Part 5

“According to your own account, you did not plan well for these mid-years. Wouldn’t it have been better to have spent an hour or two earlier in the year in study instead of cramming it into a week? Wouldn’t that have been more consistent?” asked Julia.

“It might have been more consistent,” responded Polly, “but it wouldn’t have been half as pleasant. I never _did_ believe that consistency was a diamond of the first water. Besides, it’s _much_ more exciting to leave most of your work to the last. If I were running a race I’d always make my greatest effort on the last round. To be sure, I’d feel a little better now if my eyes weren’t so troublesome. But I must go on. Elspeth and I have some German to attack—just a trifle, you know: ‘Minna von Barnhelm,’ ‘Wilhelm Tell,’ ‘Iphigenia,’ and one or two other little things of that kind,” and she made a gesture of affected carelessness. “Well, good-bye! Elspeth furnishes eyes for me at present, and looks up all the words in the dictionary, while I provide the free translations. Free enough,” she concluded with a laugh, as she disappeared up the stairs.

“There,” cried Clarissa, “I can see that Polly is worried. She’s been summoned to the office once or twice for cutting, I hear. She told of it herself,” she added, lest Julia should wonder how Clarissa had learned this.

Many Radcliffe girls, undoubtedly, took their examinations too severely. They withdrew to their rooms at the beginning of the mid-years, and came out only to get books from the library or for examinations. Yet though cramming is a bad habit, it is so firmly fixed on all students that until examinations themselves are abolished it will last. Poor students, who have wasted the lecture hours and neglected the prescribed reading, cram because otherwise they might fail outright, and so bring their college course to an untimely end. Good students, who have neglected nothing through the term, cram to assure themselves that they have done the very best by their chosen subjects. Between the men and the women students of Cambridge, however, there is one marked point of difference. With the growth of Harvard the profession of tutor is of increasing importance. Young men of small money and large ability after their Freshman year often defray the greater part of their expenses by tutoring. Many, indeed, of the youths who seek the aid of tutors have never even tried to keep up with the regular lectures. By some occult reasoning they calculate that it requires less mental effort to wait until the approach of the examinations for their great spurt. The gist of the courses they desire is then given them by an expert who in a few hours covers the work of the half-year. Lazy men, athletic men, and men lacking the mental momentum to carry them through college are the mainstay of numbers of impecunious students. Radcliffe as yet has had no attractions for girls disinclined to study. The majority have had high standing in the preparatory schools, and they go to college intending to do their best. If the Polly Porsons have been inattentive to some lectures, or if they have neglected part of their reading, they work with a will in the weeks just before examinations. But they scorn the help of tutors, or of printed notes. At the worst they borrow the note-books of some other girl, or they meet in little groups of two or three to put one another to the test with difficult questions. Informal meetings of this kind are the nearest thing that Radcliffe can show to the Seminars (disapproved by the Faculty), devised for the smoothing of the way for Harvard students.

Clarissa was one of those who liked to study in company.

“I am twice as sure of myself when I have done a little thinking aloud. Come on, Polly, one more hour will make us perfect in English. I need you to hear me say the ‘Canons,’ and exercise me a little on ‘shall’ and ‘will,’ and then I shall know whole pages of the English Literature Primer. It’s too bad that we haven’t had more courses together, for we work together splendidly; don’t you think so?”

“Yes,” said Polly, “especially as you have eyes and I haven’t. I am going to make up questions out of my head to test you, for I mustn’t look much on my book.”

“Oh, that will be all right,” responded Clarissa. “Besides, I have some examination papers—those of the past two or three years—and I am going to use them for your especial torment. It will strengthen your mind to answer the questions.”

“Thank you, but if my mind required strengthening I don’t believe that cramming would help. A cup of good strong coffee would be more to the point.”

“There,” cried Clarissa, “you’ve given yourself away. I have been wondering how you kept yourself awake until three A.M. as you boast of doing. If coffee does it I have only half as much respect for you as I thought I had. If I could look in upon you some midnight soon, and find you drinking strong coffee, with your head swathed in wet towels—for this I am told is the habit with coffee-bibbers—I’d punish you as you deserve.”

