I’ll win if I possibly can. I’ve wanted it ever since I first saw the college monthly. I’d far rather be editor than on the honor list.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Aiai!” shrieked Myra suddenly with a wild sweep of her feather duster across the bookcase, “that’s a Latin wail of woe, as you doubtless probably know. Aiai! Eheu! That’s also Latin, from Horace’s odes \u2014 ahem. Oimoi, oimoi! The last expletive is Greek. Aiai! examinations are coming. If I flunk, I can never be on the honor list, me myself. Eheu, oimoi, aiai, alas, woe, woe is me, woe is me!<\/p>\n\n\n\n ‘They told her not to worry. Nor sit up late to cram, Nor feel a sense of hurry \u2014 ‘”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ruth fled in one direction and Elinor in another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The following day was the Sunday before examination week. After supper Myra and Elinor, with arms intertwined, were strolling up and down the corridor while awaiting the hour for Bible lecture. In passing a large bare room, where on other evenings the girls spent this half hour before seven o’clock in dancing, they spied a group of freshmen besieging a sophomore with questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Do they give originals?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Do they ask principal parts?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Are you really sent home if you flunk?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “How do we know we’ve been studying right or if we shan’t forget everything we ever learned the minute we see the questions?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, you can laugh!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I beg your pardon, girls, but it does sound funny, especially when I remember that we worried like this last year; and it wasn’t so bad after all. By the way, I hear that somebody in your class went to the lady principal last Friday to ask permission to attend a recital in town. When Mrs. Vernon said, ‘Before I answer definitely, I must inquire about your record of work,’ the freshman promptly vanished with a terrified, ‘Please don’t trouble yourself about it.'”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Myra tried to look unconscious, while Elinor straightened her mouth from its delighted twitch over this not unfamiliar episode to murmur :<\/p>\n\n\n\n “‘They told her not to worry \u2014 ‘”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Myra tweaked her elbow. “‘And she failed in her exam.’ Now, hush! Suppose she did! We’re young yet.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I intend to go through this college if it takes till I’m thirty,” declared some one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A plump young woman on the piano stool began to bemoan her miseries in a thin voice that sounded ludicrously out of kinship with her generous curves. If she were sent home, no, indeed, she would not go back where everybody knew her and would inquire why she had left in the middle of the year. She would go to her aunt out West and stay, or else she would take a position somewhere as a waitress or something. But she would never, never, never go home to her family in disgrace!<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Where’s the disgrace?” demanded Myra pugnaciously, “boys don’t mind if the faculty happen to ask them questions they can’t answer. Girls are too goody-goody. I don’t care a rap whether I flunk or not.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The sophomore’s quizzical glance caught a snap from the hazel eyes. The strong-minded tutor happened to be a friend of hers. That Miss Offitt \u2014 as exquisite as a windflower, wasn’t she? though she had dark shadows under her lashes to-night \u2014 ought to persuade Myra Dickinson to study at least half the time. Perhaps that set of girls in the fourth south firewall had not yet heard the traditional rhyme:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Four little freshmen happy as could be! One flunked in mathematics \u2014 then there were three.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Monday dawned peacefully with snow powdering the dark evergreens and resting soft and deep upon the ledges. Freshmen filled their fountain pens, and quaking inwardly walked to the hall in which the examinations were to be held. When the slips of printed questions were distributed, Ruth seized one almost roughly and bent to work. Lydia, whose training in a fashionable school had not been eminently severe, glanced rapidly over the paper before proceeding with her customary self-confidence. Elinor secure in her thorough preparation had carried the first semester’s lessons with ease, and now set about her answers with practised calm. And Myra? Myra scribbled swiftly in blissful ignorance that silence is golden \u2014 particularly in those painful situations where the silver speech happens to have no pertinent value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Myra was one of the first to hand in her paper, and although in comparing memories of her replies she was assailed by a few stray misgivings, she suffered no inconvenient alarm. The next day, however, in accordance with a hint from Elinor, she spent greater care upon her answers. The following evening she even studied a little in anticipation of mathematics. On the night before the final day of trial, Lydia awoke at two o’clock to find a light in Myra’s room. At sound of her protest, Myra let go of her hair long enough to explain nonchalantly that she was merely glancing over the rules of indirect discourse. Lydia magnanimously forbore to comment on the difference between reviewing and cramming, which was learning something never known before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nobody was surprised that Saturday morning’s mail brought two little unstamped notes to Miss Myra Dickinson. Elinor gazed carefully in another direction when Myra came tripping in and spied the square bits of white conspicuous on her desk. Ruth burying her near-sighted attention farther in her book pretended to be oblivious of the sudden pause of footsteps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Only two!” cried Myra’s voice after a queer catch of the breath. She snatched them up and waving them aloft ran into the corridor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Ho, everybody! I got two \u2014 look at here! How many did you get?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was a frou-frou of skirts and tapping of heels and one or two astonished giggles and puzzled half-admiring oh’s, as a background for a highpitched, “Girls, it isn’t anything to be ashamed of. Boys never care. I am going to keep them for my memory-bill.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n While Elinor and Ruth were still listening in dismay, Lydia came sweeping into the disturbed neighborhood and in scandalized haste hustled Myra back to the seclusion of the study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “But it isn’t anything to be ashamed of,” she persisted defiantly, her cheeks very red, her eyes unnaturally shining, her fingers tearing the envelopes into strips. “It’s a good joke.” She swallowed this time unmistakably. “Some of the brightest girls in the class flunked in ‘math.'”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The brightest girls \u2014 some of them \u2014 are the very ones who think they can get along without studying,” said Lydia as she opened her notebook to jot down an item concerning the manual labor of written examinations. “Your standing out in the alleyway like that, and calling to the passers-by, will give a poor reputation to our firewall. Apparently you have derived your ideals of life here from decidedly young gentlemen who are sent to college simply because their fathers have been there before them.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “My case exactly,” broke in Elinor, “now don’t you jump on Myra any more. Girls as a general thing do worry too much and care unreasonably about insignificant points. Marks don’t matter. The most talented senior in the class failed in trigonometry three times running. The other day when I happened to say that the girls looked tired, that hardworking Miss Ray drawled out, ‘Aren’t they always tired?’ Indeed I do believe they are inclined to be over-conscientious in this place. Don’t you agree with me, Ruth?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n A laugh twinkled in the depths of Ruth’s gaze. “I wish I could, Elinor,” she said, “especially about ‘math.’ I expect to fail in ‘trig’ six times running. But marks do count. They aren’t arbitrary symbols here, you know. They are indications of how faithfully we work. Oh, Elinor, just think of the hundreds and hundreds of girls who are longing for college, hungering and thirsting for the chances some of us are throwing away. It is treacherous, it is wicked \u2014 “<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elinor sprang to her feet, with one imperious hand uplifted, before she remembered her manners and walked quickly toward her own room. Ruth had not seen the gesture for at the moment she was turning toward Myra in response to an amazed little cry : “Why, Ruthie, I thought you liked me!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I do, I do!” She jumped up in distress and reached out to give her an impulsive hug of contrition. “I love you dearly, Myra, but I’ve got to tell the truth when I’m asked. It isn’t honest to slight our work. You know it yourself. If we will not work, we have no right to stay here. It is better \u2014 far better \u2014 to go.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Myra opened her mouth once and closed it, then opened it again: ” Cr-crackie, Ruth! Do you want to get rid of me as much as all that? Well, I tell you what: we’ll all four go to the gym for a game of tennis this morning, because there are no lessons till Monday. See how it rains! The ice is flooded and the trees writhe beautifully. Hurry along. Maybe this is your last chance to play with me, Ruthie.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n For the rest of the day Myra seemed possessed of the spirit of the storm. She danced through the rain, skipping and whirling, and romped through a mad game of tennis. At luncheon she kept the table in a gale with a stream of utterly ridiculous remarks. After a restless afternoon occupied by an aimless tossing about of clothes in her wardrobe, she sat rather pale and quiet through dinner. The evening was spent in a neighboring study, where a box of good things to eat had arrived that morning. All the students were weary after the strain of the week. Ten o’clock found lights out behind the dark transoms and squares of pallid windows that stared out upon the deserted corridors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At midnight Elinor, who slept lightly, fancied that she heard a muffled footfall in the study and a queer choking sound that startled her upright, wide awake. She listened. There was no sound except the faint tapping of a branch of wistaria blown against her windowpane. A few hours later she awoke again, insistently troubled by a feeling that something had happened to Myra.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She lay for a minute, straining her ears to catch the soft gnawing of a mouse in their pantry under the window-seat in the study. Suddenly the gnawing ceased and four tiny paws scurried across a bare space beside the rug. There was a thud of someone jumping with bare feet upon the floor. Quick steps passed from room to room; then silence; then the spurt of a match, a flare of gas, and Ruth like a tall wild-haired ghost in the doorway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Myra’s gone.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elinor stared at her in dazed silence for five seconds, before bounding out of bed, throwing her bathrobe around her, sliding into her slippers, and darting into the other inside room. Myra was gone. The coverings looked as if tossed hastily over the footboard. A little silk nightcap lay on the dented pillow. Empty stockings dangled over the back of a chair where her shirtwaist was hanging neatly, as Elinor had taught her. Her shoes lay disconsolately upset underneath. Her bathrobe swung motionless from its proper hook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It is exceedingly foolish to worry,” said Lydia as she dressed in distinctly uncharacteristic haste. “Perhaps she woke up hungry and has gone to hunt up something to eat from the other girls. Does either of you know if there is insanity in her family? Three years ago on the night of the great blizzard a freshman who was threatened with expulsion for certain acts of disobedience left in a hurry like this and was almost frozen to death. Another student who failed in the midyears tried to take poison. I heard reports of a kleptomaniac who turned on the gas because she feared detection. Does it smell queer in there?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elinor laughed hysterically. “Nothing but violets \u2014 we each received a cluster at the spread \u2014 and just a sniff of cheese. Don’t you smell it? She saved part of her slice for to-day. Oh, oh, oh! where has she gone without her clothes or anything?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then the search began. Before dawn the entire institution was roused to excitement. Every building was being explored more or less thoroughly. Telephone messages to town brought information that no student had left on any train during the night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Girls gathered whispering in alcoves and recesses. Highly colored rumors of Myra’s conduct over her flunk notes were mingled wonderfully with reports of her fun-loving speeches and hints of her connection with the ill-starred green gowns. One morbid special put on her bathing suit and dragged the swimming-tank in the twilight of the winter morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was tender steak, as usual, for Sunday breakfast, and Saratoga chips hot and crisp, and bread speckled with raisins. Somehow every mouthful choked Elinor, and the cocoa seemed to scorch her throat. After a few minutes of making a pretense to eat, she returned to the study. Ruth overtook her in the alleyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Elinor, you mustn’t look like that. It breaks my heart. She will be brought back safe and well. Nothing dreadful could possibly have happened and left no trace. A detective is expected at once. The idea of a kidnapping is ridiculous. The fault \u2014 “<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The fault is yours!” Elinor flung back her head, her hands clenched at her sides. “You made her desperate. You said she was treacherous and wicked, and it was better for her to go. Now she is gone \u2014 lost \u2014 in the storm. Hear the sleet beat against the window. You are to blame \u2014 you \u2014 you!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “There’s Miss Offitt!” A group of girls fluttered into the alleyway. “Any news yet? Isn’t it the strangest circumstance!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “She was the cutest, brightest girl in the class. We all loved her dearly, and of course she’ll be found ultimately. When I lived in Denver a little boy next door was lost, and they discovered him in the river. Oh, I want to bite my tongue out.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Of course she’ll turn up safe and sound. Trust Myra Dickinson to fall on her feet every time,” broke in another hastily to cover the disastrous anecdote, as Elinor twisted the knob of the study door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It’s the most mysterious disappearance!” exclaimed a third, ” to vanish \u2014 “<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then Myra opened the door from the inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “What’s the row?” she inquired, involuntarily taking a step backward before the volley of oh’s and ah’s and where’s and how’s and oh-my-goodness-me’s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the full horror of the affair dawned upon her, the round face froze into an expression of absolutely blank dismay for the space of half a minute. Then abruptly with an odd stifled moan of ecstasy, she sank to the floor, buried her head in her arms, and shook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, girls, what a joke! I only overslept. I fell asleep away back in a corner of my wardrobe and never heard the rising bell or anything. Oh, girls, isn’t it the biggest joke that ever happened! Prexie and the Doctor and everybody hunting for me, you say? And a detective? A detective! Oh, girls, I shall die! Make me stop laughing, somebody, quick I I am breaking in two. Oh, girls!