Part 4

“I should say so,” continued Clarissa. “I shouldn’t like to have any one see what a hodge-podge I made of my note-books the first three or four weeks. I couldn’t make head nor tail of them until I had borrowed the notes of one of the model girls to interpret them by.”

“It was hard for all of us,” said Julia, “at least it was for me.”

“Well, our first hour examination showed that we must remember the instructor’s words, that it wasn’t enough to imbed them in hieroglyphics. Allusions that I had considered mere ornaments I soon found ought to have been taken seriously. Little innocent references to some reserved book were of more importance than hours of lectures. Alas! alas!”

Julia smiled at her expression of sorrow.

“You need not laugh,” said Clarissa. “I had meant to do most of my reading next summer, and I had not even taken the trouble to note the names of the books referred to. But I find that having electives does not mean that you can elect to study or not, just as you please. The mid-years will be serious enough, judging by the samples we have had.”

Clarissa was not the only Freshman to find difficulty in accustoming herself to Radcliffe methods. Many others, unused to the lecture system, had rested too securely in the hope that before the mid-years they could make up all deficiencies. As the college year went on they were bound to find, like all preceding Freshmen, that lectures in the end were far more stimulating than recitations from even the best of text-books, and in the course of time, too, even the dullest was likely to acquire the art of successful note-taking.

The hour examinations at irregular intervals before Christmas were often rude awakeners for careless girls. Others were agreeably surprised to find their marks better than they had hoped.

“It’s uncertainty that kills one,” said Clarissa. “I mean to work so that my mid-years will give me ‘B,’ or at any rate ‘C’ in English. The warning, you will see, shall not have been in vain. I used to think that I knew something about Rhetoric, but it seems that I was wrong, though I studied it years ago in the High School.”

Although Clarissa’s rather original manner of expressing herself did not wholly meet the approval of her English instructor, since the first examination he had expressed a certain restrained approval of some of her written work.

In November even the shyest Freshmen had begun to find their place at Radcliffe, and to feel that they had some individuality. The classes, relatively small compared with Harvard, enabled the members of each class to know one another by sight and name, even if the acquaintance went no further. But the new girls were impressed by the fact that intimacies in no way followed class lines. The elective system made it possible in many courses for Freshmen and Seniors to sit side by side, nor did a Senior lose dignity by associating with the lower classes. Clarissa constantly commented on this evidence of a spirit so different from that to which she had been accustomed at her Western college.

Pamela accepted everything at Cambridge as a matter of course. Nothing seemed strange to her because she had expected everything to be strange. Whatever was, was right for Pamela, so far as Radcliffe and Cambridge were concerned, and she lacked Clarissa’s bubbling energy, which constantly sought some object to reform.

“I can’t say that I disapprove of the present state of things, though I really cannot understand it. Here we are in the same town with hundreds—yes, thousands—of students, and yet we see few of them at close range, and then those we know are only our brothers or cousins or something of that kind.”

“‘Something of that kind’ is delightfully indefinite,” said Polly Porson, the little Georgian whose condescension as a Sophomore had won Julia’s gratitude at the beginning of the term. “You speak like you were disappointed,” continued Miss Porson, “but if you stop to think, it’s well that we have so little to distract us. We are not forbidden to cross the college yard if we really wish to. But only think what a nuisance if they were permitted to walk about our little campus!”

“Do you suppose that there is any rule against it?” asked Clarissa mischievously.

Polly laughed in reply. “Well, the average undergraduate would almost rather be suspended for three months than find himself within our grounds. Some of them make a virtue of not knowing just where Fay House is, and you’d be surprised to find that many explain with pride that they’ve never met a Radcliffe girl.”

“We must change all that,” cried Clarissa. “Not that we are anxious to have the acquaintance of those callow youths,—for they must be callow to look at us in that tone of voice,—but we must do something or have something here that will make them anxious to know us better.”