“I plead guilty,” cried Polly, “to the coffee drinking. Why not, since I have a little gas-stove of my own? But the wet towels, ugh! I could not stand anything so clammy. But come! time flies, and if you are in earnest about that symposium, let us hasten to my rooms.”

Many girls studied wholly by themselves. Pamela was one of these, and Lois another. Pamela in this, as in other things, was solitary from necessity rather than from choice. She had hardly a speaking acquaintance with most of the girls in her classes, and it occurred to none of them to ask her to join them. She for her part was too timid to make the first advances. Lois, on the other hand, would have been welcomed by many a little study group. But she was of a decidedly independent disposition, and she felt that she could accomplish more by herself, and with a smaller expenditure of time.

Her disinclination to be one of a crowd stood in the way of Lois’ popularity. Her fellow-students admitted that she was bright and amiable, and that she seldom said sarcastic things. But they felt that she was not deeply interested in them as individuals, and in consequence they were inclined to criticise her. It was harmless criticism, but it tended to increase the feeling that Lois was not exactly popular.

Julia and Ruth, studying together, rejoiced that they had the same electives. Ruth was unduly flurried and worried, and she and Julia sat up until midnight many nights when they might better have been in bed.

“The worst of it is,” sighed Ruth, after her last examination, “my cramming hasn’t helped me an atom. Not one of the four papers had a question that I could not have answered before I began to cram.”

“Yes, and if you hadn’t sat up so late grinding you would probably have been in a better state for work. You’ll take things more sensibly in your Sophomore and Junior years. Only Freshmen and Seniors work themselves into a fever. Freshmen are inexperienced and nervous, and Seniors never feel quite sure that they are going to pass in everything; but Sophomores and—”

“I can’t say that I agree with you, Miss Darcy,” said Jane Townall. “I’ve always tried to do my duty by all my instructors, but I never went into an examination, even in my Sophomore and Junior years, without an enormous amount of preparation. It seems to me that most girls do the same.”

“Oh,” responded Elizabeth carelessly, “it all depends on the kind of girls one knows. _Your_ friends, of course, are more serious than mine. But you all make a mistake. You have lost five pounds, and you look as if you had lost your last friend, too.”

With this Elizabeth hurried off to join Polly Porson, for they both belonged to the same clique of rather lively girls just at this time beginning to promote theatricals, tableaux, and other frivolities, calculated to show that Radcliffe girls had other talents besides the purely scholastic.

“It’s easy for Miss Darcy to talk,” said Jane Townall, turning to Ruth, as Elizabeth moved away. “The loss of a grade would not hurt her; she is not going to teach, and it will be all the same to her whether she gets a plain degree, or a _cum laude_.”

“She does pretty well, though,” interposed a girl who had just joined the group. “She showed me her marks last year, and there was nothing, I think, below ‘B.’”

“Oh, there’s an art in getting marks, just as there is in achieving greatness of any other sort. Perhaps you are not aware, Freshmen,” and the speaker turned toward Ruth and Julia, “that one principle in selecting courses is to choose those demanding the least work, and at the same time yielding the highest marks. There’s a curious relation between the two. The easier the course and the smaller the amount of work in it, the higher the mark. Elizabeth goes in for such things as Semitic 12 and Fine Arts 1, and—oh, well, we know the list. They are studies that make for culture and high marks.”

“Also,” said another girl, “Elizabeth believes in making a good impression on her instructors. She will break into a lecture three times in the course of the hour to ask a question which sometimes has only the slightest connection with the subject. But often it gives the instructor an opportunity for a series of footnotes to the lecture in the shape of original remarks, and he ends by believing Elizabeth to be the most intelligent girl in his class. He keeps this in mind when her blue-book falls into his hand. This is one secret of her succeeding without working, for _she_ says that she does not work, and _you_ say that she gets good marks.”

“In other words, she ‘swipes’ marks,” interposed Clarissa.

Jane Townall looked uncomfortable at the tone of the discussion. Personalities were distasteful to her.