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n And though probably more than one freshman suspected the truth, nobody except Elinor was ever told how Myra had crept into the wardrobe to smother her sobbing over the two little flunk notes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n “Prexie wants to see you in the office, Myra,” said Elinor as she entered the study on the afternoon of Washington’s Birthday, “here’s the note I found pinned under your engaged sign. Isn’t Ruth here, or Lydia? I never knew you to use a sign all by yourself before. Such industry is shocking. Or if Prexie doesn’t ask to see you at present he very likely will some day.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Well, what have I done now?” complained Myra, reaching for the bit of paper. Elinor pretended that she had not observed her startled jump at the opening of the door or the guilty haste with which she had cleared away the writing on her desk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, it isn’t from Prexie at all, you mean girl! It is from a freshman who wishes to borrow my long cape to wear to the ball to-night. She’s going as a witch. You were cruel to scare me so. I thought maybe Prexie had found out who hung that declaration of rights on the blackboard in Latin this morning. The faculty haven’t any business to deprive us of a holiday like this. Still, I’m getting tired of being called up for interviews. Our corridor warden is forever reasoning with me about disturbances \u2014 and she only a junior herself. Mrs. Vernon was mighty hard to manage about my going to New York without permission. I hate to bother with chaperons anywhere. Miss Ewers warned me that my English wasn’t up to the scratch. In fact, that is what occupies me this afternoon. I’m \u2014 writing.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Don’t!” Under her chaffing manner Elinor regarded Myra keenly, for this speech did not ring with her usual frankness. “If you turn literary, too, I shall certainly pack up and leave. One genius in the family is just about my limit. Beware! Ruth hasn’t any digestion. She hasn’t any friends in particular, unless you count Miss Ewers.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Of course, she’s only a faculty but she isn’t very old yet. I believe she’s about twenty-five and strangers take her for a student. When Ruth feels blue, she looks older than Miss Ewers. Ruth worried terribly about what she said to me before I disappeared.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Indeed?” Elinor began to snip impatiently at strips of white paper which were to serve as ruffs and cuffs for their colonial costumes that evening. “I apologized for blaming her, and what do you suppose she answered? She said that she knew I tried to be sorry because I thought I ought to. Gracious, wasn’t it? She is the crudest person I ever had the misfortune to meet.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “You behave friendly enough.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, yes, we get along. It is easy to act sweet and say pleasant things, but, oh, dear! I am so tired of feeling cross inside all the time. People say marriage is a discipline, and that is living with just one person; while here there are four of us jostled in together through the winter. I shall have nervous prostration before June.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Myra’s expression of alarm changed to bright interest as her glance fell upon the packet of notes in one pigeonhole and then sought the carefully scribbled sheet on her pad. “What you need is excitement. This is an awfully monotonous place. I heard a graduate fellow say so. We live from mail to meal \u2014 sleep, eat, exercise, work, rest. No wonder you long for thrills! We ought to brace up and make things happen. Haven’t you read how reporters when news is scarce manufacture something? They get robbed or murdered or commit a crime or arrange an accident. I’d love to write for the papers, as Ruth does. Why, I’d be willing to correspond without any pay.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elinor sniffed. “Prexie says the college receives gratis all the notoriety it can assimilate.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Ye-es,” the hazel eyes again lingered affectionately upon the pad, “but publicity is different from notoriety, don’t you think? President Roosevelt believes in publicity; and I’m a republican. It seems to me,” she mused, “that he would not have deprived us of a holiday on Washington’s Birthday. The faculty ought to be taught a lesson in patriotism.” The seniors evidently held a similar opinion, for they marched to dinner that evening in the guise of a funeral procession. A rumor of the plan spread through the other classes and caused them to assemble at the door of the great dining-room. After the gong had ceased its clangor, far away strains of Auld Lang Syne sounded down the main, corridor. Louder and clearer swelled the music above the tread of footsteps rhythmically in measure. Tiny flames twinkled out in the dusky tunnel and moved nearer two by two, till in the brighter illumination of the central hall advanced a long array of figures draped in black, each one bearing a candle in her hand. Some were dressed as veiled nuns, and some aa hooded monks, and some wore scholars’ caps and gowns. Aloft above their downcast heads was reared a banner inscribed with the words: “In memoriam. In memory of the memory of G. W., slain by the faculty February 22, 190-.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Myra, who wore her gymnasium suit and Lydia’s best jacket turned inside out, watched and listened with such zealous attention that she almost missed enjoying the scene. Now and then she scrawled a word or two on her paper ruffles. Elinor was dressed in the dovelike costume of Priscilla. Powder and patches, kerchiefs and curls, transformed plain girls into pretty ones and pretty ones into beauties. Lydia was a magnificent dame in flowing silk, with her own great-grandmother’s silver comb in her whitened hair. Ruth in a prim gingham, with steelbowed spectacles insecurely perched upon her nose displayed unsuspected ability to act the part of Myra’s fussy old aunt from the country. The rolling of her eyeballs, the fidgety twitches of her elbows, and her shocked shrieks over finding her nephew’s arm around Priscilla’s waist, kept the tableful in a twitter. Lydia’s indulgent, “Ah, my dear madam, but boys will be boys!” sent Elinor sliding out of her seat in helpless laughter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her cavalier dragged her tenderly into an upright position. “Sweetest, adorable Priscilla, I love you to distraction, even maudlin as you are! But pray, pray, drop your tears of joy on the other side because this satin lining belongs to Lydia. Say!” in a whisper with a quick change of manner, “Ruth’s a dandy, isn’t she? What fun she’d have been if she’d had half a chance as a youngster! I wish I could write a story about her.