“We can get along very well without their society,” interposed Elspeth Gray, who happened to be passing through the conversation room where Clarissa and Polly and one or two others were talking. “We’re not exactly cloistered here in Cambridge, as girls are at some colleges. Most of us have the society, more or less, of real men, and we do not depend on undergraduates.”

“All the same,” said Clarissa, “we might have a little more fun here. Now, Polly Porson, you must admit that it’s a trifle slow here for a college town.”

“Most of us were not looking for fun when we undertook to come to Radcliffe. Cambridge never had the reputation of being very amusing. But I’ll tell you something to raise your spirits. Rumors of the charm and wit of the Idler theatricals have begun to penetrate the brick walls of Harvard, and last year we heard of sorrow in college halls because men were not admitted to the performances. What we couldn’t attain through our work we have accomplished by our play. They wouldn’t lift their hands to read one of our examination books, but they would give more than the admission fee to see us act.”

“Aren’t they permitted to come?”

“No, indeed, although we really ought to find some way of letting them reciprocate our interest in the yearly Pudding theatricals.”

“We ought to be able to get up something to interest them,” said Clarissa.

“Can you act?” asked Polly abruptly.

“Why, yes, after a fashion,” responded Clarissa.

“Well, then, do give your name to Miss Witherspoon. It isn’t the easiest thing in the world to find girls willing to do their part. But there! you must have heard the invitation given at the first meeting.”

“I heard it without taking it to myself. I’m not the person of talent for whom the Idler is looking.”

Whatever her other faults, Clarissa could not be accused of vanity.

VII ALL KINDS OF GIRLS

Among the girls in her Latin course one had a particular charm for Julia. She was tall, slight, and graceful, with waving brown hair. Lois lived in Newton, and often for exercise she walked at least as far as Watertown after lectures. Sometimes Julia walked with her; and although Lois was not too confidential, Julia had gradually learned many things about her. She knew that Lois made her own clothes, and that home duties prevented her spending much time in Fay House frivolities.

So far as she could, Lois had elected studies that would count toward her proposed medical course. She was bright and cheerful, and always ready to help others.

“She is certainly very clever,” Ruth had said appreciatively one day after Lois had given her a suggestion as to the proper translation of a very difficult passage. Julia was glad that Ruth liked Lois so well, for she had not smiled on her friendship with Clarissa and Pamela.

Polly Porson liked Lois, too, although she was in the habit of saying that her energy tired her.

“You look as fresh as a rose!” she exclaimed one morning, as Lois, with cheeks pink from exercise, came into one of the smaller recitation rooms where two or three girls were studying together.

“Well, I ought to have a color,” said Lois. “I’ve walked over from Newton.”

“Why, Lois Forsaith,” cried Polly, and “Lois Forsaith!” echoed Ruth. “Why in the world do you walk on a day like this?”

“This is just the kind of day for a walk. I had to stay indoors yesterday because my mother was ill, and on Sundays there is so much to attend to. I hadn’t time even to go to church. But the walk to-day has set me up again, and I feel equal to anything.”

“Walking is as bad as the gym.,” cried Polly Porson; “in the South we wouldn’t think either exactly ladylike. Why, until I came North I’d never walked a mile, really I never had, just for the sake of walking, I mean.”

“That’s nothing to be proud of,” commented Ruth. “Besides, I’d like to see any one try to walk on your Georgia roads—those red clay roads. I was in Atlanta once, and I know them. We were there two days on our way from Florida, and the roads were so bad that I wondered that feet in Georgia hadn’t become rudimentary from disuse.”

“Now, it isn’t so bad as that,” said Polly.

“Bad!” repeated Ruth. “Why, we started to drive one afternoon and our wheels sank deep into red clay until we were nearly buried alive.”

“Now, it isn’t so bad as that everywhere,” reiterated Polly. “You ought to have gone out Peach Tree Street; that’s a right good road, with a fine sidewalk, too.”

“Oh, I’ve seen Peach Tree Street, too, and I’ll admit that there’s no excuse for your not walking there.”

