Part 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

V COLLEGE CALLERS

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

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

“Yes, I believe he’s in training.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But when _are_ we to see it?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Philip looked uncomfortable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VI SETTING TO WORK

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

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

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

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

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

“Why not Julia?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But you’ve made it clear to him?”

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

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