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “That cacoethes scribendi is certainly catching!” sighed Elinor, “well, I observe that you have your other cuff still blank for notes of her conversation.” Then she laughed mischievously at Myra’s guilty start of dismay over this proof that others had noticed her scribbling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After Chapel services, the girls hurried away to the dancing hall in the gymnasium. George and Martha Washington received their guests \u2014 George bowing his stately head beside fat little Martha. There were periwigged gentlemen, short-waisted ladies, plump girls with frocks slipping from rounded shoulders; there were witches with peaked caps above their wide ruffs, and new brooms under their red cloaks. There were a dozen imps in butterfly skirts of scarlet tarletan; there were soldiers and Indians and sooty-faced slaves whirling amicably together in modern waltzes or gliding through an old-time minuet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the refreshments of popcorn balls were dispensed by a bevy of ridiculous darkeys, Myra remembered that her latest good resolution was against eating between meals \u2014 and anyhow she did not care much for popcorn. While the rest were feasting, she wandered upon the stage to examine the assembled curios. The famous cherry tree was represented by an evergreen twig conspicuously labelled. There was a gun described as the identical weapon with which George shot the robin in the cherry tree. A table in the foreground was adorned with a piece of Martha’s wedding cake, a snow-shoe which had belonged to Pocahontas, the first pair of skates used on the Hudson by Peter Stuyvesant, socks worn by Arnold at the age of three, and the actual cigar which Andr\u00e9 had been smoking at the time of his arrest. The sight of a baby’s shoe half hidden by a placard which declared it to be the property of the first college granddaughter sent Myra’s gaze roving over the hall in search of Elinor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ah, there she was sitting on the steps that led to the stage dressing-room. With a popcorn ball in each hand \u2014 how greedy! Had she seen the shoe yet? Myra slipping through the wings to reach the steps by a short cut wasted a moment to smirk at her gentlemanly self in a cracked mirror. A careless sweep of her arm as she bent closer brushed off a powder-box from the dressing-table. When she stooped to pick it up, she caught a glimpse of a torn sheet of paper on a broken-legged chair. Though this was by no means the only tattered bit of paper in that littered greenroom, it was bigger than the others and lay there in such an untidy blur against the shadows that Myra half automatically crumpled it in her hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After she had groped her way to the door and emerged into the light, she found that Elinor had been captured to meet the guest of the evening, an author who had lectured before the college historical society that afternoon. While awaiting her release, Myra absently smoothed out the sheet in her hand and glanced over the writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Wedding of Sophie Moore to Professor Geo. Metry. (Symbolical of the election of mathematics by the class.) I, Sophie Moore, take you, Geo. Metry, for better and for worse, through exams and crams, and ex and gym, and Bible lectures and Chapel exhortations, and rice pudding and tombstone, and written quizzes and essays, and \u2014 ” Here the page had been torn in two and apparently tossed aside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Tombstone,” repeated Myra idly, “that’s the Bavarian cream which we have for dinner on Tuesday. Sophie Moore \u2014 who’s she, I wonder. Sophie Moore \u2014 ah, I see. Sophomore, of course! Geo. Metry \u2014 geometry! Oh, crackie! This is their secret. This is part of Trig Ceremonies. Somebody said they had begun to rehearse here. A wedding! That’s the secret. A wedding between the class and the mathematical department \u2014 that is the theme of the play. The success of the Ceremonies depends upon a complete surprise, does it? And \u2014 and \u2014 and I haven’t quite forgotten Hallowe’en. Ah-h-haha!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Myra Dickinson!” One of the imps in scarlet tarletan darted up to her. “Remember the charivari at eleven. The girls will bring combs and horns and bells and tin pans. Some of them have backed out but there’ll be ten anyhow. Won’t the seniors be delighted to hear us serenading the faculty houses! Lesson number two in patriotism! Those whitecap notes \u2014 “<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Hush!” Myra clapped a hand over the unwary mouth and dragged its owner into the dance, for she saw Elinor approaching. Elinor did not approve of this particular freshman and her band of harum scarum followers, and she had warned Myra against being drawn into their ranks. They had almost quarreled over this, Myra charging Elinor with being undemocratic and hypercritical, and anyhow a girl needed some fun to balance the extra studying which had been necessary since the midyears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For the remainder of the evening Myra avoided Elinor, who was sufficiently offended by such neglect to assume indifference. She sought Ruth who was standing happily in a corner, looking on, and made herself exceptionally charming till good-night time. Some minutes before that, Myra and most of the red imps had vanished from the ball room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shortly after eleven o’clock the sound of an appalling uproar traveled through the night from the direction of faculty row. When the jangling of bells, tooting of horns, clattering of pans, and squeaking of combs had subsided, and the students, some laughing, some scolding, had gone back to sleep, Myra stole quietly into the study. Elinor heard her but gave no sign. An hour later she awoke from an uneasy nap, crept to her porti\u00e8re, peered through and saw Myra scribbling away in a fury of composition. Presently the scratching of the pen ceased, and steps tiptoed into the corridor. In twenty minutes or so she re-entered the room, turned out the gas, and slid noiselessly to bed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At breakfast the college was ringing with reports of the freshman charivari at faculty row. At noon a rumor spread that anonymous notes written in the style of the white-caps and threatening all sorts of ridiculous retribution for the loss of the holiday had been slipped under the door of every teacher and professor living in the dormitories. At dinner the news flew from table to table that the Trig Ceremonies would surely take place the following night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Myra who had been strangely studious and retiring all day \u2014 perhaps also somewhat drowsy \u2014 brightened to hilarity for the rest of the evening. The next morning she was still in a wild mood of gayety. During luncheon she grew pensive, absently piling half a butterball on each tiny oyster cracker and dreamily shaking pepper into her oyster-stew, till Elinor caught her wrist in horror at such indiscretion. Before the last spoonful of her applesauce had vanished she became so alarmingly silent that Ruth eyed her askance and Elinor inquired if she had a headache or anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, no!” she answered quickly, and then stopped herself to touch her suddenly corrugated brow and mutter that possibly she did feel a weeny ache coming on, and anyhow she did not care to go to town that afternoon, as had been proposed. Even the erstwhile irresistible bribe of pistachio ice-cream at their favorite restaurant failed to win her acceptance. Finding her obdurate, Elinor departed to do her shopping alone, Lydia withdrew to a committee meeting, and Ruth disappeared in the direction of the library.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For a few moments after being left in solitude, Myra kept up her pretense of studying. Perhaps one of the girls might have forgotten something and be coming back to interrupt. No footfall broke the quiet of the alleyway. Myra drew a long breath of relief, threw aside her book, and walking to the couch stealthily extricated a newspaper from its hiding-place amid the pillows. Upon her return from luncheon she had spied it lying among the rest of the noon mail on the center table, and she had hastily thrust it out of sight. She wanted to be alone when she read it first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To judge from the expression of awed pride and the blissful incredulous smile that quivered about her lips, the article sounded even more beautiful in print than in writing. To be sure, the editor had clipped some of her sentences and added more vivid color to incidents here and there, but the result was still a delight and a joy to an author’s heart. Wouldn’t the girls be excited when they saw it! Doubtless the regular college copy was already being doubled over its holder in the reading-room. Her boy friends would be mightily interested too, and could never again sneer over the mild lemonade fun that girls had together. She hoped that she could make her next article quite as thrilling. Of course it would be about Trig Ceremonies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ah! in the beatitude of actually being a successful writer, she was