Polly sank back in her chair. “I never could see the sense in walking where a horse could carry you.”

“Or even an ox cart,” added Ruth mischievously; “that seemed to be the favorite Atlanta vehicle.”

“I wonder that you stand her teasing,” said Lois; “you are more amiable than I should be.”

“Well,” responded Polly, “this is my second year at Cambridge, and if I would I could tell a tale of Cambridge mud that would make Atlanta shine in contrast.”

“Yes, Atlanta mud is red,” murmured Ruth. But Polly took no notice of the interruption, and the conversation drifted from Atlanta and Cambridge mud to a more general putting forth of opinions of New England weather, a never-failing topic when two or more persons from outside New England are gathered together.

“Give me the bleak New England climate before any other,” cried Lois. “I haven’t travelled, but I have seen the products of the other climates, and ours has the greater staying power every time.”

“You’re right smart cruel,” cried Polly; “I will never lend you my note-books again.” Whereat all the others laughed, for it was Polly and not Lois who was ever the borrower. The note-books of Lois, were models of conciseness and neatness, and she was ever ready to lend them to those girls who needed, or thought that they needed, assistance. The borrowers were not always shiftless. Some were simply careless girls, who found it easier to sit idle during a lecture than to write. Some, indeed, had difficulty in following the lecturer and filling their note-books at the same time. To such girls the loan of a note-book like that of Lois was a great boon. They could copy her work in a time that was short compared with what would have been necessary to decipher, expand, and rewrite their own half-intelligible notes.

As for Lois herself, she often found it hard to lend the note-book which she liked to have by her side when preparing for the class-room. It was equally hard to refuse when a girl asked the favor in particularly beseeching tones. On reflection, however, it seemed selfish to Lois generally to refuse merely because she might wish to refer to the book, and it happened that her note-books for one or two of the courses were travelling half the time. While Polly Porson was one of the most persistent of the borrowers, Lois never refused her requests. She was fond of Polly, although it would be hard to imagine two girls more unlike than the ease-loving little Southerner and the self-restrained Massachusetts girl. The two were, nevertheless, the best of friends, though Lois was a girl who had few intimates. For one thing she was too busy, and for another she had little inclination to spend all her spare time talking or walking with other girls.

Even on this brisk, cool morning, although she had no lecture for half an hour, Lois did not sit down with Ruth and Polly and the others. She lingered scarcely five minutes, and almost before they had missed her she was up in the library, with books and writing material before her, ready for a half-hour’s work.

“Why, where’s Lois?” cried Polly, suddenly discovering her absence.

“Hard at work somewhere, I’ll warrant you. She never wastes a minute,” replied one of the group.

“As if it would be a waste of minutes to stay here and talk with us! I’m sure we have just finished a most enlightening discussion of the difference between Southern and Northern mud. We might have progressed to a discussion of the difference in Fauna, Flora, and other natural features of the two regions.”

“You forget that _I_ am here,” retorted Ruth; “it was I with whom you were chiefly carrying on the discussion. If the others permit it and you still wish it, we can continue.”

“Oh, no, indeed,” answered Polly, “I assure you that I do not wish it. You can see that I bear no malice, for I had forgotten that it was you who had said all those dreadful things about my native State.”

“Could contempt go further?” sighed Ruth. “You would have been willing to prolong the discussion with Miss Forsaith, but you think it isn’t worth while with me.”

“Speaking of Lois,” responded Polly, “I wish that she would amuse herself more. It’s only frivolous persons like me who can sing and act and study, too.”

“Oh, but Lois can act splendidly, if she only _will_,” said one of the Sophomore by-standers. “I do wish that she could be induced to help us with the Emmanuel play this spring.”

“The trouble is,” said a deep voice, “that Radcliffe girls are too indifferent to fame.”

The other girls looked up and saw Clarissa slipping into a seat beside the table.

“It seems ridiculous that there should be such trouble to get girls for the theatricals.”

“Perhaps many would not think it fame, even if they should distinguish themselves on our Auditorium stage.”

