Part 10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Of course.”

“Well, it seems that Somers Brown is up for one of those Greek letter societies,—I’ve forgotten which, and part of the programme, the novitiate, or whatever they call it, is for him to bring a book-plate away from the Radcliffe Library by means of some bluff. He wasn’t to get it by breaking and entering, but he was to have it freely given to him by some one in the college. So he decided to rig up as an Englishman, and call himself a descendant of Anne Radcliffe’s family, and—”

“I know,” said Polly, smiling.

“Oh, then you saw him? Perhaps it was you who gave him the book-plate?”

“Not I,” replied Polly, “although I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Radcliffe.”

“Surely neither the Dean nor the Librarian gave it to him.”

“No, indeed! It was Annabel. He ran across her when he started on his search for information. Poor Annabel, she believed every word he said, although she prides herself so on her insight. She gave him any amount of information about Harvard as well as about Radcliffe. But then, he really had an English accent.”

“Oh, yes, but imagine Annabel’s rage when she finds that she has been imposed on! I shouldn’t like to break the news to her.”

“But she ought to know.”

“Well, it isn’t our duty to tell her. Let us see what happens.”

The outcome was that Annabel the next morning was ready to tell the Dean of the honor paid the college by the visit of Mr. Radcliffe. “He is willing to make researches in England regarding Lady Moulson herself, and I should not be surprised if he should found a scholarship for us. From what he said I judge that he has a large estate in England, and he seems deeply interested in Radcliffe, especially after hearing my account of things.”

Julia happened to be the girl to whom Annabel had begun to unfold her great expectations from Mr. Radcliffe.

“But haven’t you heard the true story?” she asked.

“Why, no, what do you mean? What true story?”

“Why, Polly told me, she and Clarissa.”

Annabel began to lose her usual placidity. She suspected a practical joke.

“Why, who was—that is, wasn’t he—”

“No,” replied Julia, “at least as I understand it, he wasn’t a Radcliffe. It was a test quiz, you know, for one of the college societies.”

“Then who was the man?”

“His name was Brown, Somers Brown. He was ordered to get some girl he didn’t know to show him through Fay House, and to bring away a new book-plate to prove that he had been in the Library. At least that is as I understood the story from Clarissa.”

It would have been better had Julia not mentioned Clarissa’s name. Annabel turned from white to red and from red to white. Like most persons with a fair amount of self-love, she regarded a practical joke as almost unbearable. She remembered how Polly had stood about in the hall while she was talking with the Englishman, and she felt not unnaturally aggrieved. Beyond the change of color and a certain increase of dignity, Annabel did not express her feelings. “When there is any mischief brewing Polly and Clarissa are pretty sure to be in it,” she said. Then she moved off with a smile hardly less amiable than the one she usually wore, before Julia could explain that Polly and Clarissa had really had nothing to do with the visit of the pseudo Mr. Radcliffe, to Fay House. The story, however, had widely circulated, and most of those who knew Annabel, even her friends, were highly entertained that one who so prided herself on her insight should have been thus imposed upon.

“I saw Somers Brown walking about with Annabel yesterday, and I wondered why he held up his hand as if to enjoin silence on me. I had no idea that he was moving about under false colors. I can see, though, how he might impose on any one as an Englishman. He has lived abroad a great deal, and he really has an accent. Now that I think of it, his get-up yesterday was rather amusing, the plaids in his suit were so very plaid, and he used his monocle so steadily—and that cane!”

“He is so well known in Boston and Cambridge society that I wonder Annabel did not recognize him. I supposed that she knew everybody—at least by sight,” said one girl, sarcastically.

But so far as words were concerned, no one ever knew exactly how Annabel felt. An observer, however, might have noticed that from this time her demeanor toward Clarissa and Polly was far less cordial.

The book-plate episode led to a revival of interest in the story of Anne Radcliffe. Girls who had never heard just how the name came to be chosen for their college began to inform themselves more exactly.

XV ANGELINA

Late one afternoon as Julia sat in her study, the maid, rapping at her door, announced, “A young girl to see you.”

“Didn’t she give her name?”

“No, she is—well, she is a young person.”

“Show her up, please,” and Julia, stepping outside, soon saw Angelina coming up the stairs.

“Why, what brought you so far this cold day, Angelina?” she asked in greeting her.

“Well, Miss Julia,” she replied from the depths of an easy-chair in which she had immediately seated herself, “well, I did have a time getting here. You see I started this morning, and I told my mother not to worry if I didn’t come home to-night. I knew you’d make room for me, and there’s things I want to talk over that I couldn’t write.”

Julia had not heard from the Rosas since the Christmas vacation, when she had spared a day to visit them and take a basket of presents.