forgetting her scheme of inflicting vengeance upon the sophomores. No wonder geniuses like Ruth were occasionally absent-minded! she must surely attend to this episode of the freshman revenge at once, for she would need to use it in her article. Perhaps she could also bring in a really pathetic account of the Hallowe’en cruelty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The peace of Saturday afternoon was brooding over the deserted corridors, when a nimble young person stole down to the bulletin board on the second floor and posted a placard with cautious speed. After one fond lingering exultant glance flung back over her shoulder at the staring black letters outlined in red ink, she fled from the scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three minutes later a little figure wearing a scarlet coat and woolly tam-o’shanter sped down the stairs in the most distant section of the building. Out over the winding paths between high walls of snow she hurried skipping and swinging her arms in reckless disregard for a judicious conservation of energy. A sociable dog crouching at the Lodge gates responded with yelping joy to her invitation to race. Away they scampered along the hedge to the pines, where half-a-dozen freshmen conscientiously taking a walk paused to laugh at the pranks of the rollicking pair. When Myra sprang to reach the boughs bending overhead and shook the fluffy white burden down into their protesting faces, they started to pursue her, on vengeance intent. But ploughing through the deep snow she taunted them to follow from the safely trodden way. Then up through the orchard and out upon Sunset Hill she skimmed gleefully. There under the evergreens, with the wide white world spread below her, she bubbled over with singing and shouting and sweet high-pitched yodeling that made the small dog sit up on his haunches in dismay and join in with a howl. It was probably the best he could do in howls, and doubtless answered its purpose; for Myra doubled up and dropped on a snowy bench to giggle to her heart’s content, before trotting back, breathless and rosy and eager, with dancing eyes and dimpling mouth, to the triumph that she knew must surely by this time be awaiting her in front of the bulletin board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Upon reaching the building she was smitten by an extraordinary attack of shyness at thought of the rejoicing and congratulation about to shower upon her. She could almost feel the hearty kisses, the clutch of arms around her neck, the enthusiastic pats. She could almost hear them say that Myra Dickinson was bright enough even if she had flunked in Latin and math.’ Very likely they would give her a vote of thanks from the class for so brilliantly rescuing them from utter discomfiture before the enemy. Blushing in anticipation Myra slipped in at a side door and stole up the narrow stairs of the transverse. At the second floor she could not forbear to peek around the corner in the direction of the bulletin board. Yes, there certainly was a crowd of girls gathered before it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Myra crept light-footed up to the fourth story, tweaked her tam straight^ brushed the quiver from her happy lips, tried to drive the delighted twinkle from her eyes \u2014 and marched down the corridor. At the window opposite their alleyway Lydia was standing in the center of an excited group of freshmen. The little figure in red sauntered nonchalantly up to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Isn’t it the most disgraceful thing!” exclaimed someone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lydia spoke in a voice rather deeper and more quick-toned than usual. “You say that there is a notice posted on the bulletin board, telling the main secret of the Trig Ceremonies, and that everybody suspects our class of having done it?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Yes, and isn’t it the most underhanded thing to find out a secret and then publish it anonymously like that? That person, whoever she may be, had no right even to know it, let alone tell it”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The juniors are going to call a meeting to disclaim having any hand in the affair. The seniors will probably do the same. The freshmen of course are the most natural suspects because the Ceremonies are directed chiefly against us. If we don’t follow the example of the other classes, they will be sure we did it. Isn’t it perfectly horrible! Prexie says it is the most dishonorable deed ever committed in this college.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here fair-minded Lydia protested in the name of common sense. “Prexie has just returned from New York fifteen minutes ago, girls, and he isn’t likely to have heard a word about it yet. I passed him in the vestibule and he looked too anxious and angry over more important matters to trouble concerning this right away. However that does not alter our difficulty. I cannot believe that any freshman has had the tip of a finger in this outrage. We certainly do not wish to be mixed up in such a scandal. I shall summon a meeting \u2014 “<\/p>\n\n\n\n “And pass resolutions,” broke in another, “Call the roll and deny it by name. We could pledge ourselves to assist in detecting the criminal.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Coward! To watch the blame falling on us!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “A sneak! That’s what she is! A sneak and a spy and a thief! I can’t believe that a freshman did it. Ostracism would be too good for her. Expulsion \u2014 “<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Myra! Lydia! Quick!” Elinor came flying down the corridor in a passion of excitement that had broken down the barriers of her usual reserve. “Girls, have you seen the paper? It’s all over town. The newsboys are crying it on the corners. It’s an article about Washington’s Birthday \u2014 the rebellion against being deprived of a holiday, the funeral procession, the charivari, the white-cap notes, everything! It’s cooked up \u2014 colored in the yellowest way \u2014 the most sensational \u2014 it gives an impression of us \u2014 of the college \u2014 oh, such a shameful untrue impression! Prexie is almost down sick over it. He has sent for Ruth. That’s the paper which she writes for. I saw her going into the office. Lydia, what shall we do? She will be exp \u2014 “<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then Elinor caught sight of Myra’s face. “Oh!” she moaned, flinging out her hands helplessly, ” oh, oh, oh, Myra!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Yes,” said Myra, ” I did it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the stillness, Elinor pulled herself together, straightened her shoulders, and glanced from one excited face to another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “\u2014 with my little hatchet,” she murmured, and began to laugh hysterically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Myra looked at her and smiled. Myra was always lovely about appreciating a joke. But it was an agonized little smile and flickered in an unsteady fashion as if annoyed by the quivering of the round chin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I \u2014 I cannot tell a lie.” She half raised one hand toward her throat. It felt so queer and choked. “I wrote the article and I posted the notice about the wedding too. I \u2014 I \u2014 I \u2014 am going to see Prexie now.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n She walked away bravely enough before all the eyes. Nevertheless late that evening, after the Ceremonies had sparkled to their pyrotechnic close, through the wedding and everything even to the apparition of a green cheesecloth gown upon the actor who represented the freshman class, Myra escaped into her own room at the earliest available moment. When Elinor patted her comfortingly upon the head, she tried to smile, but gulped instead. At the touch of a caressing arm, her lip quivered irresistibly. She thrust out both hands to push Elinor away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, don’t!” she wailed, “now you’e d-done it! I’m g-g-going to have a b-b-b-big howl.