“Then they look at things with a jaundiced eye. Already there are traditions—I have heard them myself—about girls who have acted in our college plays,” said Clarissa, “and the greatest were the girls who made up best in men’s parts.”

“There, Polly,” cried the Sophomore, “you must be on the high road to glory, for,” turning to Clarissa, “you have probably heard that she is our very best man. Last year she just brought down the house. You really ought to see her; she’s immense.”

“That’s more than you are most of the time,” and Clarissa turned to Polly. “What do you wear, seven league boots, or something of that kind?”

“Not exactly,” replied Polly, “though if you’ll come round to my room sometime I’ll show you some of my properties.”

“They’d be worth seeing,” said the Sophomore, “especially if you’ve kept that gold-laced coat, Polly, and the high boots.”

“’Deed I have,” replied Polly; “the boots are likely to be in more than one play before summer. I’m promised for at least two.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” cried Clarissa. “You are the very kind of girl to act well. I’ve overheard you taking people off once or twice in the conversation room, and you hit them to the life.”

Polly reddened a trifle at Clarissa’s words. It flashed through her mind that she had sometimes mimicked Clarissa, and she hoped that this was not what the Western girl had overheard.

There was no trace of resentment in Clarissa’s face, though Polly made a mental note that after this she would not entertain her friends with her impersonations outside of her own room.

It was time, indeed, for Polly to make this resolve, for without intending it she had gained the ill-will of several by using her powers of mimicry too freely. “Ill-will” is perhaps too strong a word, although it takes more than the average amount of philosophy to make a girl proof against ridicule. Comparatively few persons really care to see themselves as others see them, and annoyance, if nothing stronger, is apt to be felt against the individual, whether friend or foe, who attempts to portray us as we appear to those about us.

It was now late in December, and the greater number of Freshmen had become known to the girls in the upper classes. Here and there was one who, like Pamela, had little to say to her fellow-students, and had as little to do with those in her own class as with those above her. The majority, perhaps, were like Julia and Ruth, friendly toward all with whom they came in touch, yet never forgetful of the fact that they were at Radcliffe first of all to study, and that other things must be secondary.

Clarissa was in many ways unusual. She seemed always ready for pleasure, and she spent so much time exploring the historic streets and buildings of Boston that her friends wondered how she contrived to keep up with her college work. Nevertheless, although there was no ranking in the classes at Radcliffe, and although there were no recitations to give a girl a chance to distinguish herself, Clarissa made it perfectly evident that she did not neglect her work. She asked intelligent questions in the class-room, and it was rumored that her marks in the hour examinations had been particularly good. These hour examinations, held occasionally without much warning, were tests covering a limited ground. They gave a girl a chance to recover herself, if she found that she had not been thorough in her subject, before the severe mid-years.

Some girls did not care for Clarissa. They thought her too pushing; and although partly right in this, they would have been more correct had they said that she was merely no respecter of persons. If she wished to speak to a girl she addressed her without hesitation, regardless of the fact that she had not been introduced. Strange though it may seem, some girls objected to this, preferring, as they said, “to choose their acquaintances.” Not many, however, were so foolishly formal, and Clarissa’s chief fault consisted in a certain harmless officiousness, a readiness to do things which really were within the province of some other girl. She had promptly joined the Emmanuel Society, for example, and had been a member hardly a month when she told the President of Emmanuel that she had invited Mrs. Skillington Squails, of Chicago, to speak before the Society on her approaching visit to Boston.

Now it happened that both meetings of the Society that were to be held during Mrs. Squails’ visit had been already provided with speakers whom it was impossible to put aside. Moreover, it was decidedly out of place for a new member like Clarissa to make a suggestion of this kind. There was an executive committee of the Society whose duty it was to make all arrangements regarding speakers, and Clarissa ought at least to have consulted this committee before writing to Mrs. Squails.