“I wasn’t sure that you wanted me to come to Cambridge,” said Angelina. “I don’t remember your ever inviting me, but ever since I heard you were at college I’ve been anxious to see what it was like. I thought that colleges were just for men?”

“Oh, no, for girls, too, in these days.”

“I think I’d like to go to college myself,” said Angelina, with a sidelong glance at Julia, “but I don’t suppose that I’ll have the chance.”

Julia shook her head. “Angelina, you may not go to college, but you know that we wish you to go on with your studies. I am sorry that there is no evening school at Shiloh.”

“That’s just it,” responded Angelina, “that’s just what I wanted to talk about. I don’t feel as if I cared much for Shiloh; it’s terribly quiet there in the winter after the summer people are gone. I can’t seem to think that I want to stay there all the time.”

“Your mother must decide that. Are you not needed at home?” asked Julia weakly, knowing that Mrs. Rosa had very little authority over her children, and that she was only too ready to refer all difficult questions to Julia and Miss South.

“Well, my mother _does_ kind of depend on me,” said Angelina. She did not care to admit that she was of too little consequence in the household. “But still she _could_ get along without me. The boys help considerable after school. I don’t think I’m appreciated; I’m not perfectly happy,” and Angelina drew out her handkerchief, to be ready for any tears that her self-pity might start.

“I cannot encourage you to leave Shiloh,” said Julia. “You are not sixteen, and you are not strong enough, I am sure, to go out to work. You would not find it half as pleasant to work in a strange family as you find it now at home; and should you get a place in town, you could not possibly earn enough to pay your board.”

Angelina applied the handkerchief to two or three invisible tears.

“Now, Angelina,” added Julia, “I will do what I can. I will write to Miss South. She can tell much better than I what is best. You spoke about going to college. That, at present, is out of the question. But is there any special thing that you would like to study?”

At first Angelina made no reply. Then she replied rather petulantly, “I hadn’t thought of studying anything in particular, only I don’t care much to stay in Shiloh this winter, and that’s the truth.”

By her manner as well as by her words, Julia saw that Angelina was likely to give her and Miss South more or less trouble. They had assumed a certain responsibility in regard to the Rosas, and they could not easily shake it off.

During their two years in Shiloh the Rosas had seemed to be contented. They had never before been so prosperous. Instead of the two crowded tenement rooms they had a neat little cottage, which had been put in perfect order for them. In the course of the two years, to be sure, the newness and freshness had decidedly worn off, as Julia had observed to her regret when she called there in December. But their Shiloh home was infinitely more comfortable than any home they could have had in Boston. Mrs. Rosa’s health had failed in the city, but she had so improved now that she was able to earn a fair part of the family income. The rest of it was made up in various ways. Miss South and Julia paid the rent of the little house. Nora and Brenda and Edith had charge of a fund made up of their own savings and contributions from their friends. Since she had so cleverly recovered the money stolen from Mrs. Rosa by Miguel Silva, Brenda felt that she could be very liberal to the Rosas.

The fund was Mrs. Rosa’s dependence for food and fuel. Part of her fuel was gathered by the older children in the woods, and a small vegetable garden supplied not only summer vegetables, but something towards their winter needs.

In season Angelina earned her board and a dollar a week at a summer boarding-house. This she was allowed to handle under Miss South’s supervision, and she had already started a bank-book. The sum in the bank, however, was very small, for Angelina had availed herself to the utmost of Miss South’s permission to use part of her own money for clothes. Suitable garments were chosen each year by Brenda and her friends from their own stock of discarded clothes, which, altered, answered for Angelina. But shoes and hats and some other things Angelina insisted on buying from her own savings, and in consequence the amount in the bank showed small increase. Mrs. Rosa herself had once worked at tailoring, and so she was able to remodel the garments given her for her boys. In the case of so helpless a family, neither Miss South nor Julia felt that they were likely to do harm by fairly liberal gifts. They had removed Mrs. Rosa from the city where she might have had regular relief from various charitable societies, from her church and from the Overseers if from no more. They had made her understand that all that she received from private individuals was conditioned on the care she showed in bringing up her family,—that it was a kind of reward of merit. Thus far all the people interested in the Rosas had been gratified by their progress, and Julia knew that Miss South had some plans for Angelina which might make the girl more contented. Ever since summer, however, Miss South had been occupied with the care of her aged grandmother, Madame Dulaunay, and she had been unable to do more for the Rosas than write to them and see that they received their money regularly. That very week she had started for Florida with Madame Dulaunay, and Julia saw she must make plans for Angelina. She was beginning to be so busy now preparing for the examinations that she hardly saw how she could spare much thought or energy for the young girl. Behind these thoughts was a background of disappointment that Angelina had so quickly tired of Shiloh.

“You must tell me what you especially wish to do, or to study,” she said.