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n And Elinor very wisely let her howl undisturbed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Myra was not expelled, although the narrowness of her escape proved a wholesome tonic to her conscience in future conduct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Prexie did not actually mention the charivari and the midyear examinations or noise in the corridors or cutting late or neglecting to ask permission for drives without a chaperon and for dinners in town and visits to New York and incidents like that, but he looked as if he knew all about every thing, and I was scared stiff. Ruthie talked up for me in the noblest way and said I was impulsive and meant well and didn’t stop to think and \u2014 and \u2014 “<\/p>\n\n\n\n “And what?” asked Elinor who was lying languidly on the couch while Myra dressed for dinner on this April evening. She was recovering from an attack of the “grip” and felt listless in every fibre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “And \u2014 um-m \u2014 that \u2014 that I was young yet.” Myra brought out the dreadful accusation with explosive force and hurriedly dropped a fresh white petticoat over her head to conceal her blushes. “I shall be seventeen in June,” she added in an injured tone, “and a sophomore. That is, I hope I’ll be a sophomore. The girls say that the June exams aren’t near so unpleasant as the January ones, and sometimes when it is very hot Mrs. Vernon passes around lemonade while they write. I wonder if the weather will be hot this year.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, dear! If only I can stick it out till the end! Mother will be so disappointed if I have to give in. Myra, did you ever wake up in the morning and lie there thinking about the bother of dressing till you want to cry, and real tears slide down on the pillow? And all the while you’re listening and listening to hear the horrible whir and clangor of that awful gong. And the other girls \u2014 specially Lydia \u2014 bustle to and fro, banging windows, slamming doors, thumping thud-thud-thud with such exasperating energy that \u2014 that \u2014 and Ruth’s shoes squeak \u2014 “<\/p>\n\n\n\n “‘Cause they’re cheap,” interrupted Myra, “she’s truly poor, and you know it. She isn’t sure yet if she can return to college next year. When the notice about those students who required aid was posted, she sent in a written application for a scholarship. Prexie summoned her to an interview half an hour ago. If he thinks she isn’t worth helping, she’ll have to go back to teaching. Dear old Ruthie! I wish I had a million dollars!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “How eccentric of you!” murmured Elinor; “now most people consider eight hundred thousand plenty. Half a thousand would carry Ruth through next year, and when she’s a junior she can tutor and earn money in other ways. It would cost her less if she roomed in a boarding-house instead of a dormitory.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Why, Elinor! Didn’t you know that we are all four going to room together again? We’re planning to live in a firewall study next year. Of course we may not get it, but we decided to draw for one, you know we did.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I didn’t,” said Elinor; “I never said a word when the rest of you were discussing it. I do not wish to hurt anybody’s feelings, but you may as well know now as any time that I have not the slightest intention of rooming with Ruth Allee another year.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “But Ruth wants to,” exclaimed Myra; “she said she would if Prexie gives her a scholarship.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “And I don’t want to,” responded Elinor, tranquilly, “so that makes us even. Anyhow,” she raised herself among the pillows in the energy of this new idea, “I really owe it to my mother to seek conditions that shall be as little of a nervous strain as possible. A genius is a difficult sort of a person \u2014 everybody says so. She gets on my nerves. I dare say \u2014 I’m almost sure \u2014 that’s one reason I broke down like this. How can I do good work if I am continually irritated? In fact, it may be the wisest plan for each of us to draw for a single room.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “What!” Myra twirled about on her heels so swiftly that she went too far and was obliged to reverse before securing a steady line of vision in the required direction. “Live in singles! You don’t want to room with me?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elinor raised a handful of silken fringe and brushed away a smile. Now she had the rattlepate on another track, and they could leave Ruth out of the question. “If just you and I could go into a double, why, of course, I’d love to choose that. But maybe it would be better to draw for singles, and then we could trade for a double later, if we wished; or we might choose rooms in the same neighborhood with the rest of the girls we like. We could hang porti\u00e8res and keep our doors open into the corridor and have chairs out there and tables and flowers, as if it were a private house. We might call it the Sophomore Haven \u2014 “<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, goodie!” Myra clapped her hands. “You have the loveliest ideas \u2014 “<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Girls,” Lydia came sailing into the study, “the class is to meet in the lecture room after Chapel tonight to draw for rooms. The seniors have taken four of the most desirable firewalls, and Ruth was wondering if \u2014 “<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Enter the villain!” announced Ruth, in her gruffest tones, as she flung wide the door and stalked in. Elinor glanced up quickly at the ring of a new note of exultation under the gruffness. An inner flame of joy was shining behind the mobile features. Myra gave one look, and then began to jump up and down, with her long braid hugged to her breast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, oh, oh! I know! Prexie says that you deserve a scholarship. You can come back next year. You needn’t go back to teaching right away. We shall all be sophomores together. Tell us this instant what he said about your work.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ruth carefully selected a chair and sat down with provoking deliberation. Her suspense since applying for aid had culminated in the strain of the actual interview with the president. His cordial assurance that she was worth much more than four hundred dollars a year to the institution had lifted her from the valley to the mountain-top. The past half-hour of bounding, whirling delight in the shadowy solitude of the pines beyond the garden had exhausted the remnant of her frail strength.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “He said,” she answered, “that my work in `math’ had not been so excel \u2014 um-m \u2014 I mean, so good as it might be.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n In blissful ignorance of discriminating adjectives, Myra clasped her braid closer. “Just like me!” she sighed; “my work in `math’ has not been so good as it might be, either. I’m so flattered \u2014 “<\/p>\n\n\n\n “And we’re so proud,” put in Elinor, hastily, her accent on the adverb somewhat over-emphasized, “but not one bit surprised.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ruth sent her a keen glance, opened her mouth as if about to speak, and then apparently changed her mind and smiled instead. Elinor smiled back a little uncertainly, for she never could tell just how transparent she was before this embarrassing person. To be sure, she was proud of Ruth’s success, but that was not the whole truth by any means. If Prexie had refused the scholarship, she and Myra and Lydia could have chosen a parlor for three the next year. Far be it from her to have caused Ruth such a disappointment, in case the decision had rested with her; still, if he had said no, there would have been one or two compensations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “To-night I shall draw for a choice in firewalls,” began Lydia, briskly, as she put in place the three hairs that had daringly gone astray upon her satiny head, “and if I chance to fail \u2014 “<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Elinor wants us all to try for singles,” interrupted Myra, “and have a Sophomore Haven, porti\u00e8res, chairs in the corridor, everything sociable and homelike. She says \u2014 “<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Don’t you agree with me, Lydia?” Elinor sat up in her eagerness to snatch the reins of the conversation from Myra’s erratic fingers. “Ever so many intend to draw for firewalls, and we won’t have any choice at all, even if we don’t get a blank first thing. Singles are always in demand. If we win good numbers in them, we can trade later for doubles or a parlor and a single. It will be much preferable, I think.