“Miss Darcy is very pleasant,” she ventured; “every one likes her. I envy a girl who has the faculty of making herself agreeable to every one.”

Jane meant to pay Elizabeth a very high compliment, but the two Juniors in the group laughed heartily.

“That’s just it,” said the taller of the two. “Elizabeth does try to make herself agreeable to every one. She would rather be called uneducated than unpopular. I shouldn’t wonder,” she concluded with a smile, “if she had designs on the Idler. But then, she’d make a fairly good President.”

“Oh, but what a change after Miss Witherspoon! Besides, I’d rather see a girl like Lois Forsaith.”

“Oh, well, of course. By the time she is a Senior her turn may come, but at present it’s out of the question. Indeed, I doubt that she’d ever be elected, however strongly some of us might wish it. She’s too independent; and though she doesn’t make enemies, she wouldn’t have enough people to work for her at an election. She hasn’t many intimate friends. You’ve got to belong to a clique if you want to hold office, or else be tremendously and surpassingly beautiful or rich.”

“Well, Lois isn’t that exactly. She’s just a good all-round kind of girl with considerable talent, and she’s so independent that nobody ever quite appreciates her.”

“Well, I’m sure,” said Jane Townall primly, as the group broke up, “I feel as if in some way I had done Miss Darcy an injury. I really did not mean to make her a subject of discussion when I spoke of the ease with which she takes her examinations. I hope that I didn’t do her any injustice. I’m sure that I didn’t mean to.”

“Of course you didn’t, Jane; you wouldn’t hurt a fly, we all know that,” exclaimed one of the Juniors with a surprising flippancy. Jane was Julia’s Senior adviser, and her four months at Radcliffe hadn’t lessened her awe of Seniors in general, and of Jane in particular. For although Jane was awkward—unused to conventional society—and wrapped up in her studies, she had more than once gone out of her way to help Julia; and while she was timid about offering advice, when asked to give it she was always logical and painstaking in what she said.

IX TWO CATASTROPHES

One Monday soon after the mid-years Julia and Elizabeth were walking down Garden Street in the face of a rather sharp wind. Elizabeth, like all who are not Boston bred, complained of the spring winds as if they were more vicious than in her native New Jersey. Passing the old graveyard, she laughingly reminded Julia that Longfellow’s “dust is in her beautiful eyes,” applied to one who lay buried within the First Parish enclosure, and that some wit had commented that dust was always in some one’s eyes in Cambridge.

“Yet it’s an interesting old graveyard,” said Julia, “and sometime I hope to go inside and study some of the inscriptions.”

“We all _mean_ to do those things,” responded Elizabeth, “when we are Freshmen. I did myself last year. Christ Church is almost next door to Fay House, and it’s one of the many that Washington honored. But I doubt if you go within it before your Senior year, unless you make it your regular church. But, dear me! What is that?”

A white shower was falling at their feet, and, looking up, the two saw Pamela, the very picture of despair. The three girls were almost in front of the old Dane Law School, now given up to the uses of the Co-operative Society, and the sidewalk was slightly glazed with ice. The wind, blowing strong in the faces of Julia and Elizabeth, had apparently carried the slight figure of Pamela before it. Evidently, too, she had been shopping at some Harvard Square grocer’s, and in her efforts to keep herself from slipping, her black woollen bag had turned over, and its contents were scattered. If the grocer had tied up tightly that five-pound paper bag of granulated sugar there might have been no catastrophe; but in some way the string had loosened, and Pamela stood helpless, as the stream of sugar poured itself out on the sidewalk under the very eyes of the fastidious Elizabeth Darcy. Elizabeth passed on with a gesture of annoyance. On the steps of the Co-operative she had seen two or three youths whom she knew, and she did not intend to make herself one of a ridiculous group. Julia did not follow her, as she swept up the steps of the Co-operative. Nor did the Harvard youths accompany her. Elizabeth was accustomed to attention; and though these three raised their hats politely, and although one stepped forward to open the door, she noticed that the others hastened toward Julia.

Julia, too, had recognized the young men before she began to help Pamela, and had she acted on impulse, she might have passed on with Elizabeth, for she knew that Philip was only too ready to criticise anything strange in the appearance of a Radcliffe girl. But Julia would not have been Julia had she deserted Pamela.