“Yes’m,” responded Angelina, too much interested in a box of photographs on the table to reply with her usual loquacity.

“Then there _is_ something?” Julia questioned.

“Well, nothing in particular. I wouldn’t mind living at the North End again. It’s livelier than Shiloh.”

“But surely,” said Julia, “you are all much more comfortable at Shiloh than you could possibly be at the North End.”

“I don’t know,” rejoined Angelina. “I don’t feel so very comfortable at Shiloh. I ain’t busy enough, and I ain’t idle enough really to enjoy it.”

Julia understood Angelina, poorly though she had expressed her meaning.

“Does your mother know where you are to-night? Won’t she be worried if you stay away so late?”

“I told her that I was coming to Cambridge to see you. She’ll know that you will look out for me.”

“When you next come to Cambridge you must start earlier. It is altogether too late for you to go home now. I will have a bed made for you on this divan, and to-morrow you can go back to Shiloh.”

“Oh, thank you,” cried Angelina, her face beaming at the thought of a night away from Shiloh.

“Now, I’ll tell you, Angelina, what I propose to do. I will see if your mother will let you come to Cambridge once a week. There is one day when I am not very busy. I can probably arrange to have you sleep in this house. I will pay your way over here and give you your meals. In return I shall expect you to do whatever mending Miss Roberts and I have ready for you. Besides, I will give you a lesson to study at home, and each Wednesday I will hear you recite it and show you how to study.”

Angelina both looked and spoke her thanks. “I don’t see how you ever came to think of anything so beautiful.”

“I am glad that you like it,” responded Julia, “and I hope that you will do your best to help carry it out.”

Angelina chose history as her subject of study, and as she had had American History at school, Julia began with a little outline of the World’s History.

It was a good plan and it worked very well. Shiloh evidently had not given Angelina enough to do in winter, and it was well for her to have an interest outside her home. Yet her mother needed her help to a certain extent, and it would have been a mistake to encourage Angelina to work entirely outside of the house. The weekly visit kept Julia in closer touch with the Rosa family than would otherwise have been possible, and this in itself was a good thing. Then, too, she gained deeper insight into Angelina’s character than she could have gained in any other way.

She engaged a small room from Mrs. Colton where Angelina slept when in Cambridge, and in it she placed a wicker-work table with a large basket and all the appliances for mending stockings, sewing on buttons, and the simple repairing of which Angelina was capable.

“I have always heard,” said Ruth, who shared in the advantages of Angelina’s services, “that lazy people take the most pains; for, honestly, it would save you time and money to do your own mending, and let me do mine, rather than have all this bother with Angelina.”

“Oh, it’s a good thing for me, too,” replied Julia. “Our great danger here in college is in thinking that we have no duties except those connected with our studies, as if the only thing worth living for were to get ‘A’ or ‘B’ in some course.”

“I know girls who wouldn’t think ‘B’ worth living for,” retorted Ruth, “but I agree with you that there is always a danger that we may be too narrow in our interests. That’s why I am glad that so many girls are taking an interest in the operetta. In doing it they will be assisting the fund for the North End reading-room, which is calculated to do an immense amount of good. You have no idea, Julia, what a success the operetta will be.”

“I hope so.” Julia spoke absent-mindedly. A plan that Miss South had suggested for Angelina and girls of her kind was running through her mind. But she knew that until she should leave college there would be little chance of carrying it into effect. She would have been glad to work with some of the organized charities, but she felt that college must claim the most of her time. Comparatively few of her classmates, however, were without some bit of philanthropic work. Several taught Sunday-school classes. Several others gave an evening a week to some Boys’ or Girls’ Club in Boston or Cambridge. The Emmanuel Society, so named for John Harvard’s College, had regular meetings before which appeared various organizations, who made clear their claims to the support of thoughtful young women. The College Settlements appealed strongly to the undergraduate, and a chapter to raise money for the work had been formed at Radcliffe. The Emmanuel Society supported an annual scholarship, and maintained a library of text-books to be lent to students who could not afford to buy all the expensive books needed in their courses.

Julia and Ruth and Clarissa, and even Pamela, contributed something to the various causes that appealed to Radcliffe girls, for time as well as money was asked for.

When her aunt remonstrated with Julia for giving too much thought and time to Angelina, Julia replied that she believed that the time would not be altogether thrown away.

“Now that I know that Angelina needs help and advice, I should feel it wrong to give her up.”

“If she appreciates it,” said Mrs. Barlow doubtfully.

“Oh, I’m sure that she will,” responded Julia cheerfully. “Besides, she really is of some use to me and Ruth.”

Yet there were times when Angelina’s little vagaries were hard to overcome. She was, for example, very fond of newspaper reading, and the advertisements seemed to have a special charm for her.