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I’d rather take a single,” said Ruth; “Prexie says I ought to make an effort with mathematics, and I can’t concentrate with noise and talk around me, and people running in and out. I’m such an old poke!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Why didn’t you say so before,” cried Elinor, impetuously, “and saved the fuss?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Fuss?” echoed Ruth; “what fuss? I’m afraid I wasn’t thinking much about anything but getting back. The room doesn’t really matter, you know. Any place will do, provided we manage to come back somehow or other. At the end of the interview with Prexie, he mentioned a room in Music Hall perhaps, if the regular dormitories are crowded.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Music Hall!” exclaimed Myra, appalled, “with smells from the laboratory drifting around and pianos drumming away at all hours! A room away off from everywhere and all the fun! I hope you enlightened him.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I told him that I didn’t care,” replied Ruth, happily, “and I don’t, you know \u2014 that is, comparatively I don’t. It’s pleasanter to be near my friends and the library, of course. I fancy he proposed it simply as a test to learn if I wished to come back for the essentials or the conveniences. Afterward he said that I might take part in the drawing to-night.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I guess he’d better!” growled Myra.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Girls!” Ruth clasped her thin hands in rare exaltation. “I’m coming back to college. Do you understand? One \u2014 two \u2014 three years more of study! Three years of books and friends and beautiful things! No need to have lingered so wistfully last October for farewell glimpses of golden trees and scarlet vines and the lake lying like a jewel in its radiant setting! No need to lean from my window so often to gaze at the gracious hills and distant purple mountains, hoarding the vision of them for future days in the land of level prairies! No need to stretch out longing arms to hold back the dear days of this precious year that is slipping away so fast!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “No need at all!” assented Myra, joyously; “you’re coming back to college. And so am I and so is everybody. That’s exactly how I feel about it. There’s the dinner gong now, and it is ice-cream night, and next year ice-cream night will keep on revolving week after week, and pretty soon we’ll be seniors.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I have been considering your suggestion, Elinor,” announced Lydia, as she rose from her seat, “and I have decided that it will indeed be wiser to draw for singles to-night, although roommates are said to be excellent discipline and good for the character.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “But why inflict it upon yourself?” murmured Elinor. “Job didn’t.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I think Job lacked executive ability,” spoke up Myra, with unexpected astuteness, “else why did he sit on that ash-heap so long?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Because,” laughed Elinor, for somehow it was easier to laugh at this point in the discussion, “he didn’t have the luck to live in America.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Myra took up the thread again after Chapel, when the freshmen were pressing on across the corridor into the lecture room. “American girls are the luckiest persons on this round earth. Little boys are always getting scolded and sent home from the toy-shops at Christmas time, and men won’t let them hook on behind their sleds, but they let the little girls. And girls are petted and praised and get their own way. And \u2014 oh, Elinor \u2014 I know I am going to draw a blank! I know it! I know it! And I shall die if I do, I know I shall. It won’t be any wonder if I never pass in trigonometry, with roommates disturbing me every minute. It is such a comfort to believe that I might not have flunked in `math’ if I had lived in a single this year.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Is it?” repeated Elinor, absently; “well, I’d cling to that conviction, if I were you. Some species of belief are apt to be slippery.” Then she dodged as nimbly as she could in the crush.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was not an outwardly tragic scene \u2014 that room thronged with eager young faces, some vivid in the white glow of the gas-burners near the front, others softly luminous in shadowy corners or showing as a dim fringe of heads against the pale wall. When the principal’s assistant rose to request those desiring singles to come forward, it seemed to excited Myra as if half the class were on their feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Aiai!” she wailed, under her breath, “aiai, “woe is me! There’ll be about forty blanks, because the seniors took so many singles that fewer than usual were left for the under classes. Maybe we’ll have to go into a firewall after all.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Hurry, Myra! Get into line at the platform. Lydia and Ruth are away ahead of us. Now keep cool and don’t snatch when it is your turn to thrust your hand into that fatal black bag. I think she said there are only sixteen blanks.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Sixteen!” moaned Myra, “and this is my unlucky year!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Ah! Watch! Lydia has drawn a slip. Oh, Myra!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “What? Quick! Oh! It’s a blank.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elinor broke into a nervous bubble of laughter. “Isn’t her expression funny! Astonished and sort of injured, as if she had deserved better of the jealous fates. The girl behind her drew number two, and then the next has what? Did you catch it? Thirty-five. Now for Ruth!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It’s another blank. Poor Ruthie! I’ll give her my choice if I get one. Elinor, my knees feel so queer and wobbly. See! that girl drew ten and that one twenty-three. Nobody has first choice yet, has anybody? Behold! Just watch me! I’m a magician. Ho, for number \u2014 “<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elinor bent forward in anxiety and grasped her wrist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ” \u2014 number nothing! I told you it was my unlucky year. We’ll have to go into a firewall all together.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then for one black minute Elinor lost her head. She forgot that even if she too drew a blank, they would still have a chance at the doubles, and she could pair off with Myra. She had eyes only for a vision of another endless year in a firewall study, with Ruth’s ramshackle desk and yellow paper flowers straggling over a glaring chromo, with Ruth herself continually passing and repassing, brushing against her, laying a hand on her sleeve, or staring at her silently from the corners. So Elinor reached into the black bag desperately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Hurry! You’re fumbling around in there a mighty long time,” whispered Myra, “wouldn’t it be a joke if you pulled out a blank too?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The pupils of Elinor’s eyes had contracted and the iris looked curiously veiled as if a film had thickened in front of it. She did not turn toward Myra, but held her slip as far away as possible in the opposite direction. She glanced first at one side, then at the other, before crumpling it in her hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It’s a blank \u2014 a \u2014 b-b-blank,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Crackie!” muttered Myra in an awed voice, “four blanks in our crowd! The fates have got it in for us this time. Clotho, Atropos \u2014 who is the other one? It’s a conspiracy. Let me see yours.