The bag itself had slipped from the Vermont girl’s hands, and a note-book or two, and a number of loose sheets lay on the sidewalk. To save these papers from a coming gust, Philip and Will rushed forward. Had Julia not been there they might have hesitated to intrude on Pamela. Yet their natural chivalry would probably have triumphed.

“Never mind the sugar,” whispered Julia to Pamela, and the young men as politely ignored it.

Julia, then picking up the bag, replaced the papers and note-books that had been gathered up. Pamela, thoroughly abashed, tried to take the bag from her friend, with a feeble “Let me do it,” but Julia, finishing her self-imposed task, introduced Philip and Will to Pamela.

“We’re going to the car office,” she replied in answer to Philip’s question. Therefore, across the Square, accompanied by the two young men, Pamela and Julia threaded their way between two lines of electric cars.

“We’re evidently dismissed,” said Philip, as Julia bade them good-bye at the office; and after a word or two more, Will and he went back in the direction of the Yard.

“That was rather plucky in Julia, wasn’t it?” said Will.

“What?” asked Philip, who sometimes seemed to have the obtuseness of his sister.

“Why, the way she tried to make that girl feel comfortable—I didn’t catch her name. But she’s evidently a shy creature, and she had got herself into a scrape with all that sugar on the sidewalk.”

“I thought that she was rather bright-looking,” responded Philip, “though her clothes were pretty freakish.”

“Well, I fancy we were rather in the way as long as we couldn’t help much. Julia has probably carried the girl home with her. Did she open her mouth to you?”

“Who, Julia?”

“No, the other girl. I didn’t hear her say a word.”

“Oh, she said ‘yes’ once and ‘no’ twice,” replied Philip, laughing.

“Ah!” sighed Pamela, standing beside Julia, “I hope I’ll never see any sugar again. I’m not bound to do errands for Miss Batson.” Then, as Julia looked puzzled, she began to explain. “Miss Batson is my—” she hesitated. She could not truthfully say “landlady,” so she tried again. “She has the house where I live. She has boarders, and sometimes I do errands for her. It seems easy to carry her things in my bag, but to-day—”

“Were you on your way home?” interposed Julia, to draw her mind from the recent catastrophe.

“No, I was going to Fay House to study.”

“Well, then, please come home with me. Ruth and I are always at home Mondays, but you have never called on us.”

Pamela hesitated. Every hour counted in her scheme of work. But the temptation was strong, and she went on with Julia. Although the latter remembered that Pamela had never invited her to call, she realized that she herself might have done various little things to make the way pleasanter for one who was so evidently alone. She could see that Pamela would not make friends easily, and she had noticed her at none of the college affairs since that first Idler.

“College ought to be broadening,” thought Julia, “and yet I believe that it has made me extraordinarily selfish. I haven’t the least excuse to offer for neglecting Pamela, for I saw at the beginning of the term that she would need a friend.”

Pamela’s eye brightened as she stood on the threshold of Julia’s pretty room. “How lovely it is!” she exclaimed.

The open fire blazing on the hearth certainly gave the room a cheerful aspect, and the little tea-table added to the homelikeness of the scene. Poor Pamela sighed, the comfort appealed to her. There on the table lay several of the newest books,—one a volume of criticism that had attracted great attention; another, and the best of all in Pamela’s eyes, a history of Italian Art, very fully illustrated. She recognized the cover, and could hardly keep her hands from it.

The general tone of the draperies was old blue, always a restful color when not used in excess. The curtains were of a soft rep in this shade, and beneath them were spotted muslin short blinds. Two of the easy-chairs were covered in old blue corduroy, and a third, of soft brown ooze leather, was particularly inviting. There were two or three small water-colors hanging there, but the pictures on the wall were chiefly photographs from the old masters. There were three Rembrandt heads, life-size, and a Madonna of Botticelli, as well as his head of a Florentine lady. A Turner etching hung on the little space at the edge of the mantle, and two or three etchings of minor importance closed the list of pictures. Julia’s piano filled one recess, and a bookcase that she had had made especially for the room filled the other.