“I’m awfully sorry,” she said when the matter was explained to her. “But it seemed to be such a good chance to get Mrs. Squails, that I thought that I ought to secure her as soon as I heard that she was coming East. You know that she’s in great demand, and she never gets less than fifty dollars a lecture. But she knows me very well; she stayed at our house a week the last time she came down into our State, and she would have spoken before our Society for nothing to oblige me, and she’d consider it an honor to speak at Radcliffe.”

Mrs. Skillington Squails was an effective speaker, and her subject, “The Organization of Women Workers,” might have come within the scope of the Emmanuel programmes. But unfortunately, Mrs. Squails had recently been speaking on the stump for a very unpopular political party, and to invite her to address Radcliffe girls would have drawn considerable adverse criticism on the college.

The President of the Society thought it fortunate that the other speakers could not be put aside for the Chicagoan, and in the end Clarissa was spared the embarrassment of having to explain that her invitation was not official by hearing from the latter that for the time being she had given up her visit to Boston. Although the President of the Emmanuel and her committee had been very careful not to speak of this officiousness of Clarissa’s, in some way, possibly through Clarissa herself, the story had leaked out, and nearly every one who had not met her asked to have her pointed out. They were all anxious to see the audacious Western Freshman.

Polly Porson, when she heard the story, had entertained a group of girls with a mock interview between Clarissa and Ernestine Dunton, the very serious and conscientious President of the Emmanuel. She remembered that this portrayal had taken place late one afternoon in the conversation room; and although she had glanced out into the hall to make sure that there were no listeners besides those whom she had undertaken to entertain, there was the possibility that Clarissa might have passed through the hall unobserved. The thought of such a possibility made the careless Polly rather uncomfortable, and in consequence she was now especially cordial to Clarissa.

VIII THE MID-YEARS

“It’s comical, isn’t it, to see those woe-begone faces erstwhile so gay and cheerful?” said Clarissa, meeting Julia one morning in January at the foot of the main stairs of Fay House. “Let us stand here and watch the martyrs pass.”

“Laughing at your fellow sufferers!” responded Julia; “surely you are not out of misery yourself.”

“No, indeed, I have two more; but I’d rather die with my boots on, as the miners say, than be killed by inches. Now just look there!”

As Clarissa spoke two girls approached, one stumbling along with her eyes fixed on a book, the other wearing dark green glasses that made her pale face look almost ghostly.

“You can’t pass without speaking!” Clarissa’s voice compelled attention, and the girl with the book looked up, showing the usually bright face of Elspeth Gray, while the girl in glasses responded in the accents of Polly Porson.

“I’m nearly dead, I really am, with one examination to-day and another to-morrow! I had a perfectly lovely time the first week, for not one of my mid-years came early. I went to two matinées and a Symphony Concert, had a girl from New York over to spend the week with me; but the next week when I began to study I found I’d lost the taste for cramming, and I’ve sat up nights since. It was three A.M. when I went to bed last night, or this morning—which was it?—and my eyes are nearly wrecked.”

Polly from a seat on the stairs looked up at Clarissa, who was standing in front of her.

“I’m glad that I can’t see very well,” she continued. “I should hate to discover that you were laughing at me, Clarissa.”

“Well, I do think that you are very silly.” Clarissa drew herself up. “Look at me! I’ve gained two pounds since the first of January.”

“Why! haven’t you had to work? You are an exception, and this is only your first year, too.”

“Certainly I have been working,” responded Clarissa, “but I haven’t been worrying. There’s little difference to me ’twixt ‘A’ and ‘B’ and ‘C’ and ‘D.’”

“Very well,” said a Junior, overhearing, “we shall see. I felt that way myself when I was a Freshman. But a change came over the spirit of my dream when I received my marks. I’d always thought myself a pretty bright person before that, but when I found that I had nothing higher than a ‘B,’ and that in only one course, while ‘C’s’ were alarmingly prevalent on my record, I made up my mind after that to take examinations seriously. I did better in June—I really did.”

“Yes, indeed,” interposed Polly. “I mean to do better in June myself.”