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n But when she stretched out her arm, Elinor evaded her. “No! Yes, I’11 show it to you after we get out of this crush. Come, sit down.” She dropped rather limply on a bench near by. “I suppose we’ll need to wait till the drawing is finished. There’s Lydia. Call her so that we can \u2014 can consult. Call \u2014 call Ruth.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “How queer and wobbly your voice sounds. It’s like my knees. Do give me that slip of yours. I want the four blanks for my memory-bill. What made you crease it all up like that? I can hardly unroll it without tearing. Why!” she gasped, “why, why, lookee here! You drew two slips by mistake!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Did I?” murmured Elinor faintly, “d-did I?” She inhaled a tremulous breath and jumped up in gushing dismay. “Did I? How perfectly awful! Two slips, and I thought it was a blank because they were close together, face to face, of course. Won’t the girls be provoked \u2014 those that have good numbers this time!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Why?” asked Myra mechanically, her fingers clutching the slips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Because \u2014 oh, because this is an error. It will throw out the whole drawing; There won’t be any paper left for the last girl in the row. So we’ll have to do it all over again. I \u2014 I’ve heard of mistakes like that. To think it is my fault!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “You didn’t mean to do it,” said Myra comfortingly, “never mind. It’s the luckiest mistake for us that ever happened.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The slips must have been stuck together,” said Elinor. Her breath was coming fast and short. “They \u2014 must have been stuck \u2014 stuck together.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Tingalingaling!” jangled the bell at the desk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Young ladies!” announced the assistant, “I regret to say that there has been some error made in the drawing, as no slip remains for the last applicant. I am forced to ask you to return all numbers to the bag and try again. Did anyone chance to draw two slips by mistake?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n For an instant of panic, Elinor glanced around wildly; then she seized Myra’s elbow and glided forward to acknowledge that she had been to blame \u2014 and she was sorry, so awfully, awfully sorry! It was all her fault. Would the girls ever forgive her?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Immediately she was pounced upon and gratefully squeezed by the girls who had won poor numbers or none at all. The possessor of first choice raised a half humorous, half earnest wail for sympathy. Others appeared disappointed or hopeful. The majority indeed were hopeful, because unless a girl has the very best there is always the chance that she may gain a better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the second drawing Lydia found an eleven on her slip, and Ruth rejoiced in a five. Myra and Elinor again were rewarded by blanks, and tried for a double together. In this they succeeded in obtain ing a three, and went dancing down the corridor to visit the various rooms on the list of those set apart for the incoming sophomore class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Oh, Elinor, dear Elinor!” chanted Myra rapturously, “everything happens just exactly right. Aren’t we happy, happy, happy! Ruth has a single and now she can wrestle with `math’ and write her poems and be editor by-and-bye. Lydia has a single to reign in and have committee meetings and be an example and so forth. It won’t make any difference to her whether we cut late or whistle or forget to dust or leave our beds airing all day, because we’ll be in a sweet little double all by our own selves \u2014 you and I, dear lovely charming Elinor. We shall choose a new dormitory and have two bright bedrooms and a study with windows and a lattice maybe. Oh, Elinor, you darling! I love you to distraction, and often when you aren’t near enough to hug, I wish you were twins.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elinor stirred uneasily. “Will you always love me, Myra, no matter what I do? Suppose I should do something mean and wicked and \u2014 and dishonest? Suppose you should discover some day that I am not near so \u2014 so nice as I ought to be? Suppose \u2014 suppose you have idealized me, and really inside I’m \u2014 horrid?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I shan’t suppose any such thing!” exclaimed Myra indignantly, “you never did think enough of yourself. What you need is a little proper self-esteem. You^re the best and sweetest and finest girl in the whole class. And I love you, and Ruth loves you, and everybody loves you. So there! You ought to be ashamed to slander yourself!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n EUnor paused at a window and pressed her forehead against the pane. “See that star hanging above the point of the evergreen over yonder,” she said softly, “nice star, isn’t it? Nice big bright star! Maybe I’ll decide to elect astronomy next year. It’s a snap course.” She reached down one hand and held Myra’s arm closer around her waist ” Myra, you’re a dear.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I do wish you were twins,” whispered Myra.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “If I should ever meet another girl just like me,” said Elinor slowly, “with the same thoughts and feelings and \u2014 and everything, I should hate her. Mean, selfish, deceitful \u2014 a cheat!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Hush!” Myra closed her mouth. “You’re tired out and nervous and blue after the excitement. I feel reaction myself at times. I shan’t listen. And I do wish you were twins. So there!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I should despise her,” said Elinor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chapter I The Two Little Girls who Laughed “I don’t want to \u2014 I don’t want to \u2014 I don’t want to \u2014 go to college \u2014 go to college \u2014 go to college. I don’t want to \u2014 go to college.” The words chanted themselves monotonously over and over in Elinor’s brain, keeping time…<\/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-729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chapter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/victoriana\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729","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=729"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/victoriana\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":811,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/victoriana\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729\/revisions\/811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/victoriana\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/victoriana\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/victoriana\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}That will do,' she said,<\/code>Go on.’ Then I had to explain how she had warned us the other day not to allow our work to master us, driving us on like packhorses beneath the rod of an inflexible quota. I told her that I had not found it convenient to translate beyond the foot of the page.”<\/p>\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
GREEN CAPS AND GOWNS<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/earlywithdrawal.net\/tolton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/myra.png\")
Chapter IV<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
A Mysterious Disappearance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"They told her not to worry,
Nor sit up to cram,
Nor feel a sense of hurry
In taking her exam.
And so she did not worry,
Nor study hard, nor cram,
Nor feel a sense of hurry \u2014
And she failed in her exam!\"<\/pre>\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Being a Genius<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Chapter VI<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Fatal Black Bag<\/h2>\n\n\n\n