Before Pamela could protest that she intended to stay but a few minutes, she found herself with hat and coat off, cosily seated before the fire. Julia flung herself on the divan between the windows.

“I really feel tired! That wind was very wearing. After all, home is a good place on a day like this. I will have the tea sent up before four o’clock, or rather the hot water, for I make the tea myself. Oh, here is Ruth! Do like a good girl touch the bell. I like to start with the water hot,” explained Julia, filling her kettle with water from Mrs. Colton’s kitchen. With the aid of the alcohol lamp the water soon boiled. Then putting three coverfuls of tea from the caddy into a china teapot, she covered the teapot with an embroidered cozy.

“Please notice,” cried Ruth, “our silver caddy. An old grand-aunt of mine presented it to me in her delight that we were to have a tea-table. She had feared that college would destroy our domestic tastes.”

“Yes,” added Julia, “we have made a great impression on our relatives by demanding things for our tea-table. When they asked what we wished for our rooms they evidently expected us to say dictionaries or other books. But here is a fascinating set of spoons from my cousin Brenda—every handle different; and Aunt Anna gave me this biscuit jar, and Edith Blair worked these doilies.”

“Is that a Tanagra figure?” asked Pamela abruptly, pointing to the bookcase. “How I envy you!”

“Take it down,” said Julia, “if you wish to examine it close at hand, although it’s only a replica,” she added apologetically.

“Oh, _may_ I?” exclaimed Pamela, lifting it from the broad top of the bookcase. And while the conversation flowed on she examined the figurine, fondly noting every graceful line.

No one who looked at Pamela could fail to comprehend that she must be more or less stinted for money. She herself would have told you, had you asked her, that she knew that her gray gown was of rather dowdy make, although she might not have realized as clearly as the onlooker just where the seams were crooked, or in what particular places the skirt hung unevenly. Pamela had at the best a limited wardrobe, and her village dressmaker had not kept pace with city styles. Pamela herself, unskilled with the needle, even when she knew that a garment might be improved, had not the ability to make the change. She consoled herself with the thought that no one in Cambridge was likely to notice her. She was too obscure to be criticised. She had always admired Julia’s gowns, so pretty and so simple, yet with the hall-mark of good workmanship. Pamela was a lover of beauty in every form, and she now wished vaguely, as she watched Ruth moving about the room, that she herself possessed at least one gown that she could wear as gracefully as Ruth wore hers. Ruth was giving little touches to the furniture, moving one chair farther from the fire, pulling another out of a corner. Julia had excused herself for a moment to rearrange her hair in the inner room, “in case,” she said, “that we should have some more critical callers.”

Hardly had she left when there came a loud rapping at the door.

“Come in!” cried Ruth. “It must be Percy Colton. He often runs up after school,” she added in an aside to Pamela.

The door was thrown open with a bang, and there on the threshold stood Clarissa, tall, almost overpoweringly tall, with a smile on her face, a flush of crimson on her cheeks, and a winter coat of a much brighter crimson on her back. Two other girls were with her, whom she immediately introduced to Ruth as Miss Burlap, of Kansas, and Miss Creighton, of Maine.

“It is so much better,” she said, immediately explaining, “to know from just what State a girl comes. You know what to talk about from the start, and you can account sooner for her peculiarities.”

Ruth smiled at this sally, although she was not inclined to approve much that Clarissa said or did, and she was glad to see Julia emerging from the bedroom. Julia’s greeting was very cordial to Clarissa and her companions, and Clarissa when she caught sight of Pamela greeted her as a long-lost friend.

Hardly, however, was the interchange of greetings over when the half-open door was pushed open wider. “More visitors!” exclaimed Ruth. “How exciting!”

Mrs. Blair entered Julia’s study with lorgnette raised. The action was involuntary. She had found the stairway at Mrs. Colton’s rather narrower than stairways she was accustomed to, and had used the lorgnette to help her find her way. Julia hastened forward to greet her, while Edith and Brenda, with less ceremony, pushed past Mrs. Blair into the centre of the room.