“Oh, Miss Julia,” she said one day, “I do wish that I could have a bottle of this,” and she pointed to an advertisement of “The Pearl of Beauty.” “They say,” continued Angelina, “that it will make the sallowest complexion a delicate pink. Now, Miss Julia, you know that I’m as sallow as most Portuguese, and I do wish that ‘The Pearl of Beauty’ did not cost so much; it’s a dollar a bottle. But one of the boarders at Shiloh asked me last summer if I wasn’t a colored person—kind of light-colored, and that wasn’t pleasant.”

But Julia, unmoved by this, explained that it was unwise to believe every newspaper advertisement.

“But look at this,” pointing to the lithographed lady who held a placard in her hands on which were printed words of praise of the beautifier. “‘Look at me, please. I once was dark as night, but now am fair as a lily of the valley.’ That shows that she must have improved,” said the confiding Angelina, reading the closing words: “‘Beauty is a duty.’ Oh! I wish that I could have a bottle.”

“It would be throwing money away, and I should be very much displeased with you. Remember,” added Julia, “that advertisements are written simply to induce people to buy the thing advertised.”

“Don’t they tell the truth?” and Angelina looked utterly surprised. “I always believe every word I read.”

“You have a great deal to learn, Angelina, and I do hope that you will remember what I have said about patent medicines.”

One Wednesday, a week or two later, Julia found Angelina standing before the mirror in the little room with a bottle in her hand.

“What are you doing?” she asked, suspecting the truth, and Angelina, starting guiltily, dropped the bottle, and a pinkish fluid poured out on the light carpet. As the bottle lay there, Julia read the words “Pearl of Beauty” on the outside. Angelina shamefacedly seized a towel and began to mop up the carpet, murmuring as she did so, “I bought it with my own money.”

Realizing that she had little authority over Angelina, Julia could only say, “I am sorry that you have so little regard for my opinion.” Yet neither then nor at any other time did Angelina apologize for what she had done. When Julia, consequently, reflected on the matter, she wondered if, after all, she might not have made a mistake in showing so much confidence in Angelina.

XVI WHO WROTE IT?

“It’s bad taste, anyway,” said Annabel Harmon.

“To call it by no worse name,” responded Elizabeth Darcy.

“Almost nothing can be worse than bad taste,” rejoined Annabel.

The two girls, at a table in the conversation room, were looking eagerly at the page of a newspaper.

“Why, what’s the trouble?” asked Polly, who had been standing near the window. “Has anybody had the bad taste to commit a murder, or burglary, or some other crime? I see that you have a yellowish journal there.”

The two, absorbed in their paper, did not reply, and Polly drew near them until she could read the headlines: “Is a College Education Worth While for Girls?” “Lowering of the Standard by a University Professor to meet the Demands of Woman.”

“Dear me!” cried Polly, “this does look interesting.”

“Yes,” responded Annabel, “read further and you will find it more so. You can take the paper for a few minutes. I’m glad that I happened to buy one in the Square when I came out from town.”

Polly sat down with the newspaper. Under the large headlines were others in smaller type that showed that the professor to whom reference was made was a Harvard professor, and then she began to read. Surely there was something very familiar in what followed. It purported to be the transcript of a few pages from the history note-book of a student at Radcliffe. It was all very familiar. Why, of course! Clarissa’s notes! No one who had ever gazed upon them could mistake the style. She remembered having read this very lecture last year when preparing for her examinations. Clarissa was always generous in lending her note-books, and Polly had had the use of this for a day or two. But what had seemed only funny within the covers of a note-book seemed very impertinent thus exposed to the gaze of every one who cared to buy a penny paper. Reading further, Polly learned that the article was copied from an obscure magazine to which the Radcliffe notes had been sent with a plaintive inquiry whether such lectures could greatly benefit woman.

“Poor Professor Z!” sighed Polly. “He certainly lectures in this style sometimes. For my own part, I used to enjoy the colloquialisms, and he used to give us so much besides that it isn’t fair to pillory him.”

“What do you think of Clarissa now?” asked Elizabeth Darcy.

“Clarissa?” repeated Polly. “What has she to do with it?”

Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders. “Most of us have seen Clarissa’s note-books; if she didn’t write this, who did?”

“I won’t say that this is not Clarissa’s style, I won’t even say that these are not her notes; but I will say that she didn’t print them.”

“I wish that I had your confidence in Clarissa.” Elizabeth spoke with an accent of pity. “You must admit that she loves to make fun of people.”

“She is not half as bad as I am,” rejoined Polly, stoutly defending her friend. “Why, I have even made fun of her,—that was before I knew her so well. But she bore me no malice. In fact, she never takes revenge, and there is malice in this article.”

“You admit that these are Clarissa’s notes, and yet you don’t think them malicious.”

The last speaker was Annabel, who had joined the group.